| Welcome! |
[Jan. 1st, 2020|06:37 pm] |
This is a mostly friends-only journal. I very occasionally make public posts. Most of these have turned out to be political; I think this is because I see politics as something that should be inherently public, and often is.
This entry may be the only entry to allow comments from people I haven't friended. All comments here all screened. |
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| Kindle! |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|12:07 am] |
I ordered a Kindle after they stopped shipping the Kindle 1, and it was upgraded to the Kindle 2 and shipped out on launch day. Because I also recently caved and signed up for Amazon Prime, it showed up Wednesday of launch week, and I think I had trouble connecting to Whispernet because of the number of coworkers who also had a Kindle 2 show up that day, and those who upgraded from Kindle 1 then proceeded to transfer their entire digital library to their new device.
I like it. A lot. It's close enough to as good as a book for reading that, with the small form factor and sufficiently-large device storage, and automatic delivery of content, I think it's a clear win. I'm already agonizing over what to do with my current library of books, since I often reread things. I think I'll end up re-buying the 50% of books I like best and am likely to reread more often so I can have them to reread while traveling. |
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| elections! |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|11:10 pm] |
Those of you registered to vote in King County should have a mail-in ballot somewhere for a special election to elect a Director of Elections, unless you already mailed it in. Please mail it in tomorrow.
I don't have my usual analysis of the candidates. It's a strange election, with 7 candidates and no primary/runoff system, so we just have one chance to get it right.
Instead, I'll just point out that the Times, P-I, and Stranger all endorse Sherril Huff. If the three of them can actually agree on something, that's good enough for me. |
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| [public] Trains! |
[Sep. 30th, 2008|12:58 am] |
There's been lots of discussion on my friends' list recently about trains.
( Yes, I too can rant about our lack of infrastructure spending )
At any rate, I wish rail improvements were happening faster, but I also sort of understand why. There's a lot of broken infrastructure, and a lot of studies and construction needed to deal with that. The timing sucks, because freight rail traffic is also increasing (in both train length and number of trains, I think), so BNSF is more reluctant to let passenger traffic use their rails more unless someone funds expanding rail capacity. For most of the way from Portland to Vancouver, BC, that's WSDOT's funding of Amtrak Cascades, with some help in the Puget Sound area from Sound Transit's funding of Sounder, many of which are jointly funded since they benefit both.
Some of the projects are adding crossovers (Tenino), adding/lengthening sidings, or a second/third mainline track (Kelso) to provide more opportunities for trains to pass each other. Doing that often means that more trains will block roads that cross the tracks, sometimes standing still, and people get grumpy about that, so there are lawsuits (Mt. Vernon) and/or bridges (Vancouver) to build. Also, rail corridors are popular places to put utilities like long-haul fiber-optic cables; relocating them 20 feet over to make room for more tracks isn't cheap and takes lots of coordination.
A lot of those needs are subtle. As far as I can tell, the track work around Seattle's King Street Station (mostly to the south) served two main purposes; it moved the freight mainline to no longer split the station and the passenger-train maintenance/holding yard one block south (freight trains now travel east of both), and it converted a lot of those connecting switches to be centrally managed, automatic switches. Since this included the two Sounder station platforms, Sounder trains no longer have to go through several hand-operated switches, requiring a time-consuming safety process, to get from the station to either the entrance to the maintenance/holding yard or the mainline tracks headed north or south. The Amtrak Cascades platforms haven't been converted, but the connection between them and the centrally-managed segments has been simplified; hopefully, that'll get finished in the 2009-2011 budget cycle. Upgrading safety equipment and crossing signals and straightening out sharp track curves are also important; the current short-term goal seems to be to get as many segments as possible to meet the 79-mph standards (though some like the Ballard Bridge will need upgrades just to get to 40 mph), while the long-term plan calls for some segments to be upgraded for 110-mph service.
