Month: February 2008

Back from California

The wife and I got back yesterday from a super-quick trip to California.  The main purpose of the trip was a baby shower (My first, and I have to say it wasn’t bad – males were forced to go upstairs and drink beer and watch tv while the women played all those ridiculous shower games) in Pasadena.  After driving from LAX to their house, I don’t think I could live out there.  LA is just so enormous and car-centric.  And the Pontiac G6 we rented is a prime example of why Michigan and the American car industry is having such a hard time – it was uncomfortable and unmaneuverable (I’d expect a turning radius like that from an 18-wheeler, not a mid-size sedan).  Although the wife liked having the trip counter and stuff in the middle of the dash, so she could reset it at each turn as we followed Google Maps directions.

Before the baby shower, however, we landed in San Jose and spent the night with a brother-in-law before taking the train up to San Fransisco to stay with another brother-in-law and his girlfriend.  Pictures will be up on Flickr later, but this trip especially has reminded me that I need to take another photography class – I’m less happy with each successive batch of travel photos I take, I think.

We also went to see a show at the SF Museum of Modern Art.  Wow.  It was certainly interesting.  The show was Weimar New York, and it was not quite what I was expecting.  The show is mostly drag, not surprising for the area.  But as the night went on, it was increasingly risque.  After three hours, when we decided to call it quits (It was 1AM at this point, and the wife and I were still more or less on East Coast time), they had arrived at full male and female nudity.  It was an interesting show, although I’m not sure I’d recommend it.  We were talking afterwards, and a brother-in-law remarked that he was unaccustomed to being in the top 5% of the conservative end of the room.  I felt the same way – I think I’m pretty liberal socially, but the crowd in there made me feel like Mike Huckabee.  It was liberal even for San Fransisco.

Anyway, it was a good trip, although much too short.

Say no to artificial sweetener

‘Diet’ foods weight gain puzzle

Scientists from Purdue University in the US now believe that a sweet taste followed by no calories may make the body crave extra food.

So, instead of being better for you, artificial sweeteners give you cancer, metabolic syndrome, and make you fatter.   Artificial sweeteners are not actually food.  They are chemicals that trick you into tasting “sweet”.  Every study I’ve ever seen says they’re bad for you.

So, stop eating them.  Just eat less sweets.  You don’t need that diet soda.  You don’t need the little blue and pink packets of powdered crap in your coffee.

I’ve found, as I’ve cut down on drinking soda, that I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to.  I used to LOVE Coke.  Given a choice, I would almost always drink that.  Then I found beer, and that took away the top spot, but Coke was always my top non-alcoholic drink.

I still drink it sometimes – I don’t believe in cutting things that I enjoy out of my life completely just because they aren’t good for me.  If I generally eat healthfully, then one bacon cheeseburger with fries and a large Coke every once in a while isn’t going to kill me.

In any event, you should stop consuming artificial sweeteners.

Voted!

Took five minutes this time. They had run out of Democrat paper ballots and the little blue cards that count how many people have voted for each party or whatever they do. But I voted.

It always seems a little anti-climactic after I vote – such a large event that actually takes just a few presses of a touch-screen. Whatever. I look forward to the results coming in at 8 or so.

The guy who took my little card told me that they had broken the record for most votes in this area already, and the polls are still open for more than three hours.

ITS A REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY!!!

They didn’t open my polling place on time! They know that DC is mostly Democrats, and they’re trying to steal the election again!

I’m just kidding. The polling place at 14th and Columbia NW was just slow to open the doors this morning, and the wife and I decided to come back later. It’s not like they knew this date was coming. I can understand how they might forget that there was an election this year and not get the polling place set up in time. As they say, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. Or, in this case, ill-preparedness.

Someone actually came out at 7:10 to put a sign on the door identifying the building as a polling place, and as of the time we left, the doors were still locked – you had to get someone inside to let you in. Not a problem when the polls are late to open and the line is bunching up around the door to escape the cold, but it could be a pain later.

