State of the Blog

Wow, it has been a long time since I talked about the Blog itself. I have been on this for over 15 years now, and still don't have anything worth saying.

The landscape has changed. Blogging is regarded as a bit old-fashioned in the face of newer tech, sort of like the fate of CB Radios and HAM stations. Not quite dead media, but really subdued. Everyone has gone over to the Facebookery and the Tweeter accounts, but I like blogging. It forces me to organize my thoughts a bit better, and to create a meaningful narrative through-line. Facebook is a great place for that one-off bon mot, and I use it that way, along with "hey, look at this link". But that in itself steals some of the utility I used the blog for.

And I use Facebook like I used to use Google+ for increasing the bandwidth for what is here on the blogspace, and that's OK as well. Occasionally something blows up big and I get hundreds of hits, but most of the time it is a fairly comfortable amount of reads and reblogs. I'm really not doing it for the popularity, but for me (though the rest of you are welcome to tag along).

Ditto for the Facebook. It is for me, and have no problem unfollowing problematic people I know IRL and unfriending outright bozos, who are usually strangers. I have a wide variety of people on the Facebook spanning the political spectrum, but have avoided the ones that repost Russian memes and write in all-caps. And as a result, my Facebook is pretty stable and positive - I have not had to bounce anyone for spoiling Rise of Skywalker before I saw it. Thanks, folks.

I miss Google+ by the way. I used it to line up all of the other blogs that I followed, and had a good mix of posting. MeWe isn't doing it nearly enough for me. A friend got me a twitter account (grubbstweet), but I rarely remember to cross-post to it.

My biggest limitation is a lack of spare time. I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but it is about an hour drive to the day job nowadays, and that leaves precious little time to do anything else. I get home, do a few chores, have dinner, crash early, get up early to start the process again. It gets in the way of other things, and when I DO have the chance, I read, play games on the iPad or watch comfort-videos (Great British Baking Show, of course).

And there are things that I have always posted about and will probably continue to post about - collectible quarters, local elections, books, theater. As we move into the presidential election year, there will probably be more of that, though it is a grisly task and most folk know where I lean already. I'd like to do an overview of American Presidential Elections, and how each one was the WORST ELECTION EVER. I'd like to talk about the weird histories of our holidays (I would start on March 1, which SHOULD be the first day of the year). I'd even like to post some actual honest to god gaming content here, but that's unlikely given the rest of my life at the moment.

And that's about it. Happy New Year, folks, and see you around.

More later,

Meanwhile, in 1923

What I did today:



That's a 1923 Buick four-door 23-35 touring car.

More later,

Electric Car Blues

Literally a Museum Piece

So, back in August, the Lovely Bride and I purchased an electric car. No, I haven't mentioned it before in this space. What, do you think I tell you EVERYTHING that's going on in my life?

The big reason for the purchase that the my 2001 Hybrid Insight, DOCBUNNY, was after 15 years of service, was on its last legs. The seats had been worn threadbare long ago, the radio was down to one speaker, the HVAC was spotty, there were some oil leaks with lash-up solutions, the transmission was getting mushy, and the hybrid battery was showing a sudden and shocking discharge rate, such that going up small hills could drain it completely. so the time had come to replace it.

After checking out a lot of vehicles online, we went for the sit test. We went to dealerships and sat in their cars. Test-drives were the second step of this but the big initial thing was whether I would be able to fit in the vehicle in the first place. While I am a bit wide, I can fit behind the wheel of most cars (Chevies in particular are a tight squeeze and off the table immediately), but I also have a long torso, so that for many cars, I cannot see out the front windscreen - the roof line drops down into my field of vision. Toyotas are like that, and so are the older Teslas (and I was not going to wait to see what was the case for new Teslas). We decided on a Kia Soul
Electric, blue with a white roof.

I'm a Soul Man.

