- VeriSign tapped to secure Internet voting. Well, there goes any hope of ever having an honest election again. But hey, maybe you’ll be able to vote for George W. Brush and get redirected to someone else!
- Do-not-call list takes another twist. Meanwhile, the story with AspenAir continues. I’ve received replies from both the Attorney General’s Office as well as the Better Business Bureau . And yesterday, I got a call from someone at AspenAir who wanted to tell me how they would go out of business if they couldn’t harass people over the phone. My sympathy was practically oozing out the other end of the phone line, I’m sure.
- IBM expands SCO countersuit adding in some claims of copyright violation for stuff that IBM had GPLed. [fark!]
- Says in this article on The New Apple Keyboards that the reason you still are forced to buy a wired keyboard and mouse with a Mac is that you can’t use the bluetooth mouse and keyboard until you’ve configured them using a hardwired mouse (at bare minimum). Sounds like they’re not ready for primetime yet.
- For the World’s A B C’s, He Makes 1’s and 0’s profiles Michael Everson, one of the most prolific contributors to Unicode. Sorry. This one wasn't dumb.
- Man. I want a bowling ball mortar now.
- Where do you fall on the The Political Compass? Jim scored -8.00 on the Economic Left/Right scale and -7.69 on the Authoritarian/Libertarian scale. (And he really wonders where Dave will fall) [jim]
The first time I took the test? Straight down, slightly right of dead center. 0.5, -3.0 or so. On the second try, 5.5, -4.6 (taking a less “reasonable” stance on things, and always feeling strongly about my answer). In both cases, I’m in the quadrant with absolutely no politicians in it. I had planned to do a thorough fisking of this quiz, but I haven’t had the time. So I’ll settle for a couple examples I can bash out this morning:- One is the question that says:
Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.
Agreeing with this one apparently makes you more of an authoritarian. The assumption behind the question seems to be that international law is never wrong, which seems implausible to me. - On the same page, there’s a question:
Our race has many superior qualities, compared to other races.
And I wonder which “race” the test’s author means. I was thinking the human race which apparently isn’t the politically correct answer. Who’s the racist? - Finally, there’s
A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.
If you agree that this is an advantage (I find it hard to argue that fact, even though the advantage is not for the goals I would choose), you’re also branded an authoritarian, rather than a libertarian.
- One is the question that says:
- If you’re interested in understanding current American politics, reading The Jacksonian Tradition by Walter Russell Mead may help. It also gives me another label to ponder using for myself. I often fall closer to a Jacksonian than a Jeffersonian.
- Says here Michael Moore Hates America. And he won’t talk to a passionate guy with a camera. Shades of Roger Smith? Could be.
- It was bound to happen–at last Friday’s Critical Mass an SUV ran over a bicycle.. Luckily no one was hurt, though you’ll notice in the posting that the bicyclist was arrested. The Escalade driver was let go. When the cop was asked about this and told
he ran over a bicycle
he respondedIs that illegal?
. [jim] - It’s heating season again. The landlord turned on the furnace last week, and it’s been running for a couple days. I can already feel the effects, and need to buy a new humidifier. But it’s a real pain in the butt, since the house has a forced-air system, and running a humidifier means pumping moisture into the whole house. The last two winters, I was using 3-4 gallons of water every day during the winter, and the cheap humidifier burned out its bearings after two years of use. I need something better. Suggestions?
- Should I head out to the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Carson City 2003? I might actually have some free time by November 1. I probably don’t have a winner, but the fact that I haven’t trimmed the beard for something like ten years might get me an honorable mention… [boing boing]
- Says here that Head size and mental ability are directly corrolated.
Those with the smallest heads had up to a fivefold greater risk of cognitive decline over this time than those with the largest.
Bad news for Mr. Kay indeed. - Here’s a handy tutorial explaining how to reject mail matching regular expressions via Sendmail’s milter facility. I need to look into it as another weapon in the war against spam.
- Tinfoil Hat Linux looks like it takes security farther than OpenBSD but isn’t useful for a server. Still, it’s a cool idea for a really secure Unix and don’t need to connect to the net.
- The Bongo Project implements internet protocols using Bongo Drums. Only took a little over two minutes for a ping. [boing boing]
- Justice department using Patriot Act in nonterror cases. There’s a shocker. [strib]
- I updated the Sisters Camelot website yesterday, too. Now they’ve got spiffy scripts so they can update the schedules and stuff without me having to go edit the web page. There’s still plenty of work to do on their site, but now I won’t have to worry about the monthly updates, so I might have a little more time to get the other work done.
- John Walker’s The Digital Imprimatur describes how the internet could well become less free over time. It’s a long read, but he’s a pretty smart guy (wrote AutoCAD for one). He discusses trends that have already happened, such as the Internet no longer being a true peer-to-peer network, but rather two nets, one of content producers who have servers and customers who sit behind firewalls and just suck in the content; digital certificates, which as currently implemented, can only be bought (because of the expense) by corporations; trusted computing, in which you’ll have to trust that you’re not getting screwed by the people who make your computer’s operating system; digital rights management, where you may need to get a certificate in order to publish anything on the internet; and the way access could change as we move to ipv6. It’s not an optimistic document, and I think he’s wrong in general, but I can’t point to any specific place where he goes wrong. Frustratingly pessimistic. [chaz]
- My friend Scott read my comments on wednesday about underage drinking and suggested the following:
Those fines would have made it a pretty expensive night last night for the people whooping it up last night in one of the houses on my block.I think they should have a $13 fine for underage drinking, a $130 fine for public underage drinking, and a $1300 fine for underage drinking and inconsiderate behavior in a public place … and perhaps a $13000 fine if you do it where I have to listen to your sorry shit.
- Wow. Layne made Maclean’s in an article entitled the intimacy of blogs. Layne’s response to the article is online, too.
- Layout-o-matic will build two and three-column layouts for you that will work across browsers. Just don’t try and use a percentage if you’re surfing via Safari. It won’t work. Update: Kevin has fixed the bug and it should be good to go with Safari. I got the email from him at 11pm. Not sure when he put in the fix. [zeldman]
- Style Master’s a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Editor. I’m playing with the 30-day demo, but it might be worth buying. I think between this and layout-o-matic, I might have the incentive I need to spend some time cleaning up the style sheets I use here. [zeldman]
- Telemarketing group advises members to abide by do-not-call list. Doesn’t seem all that strange. The list is a collection of people who don’t want to be called. Calling them, especially while the status of the list is in limbo, is unlikely to make many sales. [strib]
- Families say goodbye to fire victims.
