How accurate is your forecast?

Weather Forecast Accuracy for Falls Church, Virginia via Lifehacker This website not only gives you a current forecast, but it also tells you which of the other forecasting sites are most accurate. If you haven’t lived under a rock your entire life, you probably know that weather forecasters are generally regarded to be on about the same level as used car salesmen in terms of honesty. I’m often surprised at how angry people get at the weatherman, as if it’s his or her fault that either the weather is bad, or that the prediction was off.

What I’m really curious about, though, is how accurate the accuracy-checkers’ forecast is.

He says what were all thinking

CNN.com – Chavez calls Bush ‘devil’ in U.N. speech – Sep 20, 2006

This article scares me.  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is supposed to be a lunatic, but the article makes him sound like a mildly loopy Democrat.  Am I so tired of the stupid things our President does that the ravings of a madman start to sound normal?  Or is Chavez made out to be a little crazier than he really is by the media (Impossible!)?

I shake my fist at you, minivan

A blue minivan was the first to trigger my smug reflex.  I knew she was going to do it the minute I saw her.  And not only did she turn into the third lane from the left from the far left lane, but she was poking around under her seat or something while we waited for the light.  Who knows what she might have been looking for?  A pound and a half of pot she grabbed from Willie Nelson, probably.  Or an assault rifle.

But she got hers.  I honked at her as she cut me off.  She’ll think twice about doing that again, I assure you.

Surprise! Youre Jewish.

Allen Says He Embraces His Jewish Ancestry – washingtonpost.com

“I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian,” Allen, 54, said. “And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed.”

If you’re 54 years old, and have to find out about some aspect of your family heritage from a magazine article, I don’t think you can claim to take great pride in that aspect. This is his grandfather he’s talking about. It’s obviously not something his family takes pride in. It’s pretty obvious to me that Allen is a racist. That doesn’t bother me so much. What bothers me is that he seems to think it’s okay to express his racist feelings, which is just mind-boggling. If he’s a racist, fine. That’s his problem. But when he continues to make remarks that demonstrate total insensitivity to different peoples of the world, I start to wonder if he should be involved in politics. There are plenty of non-caucasian and non-christian residents of Virginia, especially around DC, and I think they deserve a representative who doesn’t hate them. Or, at the very least, a representative who can acknowledge that other peoples have an equally valid claim to personhood as he does.

I don’t know much about his opponent (Although I voted for him in the primary) except for an offensive paper he wrote 20 years ago about women in the military. I’m inclined to forgive that in the absence of more recent examples of similar things.

An omen?

As of about 5:30 PM today, I have been married for a month. It’s been a very good month. Tonight, after a celebratory sushi dinner, we went to Harris Teeter so my wife could get ingredients for a vegan carrot cake.  She often bakes dessert for birthdays at work (She even takes requests – is it any wonder I married her?). Harris Teeter often gives coupons when you check out based on what you’ve just bought.  I think this is a cool idea, although it irritates me that I get coupons for Propel with carcinogenic artificial sweetener when I buy delicious Vitamin Water.  We’d been complaining that we hadn’t gotten any good coupons lately. One of the ingredients in the cake was, strangely enough, carrot baby food.  We got a coupon today.  I’ll bet you can guess what the coupon was for, loyal reader.

Where are the drivers in the wrong?

I was all set this morning to scowl smugly at any driver who dared to turn into my lane from the wrong lane at Seven Corners.  I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to bask in the glow of self-righteousness.  I could almost taste it.

And no one was there to turn next to me.  I was so disappointed.  We left the house a little earlier than usual this morning, and there just wasn’t any traffic.

As an aside, do you see what I did there?  I managed to turn a day in Northern Virginia with no traffic into a complaint.  That skill (And I was born with that.  That’s not something you can learn) is why I run Complaint Hub, and you just read it.  Anyone can complain about stuff that sucks.  But it takes a true visionary to complain about the lack of one of the things that everyone complains about.

Aha! I was right!

The DMV was a couple of hours late in answering my question, but I’m willing to let that slide because they completely vindicated me!  Emphasis mine on the relevant paragraph.

Per Code of Virginia, § 46.2-846:

A. Except where turning is prohibited, a driver intending to turn at an intersection or other location on any highway shall execute the turn as provided in this section.

  1. Right turns: Both the approach for a right turn and a right turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right curb or edge of the roadway.

  2. Left turns on two-way roadways: At any intersection where traffic is permitted to move in both directions on each roadway entering the intersection, an approach for a left turn shall be made from the right half of the roadway and as close as possible to the roadway’s center line, passing to the right of the center line where it enters the intersection. After entering the intersection, the left turn shall be made so as to leave the intersection to the right of the centerline of the roadway being entered. Whenever practicable, the left turn shall be made to the left of the center of the intersection.

