10.13.07

Portland Quiz

Posted in Life, Transport at 8 am

How many alternative motorized vehicles can you find in this Portland street scene? Image from Google Street View (Answer below.)

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06.03.07

Status Report

Posted in Apple, General, Life, Tech at 9 pm

Been working hard: day job, teaching and diagnosing a faulty USB port on the Tivo. That’s what I get for cleaning up the entertainment center’s wiring.

But, I’m happy to report that the Tivo is now happily gathering broadband content and the Mac Mini and the Tivo are now sharing a cozy little hub. I guess I can get the PlayStation 2 connected to that too, but I rarely fire the old PS2 nowadays. Perhaps a Wii might make a nice addition.

Speaking of nice additions, the iPhone is looking more and more like a a modern jackalope. Everyone wants one, but it’s going to tough to get a hold of. I’ve got my eye on a couple of prime spots that may carry it. I’m guessing that only two types of stores will have it: Apple Stores and Cingular/AT&T stores. It’s the latter that will be the best bet, I’m sure. I’m hoping that perhaps some of the third party reseller cellphone stores might have it, but on reflection, that seems unlikely.

Recent purchases at Powell’s Books include the latest issues of Home Power magazine and 2600. Both of these are the equivalent to to purchasing Architectural Digest or the Robb Report: Discussion of things that are out of reach entirely or just fun to think about.

Other items put on the Done section of the To Do list? Haircut, flexible medical account reimbursement form and scanned receipts, updated registration for the Ghia, Oil change and check up for the 170,000k Prius, some trash and boxes expelled from the my desk, repaired the toilet handle (Note: just buy the metal version. The plastic handle barely lasted a year.) Now to reformat the Mini’s new external hard drive and I’m off to bed.

Boy a vacation sure sounds good…

05.13.07

Parking at PSU

Posted in Life at 12 pm

To Whom It May Concern:

RE: Citation C429371

I parked my car in a parking space reserved for a car pool car at exactly 6:00 PM on April 11. I know this because my class was starting at 6 PM, and I called and told my co-instructor to start the class on time, as I was held up in traffic. The posted hours on the sign stated the car-pool permit reservation was from 6 AM to 6 PM. As of 6:00 PM it was entirely acceptable to park in this location, according to the sign.

The ticket left on my windshield that evening and the time stamp on the violation notice you sent me both say that the ticket was issued at 5:58 PM. I dispute the time of the watch that was used to set the violation’s time. My car’s clock read exactly 6:00 PM, and I saw no other clock in the parking structure that would have shown a different time in comparison.

Let’s set aside time issue to focus on another aspect of this: Why wasn’t a warning used instead of a violation? Certainly it would make more fiscal sense to simply leave a warning on a car if it uses a reserved space within 5 or 10 minutes of it being available for general use.

Now you and I have to have this correspondence to work this out, when a simple warning would have let me know that your clocks are off, and to avoid the reserved spots until… 10? 15 minutes after the posted end of the reservation time?

Since April 11, I have parked at the higher levels of Parking Structure 1 and have avoided these pesky time-reserved spots entirely.

Please consider this my notice of dispute of this citation. I ask that you remove/rescind this citation and consider a policy of using warnings as opposed to inappropriate fines for such easily disputed reserved times.

Sincerely…

04.21.07

Stormy Crags on Flickr by Bo

Posted in Design, Life at 3 pm

Great shot Bo!

Stormy Crags on Flickr

Taken in Castle Crag, California

A view of the edifice from further up the valley. A snow flurry was rapidly closing in. Only a moment before the view was clear. Just after this shot, it was obscured.