- Deadly fire’s cause might never be known, official says, but they’ve said that there wasn’t any negligence on the part of the owners and that the fire could have been arson, since it started on the porch.
- Students anxious over house inspections. Yeah, but I’m betting the landlords are a lot more anxious.
- Duplex’s owner voices relief that it wasn’t maintenance problems with the house that caused the fire.
- Judge who sided with telemarketers is flooded with calls as people express their displeasure. [strib]
- Congress approves “do-not-call” legislation, but second judge blocks list. Two issues here: the first is that the FTC doesn’t have the authority (says judge 1) to handle the list, the second is that the list is a First Amendment violation because it only restricts commercial speech and not charities too (judge 2). Heck, if restricting charities from calling me would get this going, I’d be happy with that. Some of the more obnoxious telemarketing I receive is from non-profits. [strib]
- Nettle vs ACLU isn’t a lawsuit, just a commentary on the practice of the ACLU (and other non-profits) of selling or sharing their membership information to all and sundry. I don’t know that some non-profits make more from selling their membership lists than they do from donations, but it wouldn’t surprise me. [doc]
- jr’s got a way of dealing with telemarketers: ask Why are you calling me? and never let them control the conversation. [jr]
- Did you know about eBay Spying and Ratting Its Users out to the cops? And it’s not just eBay, it’s half.com and PayPal, too. Basically they’ll provide whatever information a law enforcement officer asks for, without a warrant or subpoena. They hold information on the buying habits of over sixty-two million people, and not only will give it up to the cops when asked, but they’ll even watch your account, and if you do something “suspicious”, they’ll hand that information over to the cops, too. But hey, you don’t mind if Chief Wiggum finds out that you’re the biggest collector of Malibu Stacy dolls in Springfield, do you, Smithers? [endwar]
- U.S. Court Unplugs Anti-Telemarketing List, so for the moment, the October 1 introduction of the national do not call list won’t happen. Boo!
- In more bad news on the spam front, blackhole.compu.net is now defunct and monkeys.com is now retired from spam fighting. Two of the realtime blackhole providers close their doors in one day.
- Fontscape® and Identifont® can help you identify a font that you’re not sure what it is. Useful! [zeldman]
- Kari Tauring wrote an interesting critique on our public education system. For now it’s posted on The Usual Suspects. For future reference it will be archived here [jim]
- In happier news, Radio K celebrates a decade of excellence on October 1st. Happy Birthday Radio K.
- Twins triumph after an uncertain season, winning the AL Central. I probably won’t manage to make it to any of the playoff games, but it’s nice to know they’ll be happening.
- Today’s Doctor Fun made me laugh. No more work-unsafe than some of my comments here. The biggest danger is that you might feel compelled to print it out and hang it on your cube-wall.
- Jury convicts man in DMCA case. He was selling cards that could decrypt DirecTV broadcasts, which was probably a pretty good case from the prosecution’s point of view. [scripting]
- Police unleash new tactics against underage drinking and one first-year student says
If they’re going to keep busting us, it’s going to be hard to make ends meet.
Well, maybe I’m just turning into Mr. Wilson, but it seems to me that if the fine for underage drinking ($130) is too steep for you to pay, maybe you could, oh, I dunno, stop breaking the law. Or at a minimum, quit being an asshole while you’re underage and drunk, so the cops won’t have an excuse to pull you in. Stumbling through the neighborhood at 3am yelling “Woo!” at the top of your lungs so you wake up all the people who are trying to sleep is not a good way to keep a low profile about your lawlessness. - …and in fire updates: U groups raise money for fire victims, but the Daily doesn’t list the address to send your money to, and I couldn’t find it online this morning. Eischens will finish inspections Wednesday, double-checking the smoke-detectors in all the houses they rent out. City details dozens of complaints at Eischens properties, basically saying that while they aren’t great landlords, they’re not the worst. That fits in with what I know, but I’d say they’re closer to worst than best. Tenant describes raging fire that killed U students.
- City pledges rapid housing inspections. It’s a shame that people had to die before most of the housing around the U will get inspected, but I expect this will make for a lot of very busy landlords this winter. I doubt inspectors will find many rental houses in the neighborhood that don’t have numerous code violations.
- Student housing comes in all kinds - Renters often rate cost above quality. I know I did when I was going to the U. Heck, I still do, to some extent.
- As the survivors of a fatal fire mourn, concerns rise about housing conditions near the U.
- Tenants are front line in residence safety, but many don’t know what to do when something isn’t right about the place they’re renting.
- Many roommates, tight quarters a fact of life for students in Dinkytown.
- Management company defends itself in wake of fatal fire.
- Bureaucrash is an international network of activists of all political persuasions who believe that bloated, sprawling governments and the bureaucrats and politicians who control them ought to be mocked. Mercilessly. Oh, and the pro-government protesters who want more bureacracy.
- Call Centers Struggle in Face of Do-Not-Call Rules. Isn’t that a shame? All together now: Awwww…
- Meeker Island advocates hope to recapture an era’ s history. The Meeker Island Dam was the first dam on the Mississippi in Minneapolis, and it’s about time that it get some more attention.
- Ashes, tears and questions about the house fire near my neighborhood from the MN Daily. There are also profiles of the three who were killed in the fire: Brian Heiden, Amanda Speckien and Elizabeth Wencl.
- Campus, families cope with deaths mentions that there were also two women rescued from the basement, beyond the ones mentioned in yesterday’s news articles. When I walked past the house Saturday, I didn’t notice and obvious signs of a basement apartment, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s something done in many properties owned by the Eischens, usually without a permit visible.
- City, U plan steps on student housing in wake of fire that killed 3 is the Strib’s take, and doesn’t mention anyone in the basement, either. But it does mention that we’ll probably be seeing an inspections sweep through the neighborhood sometime soon. Between that and having a new inspector working the area already, I think there are going to be a lot of busy landlords for the next year or two as places get brought back up to code. [strib]
-
House fire kills 3 students in a house near my neighborhood. My condolences to those involved. For close friends, a fiery nightmare and Three students die in fire near University of Minnesota have more on the story. I don’t know much more than is in the articles, but I did walk by yesterday to have a look. The house looks as bad as the articles make it sound.
825-15th Ave SE 2048x1536(674k) 640x480(57k) - Wow. This is a pretty impressive review of some Fine Russian Engineering: the Volga V12 Coupe. Sadly out of my price range at about half a million bucks.
- Stores report brisk riot T-shirt sales. Sigh. Not what we want Dinkytown to be known for.