And car purchasing is just as painful as it was fifteen years previous.Despite excellent credit, knowing exactly the car we wanted to purchase, and informing the dealership with 24 hours notice and filling out forms online, it was four hours of filling out forms, waiting for them to be processed, giving more information, waiting for THAT to be processed, checking options, agreeing to options that we didn't necessarily want but were on the car anyway (to be fair, the puddle lights have been rather nice), and then learning that the car that we had TOLD them the day before we wanted to purchase wasn't even at the lot (this was cheerfully reported as "We're preparing the car for you - it will be just a little while").

So, then, how is it? Well, it depends on what you're after. I am looking for a vehicle that will get me the 20-some miles up the Amazon and back to Panther Lake once a day, with the occasional side trip. It does that nicely But it does affect my ability to go to various locations in a single trip, so I'm finding myself planning more.

It is all about Ranger and Recharge: Range is how far you can go on a charge. The listed average range for the Soul is 90 miles. Tesla is talking about 300 miles with its new batteries, but they're still building them. Ninety miles is about 3 gallons of gas in a traditional car. So if you're not comfortable driving around with three gallons of gas, then you may want to wait for the future models,

Recharge is finding out where you need to go to get the charge back. The Soul came with a "trickle charger" which ran off house current but does so VERY SLOWLY. Such that you might not drain the battery to half and then not be able to regain the lost energy overnight, creating a deficit situation (plus by "overnight" I mean 12 hours, which means you bring the car home and let it sit.

This car magnet works on so
many different levels.

The Lovely Bride and I went the extra distance and installed a Stage II recharger, with the help of a state rebate plan. This brings me up to full charge in a couple hours, but it is STILL a couple hours. If you are on the road, you again have to plan for some downtime to recharge. Fortunately, my garage downtown has charging stations. Unfortunately, they just started charging for them. There is also a Stage III charger, which I have yet to use (the only one I know about is at the dealership), but then you are still at the mercy of the time it takes to recharge.

Let me add to that another challenge - cold is an enemy. The battery holds less of its charge during the cold weather. We have a spate of freezing weather in Seattle and the range plunged precipitously. Not that the weather has returned to typical Seattle winter (rainy and grey), the numbers have recovered, but it was a concern. This ALSO may mean you won't see as much of electrics in, say Chicago, for a while.

How does it perform? Nicely. There's no transmission, so it accelerates extremely quickly and smoothly. It is a bit boxy, but navigates and turns well. Downsides? Minor things like no CD player, so I had to download my books on tape and put it onto a USB drive. Oh, and the GPS is absolutely horrible. If you want to know at the traffic conditions an hour ago, it is more than suitable, but I found no traffic on roads that it claims are clogged and have been held stock still on patches of highway that are supposed to have clear traffic. But that's kinda minor.

Ah, yes, and the tire sensors are, in the terms of my mechanic, "sensitive", such that if they get even a little out of balance, a sigil lights up on your dash that is supposed to be a cross-section of a tire with an exclamation point but really looks like the Eye of Sauron atop Barad-Dur. I've had it go off three times so far, but to be fair, one of them was the result of picking up a nail and really needing a patch..

The thing I tell people is that having an electric car is like owning a horse. You can't ride it too long without giving it a rest. You have to water (well, recharge) it when get there. And you're always checking out other horses to see if their owners are having the same challenges.

More later,

DOW Breaks 18,000

Actually, this happened before Christmas. And then it dropped below for a while and then it showed up again in February, and then it dropped for another while and now it is back again. And it will probably drop again and rise again, but I suppose I should mention it before it gets to 19k.

The market in recent years has taken huge swings. Once, long ago, a hundred point swing was considered a major news item - now it is Tuesday. Part of this is because the nature of how stocks are traded. The human factor seems to be almost completely eliminated, such that even the once ubiquitous independent day traders from when I started this blog have settled into a small clique, while the bulk of decisions are made by computer agents programmed to response to particular trends.

