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Category Archives: General Comments

Bridge collapse

I am sure you all now that a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. Sadly, this will probably not be the last bridge collapse in the country. To me it highlights the benign neglect this nation has shown towards our nation’s infrastructure.
The United States decided in the 1950’s to rely heavily, or almost exclusively on a national highway system to provide land transport. I won’t go into the long term problems with this system, lets just say there are many.
The real problem is in the early 80’s many infrastructure programs were canceled to save money for the fiscally ‘conservative’ Republicans in power. This attitude of only fix it if it falling down didn’t change with Bush, Clinton, or Bush Jr. The economic recessions of the late 80’s and the post 9/11 didn’t help either.

The shifting of more money to fighting ‘terrorists’ and Iraq deflected money that would of been spent on roads and bridges. We are now left in our current state of affairs. Many of the bridges we cross every day are 30, 40, 50 or more years old. Many are far past their original design lifetimes. We keep using them because people don’t want high taxes. People seem to forget taxes are there for a reason, to pay for things individuals can’t afford. Like roads, bridges, schools, teachers, etc. Time to suck it up. Cancel the war in Iraq, raise taxes to previous levels, fix our country (roads, bridges, schools, Social Security, Health Care) and become a country that we are proud to live in again.

If we don’t, expect to see more deaths due to benign neglect, and just deal with those costs when they arise.

 

Posted by on August 2, 2007 in General Comments

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Slow FIrefox now fast Firefox

I was wondering why my Firefox 2.0.0.6 was running slow (the past few versions have been a little slow too) and I figured it must be an add-on.  Turns out I was right.  After I removed AddBlock+ my surfing has been much faster.
I think having to check every image on a page to see if it should be blocked was just slowing everything down.
I get a few more adds, but a much faster experience.
I still use Flashblock to make sure I don’t get the annoying moving picture/sound ads, and that is good enough for me.

 

Posted by on July 28, 2007 in General Comments

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Rule Ball

The children in this neighborhood play what I like to call “rule ball”.
It seems to be game like sandlot baseball, but with a few key differences.
The game still has a bat and a ball, and I think bases.
How the game is played a pitcher throws a ball at a batter. The batter hits the ball and then they argue over the rules for 8 to 12 minutes. This goes on for a few hits, but by then, the arguing gets to the point one of the parents comes out and yells at the kids for yelling at each other.
Kids, it’s just a game. There are enough rules when you are an adult.
When Glenn gets older I will make sure he has at least a few care free years before life crushes his spirit.

 

Posted by on July 25, 2007 in General Comments

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Site Updates

I created a new page with all of Glenn’s Photos, you can link to it above.
I also changed all the videos on the video page to YouTube videos.

Small changes, but I hope it makes it easier to navigate.

 

Posted by on July 21, 2007 in General Comments

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New Daily Images

One of my few hobbies is digital photography, as if you can’t tell. There is more to life than Glenn Photos, as cute as he is. I actually updated my daily photo page to show a contact sheet of what I have most recently downloaded.

I’ll update that page each day I download photos from my camera. I take walks at lunch almost every day, so you should see an odd variety of photos. Be sure to check out the steel cicada photos. That thing was over 4 feet long!

 

Posted by on July 21, 2007 in General Comments

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