- AT&T offers local service in the Twin Cities. I’ll have to check on the details, but if they offer DSL as part of the deal…
- “Green” apartments snuggle between factory and steam plant talks about the Stone Arch Apartments, build by Steve Minn. When Jim and I were walking to the ballgame last Wednesday, we walked past them. I still don’t really like the look of the building, but it’s getting closer to done, and looks less hideous. The article’s long and pretty complimentary, but I think it’s worth reading if you’re in the neighborhood. The biggest disagreement I have with the article is that I think these apartments will be the thing to chase Metal-Matic out of the neighborhood.
- UK bans spam messages, but it’s Italy that has the harshest penalties, including jail time. [fark!]
- September 19 is Talk Like A Pirate Day. Hey. That’s today. Arrr! Then again, I don’t much observe holidays, so I’ll probably keep talking like I alwasy do. But I figured you might want to know.
- The Irate Scotsman has a suggestion for Stopping spam. It just might work.
- The RIAA Prank: Do They Really Care About Kazaa, Grokster, and Napster? A guy gave ’em a call to find out. [boing boing]
- But here’s an interview with the President of the RIAA telling us Why file swapping tide is turning.
- MoMZine has A Look Back At The Beat Farmers. Dang. It’s been over eight years since Dick died. But they released a new album from 1983 recently, so what the hell. [some guy]
- Ecosystem Details for Dave’s Picks in the Weblog Ecosystem. Let’s see how far I can move up from the Insignificant Microbe I started as, and the flippery fish I was at most recently.
- Here’s a handy little guide to Understanding the tax system.
- Guns and Goldy: Weapons debate comes to the U. There’s the editorial I was expecting to see.
- At the Twins game on Wednesday, Jim noticed a guy who clearly hadn’t figured out that you need to do certain things in a given order. He was standing at the trough in the men’s room, whizzing away, while holding a ketchup-covered hot dog in his left hand. Now I’m no clean-freak, but it seems to me I would have either eaten the dog before doing my business, or bought the dog after the leak-taking and hand-washing. It was definitely bad Bathroom Behavior.
Jim and I went to last night’s Twins game. It was a fun time. The Twins Geek was supposedly there somewhere (along with 40000 other people), but I didn’t decide I was going until fairly late in the afternoon, so we didn’t try to meet. But Jim & I had a couple beers and dinner in the bar at the dome which was a very pleasant experience. $6.50 for dinner, and about $4 for a can of beer or mixed drink. Then we watched the game.
the view from our seats 640x480(119k)
Kenny Rogers worried me in the second (before the game, Jim and I decided all we wanted was six innings out of Rogers, preferably with a lead, but even a tie would be okay), when he had two runners on with one out, but he worked his way out of it. Garland, who’d started for the Sox, and looked good in the first couple innings started having trouble in the third. He gave up a home run to Ryan, then a walk, a couple wild pitches, and two more runs. In the bottom of the fifth Garland gave up a single, then walked Mientkiewicz after a stolen base by Rivas, who scored on a Jones single. That was it for Garland. It was pretty quiet until the top of the fifth when Kenny Rogers got in trouble and gave up a two-run homer to Crede, but Romero finished the seventh, Hawkins the eighth, and Eddie closed 'em down in the ninth, and that was that. The Twins are now two and a half up, and hopefully they’ll clinch the season soon so the injured guys on the team can get a little rest.
It was a much more expensive evening of baseball than I’m used to, what with $21 for the seat, about $15 in the bar before the game, and a few beers in the seats at $5.50 each, but I had fun, and it was good to hang out and watch a ballgame with Jim.
100x178(11k) - In Wikis, Grafitti, and Process Clay Shirky talks a bit about how wikis are cool. But the quote that hooked me was:
Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity. When I was CTO of a web design firm, I noticed in staff meetings that we only ever talked about process when we were avoiding talking about people. “We need a process to ensure that the client does not get half-finished design sketches” is code for “Greg fucked up.” The problem, of course, is that much of this process nevertheless gets put in place, meaning that an organization slowly forms around avoiding the dumbest behaviors of its mediocre employees, resulting in layers of gunk that keep its best employees from doing interesting work, because they too have to sign The Form Designed to Keep You From Doing The Stupid Thing That One Guy Did Three Years Ago.
- Are You Too Stupid to Surf? Or is the problem that Microsoft is too stupid to be selling operating systems? Well, not you specifically.
- Ernie Ball (makers of premium guitar strings) is Rockin' on without Microsoft after getting a visit from the Business Software Alliance (the software piracy cops) in 2000. They’ve been Microsoft free for nearly three years, and their CEO talks about the experience.
- I’ve gotta find time to play with SubEthaEdit from The Coding Monkeys. It’s an editor that lets multiple people edit the same document at once. Why? Because forty-two brains are better than one. Imagine using it at a conference like WWDC to take down commentary on something like SJ’s keynote…
Oh, Mac OS X only. It uses Cocoa and Rendezvous for most of the magic. - Also need to check out: Meteorologist. A weather program for Mac OS X.
- Appeals Court Delays Calif. Recall Vote, which would mean that it wouldn’t happen until March 2. Lovely. six more months of hearing about that crap. Yeah, I understand it’s important to California, but so are avocados.
- Chong gonged for selling bongs–nine months in federal prison and a $20,000 fine. But yeah, that’s just John Ashcroft protecting us. Hey, I feel a lot safer now that that hippy’s in jail. (Is your sarcasm detector working? That was a test.)
- Missouri Senate overrides concealed weapons bill veto, making Missouri the 36th state with a shall-issue concealed-carry law, and the 45th to allow some form of concealed carry. It’s not as good as Vermont’s law, but it’s another bit of progress.
- Student to challenge U concealed gun prohibition, but that’s got a whole bunch of people in a tizzy. Think there might be some editorials in the local papers soon?
- Hey, speaking of people in a tizzy around here, last night there was plenty of procedural wrangling at our Neighborhood Association meeting. It prompted me to write an essay On Communicating Effectively while I was lowering my blood-pressure with a few glasses of liquid calmative. In other news, Paul Zerby’s proposed amendments to city ordinance are going before the Public Safety & Regulatory Services Committee today at 1:30pm. He’s taken out the non-transferability of on-sale liquor licenses, but I still don’t think his suggested changes address the real problem, which isn’t drunks, it’s people who are assholes when they’re drunk (nothing at all like your humble narrator, natch).