For the mildly paranoid, releasing untested rules into the wild tends to create unintended consequences, where independent programs tend to cause spikes and crashes. For the really paranoid, it is but a small step between programs which analyze and play the market and those which analyze and manipulate the market without need of human direction. These pop up as a minor concept in William Gibson's recent book, The Peripheral, where Aunties - autonomous financial programs from the future, are unleashed further up the timestream to affect a divergent universe.

But that sort of things does not capture our attention so much as something closer to home - gas prices. They went into a steep dive of late, getting to below $2.50 here in the Puget Sound region and below two bucks in the more accessible parts of the country. And there were a flurry of articles about how this is a bad thing, most of them in the line of "Yeah, its good for most drivers, BUT..." And then they would talk about how low gas prices add to instability by undermining fracking or oil shale or solar power (yeah, I don't get this one either) or makes Russia or Iran or Alberta more desperate by reducing their income.

In the short run, things seem to have stabilized, which most of us means that prices have been slowly climbing upwards. But that comes with a price - apparently a lot of gas is being kept off the market, warehoused for the eventual day when it will bring more money. And we're running out of space to hide it. So sometime this summer we should see another price drop and another round of pearl-clutching as the producers are faced with either reducing production (which has happened to some degree, ending booms in South Dakota) or actually selling the product they have. And prepare for another round of worries about how this will affect the status quo, as if that status is considered to be the ultimate desirable quo.

Unless, of course, the Aunties from the future do something else to jimmy with our markets.

More later,

Cop Spotting

So after a recent traffic ticket (no, I didn't mention it here - jeez, I don't have to tell you guys EVERYTHING, do I?) I found myself sensitized to the local police presence. Hyper-sensitized. To the point of wondering "Wow, do I see cops EVERY day?". So piqued, I spent most of January keeping a notebook in the car, and every time I saw I cop, I wrote it down (once I had reached a safe and convenient spot) where I had seen the officer, what branch the officer belonged to, and what he or she was doing at the time.

I quickly found I had to develop a bunch of ground rules:

• I would count by instances, not numbers of police vehicles. Four cops responding to a call in the International District would count as one, not four.
• I would only count vehicles, not officers. Foot patrolmen got a pass. Motorcycles, police vans, and those dinky little parking vehicles the Seattle cops used all counted.
• No fair counting cops parked at police stations. Ditto fire stations and city halls. That's just cheating.
• Similarly, no counting officers in my living room or at my dining room table (Hi, Dave!). That's cheaty as well.
• Wreckers, fire trucks, emergency vehicles and anything else that has bubble dome lights is a count for another day. 
• Only count as IDed it you can figure out what branch they belong to. Most of my unidentifieds are motorcycles, since they are hard to pull out affiliation as you drive past them.

I ran this for the first four weeks of January. My normal commute is down Benson and Talbot to Renton, then north to Bellevue either by I 405 or back roads, depending on crowds. Once a week I would drive to Federal Way for comics, and once a week I would drive downtown to the ID for Tai Chi. Upon looking at the notes, I saw that I rarely traveled on weekends, staying home to work, and though I would get out to play games with friends, I did not rack up enough instances to really rate them, so I'm taking Sunday and Saturday off the table.

So what did I end up with? Here's the summary - 47 sightings over 20 days. That's over two, nearly two and half police encounters a day. Let me did into the tables a bit:

Day	Numbers
Monday	04
Tuesday	08
Wednesday	17
Thursday	06
Friday	12

Note - Wednesday gets the big number here, but that makes sense because it is the day I'm doing Tai Chi downtown and getting comics. More travel = more sightings. But Friday is not out of the ordinary as far as travel but gets a higher number, while Monday is the slowest day. So if you're going to violate traffic laws in the Renton and Bellevue areas (which this blog does NOT endorse), Monday is your best day.

Location	Numbers
I-405	14
Bellevue	09
Downtown	06
Benson/Talbot	10
I-5	03
Lake Washington Blvd	03
Auburn Way	02

There is a surprise there, but one I did not expect. Lake Washington Blvd. is a noted speed trap for drivers who are avoiding I-405, the main artery between Renton and Bellevue, but it pales compared to local cops in Bellevue proper, or along Benson and Talbot, which seems to be a new hotspot in the evenings for squad cars.