Ironically, WSDOT is also funding improving freight rail stuff, but most of that money seems to be going towards building/improving connections to ports and industrial centers; little else has been done by them or anyone else to this entire rail corridor since 1917 except to improve signaling systems. I don't know whether that's a significant driver to BNSF's traffic; maybe that that's pretty insignificant to them, and most of their traffic is longstanding connections and/or goods that are trucked to/from a rail switching yard to be whisked away to a different part of the country.
I don't know if we'll ever reach the goal that was originally envisioned for 2023; that requires some expensive new track for 110-mph operation. However, I have high hopes for their "midpoint" goal that they originally thought could be done by 2008. We're one of five federally-designated future high-capacity rail corridors (not counting the Acela corridor that's already running), although I haven't seen indications that that's translated into significant funding yet. WSDOT and BNSF have a legal agreement that sets out the framework for doing all of these projects, minimizing the remaining bureaucracy required for each individual project. Finally, we're starting to make progress. Several of these projects are underway, including one or two expensive ones. Lots more have funding for their design phase. Hopefully, all of this forward progress will build momentum that'll help get the other pieces done too.
( sources ) |
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| [public] Orbitz 3, Expedia 9 |
[Sep. 21st, 2008|11:09 pm] |
(out of 10)
Yesterday, I went online to reserve flights and hotel for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jmboyles and I for the holidays. The experience was quite enlightening, and has left me with a definite preference for travel websites. ( Read more... )
At the end of it all, while Orbitz gets points because their rep was quite willing to help make things right after the craziness I experienced trying to use their website, Expedia avoided the craziness; their processing flow had what I consider the right way of handling things; they largely hid the internal problems from me and used a mechanism to make things right smoothly enough that I might never have noticed something was wrong if I weren't really paying attention. |
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| [public] decTOP Ubuntu upgrade |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|11:45 pm] |
I upgraded Ubuntu on my decTOP, the server that I got when tithonium bought a set of four to get the 4-pack discount.
It was only slightly interesting. ( I was only briefly running Gutsy, but Hardy seems happy. )
I don't actually recommend new decTOPs at this point, except for people really like the ruggedized case or really care about it being as cheap as possible, primarily because the decTOP has only USB1 and no builtin Ethernet, though it does come with a USB-Ethernet dongle. Newer options are out there that have the nice low-power characteristic and actually have USB2 and Ethernet built in. I'll try to edit this entry soonish with one I've heard of (which, sadly doesn't have complete Linux drivers yet). |
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| [public] Training update |
[May. 5th, 2008|11:26 pm] |
These past few days have seen lots of progress on training!
On Saturday, I went biking. It was rather wetter than I would have liked. For the first half of the ride, I rode with jmboyles, mh75, and a few others from what's become of our STP biking list. We started out from UZ, in the hopes that this brief break in the rain was actually more than that. Nope. We stopped at Matthew's Beach to meet someone who was running late, and then the rain picked up on the way to Logboom Park. After a bit of hanging out, I turned around and headed back, as I had no interest in doing the full 50 miles that many in the group wanted to do. I was also starting to get a little cold. What I hadn't realized is how much my rear rack on my old bike kept water from getting kicked up onto me; my back and butt had gotten nicely soaked by my rear wheel.
( I slowly made it back just fine, a bit tired, and none the worse for wear, and overall happy that I had gone, particularly to catch up with a few friends I hadn't seen recently. )
Then, on Sunday, I did Mary Meyer's pool training clinic. It was lot of information (and slightly overwhelming as a result), but it was also way helpful. I intend to go again and expect it to not be overwhelming a second time because I'll already know some of their standard drills. My typical stroke count has been 24-28; it dropped to somewhere around 16, and the pool seemed a lot shorter than 25 yards. Now we'll see whether I can remember all the tips. Or even half of them. The thing that made the biggest difference for me was angling my body (and not my head, oops!) to one side or the other with my stroke (you should only be flat 5-10% of the time; most of the time you should be at a 30-to-60-degree angle). I also need to work on kicking; the other coach gave me a specific exercise to do for that, which I think sneaks in getting used to having my back straight (instead of dragging my lower torso through the water). One other group drill was intended to get us to keep the shoulder that's not being used for the current stroke in tight (close to the ear). jmboyles jotted down more notes of what both of us remembered; one of us will probably post those.