- Minneapolis tower plans renew height debate, with two development projects (one that I knew about, and another I heard about from this article) along the river. 35 and 39 stories tall. But before all the foo-fraw last night, I found out that the 35 story project is probably going to be scaled back to only 15 or so. There’s one that we won. [strib]
- If you’re paying attention, you may have noticed something new on the site. I’m not entirely happy with the layout I’ve got, but it’s the least hideous way of putting it on the site I could come up with. And I know it’s a web bug and I don’t especially like those, but dangit, I’m gonna see if I can maybe make a little money off the effort I put into the site. So if you do see something that interests you there in the lower right, go ahead and click it. It probably won’t earn me very much, but I think it’s worth trying. Some of them are tailored very well to the page they appear on, so there’s at least a slim chance there might be something worthwhile there.
- While I was futzing with the site yesterday, I updated the list of Dave’s Random Essays to include the things I’ve written this year. Yeah, sometimes it takes a while before I get around to the maintenance around here. No new content there, I just made things a little easier to find, I hope.
- Cosh talks about the self-inflicted black eye for baseball that is the Montréal Expos. He’s got good points, and it’s yet another one of the things that’s happened under commmissioner Bud Selig’s tenure that’s made me less than enthusiastic about supporting MLB. [colby cosh]
- The Hardest Stuff in baseball? Fastballs above 100mph are right up there.
- NASA to smash Galileo probe into Jupiter because it’s almost out of fuel and almost certainly contaminated with microbes from Earth. Rather than have it smack into Europa accidentally, they’re going to drop it into Jupiter instead. More information available at the project home pages. [strib]
- Bloomington resident to attempt record rocket launch in Nevada desert. Ky Michaelson’s trying to be the first amateur to get a rocket above 62 miles up. [strib]
- How Much is Inside a Sharpie? Well, go read the story. And then be glad someone else did the experiment, because it’d take you a while. [boing boing]
I did some coding on the website yesterday. It was about four hours of research and coding, and under a dozen lines of new code when all was said and done. But I think I’ve got the referer-spam problem under control for the moment, and more importantly, I think I put the new code (and more importantly the new ideas) in place so that I can extend it more easily in the future. Between that before-noon productivity, a beautiful day outside, with a walk where I took a couple random pictures, and not trying to get a hundred things done around home during the afternoon, I feel pretty good about starting a new week. It’s been a while. Of course something will probably happen in the next couple hours to sour my mood, but that’s how Mondays are supposed to be, right?
pretty flower 1536x2048(527k) 480x640(43k) - The biggest companies are complaining that they can’t find workers. But I’m not the only one wondering What labor shortage? Besides, there are pleny of people complaining that there aren’t any jobs. The real problem is that the kind of jobs and the kind of hiring is changing. There are more people who want to work for themselves. There are more people moving laterally at more senior positions. And finally, there are people changing careers. It all shakes up the labor market, and companies that have shitty benefits, or whose HR departments are stuck in the 50s are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to trying to find the best candidates.
New Terror Laws Used Against Common Criminals, thanks to the ever-useful USA-PATRIOT act. See, methamphetamine is a chemical weapon, and a pipe bomb is a weapon of mass destruction. How Convenient!
Good Thing It's Open! 1280x1024(332k) 640x512(54k) - Meanwhile, Bush Seeks to Expand Access to Private Data with the follow-on to the Patriot Act.
- A column by Dave Barry put the screws to some telemarketers who didn’t seem especially happy when a lot of people called them. And when telemarketers complain of how many jobs will be lost because of the National Do Not Call Registry Barry responds by saying:
Of course, you could use pretty much the same reasoning to argue that laws against mugging cause unemployment among muggers, but that would be unfair. Muggers rarely intrude into your home.
- I’ve modified how I display the Last 10 Referrers list a bit, and also the code that serves up every page on Dave’s Picks. If you’re seeing a problem I hope you’ll let me know, but you probably won’t be able to read this. Basically I’ve got a list of sites that have referer spammed me, and if someone tries to read a page on this site, with one of those sites as a referer, they’ll get a 403 Forbidden error and no content. Yes, I’m breaking part of the web and part of my website, and I feel bad about it, but these are almost always either search engines that don’t check for robots.txt before spidering my site and send a bogus referer in their request (a search engine should send nothing for the referer, IMHO) or porn sites that are trying to get more hits. Well, screw ’em. They get nothing. Hopefully this won’t break too many legitimate users of the site, but I do expect to see some problems. If you’ve got a better idea, feel free to send it along. I’m thinking that I’ll probably end up pulling the last-ten thing eventually, but maybe there’s a smart idea out there that will put that day off.
- Welcome again to Accordion Guy readers. Go back to Thursday for more about why Joey’s thanking me.
- Yesterday I walked down to East Hennepin for some lunch and a bit of shopping. I ended up stopping at Panera Bread for the first time ever, and had their Italian Combo sandwich. It was good enough, but I was a little disappointed. The sandwich, a bag of chips, and a medium pop was $8. If I get the same thing at Delmonico’s for a couple bucks less, and a lot more friendly chatter while my sandwich is being assembled (and yes, Delmonico’s is still for sale if you know anyone who wants a house and grocery store.) As an added bonus, later in the evening, it became apparent that the Panera sandwich had gone thorugh me like grass through a goose. I’m pretty sure I won’t be eating there again. Oh well, at least it was out of my system relatively quickly.
- After lunch, I walked up to Kramarczuk’s for some shopping. Pastrami, Polish Ham and Moroccan Lamb Sausage came home with me for lunches over the next week or so. Yummy!
- What can Charles Darwin can teach Tom Ridge about homeland security? To Adapt or Die. Good points through the article, including the one that the Department of Homeland Security is probably not the right response. [some guy]
- Hit-run crashes now low priority in Minneapolis. Basically if the police can’t catch the person who hits you right away, you’re going to have to track them down yourself. Or have an insurance company that will, and that’s not one of the things they advertise about their service.
- Speaking of traffic, The battle of the bottleneck: We’re all choked up in the Twin Cities by poor highway planning in the 50s and 60s. It doesn’t help that evening rush hour seems to start about 2:30pm now, rather than the 3:30pm it did less than ten years ago, either. Me, I try to avoid driving long distances for work. I’ll probably be even more careful about where companies I work for are located in the future, especially if they insist that I come to the office periodically. [strib]
- Here’s some local telemarketing scum: Aspenair Heating and Air Conditioning of 656 Lake St N, Forest Lake, MN. 651-982-2626 . They called about noon on Friday with an automated dialer (illegal under MN Statute 325E.27 for them to to that), ignored the No Solicitation service I have on my line, and when I called to get off their list and generally bitch at them, they denied doing anything illegal. I’ve sicced the MN Attorney General’s Office on them, and filed a complaint with the Minnesota and North Dakota Better Business Bureau. While I wouldn’t encourage any illegal behavior, I sure wouldn’t mind if they got a number of calls to come out and clean non-existent chimneys in the metro-area.
