March 12, 2014

There were 3 posts published on March 12, 2014 (this is page 1 of 1).

Can’t get there from here

No-Go Triangle

No-Go Triangle


Why does bus service suck so bad? That’s the question I have after trying to plot a course downtown by bus from our home this evening.

Travis is performing in tonight’s Pieces of Gold performance and needs to be at Memorial Auditorium by 6, so Kelly took him and decided that the 7 PM performance didn’t warrant another trip home. Hallie and I were hoping to take the bus to Memorial Auditorium so we wouldn’t have to fight for parking with the hundreds of other families attending the event but the bus that serves our neighborhood, Capital Area Transit (CAT) bus #3, stops running after 5 PM. Why does it do this? I have no earthly idea.

The result is what you see above. Fully 75 minutes out from showtime, the best that CAT can do is for us to walk over a half-mile to Glascock and hope that the busiest bus in Raleigh has room for two more passengers.

Plain and simple, this service sucks. Sure, there’s a bus stop nearby and apparently plenty of buses available, but try to find one when you need it and you’re out of luck.

Once upon a time, downtown Raleigh rolled up its sidewalks at 5 PM but those days are thankfully long gone. Raleigh really needs to get its buses on a schedule that makes some sort of sense for its passengers.

How Daylight Saving Time is worse than jet lag

I tried to keep my mouth shut this year about Daylight Saving Time. I really did. I was content to let my friend Damon Circosta take point on this as he likes to do, but I found I could hold out any longer. I’ve heard Kelly relate too many tales of office brain-dead-iness (also know as the Daylight Saving Time Fog) this week not to think this cause deserved another rant.

I used to enjoy comparing Daylight Saving Time to jet lag. After a few mornings spent awakening from unsatisfying nights of sleep, it occurred to me that Daylight Saving Time is actually worse than jet lag.

When you fly to a different time zone your body needs to adjust to local time. It does this through environmental clues, i.e. “the sun comes up later here so therefore I need to wake up later.” For instance in both Raleigh and Los Angeles, the local time at sunrise is around 7 AM and when you’re in either one the clock mostly matches the sun. However, when we reset our clocks without “resetting the sun,” none of the accompanying environmental clues are present to help reset our internal circadian clocks. It’s no longer 7 AM when the sun rises.

The result is a confused body and mind that struggle to reconcile this time fiction with what they are actually experiencing in the environment. Thus, Daylight Saving Time is actually worse than jet lag.

in Rant | 240 Words

Oakwood files bogus DMCA takedown notice

I sympathize with neighborhood listserver moderators. I know what they deal with, having moderated a handful of East Raleigh neighborhood lists for several years. It’s not easy keeping certain topics from exposing strong opinions and blowing up into a major snit. This is especially true with the listserver of a nearby neighborhood, Historic Oakwood, full of very passionate citizens.

Recently it came to light that someone was reposting snippets from this neighborhood’s listserver onto a Twitter called OakwoodListserv. The listserver moderator complained that the account violated the listserver’s terms of use and so the account should be removed. These terms, adopted in October 2013, prohibit reposting list content in other forums without the author’s permission.

These rules are prudent and understandable. Listserver moderators have the right to regulate what goes on on their lists and to expect list members to abide by certain standards. I get that because I’ve done it myself for years. I’ve regretfully had to kick certain members off my lists because they couldn’t behave.

It’s what I didn’t know until today that gives me pause. On March 4th, someone representing the neighborhood filed a DMCA complaint against the mocking Twitter account, claiming copyright infringement. Twitter subsequently deleted the account and there would be no trace of it today save for the DMCA abuse-tracking website Chilling Effects. Here’s the complaint as posted by Chilling Effects:

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