Affiliation	Numbers
State Police	06
Bellevue Police	09
Seattle Police	05
King County Police	03
Renton Police	11
Other	03
Unidentified	10

So we have here an embarrassment of riches for the various departments keeping an eye on the streets. Renton and Bellevue have the lion's share, which is to be expected. Most of the Unknowns are, as noted, motorcycles. The others are New Castle, Redmond, and Auburn, but oddly enough, nothing from Kent, where I currently live.

Activity	Numbers
Patrol	29
Responding	05
Ticketing	07
Parked	02
Accident	02
Breakdown	01
Unoccupied	01

The vast majority of the cops were in motion from one place to another for reasons unshared with me (my lone Redmond cop I picked up in Bellevue and followed all the way to Federal Way). Responding was in motion with the lights flashing. Tickets, Accidents, and Breakdowns were all pretty obvious. Parked is a none-of-the-above situation, where they COULD be waiting for the unwary, but I have no proof that they were not reporting in, doing paperwork, or just keeping the speed limit down by their presence.

So did I learn anything (besides the fact that there is probably a better way to do tables on Blogger)? Just a bit. The sample size is still pretty small, but it shows that there are likely heavy and light days in rotation, that the bulk of the police seen are in motion, and that supposed legendary speed traps were not, and new ones may be opening up. If anything, this type of activity needs more spotters and a more cohesive way to manipulate the data. In short, enough with the long-hand calculations - there's gotta be an app for all this.

Next up? Sketchy research on why there's never an officer when you need one.

More later,

Tombstones and Breeder Tags

I think there is a PHD dissertation, a heavy coffee-table book, and a permanent spot as a pundit on NPR for anyone who creates a definitive history and analysis of bumper stickers and similar vehicle personalization devices. From mudflap girls to fake bullet holes, from "Don't Mess with Texas" to yellow ribbons (now sadly in decline, despite the fact that we're still in Afghanistan, people), what we put on our cars is a window into who we are and what we want others to think about us.

And recently, I've hit two new phenomena, which I have chosen to name for lack of better things to do.

The first involves Tombstoning. I noticed this a couple times over the past few months. The entire back window of the vehicle ahead of me is taken up by a full decal saying in something along the lines of "In Loving Memory - *Insert Name Here* - You Will Be Remembered". The vehicle itself has been turned into a memorial for the loved one, with the back window of the vehicle its epitath.

I find this touching, but also started wondering - is there a time limit on vehicular mourning? If another loved one dies, do they get the slot, or would a simple additional line merit? Is it bad taste if the deceased died in a vehicular accident, or merely ironic? Does it effect resale value? I don't think Miss Manners has the answers for these questions.

The other new effect is something I'm calling Breeder Tags. They are pretty popular, and you see them on the back window of vans and SUVs. Usually it is Dad, Mom, and a number of kids, divided by gender and sometimes by age/height. I know this one has gone national, since the ones I've seen have been Disney-inspired, where everyone except the girls are wearing Mickey Mouse ears (and the young girls are princesses).

Part of this strikes me as justification - I need the big vehicle because I have a lot of kids to haul. I'm cool with that, though I notice that some are a little be disingenuous - What looks like a large family at first blush turns out to include dogs, cats, and even goldfish. Now your back window is not an IRS form, and you can claim as many dependents as you choose to stick there, but it just doesn't stand up under examination. It feels like a criminal use of the inherent promise of a "Baby on Board" decal.

And there was one set that combined the first development with the second. It was a set of breeder tags in the lower left-hand corner with one member positioned at the top of the windshield, with wings and halo. And all at once I am consumed by the sadness of losing a child and creeped out by the fact that you'd want to broadcast this to people zipping along at 60 MPH on I-5.