- Says here that Danger is going to be offering new features in the Hiptop just in time for me to renew my one-year plan. But as Cory points out, T-Mobile’s voice plan is nothing special, and there are other cool phones out there. I like my hiptop, but I seldom carry it anymore. It’s heavier than I like, and the one feature I dug most when I saw the betas last year still isn’t on the list as something I can get (a ssh client, so I can fix my server remotely). I’m not sure what I’ll be looking for in a phone, but the two directions I could go are to drop the cell-phone entirely or to try and find one that’s a good replacement for my landline (see previous entry).
- Hard times, nasty battle at First Avenue, as the owners try to sort out who actually owns the place, and the club’s losing money. I worry a bit about that, since the land under the club is probably pretty valuable now. [strib]
- Call the heat on Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of a teacher who found an interesting way of discussing the lessons of the book. [endwar]
- In IE, Flash, and patents: here comes trouble, Zeldman details (and points to a news.com story which also lists) the problems that will hit the web if the Eolas patent on embedded bits in webpages is upheld. I can see two good things coming of this: first, more people will be taking a hard look at the faults in the current patent system, especially for business method and software patents; second, maybe it’ll kill off those damned blinking flash ads that companies put to suck your eyes away from the content you’re trying to read. [zeldman]
- I spent a while yesterday resurrecting the F page of the LM Jargon File. Seems that somewhere along the way, about half the content of that page had gotten lost, so I had to rummage around for an old backup. Good thing I don’t much throw things away.
- I put this picture in the links yesterday, but Jim points out that he really enjoyed it in its original Billboard Magazine ad form. It’s from a 1998 ad that American Recordings ran after Johnny won a won a Grammy for Unchained as best country album. [jim]
Country singing legend Johnny Cash dies of complications from diabetes. Not terribly surprising, but still sad. Thanks to Jeff for pointing out the appropriate picture.- Last Monday, I saw Magas and Luke Eargoggle at the rock rock rock with Susan. Most of the music didn’t really wind me up. It’s the same old stuff that those kids have been raving to since forever, and I heard enough of that in the 80s (there were a couple points when I looked over to her and said
like Kraftwerk, but without the German lyrics
). But I didn’t hate it either, and Fuckstorm opened, so that was a good thing. I dunno. I had more fun watching the crowd, and talking to Susan than I did listening to the music, but what the heck. The only real drag was the parking ticket on her car when we left. Guess we got into the one-hour parking 8am-10pm zone before 9pm, so she got the ticket. It was only $33, and we decided to split it so it didn’t break the bank, but it made the evening a bit more expensive than anticipated.
They had Orange Crush in bottles in the cooler at the bar. And remembering high school, I got a crush with a shot of rum. Tasty drink, but too sweet to have all night long. It brought back memories of days when I didn’t have the wisdom to switch to something else. - Raindrops finally falling on our heads, and it’s sure nice to have the dust and allergens settled a bit by the rain. It was a rough week work-wise, and I’m hoping the change in the weather will help me be a bit more productive today and next week. If nothing else, it’s cooled off enough that I can work without the constant drone of the air-conditioner for a day or two.
- Michael Mace asks Who Killed Apple Computer? I think he gets a couple things wrong, mostly thinking that Apple is (or was) dead, but he also makes some good points. But I think one of the biggest changes (that he seems to miss) is that Apple never could figure out how to make money from software. Until very recently, almost all of Apple’s income came from hardware. That’s starting to change with QuickTime Pro sales, the iTunes music store, and .mac subscriptions, but it took a while to figure out, and Apple still makes most of its money from hardware. [scripting]
- Via Turly (who got it from Fintan), I got the following bit of cool:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
- Mill City Museum opens Saturday. That’s tomorrow. Sounds like a cool new museum just across the river from me.
- Well, I found the solution to the sleep problem of earlier in the day. I worked until 6am, had some breakfast and a little more work, and then went back to sleep from about 7 to 11. Now it’s after lunch, and I’m feeling pretty good. Hopefully the rain this morning has calmed down the allergens. I’m about to venture outside to find out.
- Welcome Accordion Guy readers. Yeah, Joey’s Montreal bound because of a voucher I sent him. The explanation of how I got the voucher in the first place might be interesting to you. As for why Joey got it, well, he’s Canadian, which meant he had a better chance of using it than I did (it’s only good on VIA, the Canadian rail system), and when I sent it to him, it sounded like he could use it. I figured (correctly as it turns out) there was no way I was going to be able to use it, and I wanted someone to take advantage of the free travel. So there it is. Have a good weekend in Montréal, Joey.
- This morning I discovered the downside to napping as much as I did yesterday. I went to bed last night about 11pm. Woke up at 1:30am. Then again at 2:45am. Then again at 3am, when I just decided to get up, since I was wide awake and actually feeling pretty good. Guess since I couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t find anything worth blogging this morning, I’ll just do some work. But I’m worried about the meeting I’ve got this afternoon. There’s a good chance I’ll be feeling like napping again by then.
- This Feed Validator for RSS and Atom is handy if you’re making your own RSS feed, like I am. [zeldman]
- Huh! I didn’t know about the OpenBSD Manual Pages: afterboot(8) man page. Handy!
- In Be it ever so crumbing... jr’s got some tips for people buying homes. Mental note made. [jr]
- Check out James Howard Kunstler’s Eyesore of the Month. Well, someone’s a bit cranky about design in America. And looking at the pictures in the archives, it would seem to be for good reason. [some gal]
- Asbestos, Not Rock and Roll, Fells Warren Zevon. He died of mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos from a factory he worked in, not smoking or a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Wonder why this didn’t get more press. [colby cosh]
- The Dog Days of summer seem to be stretching extra-long this year. I only whined about allergy problems twice last year and three times the year before, and it feels like I’ve been complaining about ’em for months already this year. I’m not sure if it’s the dry weather this year that is making things worse, but I feel like I’ve lost most of the time since mid-August to days of sniffling around with a head full of cotton. Yesterday was another miserable day, and I nearly filled the kitchen garbage can with wadded up bits of snot-filled paper. Ugh. Claritin alone isn’t doing the job, and I think the goal for today is to head down to the drugstore and get out the heavy artillery. Benadryl and Sudafed (or generic versions thereof) are both on the shopping list, and taking Benadryl is going to mean days that are lost to a drug-haze. Hopefully I’ll manage to be at least a little productive, but at this point, I wouldn’t mind just sleeping until it snows.
- Hey. Apple’s sold over a million iPods. And I just noticed that if you look at the iPod name umop-apisdn, it looks like Pod! I hadn’t really noticed that before and wonder if the reason I find it insteresting has anything to do with the previous post.
