Plenty of places in VA must overmatch GPS

Just catching up on this myself

Walker approached county supervisors armed with photos of a truck jack-knifed, another in a ditch, another forced to back out onto busy South King's Highway, as well as pictures of broken trees, mangled fences and rutted lawns.

Virginia is the worst for having the name of a street or even main route having one name on one side of the intersection and another name on the other side. Guess which one you always pick up when you are unfamiliar with the area? And don't even get me started about Arlington Va.

edit: the below is a link in case it is hard to tell. But I am starting to think it is blogger dot com that screwed this business up. 

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/04/faulty-gps-makes-va-neighborhood-truck-obstacle-course

Two to Check Out and Feel Humble

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5492781335/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5483193591/in/photostream/

Not sure hyperlink is working and other issues, but check it out.

PS: one is a video. Some scientists say we ain't seen nothing yet. Some day some flares may be bad enough to wipe out the power grid so bad it can't really be fixed fast enough to avoid some real devastation. 

I missed this!

This is one of the most delicious stories I have run into in a long time. Probably most of us saw these commercials. 

Answer to Trivia Question

obviously, don't look if you are still trying to guess.

The answer has been said to be this. Seems believable, but I guess I can't absolutely validate it. From Wikipedia.

World Population Trivia

trivia question going around: what event in 1960 causes the shocking dip around 1960 at this census bureau chart?

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopchggraph.php

The Brain is Something

Check this out .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

Stuck in Traffic

During the Great DC Area Snow Nightmare it did indeed take me 6 and a half hours to get home. I felt better about it once I heard some folks took as much as 13 hours to get home!


For what I was able to observe myself, the problem was 100% the people who were out there who had no business trying to drive in the snow. The conditions weren't that bad! It was snow, not freezing rain, in fact it was above freezing the whole time. Snow has sort of a grainy consistency, so in some ways it is like driving in sand. Once cars have driven on the snow, it packs down into an somewhat of an ice-like quality, but it is not ice, it still has a certain graininess. Yet even before there was much accumulation, cars ahead were stopping traffic because their tires would only spin on that. These people simply had cars or tires that were unequal to this mild challenge. This would usually be on a slight grade, but sometimes on no grade at all! Desperate to keep going, they would wind up in the middle of the road stopping traffic. I did not see one accident. Outside of sheer congestion, of course, there just seemed to be this one problem!


To tell you the truth, I didn't know you could even buy tires today that are so useless in the snow that even front-wheel drive vehicles would get stuck like that. 


One can only hope these drivers now know and will all stay home next time. 

New Razor Threatens Face of Arlington Resident

There's no doubt that a person faces change in life. So naturally now being well into my Farthood I have to complain about the old days being better in various ways. Well, as a matter of fact,  I don't think much about these modern razors we have today. 

I can remember my Father saying he missed the old blued safety razor blades. In his day the most modern razor was called a safety razor, and it had the common sort of postage stamp sized flat razor blade that just dropped in, then you closed the top flaps so that only the edges of the razor were left. What he must have been talking about was steel razor blades that became unavailable when stainless steel blades came out. In what I guess will have to be a different blog post some day, I'm going to sound off against dubious quality stainless steel taking over steel too often in all kinds of things, but for now let's just say from dealing with knives it's easy for me to believe the old blued steel blades were better, just needing to be replaced more often.

I really wasn't expecting to decide at some point razors were going to be a source of such disappointment in my life as well, but sure enough it has. Razor makers went from using stainless steel safety razor blades to designs that used what almost could be called a wire strip of stainless steel. These were marketed as multi-bladed almost immediately, with the famous illustration that claimed the first row of blades pulled the whisker out so that the second cut it even shorter when it passed through. Granted, you can shave pretty quick with these devices, but probably not for this reason. Needing a razor some 30 odd years ago, I wound up with the Gillette Atra, and I distinctly remember it was free, attached to a shaving cream can. There's no doubt that the idea is to get the razors out there to the public at a loss, then clean up on selling the blades at a huge profit.

I liked the Atra OK, and might concede it was possibly at least faster and somewhat safer than the old safety razors. Unfortunately it became impossible to buy the blades without getting this idiotic strip on them that ooze some kind of lubricant that is supposed to make shaving easier. I've always hated that stuff, as it doesn't work at all  and makes it hard to grab your facial skin for what for me is a necessary tug to splay out the beard at an angle so that a second swipe in the opposite direction of the first can finish off what's left (notably this does not happen as in the famous illustration but requires this step)

Fortunately, you can wash this lubricant off, and I just got used to having to do this when I had to give up on the Atra. The old razor wouldn't grab the blade cartridge anymore. Time for a new razor, and again I already had one I got free; I think it was also attached to a shaving cream can. I decided not to try to get another Atra as I have to believe new blades will not be available some day soon. So anyway I needed to rob a liquor store so I could buy some blades for the new contraption: a Gillette Mach3. From the name I guess we are to imagine we can shave at 3 times the speed of sound. This monster takes the idea of multiple blades further, using 3 rows, without question decreasing the safety of it. I also do not believe it shaves a lick better than 2 row systems like the Atra, reinforcing my belief that the claim that whisker get pulled out to be cut shorter by following blades is a canard. And of course it is impossible to buy blades without the lubricating strip. Worst of all, I can't as safely or as effectively shave the mustache area, the menacing 3 rows can't seem to be arranged safely for this, and I'm finding myself getting nicks there. As a compromise I shave with the Mach3 except for above the lip where I use a disposable 2 row razor. Sue has noticed I seem to be trying to grow a mustache! Maybe the next time you see me I'll have grown one out of desperation.

