July 8, 2010

There were 4 posts published on July 8, 2010 (this is page 1 of 1).

RPD officer parks vertically

A friend forwarded this FailBlog picture of an RPD police car that inadvertently got parked vertically. It looks like a new model car, so I’m thinking this happened somewhat recently.

Anyone know any details, like when/where this took place?

Update: My brother Jeff thinks this is the area near Six Forks Rd. and Millbrook Rd. I think it might be somewhere along Six Forks Rd., or maybe Lead Mine Rd. near Glenwood Ave. It could also be Six Forks close to Strickland, near

Look at the light pole in the top of the picture: it seems close enough to make this a narrow road, perhaps two-lane. On the other hand, the retaining wall looks new, too, so perhaps this road has gone through some widening recently. The close telephone pole could simply be an illusion caused by a telephoto lens.

The large bundles of copper telephone wires seem to point to a location close to downtown. I’m trying to identify that building in the background, too.

Sen. Hoyle’s anti-competition broadband bill expected to die

Internet hero

It turns out that no news is good news for Sen. David Hoyle’s anti-competition broadband bill, H.1840 (and formerly S.1209). The bill, which would block North Carolina municipalities from offering a choice of Internet services to their citizens, is stuck in the Broadband Connectivity House committee.

This committee is chaired by Rep. Bill Faison, who appears to be none too keen on letting this bill see the light of day. Rep. Faison learned first-hand the dangers of this scheme when it was pitched last year as H.1252. Faison is also not happy that Hoyle tacked his municipal broadband moratorium language onto one of Faison’s bills.

So, what have I learned about this? It’s good to be the chair of the Senate Rules committee, but it isn’t necessarily successful in getting bad bills passed. Also, it’s good to have two houses of government. Thirdly, don’t let the media hear from only one side. And, finally, sometimes otherwise good people like Josh Stein wind up disappointing you, even after you’ve stood in the rain all afternoon helping to get them elected.

Email address bill winds through legislature

Looks like John Beimler’s email address stunt might result in a law that makes it harder to obtain email addresses from local governments in Wake County.

The bill, H.1921 reads in part:

The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:

SECTION 1. Notwithstanding Chapter 132 of the General Statutes, when a unit of local government maintains an electronic mail list of individual subscribers, Chapter 132 of the General Statutes does not require that unit of local government to provide a copy of the list. The list shall be available for public inspection in either printed or electronic format or both as the unit of local government elects.

The bill has been kicked back into committee after returning from the Senate, so it remains to be seen if it will become law. With only a day (or two, tops) left in this legislative session we’ll know soon enough.

Update: it was just moved to be placed on today’s calendar.

Close, but not quite

I put on my geek hat last night to see if I could get Bluetooth audio streaming to work from my mobile phone to my Ubuntu desktop. I got tantalizingly close! After adding “Enable=Source ” in the /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf file and rescanning my laptop’s available services from my phone after I made that change (among the other steps outlined in this page, suddenly the phone would connect to my laptop. It wouldn’t last long, however as soon as I began to stream music to my laptop it would disconnect. I’m not really sure why, too. It probably has something to do with PulseAudio, which I have rarely messed with and don’t completely understand.

I bet you this is a cinch to do under OS X. Sigh.