This morning, while getting dressed, I realized that at least one shirt no longer fits over my upper arm comfortably.
And I finally did some running again! I've had my running shoes at work for a week or so; this afternoon, I walked out to the waterfront, and then alternated running two blocks, then walking one block unless waiting for a don't-walk signal gave me a break. I made it to Madison before turning around, and was still jogging about half the time until I left the waterfront and about half the distance (roughly 1/3 of the time) until I was pretty close to my building, for a total distance of, um, probably 1.6 miles. That went much better than I expected! I intend to do roughly the same level for a bit simply to get my body used to those running shoes with their new orthotics, and break in both shoes and orthotics before increasing distance or run/walk ratio. |
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| Washington Democratic caucus |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|11:57 pm] |
The WA Democratic party expects the precinct caucuses to be a zoo this year, both because of a trend in increased participation and because it'll play a significant role in choosing the Democratic candidate.
I encourage everyone to attend! (Well, you have to be a Washington-registered voter, or a Washington resident under 18 who expects to turn 18 and be eligible to vote by the November elections.) If you're a Republican, then you should attend the Republican caucus, which I know nothing about.
I also encourage y'all to help them go smoothly and be successful. To that end, here's my advice, based on a combination of my experience leading my precinct's caucus four years ago and being marginally in the loop for this year's planning...if you want to help them go smoothly, there are a variety of things you can do to help the Democratic precinct caucuses in WA:
( helping out... )
Lastly, if you feel strongly about a candidate, spend some time preparing yourself to be able to explain to the crowd why you support that candidate. I was on the fence going in to my caucus in 2004, but the Dean folks got my vote because they could explain why they liked him. |
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| voting... |
[Oct. 31st, 2007|10:22 am] |
I know, many of you have probably mailed in your ballots already.
There have been lots of election things showing up in my mail and on my answering machine. I've been ignoring most of them. Why? My real dilemma is what to do with Prop. 1. I think I'm siding with Ron Sims' viewpoint. It seems sad to vote against the expansion of light rail and other things with this package. However, I'm disappointed by some of the choices the light rail district made, including going with the highest-cost option which seems to provide light rail to a slew of areas with low-density housing, and I totally agree with the congestion pricing concept; it seems like an innovative way to maximize the throughput of highways by using economics to reduce the traffic volumes to the sweet spot where the most vehicles can get through (for this reason, WSDOT now only counts congestion when traffic speeds drop below 70% of the speed limit; see WSDOT's Gray Notebook, Sept 2006, mentioned in Lite edition, but only the full edition has a decent explanation).
I actually started thinking in this direction before Ron Sims went public with his opinion; what got me started was my brother dzolo's comment on my viaduct post when that went up for vote, as well as my own ruminations of how expensive WSDOT's ferry system is. The ferry system is rather expensive, and most of the time, it benefits a small percentage of the state residents even though it's heavily supported by state funding. WSDOT's default mode of operation is to try to keep doing as good or better at moving people; from there, it's a small step to always building out transportation facilities. What if we froze our ferry system's capacity at its current levels, and raised prices to maximize the income from ferry fees (based on at what threshhold various percentages of people would stop using the ferries), and possibly used congestion pricing there as well? This way, very gradually, we could wean the ferry system away from the subsidies they get, without abruptly disrupting the communities that have come to depend on the ferries. Taking my brother's comments into account, gradually, people's choices would change, as they took the ferry price increases into account when selecting housing, and thus many things would be kept more or less in balance.
