Jon – Page 95 – Complaint Hub

Its a done deal

“I drive down my block and others in neighborhood and I just smile because I know these houses and the families that live in them are going to be protected for a lot more years,” said Anne Theisen, an ANC commissioner who led the effort.

So, it’s a done deal. This doesn’t affect the street I’m about to live on, though. It’s up closer to the DC USA project. Frankly, it’s a pretty small area that’s been rezoned. Only from Monroe to Spring between 14th and 16th. I don’t know the area well enough yet to know what makes that little rectangle significant.

Calling all car nuts who dont really like to drive

Automotive Killer App? The Zeroshift Automanual – Jalopnik

If your idea of nirvana is clutchless gear changes with zero lag up and down the cogway, today may be your birthday.

However, if you really like to DRIVE, this is another nail in the coffin. I know I’m in a small minority here, but I think the skill and enjoyment of driving comes from the driver, not the car. Certainly it is more fun to drive a brand new BMW M5 than a ’74 Pinto. But if I shave .4 seconds off my quarter mile time because I got some new transmission that does all the work for me, that’s a step down in my book. If I have aFerrari, and you have a Hyundai, and I beat you in a race, that doesn’t mean I’m a better driver.

I LIKE doing the work. I like working the clutch and shifting gears. I’m comfortable doing that, and I want to continue doing that. It’s not the most efficient way to drive, perhaps, but I’ll trade some efficiency for my enjoyment.

I hope that, when the day comes that this kind of thing is standard, where the car controls everything, that we also have auto-drive cars. If the car is going to insist on shifting for me, I’m not interested in doing any of the rest of the work.

What planet is this guy on?

The Fantasy Of Happily Ever After – washingtonpost.com

I won’t pull a quote from the article, because you should really read the whole thing. Any article with references to Tolstoy and Newt Gingrich while calling Anna Nicole Smith a modern courtesan is just something that everyone should read.

I’m not sure what the author, Philip Kennicott, was trying to do with the article. Perhaps it was subtle satire of of our star-obsessed culture. Perhaps he hoped to educate us on the ridiculousness of putting people like Anna Nicole on a pedestal. Perhaps he was really, really high. I don’t know. All I know is that the article made me laugh.

They want to make my condo illegal

Rezoning targets rowhouses in Columbia Heights

Looks like the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for where I’m going to be living is trying to block the condo-fication of row houses, which of course is exactly what we just bought. The claim is that taking one single-family row house and turning it into multiple condos will increase traffic, limit parking, and diminish “the architectural integrity of the rowhouse blocks”.

They probably have a point, but trying to revitalize the neighborhood, and then insisting that everything stay the same, is kind of counterproductive. I’d like the neighborhood to keep some of its history, its personality, etc. If we wanted cookie-cutter suburbs, there are plenty of places in Fairfax County.

There’s going to be more traffic. It’s just a fact. As the area becomes a bigger draw, more people will come there. Parking will get worse. Traffic will get worse. Re-zoning will perhaps slow the tide, but it won’t turn it back.

And if your goal really is to keep the architechture, then make sure the outside of the houses stays more or less the same. Personally, I love the look of the old row houses. I wish our developer hadn’t made our building look like an office building. But these are separate issues.

I don’t really know what the solution here is. I agree with the intent of the ANC, but I’m not sure I agree with the execution. I guess I’m going to have to start going to these meetings when I move down there.

Really old and really dead people found hugging

Prehistoric lovers found locked in eternal embrace – CNN.com

“It’s rare for two young people to die at the same time, and that makes us want to know why and who they were, but it will be very difficult to find out.”

Really? It will be hard to figure out who they were? Maybe because they were buried 5000 years ago. I mean, it’s not like there’s some old guy you can just go ask.

Seriously, this sounds like an elaborate pre-Valentine’s Day hoax. Right near the place where “Romeo and Juliet” was set, a week before Valentine’s Day, we find the remains of two young lovers? Someone better check and make sure the skeleton doesn’t say “Hallmark” on it.

Man, I forgot about McSweeneys

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush Wish to Return Their Television.

McSweeney’s is a frequently hysterical satire site that I never remember to look at because they don’t have a friggin’ RSS feed. I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish – they don’t have ads that you’d miss out on if you looked at the RSS instead of the main site. There is no reason I can imagine. And yet still no RSS feed. On the bright side, when I do remember, there’s usually a bunch of new stuff since the last time I was there.

Snow again

It’s so disappointing when you find out at 10pm that you somehow missed the announcement that it was going to snow, and didn’t notice the snow until there was almost an inch on the ground, but wake up the next morning to find that the streets are already clear.

So now you’re just stuck with the occasional icy spot, a few dumb drivers, and no excuse to stay home from work. I hear lots of people say, “Oh, it’s not the roads you have to worry about, it’s the other drivers.” I think that’s a pretty pathetic excuse. There are ALWAYS stupid drivers trying to kill you. One woman did it to me this morning. Somehow, her red light and my green turn arrow meant she could go right into the lane I was turning into.

I’m really looking forward to getting into the city, where people do the sensible thing when it snows and don’t drive for a week.

Not looking good for Whole Foods

According to the Columbia Heights News Forum, it’s not looking good for a new grocery store in the DC USA site. That’s too bad. I was pulling for Whole Foods. Certainly we can make do with the one on P Street. But I hear on the forum that the new Giant and the local grocers are having a hard time keeping up with demand, and I do love Whole Foods’ organic vegetables.

It looks like it’s 1.6 miles from our house to Whole Foods. That’s doable.

What is art, really?

Inhabitat » URBAN CURATORS PROJECT In Downtown Providence

Passing residents were pleasantly bewildered when they stumbled upon a series of gold-painted frames haphazardly taped to graffiti-covered walls and the crumbling exteriors of abandoned sites.

This is pretty cool. Up in Providence, they just stuck frames on random spots of wall and whatnot. For anyone who has ever wondered what makes something art, this seems to suggest it’s just the eye of the beholder.

I wish they used the closed captioning

As you may know, it’s really f’ing cold in the DC area. NPR told me this morning that it was 9 degrees with a wind chill of -1. That’s totally awesome. Yesterday, I was at the gym, and while I was on the elliptical, I had my usual choice of ESPN, NBC4, and Fox News. I generally watch ESPN, because NBC is usually showing Dr. Phil, and Fox News is just completely insane. But during ESPN commercials, I looked over at what Neil Cavuto was talking about. They didn’t have the closed captioning turned on, so I could just read his inflammatory headlines. The one that made me laugh out loud was the suggestion that this cold spell disproves everything we’ve been hearing about global warming. He then went on to talk to some PR guy from some big company, at which point the closed captioning came on, and the guy actually said that obviously global warming people will never change their opinions that it’s happening, and his reasoning for this was that they were crazy liberal Democrats. Then he took a few uninspired shots at Al Gore, at which point I went back to ESPN heaping praise on undeserving Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning.

The logic here is absolutely incredible. Al Gore made a movie blaming people for global warming. Al Gore is a Democrat. Therefore, global warming can not be happening, and is merely a political tool of the liberals against big business. Amazing. Paranoia, thy name is Fox News.