Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 21 of 78).

Two years ago

Gerry Reid

Gerry Reid


It was two years ago today my close friend Gerry was severely injured in a wreck on I-40, passing away three days later. The days and weeks following the wreck were full of pain and tears though I managed to keep busy helping pull his friends together to celebrate his life.

Two weeks ago Kelly and I met with our financial advisor, who happens to have been a mutual friend of Gerry’s. Since Gerry’s death we trade hugs when we see each other, even two years later.

You gotta look out for those you love, and live life to the fullest. All we ever have is today.

Triangle Transit circulator buses

I’m not a huge fan of RTP but you have to admit that it’s a formidable economic engine and home to a large number of the area’s high-paying jobs. Try, though, to actually take mass transit to it. It can’t be done in any reasonable fashion.

I live near a bus line in Raleigh and would love to be able to hop a bus and take it into work. I can easily get to the Triangle Transit bus from Raleigh’s Moore Square Transit Station and from there out to Triangle Transit’s hub in RTP. From there, though, I’m on my own! Despite working in a large business park (Perimeter Park) with many companies nearby, I’m forced to walk over a mile from the nearest Triangle Transit stop near the Morrisville factory outlet mall.

This is where the Triangle Transit model falls down: there are no circulator buses which connect the various RTP office parks to the hub. Sure, if you’re a large employer like Cisco you can command your own circulator bus. The rest of us are destined to waste an hour or more each day, staring at taillights on I-40.

I’m curious why Triangle Transit doesn’t invest in more circulator buses instead of buying up land for a light-rail system that’s many years away. Yes, I’d love to ride the train into work, too, but why not first sell people on the practicality of mass transit by implementing a bus system that actually works?

Three trillion in change

As I was contemplating the $5-per-gallon gasoline price forecast by the end of the year, my mind turned to the three trillion dollars America has squandered over the past decade fighting two Middle Eastern wars.

What if America had invested that $3,000,000,000,000 in making our country more energy-independent rather than in blowing people up? What if this enormous nation of ours had used that money to build a first-class, high-speed passenger rail system that would keep us globally competitive as fuel prices continue to skyrocket?

Instead, we have thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers (kids, really), hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed, two battle-scarred countries of questionable stability, and a huge mountain of debt with little to show for it.

It has not been America’s finest moment.

Grown-up Raleigh politics

At ages 7 and 9, my kids are growing like weeds. They’re growing almost faster than I can acknowledge.

The same goes for Raleigh. A fact I liked to share when former mayor Charles Meeker was in office was that Raleigh grew so quickly during his tenure as mayor that one out of three Raleigh citizens had never known another mayor. That’s right: in the span of ten years Raleigh population grew by fifty percent.

Fifty percent! It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around that.

Over the holidays my aunt came up to visit from Tallahassee. Knowing my interest in politics, she asked if I was interested in running someday.

“If only it paid the bills,” I sighed, explaining how our mayor and councilors serve as de facto volunteers.

My aunt was surprised that Raleigh, the country’s 43rd largest city, has volunteer leaders. “Even little Tallahassee pays its mayor and city commissioners,” she pointed out.
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Slow it down

On my morning walk my still-kinda-dreaming eyes fell on the 25 MPH sign next to Dennis Avenue.

I thought about that wide-open stretch of road and the role the speed limit plays in taming it. Must have been like a racetrack before, I thought.

Then I thought of the mini-highway that New Bern Avenue became when it became one-way, and the mini-highway that Capital Boulevard is near my home. Seemed to me the first step in rejuvenating these areas would simply be to slow down the traffic. This could be a sophisticated operation like returning the streets to two-way traffic. Or, it could simply be dropping the speed limit.

I’m thinking all it would take to pump some life into some of Raleigh’s troubled neighborhoods would be to reduce the speed limit. It’s a simple and cheap solution, too.

“Let me run this by you”

One of the biggest compliments anyone can pay me is to tell me “let me run this by you.” I’ve been hearing this more often from friends and colleagues and it never fails to humble me to hear that people value my opinion.

Outlet mall to become Chinatown

Last week, I made my first trip to the Prime Outlets mall in probably ten years. The outlet mall, across I-40 from the RDU airport, was a very popular place to shop in its prime (pardon the pun). It was also an even more popular place for RTP workers to grab lunch as there were very few restaurants in RTP for the longest time. It was obvious from last week’s visit, though, that times have changed for the mall. I was shocked at how empty it was, with storefront after storefront dark. Fortunately for me, my clothing store was still around but few other stores were.

Still, I was struck by how clean and tidy the mall was, in spite of its lack of tenants. It was obviously being well kept. There was no decline in its care. I told Kelly later that night that if I had a few million lying around, I would buy that mall. We agreed that the Triangle was a good market for an outlet mall.

Turns out someone beat me to it, someone with plans to make it the Triangle’s Chinatown.
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Time for a new drug war strategy

I was surfing WRAL’s webpage the other day and, like many of their web visitors, got stuck in their gallery of arrest photos. Like the “rate me” sites like Am I Hot Or Not?, the parade of suspect photos pulls you in, making you want to click just one more time to see what’s next.

Anyway, I was clicking away one afternoon when I noticed a pattern. Of the suspects arrested for drug violations, the overwhelming majority of them were arrested for the possession or sale of marijuana. While there were some arrests for other drugs, marijuana was far and away the drug most often cited.

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It’s about quality of life


I attended this morning’s official announcement that Red Hat is moving to downtown Raleigh. While that’s a welcome announcement, it isn’t itself news. What CEO Jim Whitehurst joked was “worst-kept secret in town” has been known for months. What did capture my atention was one of the reasons Whitehurst mentioned to another open-source company as a reason to move here: quality of life.

Quality of life is one of the most important “incentives” a company looks for in a new location. If your employees aren’t happy where they are they’re more likely to go elsewhere. A good job market, a city with the right amenities, good government, and good schools are all important ingredients to an attractive business environment.

Raleigh has had the foresight to keep investing in itself so that it remains one of the best places to live and work. That strategy continues to pay dividends.

The Kmart “layaway angels”

Call my cynical, but I’m really suspicious of the “Kmart layaway angels” story. I love thinking that there are good people out there who would help anonymous others out of a jam. The cynic in me, however, wonders if Kmart set this up as a viral marketing campaign. And the protective person in me worries that poor people are now going to load up their layaway purchases in the remote chance that an angel will sweep in and rescue them for free.

It was Dec. 6 when a woman paid off the layaway for three strangers at a Kmart in Michigan. Since then, scores of people from Missoula to Las Vegas have followed her lead.

“There are people in line and they will just start paying off people’s layaways,” Aldridge says. “It’s given people big hearts this year. It’s bringing people together.”

via Layaway angels’ payoffs snowball at Kmarts | layaway, kmart, woman – The Orange County Register.