- Police crack down on illegal alcohol consumption, sales this weekend. One of the problems with living around the U is that you have to deal with a new crop of kids every year who are away from home for the first time, and who are exploring the limits of what they can do. That often includes boozing it up, and with no real experience in how to hold their alcohol, and a society which often lets people use intoxication as an excuse for bad behavior (
Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up with loud music at 4am, but I was drunk
as if turning the stereo to 11 is somehow quieter when you’re sober). It’s nice to see something being done about it, even if the police are targeting underage drinking, rather than the real problem, which is people who don’t take responsibility for their own actions or consider how those actions affect others. - U-area bars upset by proposed liquor license restrictions which Paul Zerby is moving forward with. But again, the felons from the hockey riots, who are one of the reasons for these proposed changes, were not of legal drinking age in the first place. If you’re going to crack down on drinking near campus, it’s the house-parties that need the focus, not the bars.
- Increased illegal drinking puts more police on campus details some of the arrests from last weekend. Hey, house parties got busted.
- New signs will help direct residents and visitors alike to the Mississippi, which I think is a good thing. Also be sure to check out the related content in this article. There’s a lot going on by the river right now. [strib]
- Sunday’s Saints game started a little rough. Dave Wright was talking to the control-room pre-game, but there was no actual webcast during the first. I could hear the PA announcer announce four Saints batters during the top of the first, but that was it. Dave came on partway through the bottom of the first. Apparently the Twins game on KCCO was running late and he wasn’t aware that he should be calling the game on the web. Oops.
After Dave apologized for the technical difficulties, and got caught up at the end of the first inning, the webcast went dead again. Argh.
The webcast came back just as Winnpeg scored in the bottom of the second, making it 1-0, but the Saints got a couple back in the top of the third, taking the lead. It could have been more, but Justin Hall held up at third (or was held up–it wasn’t clear from the call), messing up the basepaths, which ended with Chris Jones hung up between first and second for an out.
Winnipeg tied it at two in the bottom of the fourth. Von Haefen only pitched four and a third before being relieved by TC, who let in two of Von Haefen’s runners in the bottom of the fifth, giving the Goldeyes the lead.
Warren Newson got his first (and as it turns out, only) hit of the playoffs in the top of the sixth, followed by a single from Alfonzo, which chased Luque. Donnie Smith took over, keeping the Saints to one run for the inning.
Heath McMurray took over for Winnpeg in the seventh and shut down the Saints. Winnipeg wins 4-3.
The key play of the game? It was either the base-running problem by Hall at third in the third or the dropped popup by Alfonzo in the second. Either one made at least the one-run difference the Saints needed, and also gave the Goldeyes a psychological boost.
This was definitely a much better season than the past few years, but it’s a disappointing end to the season, and I’m not sure whether I would rather have been up in Winnipeg to watch it live or not. I’m pretty sure it would have been a depressing drive home if I’d gone up there. - Saints' season ends with playoff loss, and Tsamis cites the same two mistakes that I noticed. It’s a bit odd that the Minneapolis paper gave this more prominent placement than the St. Paul paper did. Then again, the Saints website doesn't have the scores posted yet, either. [strib]
- Warren Zevon dead at 56. R.I.P. [strib]
- Continuing the bright sun-shiney tone of the day, I wrote up some thoughts on End of Summer recently.
- It was a rough start for Kevin Foster who gave up five runs in Saturday’s game in Winnipeg (not posted just yet - here’s the Winnipeg Box Score), as the Saints lost 6-2. Cory Walters came in and pitched a darn good game in relief, striking out the side at least once and giving up only one run in five innings. Purcell, the Goldeye pitcher got touched in the first and second by the Saints, but recovered to have a good five-inning outing, before Jake Brooks came in to relieve him, and Donnie Smith shut the Saints down in the 9th. Leland Swenson went out injured (hope he’s okay), and Aaron Fera got ejected in the 8th as he made a comment about the ball and strike calling as he was walking back to the dugout (the pitcher was upset by the calls in that at-bat, too). I suspect there was more than a little frustration involved, but the umpires in the Northern League have said things to upset players more than once this year, too. Dave Wright, filling in on the radio, called a pretty good game on KCCO, too. Today’s game will be at 4:05. Go Saints! I want more baseball in St. Paul.
- Ted Koppel On The Dangers Of The Patriot Act. Hey, the mainstream media is finally starting to notice some of the things I’ve been complaining about for the past two years. Wonder if the timing is at all related to the fact that we’re just over a year from presidential elections? Naw, that’d be too cynical, right? [boing boing]
- Collect calls add new wrinkle to telemarketing, suit says. Not just telemarketers, but ones calling businesses collect. And over a hundred Minnesota businesses actually paid around thirty bucks for the call. [strib]
- In Singles who serve looking for love the Press-Patch sent four single reporters out to try out the various options for meeting people in the Twin Cities. The results? Well, I’m not encouraged.
- So, problem solved with the server. I ran to General Nanosystems and bought a Seagate Barracuda ATA V 80GB drive, popped it into the server-case, ran newfs (apparently the disk had been automatically labeled), mounted it on /mnt, copied the old (too small) /var partition to /mnt, then tweaked /etc/fstab, rebooted, and all is well. Instead of having a few hundred meg for /var (which holds all the websites I serve, plus email and a few other things that take up more space than I’d initially figured), I now have about 79GB remaining. Much better. And thanks to Bill for helping me muddle through getting it all hooked up. As to why I needed to do this, I got sent a number of big jpegs for some webpages I’m going to do for the neighborhood association. The email filled up the /var partition completely, leaving no room for new email, nor even enough room for the big email to be copied to my inbox so I could easily delete it from the server. Note to self: filling up /var is not good.
Don’t cross the beams.
Don’t fill up /var. - So I didn’t make it to Winnipeg, and I didn’t listen to the game last night, but the Saints take series lead up there, and now lead 2-1 in the playoffs. Woo!
- The National Air Tour will be stopping in Blaine next Wednesday and folks
will have a chance to see more than two dozen vintage aircraft from the 1920s and 1930s, including Ford tri-motors, Stinson tri-motors, and aircraft with romantic old names like Travel Air, WACO, Paramount, Curtiss, New Standard and Eaglerock. There will be bi-planes, monoplanes and flying boats, all harking back to the Golden Age of Aviation.
The airplanes are supposed to start arriving about 1:30pm, at Anoka County/Blaine Airport and stay until the following morning. [strib] - If You Drop It, Should You Eat It? Scientists Weigh In on the 5-Second Rule. Well, there it is, then. [fark!]