More later,

On The Road Again: Wilburton Redux

So long ago and far away, I talked about the demise of the Wilburton Tunnel in Bellevue, just north of the concrete tangle where I-405 meets I-90. The reason for the removal was more lanes and better traffic flow, but it hasn't worked out that way.

Let me lay out the current situation. If you're coming southbound on I-405, you have for a brief stretch six lanes of traffic. Left to right, they are:
 - Lane 1: An HOV lane continuing south on 405
 - Lanes 2 and 3: Regular occupancy lanes continuing south on 405
 - Lane 4: Regular occupancy lane that becomes an exit to I-90 East (towards Spokane and, legends have it, Chicago).
 - Lane 5: Regular occupancy lane that becomes an exit to I-90 West (towards Seattle), And ...
 - Lane 6: An HOV lane that joins the HOV lane on I-90 West.

Got that in your mind? Good. Now, getting on the highway from 8th, the southernmost of the Bellevue exits, after you merge, you're in Lane 5. If you want to head south to, say, Renton, you have to get to Lane 3. And with all these lanes, you should be able to easily, right?

But, ah, there's the rub. There is apparently something wrong with the entrance on I-90 East, where Lane 4 enters onto the highway. Something so wrong that the traffic backs up onto I-405 South, and forms a Wall of Internal Combustion (which is an old Magic: The Gathering card) between Lanes 3 and 5. Which means that everyone has to negotiate the changeovers between the lanes, slowing down traffic in those adjacent lanes as well. Add to that people from lanes 2 and 3 trying to get over to lanes 4 and 5, and the HOVs in Lane 1 trying to exit, and you have an unholy mess, as nasty as it was when we had only four lanes and a big concrete tunnel in the way.

Yeah, they will have to address this one, but it reminds me that working on highways is like doing the plumbing in an old house. Yeah, you may replace the leaky pipes in one area, but the change in pressure will spring the seams in a dozen more places.

More later,

On The Road Again: The Apology Blinker

Ah, the holidays. The time of year when people who have no business driving in the first place set out in weather that would normally keep people home. In Seattle, such weather means heavier rains than normal, slick roads, and early darkness. And the end result is bad drivers aplenty.

And the latest incarnation I've noticed this week is the Apology Blinker. The car in the next lane over pulls into your lane. It may be a rapid cutoff or a slow, unyielding merge that ignores your presence in your lane. Yet AFTER they have completed the merge, always without a turn signal, and they are in your lane, THEN and ONLY THEN do they turn on their turn signal.

This behavior baffles me. What are they saying? "This is what I just did"? Or do they feel that they've righted the cosmic imbalance they've committed by flipping on the signal later? Or is it an apology blinker, a sheepish admission of "Yeah, I screwed up"?

I dunno, but I've had it happen three times in the last three days, and I for one am sick of it.

More later,

Monster

And this morning I ran over some baby ducks.

Yes, it was a accident. And yes, I'm completely broken up about it.

I think I've mentioned how my office is in a bottomland crisscrossed by channels and shallow bodies of water. And with spring we have an abundance of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl raising their young. We have signs up and everyone is very careful about driving around.

And then I ran over the baby ducks. Now I'm a monster.

I came around a curve into our parking lot. I never saw the ducklings, and saw the mother duck only when I was right on top of them. Looking in the rearview I saw one of their little bodies flapping around on the asphalt and realized what I had done. I parked and went back but by that time it was too late.

There were two of them. The one I saw flapping was dead by the time I got back, and I found the body of another one, crushed, nearby. I moved them off the parking lot into the low marsh nearby, to where the mother was squawking loudly at me with her surviving brood. I apologized to the mother and offered a quiet prayer. But I had blood on my hands.

There had been another driver, right behind me coming in, but it doesn't feel right to share the blame. Or to blame the ducks for picking that particular moment to cross a heavily-traveled lot. Or to remember all the times I stopped, or even got out of the car to shoo ducklings to relative safety. Or to seek comfort in the fact that there are survivors, and part of the entire idea of raising a lot of duckling is that some will not survive, taken down by predators or illness or accidents.