Which gets me thinking...if this idea can safely be applied to the ferries or the viaduct, could it be applied to the 520 bridge? How could we design a system that would provide the right incentives to slowly shift our region to not needing that bridge at all over the next 10-20 years, or having just a 2-lane bridge for some combination of transit, HOV, and people willing to pay (probably quite high) congestion-based tolls? I've seen fiscal analyses indicating that in order to afford to replace the 520 bridge, in addition to whatever funding we get, we should start tolling both 520 and I-90 now to pay for it; why aren't we doing that?
Should we be doing *more* of this, say at every bridge that crosses the ship canal?
I'm not actually qualified to evaluate these things. However, I think the people guiding our choices should be evaluating these options, and my impression is they're not, because they're not politically viable options. |
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| [public] Joel on Software |
[Sep. 7th, 2007|11:41 am] |
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Thursday was lots of running around. In the morning, I watched Joel, of Joel on Software, speak. I was impressed, but not for the reason I expected to be. Part of a quote from someone who attended in Vancouver, BC, the day before, captured it nicely. "Well, I expected to be bored about FogBugz and enraptured by fascinating tidbits of Joel Spolsky wisdom. In reality, the opposite was true. I now believe FogBugz to be a pretty interesting looking app..." Actually, I thought some of Joel's tidbits were interesting too. What was really interesting to me was how he's intertwined the two; Fogbugz has not only grown from a bug management system to a task/bug/contact management system (where tasks seem to be the primary entity), it embodies his own understanding of how software development should be done. He's done that in how he prioritizes features, at times refusing to implement certain features because he thinks they would encourage programmers to optimize for the wrong things, or something like that. This also means that it's a task management system optimized for software development, not for anything else. It contains the wrong feature set for, say, managing tasks for repaving I-5 in the south part of Seattle. (This just happened, and was a Big Deal.) |
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| tinyurl and services |
[Aug. 22nd, 2007|11:34 am] |
tinyurl is nice.
I'm surprised that companies like Google don't offer this for their own stuff. For example, it'd be really nice if every "email this" and "link to this" link at Google ran the url through something like t.google.com (t=tiny) behind the scenes before surfacing it to the user. |
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| viaduct vote |
[Mar. 4th, 2007|03:01 pm] |
If you're a Seattle voter, you probably already got a ballot in the mail for the pair of votes on what to do with the Alaska Way Viaduct (state highway 99 along the downtown waterfront).
The issues here are quite complex. This debate has been going on for years. The stacked-tunnel option was already discarded once, but was added back to the list for more detailed studies. Other options have been killed off from most perspectives, but refuse to die entirely. Numerous politicians seem to have the attitude of, "Of course I'm right, everyone should just agree with me so we can move on." I'm biased; I have an opinion of which politicians are behaving worse than others, and I also use the viaduct as a part of my daily commute. However, I'm going to try to present some unbiased background before presenting both my opinion and some resources to look up more stuff on your own.
( Read more... ) |
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| Election time! (judges) |
[Sep. 14th, 2006|10:00 pm] |
I got what I considered lukewarm responses to my poll about getting together before elections to go over the Seattle Voters' Pamphlet. It sounds like people are interested but busy. So I'm instead going to post about what I think of the races where I think I have something meaningful to say. I'm not going to make any attempt to be thorough.
Feel free to agree/disagree in comments, or to state your opinion without reading mine.
Today, I'm writing about the State Supreme Court races. (These are the only judicial slots applicable to my precinct.) Because of the lack of attention elsewhere, I'm prioritizing the judicial races. ( Read more... ) |
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| SPF (an anti-spam technology) is coming fast |
[Aug. 20th, 2004|02:49 pm] |
An anti-spam initiative is about to become real, it'll hopefully help your ISP do much better spam filtering in the short term and cut down forged email headers significantly in the long term, and it'll likely matter to you how quickly you and your ISP move to ensure your outgoing email can be considered good.
( background, details, and what it means for you )
It isn't the entire solution to the flood of spam, but it's a good first step. |
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