If you click on the link above, you'll see a section that says this:

"The latest razor introduced by Gillette is the Gillette Fusion brand shaving system, which utilizes a five-blade cartridge razor with an additional single blade for trimming."

What the hell is that thing? Entirely too scary to contemplate! These young whippersnappers in the razor business are just screwing everything up! Some day I'm going to have to use one of those things? I hope not, I'm starting to think I've got to find ye olde straight razor and learn how to strop it!

New Tires

In my life I have had more trouble with auto mechanics trying to cheat me than in any other business I conduct.

I got two more tires this week for the Honda. I had to make sure, though, that I got it somewhere else than Sears. That's a shame in a way, as I will explain.

So here is the whole story. Like most guys, tires became a subject of interest for me fairly early on. When you are a young man on your own, certain things about owning a car just come as a shock. As a teenager, you realize you can't even afford to put in the gas. When you get older than that, you realize you can't afford the insurance, not for what younger males get stung with. And the tires! buying the tires can kill a guy. So actually I became rather good at identifying good used tires. Brother Forrest actually asked me to check out what I could pick up for his cars when it happened I had some free time for that. It didn't bother me to pick up a pair that were in good shape, but that didn't have all that much tread [for my own use]. 10-15 thousand miles is a good 10-15 thousand miles at the right price. Once I picked up something like that and the mechanic who was going to put them on said he just threw away better tires than that! That I went and got those discarded tires out of the dumpster is a favorite story of Forrest's in fact. Well, in those days I was sometimes broke. But I knew what to look for, and my point is I know my used tires!

Back in September I ruined a tire running over a piece of jagged metal, and bought two new tires, as it is best to buy them in pairs. The salesman at Sears was bound and determined to sell me four tires, though, and proceeded to dishonestly represent the situation and scare me into buying four. He was the type of salesman that is a disgrace to the profession, caring nothing about the customer but caring bigtime about his short term earnings. First thing he does is point to some aging on the sidewall and claim it was a sign that the tires were on their last legs. This was to dispel any notion that the mostly sufficient tread would mean the tires are still good for some more miles. Little did he know I was a used tire connoisseur! Those tires were fine, and if there is anything wrong with the sidewall, it would be road damage or the telltale sign that the tires had been sitting flat with the weight of the car on them for a period of time. Furthermore he had a cock and bull story about how he wasn't a salesman, but a mechanic just helping out for the day. Unfortunately it developed that he had to assist the other salespeople with this and that, his competence exposing this lie. He probably was in management, teaching the other salespeople to lie and claim, as a purported mechanic, he wasn't trying to sell me something for the commission. Not that he perhaps wasn't indeed originally a mechanic, their training does seem to revolve around how to artificially drive up the price of repairs. The guy was unbelievable, actually, really making wild claims that I was no more than going to go out of the parking lot than have blowouts on those tires. He just wouldn't quit with it. I'd like to think he couldn't make his balloon payment on his sub-prime mortgage that month because of holdouts like me!

The shame of it all is that I had come to pretty much want Sears to be the place I bought my tires. I had gone through local retailers "Merchants Tire" and a place I think is now called "NTB". The problem with those places was that you could get good service one time, then the next time you went back it was all new people and you would get lousy service. The Sears place, though, seemed consistently good. Then I ran into this guy. Of course I couldn't get what he said totally out of my mind, which included a claim that tires simply get old and have to be changed purely for that reason. I checked this out online and sure enough you can find some not too convincing, clearly very conservative claims that tires ought to be changed every 6 years even if they have good tread. That age was approaching on these tires, and I felt I couldn't take a chance I'd regret not getting new tires, what with Sue also driving the car.

So I just got two new tires. Took it to a mechanic I trust and definitely paid a little more. But it was damn important to me that Sears not get the business. I'd like to think the younger person at that shop said,  "hey these middle-aged guys throw away perfectly good tires!" and put them on his own car. That would bring a smile to my face.

It's been too long since my last post. I have been spending more time at work, where I never have liked to work on a blog. Perhaps this sounds odd, but the extra concentration means I don't like to be interrupted, while, on the contrary, now especially I need to be ready to drop anything and exploit opportunities.  

I've got a couple of posts I am working on. The one on salt is taking a long time, maybe it ought to be two posts. And I need to post about buying tires, perhaps I can get that out soon. I don't think I am going to post about Fantasy Football though [g].