12.31.09

Worst Driving Day of 2009

Posted in Family, Transport at 10 am

In bullet point form:

* Three early morning feedings, pre 7am

* 7am: Amy in horrible acute pain

* 8am: All of us out the door and to the OHSU ER

* 11am: Discharge from OSHU following IV pain reliever and ‘possible’ diagnosis

* 1pm: Sudden snowstorm sweeps into Portland

* 2:30pm: James and I head out to Hillsboro to get cash to make up for my skipped pay check (Unpaid Family leave)

* 4pm: 30 minute drive takes 90 minutes today. (Having a credit union with offices near where you work makes more sense when you’re actually working at the office.)

* 4:30pm: Head home from Hillsboro, via TV Hwy, hoping higher-traffic roads will remain safer.

* 6pm: 4 miles and an hour and a half later, James and I stop at @jockmurphy’s home and have a spot of hospitality.

* 7:30pm: Back on the road, decide to take the more-flat Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy rather than chance the elevations of the Sunset Hwy.

* 9:30pm: Averaging 5 miles an hour our jouney finally finishes back at home.

This was crazy. I couldn’t believe some of the insane drivers both too cautious and overly confident.

05.30.08

Bridges: reduce and reuse before recycle

Posted in Public Works, Transport at 12 pm

As noted on Portland Metblogs:

The Columbia River Crossing project needs input from the public, and the current feedback period is only open until July 1.

This is a really serious issue. They have absolutely no reason to take out the existing bridges. They are structurally sound, effective for ship passage, and recently repainted. Sure, they aren’t wide enough, but thats why we ADD to them.

Whatever solution is put together, I think it’s important that it look at reusing what already exists and make it easy to add onto it later (which the existing pair of bridges don’t do), remembering that this stage will only be one more step into the future use of this road/rail/path. We should not only use what’s available today, but also look to the future so that we can expand and be flexible with the changing tides of time.

(Hell, once we get the hovercars, we won’t need the bridges, right?)

11.24.07

Pre-Production Electric Vehicles Compared

Posted in Transport at 2 pm

Six Major Pre-Production Electric Vehicles Compared – DIY Electric Car Blogs

With all of the hype surrounding hybrid vehicles today, I thought I’d do some research and post my findings on the next generation of fully electric and plug-in hybrids. The fully-electric EV has had a bad name in the past, mostly due to insufficient battery technology, politics, lack of performance models and other factors. Starting this year with the Tesla Roadster, the EV is going to take on a new form in the eyes of John Q Public. Quiet, efficient EVs will start to become commonplace in the next few years as major manufacturers go into production with the newest generation of vehicle sporting more powerful motors, efficient generators and the latest battery technology.

I’ve been taking care of the OEVA’s web site and have a news stream showing up on it. This came in recently. I don’t normally point to articles about pre-production vehicles, simply because they are often so much vapormobiles. But this seemed in-depth enough to warrant a link.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.)

Read the rest of this entry »

09.09.07

Last Week's Itinerary

Posted in Career, Transport at 7 am

This was my travel plan from last week’s business trip. The only change was that I ended up on an earlier flight on the way home, the first leg of which was in United’s Economy Plus featuring 5″ of additional leg room. Nice for a free upgrade, not worth purchasing though.


---------------

Flight   574
United Airlines Inc Confirmation Numbers: ZCWTNI
	Depart: Portland Intl Arpt (PDX)
	06:34 AM
Arrive: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD)
	CHICAGO, Terminal 1
	12:22 PM
Seat 19C

Flight   536
Depart: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD)
	CHICAGO, Terminal 1
	02:00 PM
Arrive: Logan Intl Arpt (BOS)
	BOSTON, Terminal C
	05:25 PM
Seat 23C

----------------

Avis
Confirmation Number: 00710940US6
	Pick Up: Tuesday, September 04, 2007
	Logan Intl Arpt (Terminal)
Phone: 617-561-3500

----------------

The Westin Waltham-Boston
Confirmation Number: C531347547
	The Westin Waltham-Boston
	70 Third Ave
	Waltham Ma 02451 Us
Phone: 781-290-5600
Check In: Tuesday, September 04, 2007  3:00 PM
Check Out: Friday, September 07, 2007  1:00 PM

----------------

Flight   881
United Airlines Inc Confirmation Numbers: ZCWTNI
Depart: Logan Intl Arpt (BOS)
	BOSTON, Terminal C
	09:00 AM  Friday
Arrive: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD)
	CHICAGO, Terminal 1
	10:37 AM  Friday
Seat 17D

Flight   929
United Airlines Inc Confirmation Numbers: ZCWTNI
Depart: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD)
	CHICAGO, Terminal 1
	12:20 PM
Arrive: Portland Intl Arpt (PDX)
	02:38 PM
Seat 13D

----------------

03.18.07

Peak Moment Television

Posted in Tech, Transport at 9 am

Peak Moment Television – Conversation 52:

Otmar Ebenhoech has worked with electric vehicles for decades, watching as popular commercial EVs were developed, then recalled when their legal mandate was overturned. He sees improved battery technologies as the catalyst to enable widespread acceptance of EV’s. Peek under the hood and watch a test drive of his hot electric Porsche race car conversion (0-60 in less than 5 seconds!).