- Doh! Man steals GPS tracking device details yet another one of the 4% of the population which Jerry Lewis just referred to as
idiots
on the telethon. - Due to some problems with the original HD partitioning on my server, I inadvertently filled up the /var partition yesterday afternoon (I’ll come back and write up the whole story later today). So I’m off to buy a new HD, and install that as a frickin’ huge /var partition. But to do so, the server will have to be offline for a bit this afternoon. More details once the deed is done.
- I ran into Jim after having lunch yesterday. We were both shopping at the large corporate bookseller and stopped to talk a bit. I mentioned that rather than screwing anything more up this week, and then having to spend the time trying to fix my mistakes again next week (it’s been a pretty rough week for work quality, which isn’t surprising when I’m being allergic), I was just going to take the rest of the afternoon, all of today, and tomorrow off. Not to drive to Winnipeg or to work on stuff for the neighborhood or any of the bazillion other things on my to-do list, but just to lay around, read, and try and get in a better mood for next week. He commented that
So you’re making progress by doing nothing?
and I said that was pretty much the size of it. At which point Jim pointed out how great it would be if I could get paid for that, to which I replied thatbut then I’d have to work for the government.
- Scott talks about his St Paul Saints game of the season, and points out something that’s been bugging me, too. Other than Jody and TC, who stopped out for beers after Wednesday’s game, there’s a lot of the Saints players who seem to ignore the fans entirely. As Scott says,
As the St Paul Saints walked back to the dugout, they ignored the cheering fans and spectators, as if they were not there. And maybe we were not.
In any case, I’ve decided that as much as I’d like to head up to Winnipeg to see this weekend’s games, I really need to stick around home and try and get a little caught up on something. I’m not sure what it’ll be, but there’s enough items on the to-do list that I’m hoping I can pick one and knock it off this weekend. And just maybe get back into the swing of things on Monday so I can start making real progress on the paying work again and not feel I’m just going to make things worse when I sit down in front of the computer. [scott mcgerik] - In Surprise Decision, Federal Judges Block FCC Media Ownership Rules regarding who can own how many stations in each local market. I see two sides to this problem. The first is that FCC regulations have created monopolies in the first place. The second is that in the name of deregulation the FCC is trying to remove all restrictions on such monopolies. It shares some of the same problems as the attempted (and very half-hearted) deregulation of electricity in California. You can’t just drop all the regulations in one fell swoop, because the government created an unfair playing field with the regulations in the first place. Is there some kind of methadone program for the addiction of big government, or are we forced to choose between a monkey on our backs and going cold-turkey? [jim]
- Y’know, you try to explain that people who apply for a concealed-carry permit are generally good folks, and aren’t going to go shooting up a barroom because Dirty Dick dealt a card off the bottom of the deck or something, and then someone like this this idiot comes along. I mean a 10mm probably isn’t the worst caliber to use if you’re going to try and shoot up the engine block of your idiot brother who’s tearing up your lawn, but that still doesn’t make it a good idea unless the guy’s trying to run you over. I’d be grabbing the camcorder and calling Judge Wapner, rather than reloading at that point. Or perhaps they’d had a few brewskis while working on the motorcycle and that colored the whole episode. In any case, taking away the guy’s permit seems like it’s not punishing him enough. [strib]
- Yesterday my allergies knocked me flat most of the day. There was about a 20mph wind, and it stirred up all kinds of stuff I’m allergic to. After going out for lunch, I came home and tried to work at the computer, and when I wasn’t sneezing, I was so tired that I’m pretty sure I dozed off at the computer a few times. Ugh. As it was, between the allergies and a MHNA executive committee meeting at 3pm, it was a completely lost afternoon.
- Saints miss chances in 4-2 loss. Jason Von Haefen gave up all four in the second (he’s had trouble in the second inning before) and while the saints had plenty of baserunners, they didn’t get ’em across the plate, stranding ten, five of those in scoring position. Now the boys are off to Winnipeg where they need to win two of three, so it doesn’t look good, but the Saints were in the same spot in 1995 and prevailed. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to drive up to Winnipeg for the games this weekend. Have to see how I do on the work today.
- Council comes loaded for bear, turning down the Hamm’s Bear statue. The group can still put it somewhere in St. Paul, just not in Como Park.
- Big CD price cut on way as Universal Music Group says they’re going to drop the standard CD pricing to $12.98. If the price cut trickles into used CDs and they start going for about seven bucks, maybe this will give me a reason to buy more music again. Of course they’ll have to put out something that isn’t crap, too…
- First Love is a long article about First Avenue in the City Pages. If you’re at all into the Minneapolis music scene, there’s probably something in here that will interest you.
- Saints rally for two in ninth to take series lead. Woo! It was a nail-biter, though. The Saints had the lead from the fourth to the seventh, but it was never more than a one-run difference, and both teams played pretty well. We got to a number (four?) of the Winnipeg relievers, including Rich Bell and Rodney Dickinson (who both pitched with the Saints before), but none of them for a very long stretch. It may wear on them a bit if we can get into their pen again, but at this rate, it’s the bats that are deciding it, and that leaves me a little worried, since the Saints stranded a lot of men on base.
- The thing I took the most exception to during the game was in the bottom of the ninth, when with a man on first and nobody out, Tsamis called for Justin Hall to bunt. And then when Hall reached on an error (on his bunt), Tsamis called for Dave Callahan to bunt, too. To me, that seems like playing for one run. When you’re down one, I guess it makes some sense to try and tie the game up, but I would’ve let the boys swing away and try to get two in one shot. I’m starting to think that the Sacrifice Bunt is one of the worst plays in baseball. You give up one of your three outs for the inning in exchange for a chance of moving a guy up one base, and with as badly as most players bunt, the odds aren’t that much better than just letting the boys swing away. I don’t mind the surprise bunt every now and again to the help sow confusion in the defence, but once they’ve figured out that you’re bunting and pulled in the corners, I think you should swing away, since that gives you more park to hit to.
- We met Rod from Winnipeg last night. He’s down for the playoffs. Seems a nice enough guy, and if I decide to drive to Winnipeg, he’s offered to introduce me to some folks up there.
- Jody’s probably out for the rest of the season with his bad knee, but he’s said he can help get me tickets if I head to Winnpeg. Cool.
- Last night’s attendance was only 2,083, so if you have any interest in seeing a Saints playoff game, order a ticket online or come down to the stadium and pick one up at the gate tonight. In spite of the small crowd last night, we made a fair amount of noise, but more people would be a good thing. And with buck beers and hot-dogs, you can eat and drink pretty cheaply. Just remember that the game starts at 6:30pm, not the normal 7:05. It’s supposed to be a beautiful evening, though it’ll probably get a bit chilly by the time the game is done.
