Garrett M. Vonk

We’re off this Wednesday to the land of rain and cold. We’ll be packing for the next four days and then we’re off to Ireland and England for the following ten. Today was catch-up-shopping day: power adapters, khakis, and paperbacks were my primary goals. The most depressing purchase? Currency.

Yes, almost as frustrating as our experience getting the new HD TiVo set up* was turning our hard-earned US Dollars into far more valuable (and thus far less plentiful) Pounds and Euros. I can’t wait until we arrive and can spend it all on $8 pints and $10 sandwiches.

I just noticed that this is post ID# 500. I think I’ve deleted a few here or there, but at a week over six years since my first entry, it’s as good a milestone as any. Happy birthday, blog.

*More on the ridiculous Comcast CableCard experience later.

Traffic politics are a major point of contention for me, encompassing a huge range of issues from red light cameras to random checkpoints. For this reason, I’ll probably check out Parking Wars on A&E as long as I can take it without changing the channel in frustration.

A blog I found last year, ambiguously named The Newspaper, does a fantastic job of rounding up the “politics of driving” stories. Here’s a sampling of the stories they covered this year:

In September, motorist Brett Darrow’s videotaped harassment during a traffic stop in a small Saint Louis city became international news. Our follow-up coverage showed area police continued to harass the young motorist, and even threaten him, over the publicity.

We also helped spread the word in June about the Virginia’s so-called abuser fees that turned what other states treat as an ordinary speeding ticket for driving as little as 15 MPH over the limit in a 65 zone (or 10 MPH over on sections of Interstate 85) into an offense carrying a maximum penalty of $3550. [...] Many motorists in the same state were surprised to learn in October that they faced a $2500 fine for not making a lane change away from a police officer stopped on the side of the road.

[...]

In April, we broke the news that a little known California agency intended to install speed cameras and the first-ever stop sign — not stoplight — camera, in violation of state law. We followed up with a report on the stop sign camera’s activation in July. But the news was not good for the ticketing industry in Minnesota. The state’s supreme court struck down of the legality of red light cameras with a strongly worded decision in April. In Kansas, ticketing picked up as police struck deals to hide video cameras in commercial big rig trucks to issue tickets to passing motorists.

Some UK motorists discovered ways to prove speed camera tickets inaccurate, including the use of a cell phone’s GPS readings as evidence.

Some of that stuff is pretty infuriating. (stop sign cameras?)

It’s exciting to read that the Airbus A380 may be offered in a configuration with bunkbeds as an option rather than the typical seating layout. For any flight over an hour or two, I’d much prefer a cot, even an only mildly comfortable one, over a seat that just reclines a few inches.

Sure, meals and movies are pretty much out of the question, but depending on how much space the airline saves, and after seeing the posh common areas they have planned on some of these jets, I bet they can still come up with something creative.

Here are a few things I’m excited about this fall…

• Halo 3 - Duh. After playing the multiplayer beta and following every tiny tidbit of Halo news I could find on X3F, the most anticipated video game of all time is pretty high on my list. I even violated two of my self-imposed rules by A) pre-ordering the game at B) EB Games, but I don’t care. Come September 25th, I’ll be right there in line with the teenagers waiting to unwrap my cat helmet and play all night. Also–I have a Halo 3 party planned with several friends that night. I’m obsessed.
• Trip to Reno/California - Heather and I are heading to Northern California in October to visit my grandparents out there and do a little sightseeing. We happened to find a great price on a flight through Reno, so we’ll probably spend a day in Lake Tahoe, as well.
• Futurama - As far as I can tell, Futurama will be back on TV toward the end of this year or early 2008. It can’t come quickly enough for me. Yes, I saw the Simpsons movie, and it was great, but I’m at least equally excited for new Futurama after all of these years of repeats on Adult Swim.

• Deli Lane & Sunset Tavern
  This is a great little place for breakfast that was right around the corner from our hotel. Sure, the $25pp room service breakfast seemed like it would be tasty, but the $4.50 breakfast special at Deli Lane is filling, tasty, and worth the (short) walk.
  (tags: miami food)

We’re heading out tomorrow to the British Virgin Islands for a trip that we’ve been planning with Heather’s family since last July. We fly through Puerto Rico on Friday and stay the night in Tortola, and we’ll be on the boat Saturday through Thursday.

I guess there’s not much else to say except that we’re excited and trying to get packed and finish up everything at work before the trip. I always make a concerted attempt at not over-packing, but sometimes I fail. I have a feeling this may be one of those times. I mean, how many pairs of socks and gadgets could I possibly need on a 55′ boat?