But in this case the accident was me. And I feel like the clumsy giant, the uncaring ogre, the bad neighbor, the savage fool. Killing without purpose, an engine of destruction.

The guilt will remain with me for a while, as it should. I still feel the karmic debt for running over a chipmunk in Lake Geneva almost 20 years back.

I'm going to be carrying those ducklings for a while.

More later,

Near Jeff Encounter

I was almost creamed on my way home last night, and it has left me a bit rattled.

Here's the set-up. I live on an east-west road, heavily traveled these days as more houses go up around us. There is an north-south road that crosses half a block from my house. That road has a stop sign - the east-west road, the one I was traveling on, does not.

It was early evening, right after dusk. I approach the intersection from the west. There is a silver mini with a white top at the north part of the intersection. I maintain speed. I don't have a stop sign. I'm expecting it to wait until I pass.

It doesn't. The mini lunges forward into the interchange. No time to hit the brakes, no time to hit the horn, no time to curse - the driver hadn't even seen me coming, probably looking the other way. I jog the wheel to the right, making a wide curve around the front of the mini. It nearly t-bones me. Quick mental flash to when I was a kid, two weeks away from taking my driving test, getting clobbered by a driver pulling out of a driveway without looking.

And then I'm past and I swing back into the lane and I look in my rearview to see the last of the mini disappearing on the road south. No honk of horns, no pulling over, not even a squeal of tires. I live half a block from the crossroads. When I pull in, the Lovely Bride is getting out of her car - she had just gotten home.

I was shaken. Another random roll of the dice, and she would have heard the crash, seen the carnage. I was lucky, luckier than I deserved to be. I left one of my nine lives at the intersection, spend too much karma, too many action points, shaved off one of my regenerations, created a couple alternate universes with various casualties.

And in the middle of the night I awoke in a mild panic, fearful that I had not escaped, and that what I was experiencing was just a delusion and I was still at the intersection, waiting for the EMTs to pry me loose from the wreckage. It was a mindless panic, but one that could not be denied. And I sat up and thought about all the other cases where I had avoided horrible consequences, where there were an ever-growing number of alternate universes that were suddenly un-Jeffed.

One of the cats, wondering if I would feed her, nuzzled me. I picked her up and she twisted in my arms, catching me with a back claw for a sudden, inadvertent scratch. And with the pain I suddenly felt better that I was still in the real world.

More later,

On The Road Again: Road Elves

I am going to sound horribly ungrateful here, but would it be possible to leave ONE route from my house to my job that isn't under construction?

I know, I should be appreciative about the large amount of road repair that's been going on all winter, often in difficult circumstances. I come from Pittsburgh, which is legendary in regards to the depth of its potholes and the non-responsiveness of its pothole-fillers (Many, many years ago, a local station ran a "Pittsburgh's Deepest Pothole" contest - The winner was one that went completely through a bridge deck and 100 feet further to the ravine below).

And Seattle and WSDot have been positively PERKY about road repairs, ranging from restructuring the exit at Coal Creek Parkway to replacing drains along Lake Washington to widening I-405 in Tukwilla. And then there are teams of what I can only describe as "Ninja Road Construction Elves". They are there one day, with their florescent orange witch hats, rodeo clown barrels, and Stop/Slow paddles, and the next day they are gone, leaving only a patch of hardening asphalt and an appreciative community.

But I have four ways off the hill, and the standard commuter's bag of tricks with back ways and access roads to get to work, and for the lifeof me, this past week, ALL of them have had construction on them. I went from plan A to plan B to plan C, and each day, there was a closed lane and the industrious fury of the Road Elves.

Like I said, I'm trying to make their lives easier and find alternate routes so they can get a much-appreciated job done (so always drive safely when they're working). But they GOTTA leave at least one exit free. Right?

More later,