Record heat wave spawns derecho

Derecho, 29 June 2012


This is day two of a record heat wave in Raleigh and elsewhere in the US. Yesterday, the thermometer here at MT.Net topped out 107.8 degrees, though the real temperature was probably closer to 105 degrees. It was surreal walking onto the porch and feeling this heavy air that didn’t cool you when you moved.
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Zazzle yanks sticker under pressure from Honda

Odyssey transmissions blow chunks. Literally.

It seems Honda took offense to my first bumper sticker, asking Zazzle to pull it from sale. I asked Zazzle to elaborate:

Thanks for the response regarding my rejected bumper sticker content. However, I am still at a loss as to how this sticker infringes on any copyrights, trademarks, and/or libels or defames anyone. Could you please cite the specific content guideline that is of concern?

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Democrats protest Republican grilling of DOT employees

I hope this photo runs on the front page of tomorrow’s News and Observer. Nothing better captures the bullying nature of the North Carolina GOP and its war on women than this excellent shot by Shawn Rocco.

RALEIGH — After Republican senators grilled two Department of Transportation employees and a member of Gov. Bev Perdue’s staff at a committee hearing this morning, Democrats protested that the DOT workers were being hounded unfairly for their involvement in a mistake.

Vicki Stanley, a DOT office manager, and Susan Coward, a DOT deputy secretary, were questioned for a combined 40 minutes about their actions on June 14, when they agreed to issue letters to two legislators over the signature of their boss, Jim Trogdon, DOT’s chief operating officer.

“We have a one-sided cross examination of civil servants, these two ladies who showed up here this morning, … who were just doing their job in this entire process,” Sen. Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat, said after the hearing.

via Democrats protest Republican grilling of DOT employees over false letters – State – NewsObserver.com.

Ask me about Honda transmissions bumper sticker

Honda transmissions suck


After becoming disgusted with American Honda’s refusal to own up to the problems with the Honda Odyssey transmissions, I decided to create a bumper sticker which will help spread the word about Honda’s shoddy treatment of its customers.

Feel free to share!

Update 1:25 PM: It seems Zazzle has removed my bumper sticker without explanation. My email is down at the moment but when it returns I hope to hear what happened. I certainly hope it isn’t a case of Zazzle getting nervous about me exercising my First Amendment rights. Certainly there’s nothing defamatory about a product that simply reads “ask me about Honda transmissions,” is there?

Wade CAC nominations

It was a busy day! Not only did I attend the Glorious Church meeting but this evening I presided over the second special meeting of the Wade CAC. This meeting was the one where the candidate nominations were taken and nominations closed. It was the first meeting of the Wade CAC in its new meeting room, the aptly-titled “Meeting Room” in the newly renovated Jaycees Community Center on Wade Avenue.

The meeting began with city reports from the police and parks department. Following that, the list of existing candidates was presented and nominations taken from the floor. One new candidate was nominated and things went very, very smoothly.

For new business, two upcoming rezoning cases were mentioned but I didn’t have many details to share as I’d just been told about them at noon today. Also, one member expressed concern about the daytime closing of Dan Allen Drive and wanted some CAC members to study that.

It looks like the difficult stuff is behind us now and I expect next month’s meeting to be a smooth transition to the new officers. I will then happily step back and return to my other endeavors. While I think I’ve served an important purpose for the CAC, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the personalities of the Wade CAC. Perhaps I’ll be back as a visitor someday.

Myth Dispensing: The Whole ‘Spotify Barely Pays Artists’ Story Is Bunk

Listen up, David Lowery.

One of the key talking points that we’ve heard from the "haters" of the new music business models is the claim that Spotify pays next-to-nothing to artists. This is really based on a few stories, taken totally out of context, concerning a few artists who received relatively small checks from Spotify. David Lowery actually used this as a key point in his screed against young music fans and their supposedly "unethical" behavior: to him, even if you are listening to a legal, licensed service like Spotify, you’re "unethical" because he’s heard rumors that Spotify doesn’t pay enough.

However, the more you look, the more you realize that Spotify actually pays out quite a lot. A few months ago, someone at one of the music collection societies told me about an analysis they had done concerning the amount of money paid per listen — comparing Spotify to radio, iTunes and lots of other things. When you knock it down to a per listen basis, it turns out that Spotify pays a hell of a lot more than any of those other sources.

via Myth Dispensing: The Whole 'Spotify Barely Pays Artists' Story Is Bunk | Techdirt.

“Natural leaders”

One thing I keep hearing about our kids is that they’re both “natural leaders.” Next to hearing how considerate they are and how helpful they are, this is some of the highest praise I can hear about our children. We saw this in action at Travis’s engineering camp last week when, in a room full of 150 people Travis fearlessly raised his hand and shared with everyone about a broken bus adventure. Hallie’s equally fearless about holding an opinion and not being afraid to share it. I wonder where they get that?

I’m not sure what professions each will pursue but I’m sure it won’t take them long to establish themselves!

Glorious Church noise issue in committee

Raleigh’s Law and Public Safety committee met at 3 PM today with the Glorious Church noise complaints on its agenda. I attended the meeting, not as a community leader but more as an interested party as the church is in my neighborhood. Before I could declare my neutral position, chairperson Mary Ann Baldwin was meeting with me and fellow neighbor John Seitz to “hash out the ground rules.”

Both John and Bishop Spain are neighbors of mine, so I sympathize with both sides. John has a right to enjoy his home in peace and Bishop Spain and his churchgoers have a right to worship any way they’d like. The only way I can see both of these rights being fulfilled is for the church to accept the neighborhood’s offer to raise money to upgrade the church’s windows. With some soundproofing in place everyone can be happy. If the soundproofing includes new windows the church will undoubtedly save money on its heating and cooling bills, too.

The upshot of today’s meeting is that the community and church agree to meet again within two weeks to plot next steps. Though I just expected to sit quietly on the sidelines today I wound up being asked by Councilor Baldwin to help set this up, so now its time for me to pull the resources together. It’s not the role I expected to be playing in this situation but I’m honored that Councilor Baldwin and the various parties involved think enough of me to ask for my help in brokering a solution.

Parking Permit Process for Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center

In my guise as Raleigh parks board chair, I had a concerned citizen call me two weeks ago asking if there was anything that I could do about the lack of parking around Pullen Aquatic Center. She had witnessed handicapped pool patrons turning away when all the pool’s handicapped spaces were full.

I told her that I would bring it up at this month’s Parks board meeting and that’s what I did. Fortunately, the Parks staff has already been working on a solution: a parking pass system will be give pool users exclusive access to the Pullen Aquatic Center parking lot.

This isn’t the only remedy being considered but it’s one that might offer immediate relief to the pool parking issues brought on by the wildly-popular Pullen Park.

Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center will now be using a parking permit process to ensure patron access to the facilities. Parking permits will be issued to Community Center and Aquatics participants for the duration of their class, program, pass or rental.

Permits will be required during normal operating hours and for all after hour events at each facility. Signs will be placed at the entrance of each parking lot indicating that a permit is required. You may obtain your permit from Pullen Aquatics front desk for aquatic participation and from Pullen Community Center for community center participation.

via Parking Permit Process for Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center – The Official City of Raleigh Portal.