02.24.07

Richard Dawkins' jaw-dropping talk on our bizarre universe (TEDTalks) – Google Video

Posted in Life, People at 11 pm

Richard Dawkins’ jaw-dropping talk on our bizarre universe (TEDTalks) – Google Video

” Richard Dawkins is Oxford University’s “Professor for the Public Understanding of Science.” Author of the landmark 1976 book, The Selfish … all » Gene, he’s a brilliant (and trenchant) evangelist for Darwin’s ideas. In this talk, titled, “Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science,” he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the “middle-sized” world we can observe. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:42) “

09.19.06

Recent writings

Posted in Career, Life at 11 pm

So in the last couple of months Amy and I went on vacation, Planar purchased Clarity Visual Systems, the Home Theater business unit launched, I had my 32nd birthday. In place of the journal entries that should have been coming from these events, You’ll have to settle for the three articles I posted: http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/articles/.

More news coming this weekend.

03.19.06

Portland to the MAX

Posted in Life, Public Works at 11 am

Over at Metroblogging Portland Banana Lee Fishbones posits that Tri-Met should run around underground the MAX and give up on adding the MAX into the Bus Mall mix.

I’m not a big fan of digging up Portland’s streets, but here’s my response:

BLF: […] I agree with you about the need for alternatives in the Tri-Met plan. This whole idea of taking what is normally a longer distance service (The only route that stretches from G’town to B’ton.) and making. it. stop. every. two. or. so. blocks. in. the. middle. of. down. town. makes no sense to me at all. MAX ought to be a backbone route, dropping people off at half a dozen strategic locations in the core and then getting back to a ‘stops every half mile’ sort of style.

Have they even thought about how many riders they’re going to pick up on the trains that are only as long as a euro-style shorten city block? Those trains are going to be OVERFILLED between downtown and Rose Quarter.

Here’s my thought: run two lines of rail branching off of the existing MAX line.

A) one that breaks off the Steel bridge on the west bank, runs up Everet/Glisan thru Old Town/Perl/Northwest and swings around to catch up with the main line at Civic Stadium. (Yes, you heard me _Civic Stadium_). This brings better service to all the Yuppies in the Pearl and NW and brings down the number of commuters clogging those streets. When the area becomes a shanty town in 30 years, the residents will really need the mass transit options even more.

My Proposed Plan for MAX for 2009 Legend

  • Blue: MAX (Existing & Planned)
  • Red: MAX (My Proposed route on 99e and LO Commuter Rail)
  • Green: Streetcar (Existing & My Proposed Mississippi/Hollywood/Woodstock extensions)


B) Then run a line from Lloyd Center, down 11th/12th to Powell, setting up for a Moreland/ Milwaukee shot south along 99E. Get down to at least SE Tacoma, then shoot a branch off towards the river. We can build a replacement for the Sellwood bridge that includes a MAX deck, and then run the MAX up the old Lake Oswego commuter rail line up into downtown, either staying on the street car line, or hopping onto the rest of the under-used 1st avenue that the exisiting MAX is already using downtown.

In fill some major arteries with street car and now we’ve got a multi-modal hub/spokes/ring around greater Portland, with MAX able to handle a large amount of the commuter traffic that’s pounding the roads in the area, freeing up bus service to support more regular runs in smaller neighborhood hubs.

This is a little Southeast-centric, but hey, we’ve got to make up for the Mt Hood Freeway somehow, right?

02.17.06

Things we didn't know this time last year

Posted in Life at 7 pm

I love stuff like this:

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 100 things we didn’t know this time last year

74. It takes a gallon of oil to make three fake fur coats.

75. Each successive monarch faces in a different direction on British coins.

76. The day when most suicides occurred in the UK between 1993 and 2002 was 1 January, 2000.

77. The only day in that time when no-one killed themselves was 16 March, 2001, the day Comic Relief viewers saw Jack Dee win Celebrity Big Brother.

78. One in 18 people has a third nipple.

12.26.05

The Limit

Posted in Life at 11 am

Please. When I get brave enough to drink straight from the bottle, stop me.

Merry Christmas!

12.24.05

GapMinder

Posted in Life at 9 am

At Christmas-time, something like Gapminder can really put things into perspective for Americans.