  3. Left turns on other than two-way roadways: At any intersection where traffic is restricted to one direction on one or more of the roadways, and at any crossover from one roadway of a divided highway to another roadway thereof on which traffic moves in the opposite direction, the driver intending to turn left at any such intersection or crossover shall approach the intersection or crossover in the extreme left lane lawfully available to traffic moving in the direction of travel of such vehicle and after entering the intersection or crossover the left turn shall be made so as to leave the intersection or crossover, as nearly as practicable, in the left lane lawfully available to traffic moving in such direction upon the roadway being entered.

B. Local authorities having the power to regulate traffic in their respective jurisdictions may cause markers or signs to be placed within or adjacent to intersections and thereby direct that a different course from that specified in this section be traveled by vehicles turning at any intersection. When markers or signs are so placed, no driver shall turn a vehicle at an intersection other than as directed by such markers or signs.

So, if you are in the far left, you must turn into the left lane.  I’m willing to concede the second lane from the left as well, but NOT the third from the left.  So take that, high-beam-flasher-lady!  You’re wrong!  I’m right!

I still contend that the intersection is an abomination, but I feel quite vindicated.

Big surprise – Microsoft Zune to suck after all

Medialoper » Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM Link via Techdirt.

Everything I had heard so far about Microsoft’s supposed iPod killer was pretty good.  They were going to work out some way to reproduce your iTunes collection so you didn’t have to repurchase all those songs (Because Apple sure as hell wasn’t going to let you transfer those songs to a competitor’s product).  It really sounded like they were going to try and create a music player that didn’t assume everyone was a criminal.

Unfortunately, things are not what they seemed.  If you share a song via the Zune’s wireless sharing, it will apply DRM to the file so that you can only play the song for three days or three times.  I assume the intention here is to allow you to share a song with your friend so the friend will go buy his or her own copy.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with that – I understand that Microsoft and the record labels are just trying to make a buck, and I really do fully support capitalism.  But the article explains how this is a problem.  Let’s say I’m an amateur musician.  I create a new song on my computer by sampling my cat scratching in her litter box and set it to a beat of me kicking the wall as the Redskins got manhandled by the f’ing Cowboys.  I decide to apply a Creative Commons license to my work, because I think it would be cool if someone else sampled my work and used it in their own song, so long as they give me credit.  So, I have this song on my new Zune, and I’m playing it at a party.  Someone comes up to me and says, “Dude, I love that song!”.  He has a Zune, too, so I share the song with him.  Oops, Microsoft’s DRM just violated the Creative Commons license.  Creative Commons forbids any kind of DRM (Which is a large part of the reason I chose the license).

I haven’t bought a cd in close to a year.  The last cd I bought, in April of 2005, was Garbage’s Bleed Like Me.  I bought it without hearing it, because I really like Garbage.  I put it in my computer so I could rip the MP3’s FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE (I wanted to make an MP3 cd to use in the car so I don’t scratch up the original, and so I can fit ten albums on one disc), and the cd told me to go jump in a lake.  My computer didn’t recognize the cd as an audio cd.  It would play it, but it didn’t see any rippable files.

What I really should have done was return the cd as defective.  I bought the cd assuming that I could listen to the music however I wanted.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll buy Garbage’s next cd.  Part of me wants to boycott it, but the other part of me knows that will hurt me (as I like the music) more than it hurts the company selling the cd.

The real problem here is that the music industry has made it so hard to buy a song once and use it in whatever legal way I want that I’ve just stopped buying music completely.  It sounded like Microsoft was going to help that problem, but apparently that’s not the case.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

A light bulb and a solar panel

EcoGeek – Technology for the Environment – Photovoltaic OLEDs: The Lightbulb Combines with the Solar Panel

So, some really smart people at Cornell have created organic LEDs that can both emit light, and create energy from light.  This makes a lot of sense – one doesn’t need nearly as many light-producing devices when it’s bright and sunny outside, but those lazy regular light bulbs just sit there during the day, mocking the environment.  Even the fancy CFLs don’t do anything useful when they’re not turned on.

I’ve always thought we should do more of this – collect energy that’s already there when we don’t need it so we don’t have to buy as much from the power company when we do.  Efficient appliances are great, but appliances that gather some or all of the energy they need to run are even better.

American Airlines gets their (its?) comeuppance

American Airlines to ‘Path to 9/11’ Producers: That Was US Airways, You Jackasses – Consumerist

So apparently the farce of a documentary called “Path to 9/11”, which seeks to politicize the tragedy even more than it is by spreading lies and deception, got some facts not related to Bill Clinton wrong.  You see, it wasn’t American Airlines who let Mohammed Atta through.  It was US Airways.

American Airlines are so pissed, they’re threatening to withdraw all advertising from the ABC network, and are also murmuring ominously about lawsuits.

I think this is merely karma for American Airlines.  If they hadn’t screwed up my bachelor party, or if they had been nice about fixing it, this never would have happened.