Otmar gives a GREAT interview to a Peak Oil information site and we get to see an excellent interview that provides a solid introduction to EVs. Watch it!

02.08.07

YouTube – 2007 Portland Auto Show in two and a half minutes

Posted in Transport at 11 pm

I just posted to YouTube: 2007 Portland Auto Show in two and a half minutes. Which was midly interesting… but only just. The show was pretty quiet and the companies don’t bring out the really advanced concepts.

The video is taken from about a 12-foot tall view of the main hall from the Oregon Convention Center. New cars and trucks on display. The film is really jerky, but it’s a fun ride. Any suggestion for a soundtrack?

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11.20.05

Service shop recomendations – PriusChat – Toyota Prius Forums

Posted in General, Transport at 1 am

I just posted this to PriusChat:

[We] just purchased a Super White 2001 Prius with 107,000 miles on it… I’m now looking for a good shop that I can rely on to take care of my new Hybrid baby. Any thoughts or recommendations?

Amy’s 1984 Honda Accord gave up the ghost after 350,000 miles. After a bit of messing around we’ve settled in with this new technomarvel.

More to come about it later.

09.10.05

Catching up with August 2005

Posted in Apple, Career, General, Life, Media, Tech, Transport, Web at 9 am

For the first post of September, we’ll be covering August and the last few weeks with QuickNotes™…

1) I’ve got a new laptop: 15″ PowerBook. Woo Hoo! It’s teh hot! Seriously, switching from the plastic-cased iBook to the aluminium wraped 15″ PB has given me a new appreciation for thermodynamics. (But still the PB is FAST! So much faster than the iBook.)

2) Tiger is okay, but little to write home about. The UI inconsistencies in OS X from the system and iApps perspective is becoming more obvious. But I could be just railing against the fact that part of iChat crashes on a regular basis, just after I switched back to using it instead of Adium because iChat can now do multiple accounts including Jabber accounts.

3) General instability is the call of the day. Some things are craping out way too easily. I’m letting Steve use my iBook while he’s out in Astoria for school, and I’ll be putting Panther on it.

4) Went and saw part of the Woodburn NEDRA electric drag races. Took some video and put together some movies for John Wwayland over at plasmaboy racing.

5) The new iTunes interface is an unecessary change unless it’s carried out to the rest of the iApps. The name for it seems to be “Polished Metal” as opposed to the older (and reviled) “Brushed Metal”. The iPod Nano looks cool but it took me days to find out it was solid-state flash and not hard drive-based. The ROKR iPhone is for SUKRs. Totally crippled and nothing new hardware-wise. Apple can’t build the whole widget, so the widget is a total compromise.

6) Our living rooom television died. Would like to replace it with a flat LCD, but they’re still more money than I want to invest in Home Entertainment. If anyone’s got a recommendation for a $200 to $300 television with *LOTS* of input and output jacks, let me know.

7) I’ve got a freelance project launching in the next could of days. I’ll point to it once it’s got a bit of burn-in time.

8) I’ve been seeing a new testing probe-bot that’s crawling around Contact forms. It’s already hit LazerQuick where we’ve patched it and just last nite it hit my feedback form on OrderSomewhereChaos. Nasty little bugger made me dive back into Perl code that I’ve not touched in 6 or 7 years. The mail is being sent to the (probably compromised) AOL account of “jrubin3456@aol.com”. They’re looking to find tons of spamming reflectors. I’m sure they’ll find *LOTS* of them.

9) Amy and I are off to see the final regular-season game for the Timbers! Mighty Mighty Timbers!

08.26.01

Electric Drags

Posted in Transport at 2 am

I attended the NEDRA Woodburn Electric Drags on Saturday. I got a lot of pictures and a *lot* of sun. I wrote everything up in an article that’s got lot of pictures.

I stole Amy’s Cannon digital camera and took it with me. I’m glad I did, because it made this write up a lot more interesting. Of course an event that’s all about the silence of an electric motor that is moving over a period of time would be far more interesting with a digital video camera… Hmmmm.