Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 145 of 153).

Raleigh to host high speed rail summit

The N&O’s Crosstown Traffic blog reports that Raleigh will be hosting the conference Summit For High Speed Rail on the East Coast. The conference, sponsored by Women ‘s Transportation Seminar, is scheduled for Monday, 22 October in the Fletcher Opera Theatre at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Transportation bigwigs, including congressional representatives, will be there to discuss the status of the project.
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More Jason Ray

Jason Ray is still touching lives. The UNC student who performed as the UNC mascot Rameses (and of whom I wrote about before) may have died in March but parts of him live on. Ray’s organs have been distributed to over 80 people, according to the Charlotte Observer this morning.

Tonight ESPN will air the story of Jason Ray, called “Ray of Hope.” I hope his story inspires more people to become organ donors.

I’m an organ donor. Are you?

Craigslist fun

I had a little fun on Craigslist this morning:

Wanted: Desalination Plant – $1
Reply to: sale-446914297@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-10-12, 8:41AM EDT

Willing to trade lightly-used lawn mower in good condition for large desalination plant. Must have capacity for several million gallons per hour.

Will throw in weed whacker and accessories for water pipe that can reach the coast.

* Location: Raleigh
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 446914297

Of course such a thing does not exist, as the biggest dasalination plant in the world, Dubai’s Jebel Ali plant, produces 300 million cubic meters of water per year according to Wikipedia. I toyed with changing “millions” to “thousands” but I thought it was funnier with millions.

Taser abuse, again

Last year an Alamance County man mouthed off to an Elon cop and the next day the cop tasered him for no apparent reason. John Wayne Paylor was essentially assaulted by the cops in what was clearly revenge.

I support the police but there’s no way anyone can excuse this behavior with a straight face. If Paylor caused an incident the day before, why was he not arrested right then and there? This cop should be looking for work now, if not looking at a judge as a defendant. I’d be embarrassed about this if I were a cop.

This makes you wonder how often this happens and no one finds out about it.

Motion-activated air filter

I’ve noticed that when my cat paws through her catbox it raises a lot of dust. I run an air filter near it but I don’t want/need to run it all day or turn it on by hand every time she uses the catbox.

Its the Internets to the rescue! This gentleman blogged about a motion-sensor outlet, which turns any appliance into a motion-activated one. Now I can hook the air filter up and only have run it when the cat’s near the catbox.

Problem solved. Thanks for the tip, Joe!

Context and the Internet

Mark Cuban has some important thoughts about what the Internet has done to context. Worth a read, and something I’ve not considered before.

On the other hand, this isn’t new to celebrities. The tabloids collect a file full of pictures of a celebrity’s differing moods. When that celebrity has a down week, the papers will run an angry picture. When its a happy occasion they’ll run a happy picture. I guess when everything gets recorded this is to be expected.

Popular Mechanics for Kids

I was trying to explain welding to Hallie the other day when her eyes lit up. “Oh,” she said, “that’s in the ‘Undersea Water Creatures’ video!” She marched over and popped the DVD in and sure enough one of the kids on the show does some underwater welding!

A lot of the kid videos out there are lousy. Either they’re too sugary or just plain dumb. I can stand to watch very few of them. Popular Mechanics for Kids, though, is an exception.
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