Yes, we’ll take lots of photos and no, I won’t have access to email or phone for the whole week. It’ll be very nice.

So, the big story today is the traffic, traffic, traffic. While my train ride took the same seven minutes it always takes, I can sympathize with the commuters’ horror stories of 2+ hour drives from 285 to downtown. However, some of the comments at the AJC blog seem to completely miss the point of the HOV lanes…

“Jane” writes…

In a traffic situation like the one we had today, I think it would REALLY help to open the HOV lanes, just to get the traffic moving a little better. I know that’s not fair to the carpoolers, but in an extraordinary situation like today, it would help the 98% of the rest of us.

D. Potter:

Took 2 hrs. 45 min from E. Cobb - open up the HOV lanes to all traffic when these horrendous conventions take place & keep Williams St. moving for god sake.

I’m not sure what these people think the HOV lane is for. Here’s a hint: It’s not a super-special red carpet so that carpoolers can feel better about themselves. It’s an incentive to get cars off the road. And if you removed that incentive, those cars would no longer be off the road. You’re already benefitting from the HOV lane in the form of decreased traffic overall, and we’d negate that benefit if the HOV lanes were to be used by everyone. It’s not that it would be “unfair” to the carpoolers, though it would. It would simply cause less people to carpool in the first place. I don’t know what the statistics are on the effectiveness of the HOV lane at reducing overall traffic, but I imagine it’s a net traffic loss even when you consider that the lane can’t be used by normal commuters.

Followup: My Playstation 3 camping friend survived the Wal-Mart ordeal, making a tidy profit on eBay. It really seemed like a lot of radio and TV commentators missed the point when discussing the “console camping” phenomenon. My impression is that there were at least as many profiteers as there were PS3 Fanboys, and the 12,000+ consoles currently for sale on eBay confirms that in part. But somehow, all of the questions asked of the people waiting in line were “What’s so awesome about the PS3?” And all of the answers were “The graphics are great and I just love playing games!”

Tomorrow we leave for Orlando for a week. Work will follow me, to some extent, but it will still be relaxing. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve been on a bit of a Flickr binge, posting some old photos that I recently scanned. We’re talking REALLY old photos from high school and band, as well as some vacations and other trips. I was worried that the film would have deteriorated too much in the years it has sat in drawers and boxes, but it all appears to be in ok condition.

The real trick has been the photos from the GASFP trip back in 2000. They sat in film canisters and got all kinds of scratches and dirt. It really pains me to see scratches in the emulsion like that when I could have maybe taken better care of them and ended up with better scans. Nobody ever told me that film could scratch itself so easily.

I’ve uploaded some of them, and will eventually put them all in order and even perhaps date and geotag them.

The rest of the weekend went well. Saturday was a day of fun and excitement at the Food and Wine Festival.

EPCOT, as you may know, is partitioned into countries, with scenes exhibiting the plethora of stereotypes that Disney engineers held about all 12 nations of our great planet. So, in that vein, the food/wine/beer exhibits were sectioned by country. Heather enjoyed a Lamb Slider from New Zealand. In “Argentina”, I had a Spicy Beef Empanada worthy of José Olé®. I sipped, even in 90 degree weather, a small cup of Cheese Soup from Canada.

You’d think this would mean there were exciting beer selections from these countries. But unless Tsing Tao, Kirin, and Peroni make you feel like you’re sitting in Beijing, Tokyo, or Milan, the beer selections at the Festival were nothing to write home about. The only beer I hadn’t heard of at the entire festival was Brahma, a fruity Brazilian brew. Blah.

Sam Adams, over in the “America” exhibit, had a whole smattering of Sam Adams brews, like their Cherry Wheat and whatever. That normally wouldn’t pique my interest at all, but they had a “11th Annual Festival Brew” that was a nice robust porter. Probably the best Sam Adams I’ve ever had, though their Summer Ale isn’t terrible.

All in all, there wasn’t much free beer, and there wasn’t anything I hadn’t had before, so I call it less than optimal. However, it was a day of walking around, stopping every 10 feet to eat and drink, and watching fireworks, so as far as theme parks go, I wholeheartedly approve.

Saturday evening was fantastic. We filled up exquisitely at The Yachtsman steakhouse and then had a front-row seat for the fireworks display back over at EPCOT. We returned home only to watch Georgia squeak by yet again against Ole Miss. Do I regret this year’s wager with Rusty? No. Am I worried about it? A little.