- In some on-scoreboard thing last night (no idea when it was taped), it was apparently decided that Chris Chavez has the worst hair on the team. But when you’ve got a team with as many bald-guys as we do on the team, that’s not saying much.
- Hamm’s, the ____ refreshing. There’s a monument to the Hamm’s Bear that some folks are trying to get installed at Como Park, but there’s plenty of opposition too, because people don’t want to see a monument to advertising.
- The big problem with Monday holidays is that they’re followed by a Tuesday. Tuesdays for me are normally meeting day. When the normal Monday administrivia gets added to that by a holiday, it makes for a morning where I’ve got to get about four hours worth of work done before 10am, and I usually don’t end up getting out of bed until 8am after the holiday. Today is not atypical.
- Being drunk in a pub may soon be illegal in Australia. Meanwhile, in Ireland similar laws against drunkenness have gone into effect. What’s the world coming to when a guy can’t have a couple dozen pints at his neighborhood pub without being liable for arrest? [fark!]
- Speaking of Ireland, the Irish language Wikipedia has some good information about the language, including the fact that it’s in rapid and perhaps terminal decline. One, maybe two more generations, and Irish Gaelic will likely be a dead language (unless something changes soon). [holy schmoly]
- In Friendly Fire, Evan talks about learning. He’s responding to an article headlined Can Grand Theft Auto Inspire Professors? I think he’s got a lot of good points, especially that requiring students to write essays is a good way to test their comprehension of the subject. Also, rote-memorization is still important for some things, as it’s the only way to get the data into your brain, so you can later put the pieces together. But Evan misses the scariest quote from the article:
Those of us who grew up with Nintendo are moving into professor positions.
I worry about the state of education a few years down the road. [101-280] - Well, it’s Labor Day, and a much-needed holiday. There was plenty to do over the weekend, but today is pretty much open, except for household chores. But it’s also the traditional last day of summer,classes start at the U tomorrow, and all the students are back, so I feel as though I should get outside and do something today, too.
- Saints drop regular season finale, 4-3, losing to Gary, and finishing just below .500 for the second half of the season. The regular season is over, and it’s time for the playoffs tomorrow. Foster and Von Haefen will be the starters at home on Tuesday and Wednesday, and they’re good guys to have on the mound, but we’ve had trouble with Winnpeg all year (they lead the Saints 11-6 in the regular-season series this year), so I don’t think this will be a cakewalk. Cautious optimism…
On Saturday, I took a walk down by St. Anthony Falls to see the River. Brian had mentioned to me that they’d shut off the water going over the falls and were working on things down there.
the falls are dry 2048x768(290k) 640x240(18k) 
the falls are dry 2048x768(299k) 640x240(18k)
Apparently, I’d missed the Coming up dry on the Mighty Mississippi story in the Strib, which explains some of what’s going on.
you don’t see that every day 800x200(38k) 640x160(13k)
On Saturday, the Pioneer Press had FYI: Mississippi boats delayed, which had a little more explanation.
dry riverbed from above 2048x1536(484k) 640x480(30k)
But it’s not every day that you get to see the riverbed completely dry, and trucks, bobcats and men wandering around in what’s normally river-bottom. Nor do you get to see the big slabs of limestone that form the old base of the falls. Of course without the horseshoe dam and other manmade bits, the falls would probably already be gone, as the limestone cap that made them possible ends not much farther upriver.
fixing the horseshoe dam 2048x1536(543k) 640x480(43k)
And so, in order to keep everything in place, Xcel Energy, which runs the powerplant at the falls, has to do periodic maintenance on the dam. I haven’t noticed this in years past, other when their generating plant at the lower falls washed out, but they usually time it for the late summer, when the water flow is lowest, so it’s easiest to stop the flow over the horseshoe dam.
-
taking out the trash 2048x1536(560k) 640x480(36k)
There’s also trash to be removed, both from the repairs to the dam, as well as stuff that’s washed down the river.
the falls from the northeast 2048x768(299k) 640x240(23k)
-
NSP elevation data from the Corps 720x541(37k)
Another neat thing is that thanks to the Corps of Engineers, you can check out raw data about the river on their website. Since the NSP pool is at the same level as the area above the horseshoe dam, and that data’s available online, it’s pretty easy to see when they started lowering the water level so work could begin. The online data shows only a foot or two of drop in the water-level for the past month, and it looks to me as though the water’s almost three feet lower on the new dam in front of St. Anthony Main. But looking more closely, it looks like they started lowering the pool about the first of July in preparation for this project, and the water level’s down over four feet from the highest levels, and about three feet from the normal summertime levels.
the NSP pool 2048x768(255k) 640x240(15k)
- Last Month
30. September, 2003 - It’s like technology, only dumber
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29. September, 2003 - politics
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28. September, 2003 - dry
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27. September, 2003 - webby stuff
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26. September, 2003 - fire wrapup, spam
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25. September, 2003 - the war on spam goes poorly
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24. September, 2003 - Twins clinch!
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23. September, 2003 - Fall!
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The stories about the fatal fire last weekend continue.
And here’s some other news. It’s time to get back into the swing of it. I’ll keep pointing at the stories about the fire, since it’s a big deal in my neighborhood, but it’s a new season, and time for some other content.
22. September, 2003 - more fire
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Sorry. The news of the fire Saturday morning is still the top story around here. I’ll try to have some happier news tomorrow. I’ve lived in rentals around this area for nearly twenty years, and some weren’t in very good shape. I guess you could say it’s a topic that hits fairly close to home for me, in more ways than just geographically.
21. September, 2003 - fire
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20. September, 2003 - mixed bag
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19. September, 2003 - Arr!
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18. September, 2003 - Twins, software
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17. September, 2003 - Politics! Blegh!
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16. September, 2003 - site notes, baseball, science
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15. September, 2003 - a good weekend
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14. September, 2003 - coding on a sunday morning
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13. September, 2003 - Aspenair sucks
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12. September, 2003 - that’s enough of that week
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11. September, 2003
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10. September, 2003 - quickies
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9. September, 2003 - and now, in local news…
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8. September, 2003 - game over, man
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7. September, 2003 - tied at two
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6. September, 2003 - oops
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And here’s the real update for the day, now that the server’s better…
5. September, 2003 - staying home this weekend
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4. September, 2003 - baseball and music
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3. September, 2003 - one win in the playoffs
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2. September, 2003 - back to work, slacker
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1. September, 2003 - wrapping up the long weekend
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