June 2009

There were 50 posts published in June 2009 (this is page 5 of 5).

The Carolina Mudcats and the messages in music

Last Sunday the family and I enjoyed a day at the ballpark, watching the Carolina Mudcats demolish the Tennessee Smokies 10-2. It seemed like a very family-friendly place, right down to the Mudcats letting all the kids round the bases after the game.

It was almost perfect except for one tiny detail. You see, there are a lot of short breaks in baseball that are routinely filled by music played played by folks in the stadium sound booth. Most of these songs were familiar 80s hits that put a smile on my face but there was one particular rap song that played over and over, making me more annoyed every time I heard it.
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Raleigh talks about car-sharing

After I just blogged about the need for a car-sharing program here in Raleigh, Triangle Transit announces a forum to discuss just that. Coincidence? I think not.

See the announcement below.

(h/t Urban Planet, by way of Bob Geary)

Triangle Transit, in cooperation with the City of Raleigh and the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, invite you to join us for an exploratory, interactive discussion about car-sharing potential in downtown Raleigh.

Thursday, June 18, 2009
1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
At the Raleigh Urban Design Center
(light refreshments will be served)
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Apple and its new datacenter

So it seems the state government has successfully lured Apple into building a new $1B datacenter here in North Carolina.

I was thinking about where that datacenter might wind up and the impact those many thousands of servers would have on the local utility grid. Then I thought of the perfect place: Badin, NC. If Apple moved to Badin, it can plug into the Yadkin River hydroelectric plant that ALCOA may be losing. The state wouldn’t have to give Apple a dime in tax breaks if it would’ve let them tap into cheap electricity from the dam. Electricity, you see, is by far the biggest cost to such a massive datacenter.

The problem with this scenario is that the reason the state is opposing ALCOA’s permit renewal is that the thousands of jobs once provided by the aluminum smelting plant are long gone. Turning dam operations over to an admittedly flashy and high-tech Apple would seem to be a savvy move on the face of it but the meager 50 full-time jobs Apple brings makes it a bit hypocritical in the face of the state’s complaint against ALCOA.

On the other hand, in tiny Badin (population 1,154) 50 jobs is 4% of its population and 8% of its workforce. And it is a economically-depressed area, which is an area the state’s incentives were designed to boost. Add in the contractor jobs and the associated vendor businesses that an Apple facility may bring and a modest little high-tech oasis could be created.

Spanish treasure .. or Native American treasure?

This deep-water shipwreck exploration company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, finds a sunken ship filled with millions of gold and silver coins. Spain argues that the ship, the Spanish naval vessel Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes and its contents belongs to them, and a U.S. judge has agreed.

I know international law says Spain owns the vessel. But the gold? Wasn’t that looted from the goldmines of the Incan and Mayan people? Shouldn’t their decendants have a stronger claim?

And what about the British, which sunk the Mercedes in 1804? Since it was their cannons made a reef out of the Mercedes wouldn’t they also have a claim?

It seems to me that all of this is simply a bunch of thieves fighting over loot none of them legally own. Perhaps it belongs beneath the waves after all.

Twenty years ago

In addition to it being Hallie’s birthday, today is also the 20th anniversary of the curshing of the Tienanmen Square protest. At the time of the protests I was in the Navy. My ship was in drydock so I had plenty of time to watch the events on CNN. It was stunning to watch these people bravely ask for their right to choose their destiny. It was so sad to watch the carnage that ensued, but now the country is safe for Starbucks, Apple Computer, and the thousands of other Western companies that have set up shop there.

My 2007 visit to Tienanmen Square has been on my mind today, too.

Seven Years Ago

This night seven years ago was one of the scariest nights of my life. Kelly was in the hospital seriously ill with preeclampsia, her vital organs slowly shutting down. I watched in terror as her blood pressure soared, feeling utterly helpless. It was a terrible feeling. I worried how it would all turn out.

And yet through it all was the chirp of a baby’s enthusiastic heartbeat, offering hope for a happy future. Sure enough, the next day became one of the happiest of my life when Hallie was born. We had to wait another 7 weeks to take her home, but we made it through. If only I could’ve seen back then where we’d be today.

In her young life Hallie has shown there are no barriers she can’t overcome. Our amazing girl turns seven tomorrow. Happy birthday, Hallie!

Roomba zoomba

We had not been using our Roomba that much until this spring, when I thought I’d turn it loose on the dog hair that piles up. Roomba would clean half a room before stopping and complaining: its battery would no longer hold a charge. I remedied that last month when I purchased a replacement battery. Now Roomba is back to cleaning like a pro, sucking up “dog-hair sandwiches,” as I like to call them.

It’s nice to have a vacuum that does the cleaning for you!

Obama pushes to keep torture pics secret

President Obama is supporting efforts by Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to amend the Freedom of Information Act so the Obama administration can legally withhold photographs showing detainees being tortured. Don’t like a court ruling forcing you to do something you don’t want? Simply change the law retroactively!

I’m still waiting for Obama’s open and transparent government. Is this what “change we can believe in” is all about?

Rankcrawler update

I received an email this evening from Philippe Martin at RankCrawler, apologizing for the bad bot behavior:

Dear Mark Turner,

I apologize for not properly identifying our crawler (RankCrawler) by using the user agent. Our reverse-dns go to rankcrawler.com but we don’t use our own user agent. We will fix this problem soon. We have stopped to crawl your website as soon as I read your message.

We DO NOT crawl with the IP 94.23.51.159 as you claim in your second blog post about Rancrawler. It should be another company that we don’t know and that uses the same ISP (OVH is a very large ISP). We uses at this time only 5 IP that goes to rankcrawler.com.

I apologize again for this problem and I hope you will let our crawler access your website once we properly identify our crawler with our own user agent.

Thank you for your message,

Philippe Martin
http://rancrawler.com

I’m pleased that Mr. Martin chose to respond to my complaint and as such, I will allow RankCrawler to access MT.Net once again.

A tale of two stadiums

While we were enjoying yesterday’s baseball game, Kelly pointed out something quite true.

“This just makes me all the more angry at Walnut Creek,” she said offhand.

Kelly was referring to the rampant price-gouging that occurs at the Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek (that’s its $20 name. Locals know it by its $2 name of “Walnut Creek”). Go see a show at Walnut Creek and you pay $6 per ticket for parking (wiping out any incentive to carpool). Expect to pay $10 for a shitty beer, a few bucks for a bottle of water, and if you want a souvenir T-shirt you’ll be parting with two Ben Franklins at least. It’s out of control.

By comparison, the Mudcats game cost some money to get there, as it’s a 30 minute drive out of town. You pay $4 per car for parking, but then the concession prices are reasonable ($3.50 for a pretty good-sized ice cream, for instance). Ticket prices are affordable at just $6 for general admission seats. The kids had a great time and so did we.

Kelly and I have seen more concerts and show this year than we have in a long time, but with the exception of Buffett none of those were at Walnut Creek. And we’ll not set foot in that place again if we can possibly help it.