There was one lonely guy outside with a “Demand the Vote” sign. As I’ve said, while I would like a congressional representative or two, I feel that I can’t complain too much about DC’s lack of representation – I knew full well what I was getting into when I moved here.

Update – a neighbor reports on the Columbia Heights neighborhood forum that my polling place was running smoothly at 8:15. So I should have no trouble voting when I get home.

Still nothing all that cool in alternative energy for transportation

The Reality of Greener Transportation « Earth2Tech

Chanaron writes that the growth in hybrids across US car manufacturers, “is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communication campaigns than on pure rationale scientific arguments.”

One of my problems with all the new more efficient cars and trucks on the road now is that we haven’t had anything truly revolutionary. The Prius deserves some credit for being the first real success in the industry, but the thing still gets under 50 mpg. If I’m going to drive an automatic-only vehicle that looks as ridiculous as the Prius, it better be getting some really ground-breaking mileage.

That’s a big reason why my technique of using less gas is to walk and take public transportation. Our Mazda 3 gets 23-28 mpg on average, depending on what kind of driving we’re doing.  And it’s still fun to drive.  We try and make up for the difference in fuel efficiency by only using it when we really have to.  My first choice is almost always to take the Metro or bus.  And I expect it to stay that way until there’s a real solution to personal transportation, which doesn’t sound like it’s imminent.

I should have taken a picture

As you know if you were in the DC Metro area last night, it was really, really windy.  So windy, in fact, that the plywood sidewalk cover across the street from the house, erected by the construction company to protect pedestrians, blew over into the street.  Luckily, there’s a fire hydrant there, and it’s the side of the street where you can’t park during rush hour, so only one car was hit with debris.  Well, lucky if that wasn’t your car, I guess.  I mean it was lucky that there weren’t more cars parked there.

The police came, and spent an hour or so driving past, and then backing up (the wrong way down our one-way street), and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  Then they put up some crime scene tape and tore off down the street.

As of 7AM this morning, the car with a huge pile of plywood on top of it is due a parking ticket.  It may be hard to place the ticket on the car, as the front end is entirely covered.  But I fully expect DC’s parking enforcement to try anyway.

I cant believe they said that

Techdirt: Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?

Then, late Sunday a new rumor arose: Yahoo! might try to keep Microsoft away by merging with AOL. That seems sort of like trying to keep a wild animal from eating you by covering yourself with feces. It might make awful sense for about a second, but it’s just a bad, bad idea. First, it’s unlikely to work — and, second, it’s just pathetic.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much at an article on Techdirt.  Comparing a merger with AOL to covering yourself in feces?  Do they have a new intern writing articles?  Wow.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great analogy, and really funny, but totally not what I expect from Techdirt.

I don’t really care what happens to Yahoo.  My only request is that they make sure that someone with a soul gets control of Flickr.  That is the only part of Yahoo that I care at all about.  When Yahoo bought them, I was afraid that Flickr would be ruined, but Yahoo has pretty much left the site alone.  There is a really good community there (Slightly obsessed with half-naked women, but isn’t that why most people pick up a camera anyway?), and it’s one of the only things online where I actually pay for the “pro” version.

Anyway, I hope Yahoo finds a buyer and everything works out.  I doubt they’ll ever catch Google, but they can at least keep nipping at Google’s heels, keep them from getting soft (And putting out a product like Windows Vista).

Obama is down with Creative Commons

I was poking around on one of my favorite websites, Flickr, and found that my favorite presidential candidate not only has an account, but shares all his photos with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.

For all of you internet communist Techdirt-fanatic geeks (like me) who believe that non-scarce resources (like photos and MP3s) should be free (And there is extensive economic theory that reinforces this), this is awesome.

Not that I needed another reason to vote for the guy – he’s the only one running who I trust with my country, even if I don’t agree with him on a lot of the issues.  But if I were looking for more reasons, this would be one of them.

Now I just have to figure out a non-commercial use for one of his photos so I can take advantage of the license.