Amtrak through NC hits highest percentage of growth in nation

Rail travel is hugely popular in North Carolina!

Raleigh, N.C. — Amtrak’s Piedmont route, which runs from Raleigh to Charlotte, grew by a higher percentage of riders than any other route in the nation during the last fiscal year, according to the latest data from the rail service.

The route set a new record of more than 162,000 riders and had the best percentage increase of all Amtrak routes, with a jump of 16.2 percent over the previous year, Amtrak said. The 2012 fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

It sure makes me wish the USDOT had awarded our state something more than the paltry $1.5 million from the billions in stimulus rail funding that were awarded two years ago:
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Raleigh’s System Plan project

The City of Raleigh just created a video encouraging citizens to get involved with the upcoming System Planning project, where the Parks department will be creating a vision for our city’s parks for the next decades. It’s another one of the city’s dazzling videos about our wonderful parks. You can also catch a glimpse of me around the 56 second mark.

Find out more about the System Plan effort at the Your Parks Your Future website.

First Date anniversary

With all the anniversaries I’ve been mentioning, I figured today’s warranted a mention. It was fifteen years ago today that I finagled a trip up to visit my future bride, Kelly, in Boston where she lived. It was our first date and took place only weeks after we’d met at our high school reunion.

At the time I swore up and down that I originally booked the trip to visit my friend, Gordon, who lived in Beacon Hill. Funny how I never got around to seeing him. It was only years later that Kelly actually began believing me when I said he existed!

Diaspora and Tent: open alternatives to Facebook

After several weeks of shocking revelations about Facebook accounts being hacked to say things their users never intended, needless to say I’m quite depressed about the state of social networks. I am actually considering shutting down my Facebook page since I can no longer be sure what I’m reading there is what my friends actually put there or instead the work of some outside (or inside) hacker.

There’s Google Plus, of course, but who’s to say that it couldn’t fall under the same spell (or under the same misfortune) that Facebook did?

What if there was another alternative, completely free and open? Sort of like an “RSS on steroids” that would share the content I created from a server I managed? What if it took the best of blogging, Twitter, and Facebook and tied it together with a flexible content-protection system that emulated “friends” or “circles” only it worked across separately-owned servers?
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Thirty years of computing

I was at a dinner this evening and shared a table with two retired IBMers. We began trading technology stories and I bragged about being one of the first to use the IBM PC. My dad bought it for the family back in 1982.

Only after getting home did I realize that this year marks the 30th anniversary of my use of computers. Our first PC lasted a year or two before my brothers and I upgraded it with a new motherboard, doubling its speed to a blazing 8 MHz. A subscription to Computer Shopper magazine and few years of part-time-job salary saved up and we had added our first hard drive, an incredibly fragile 10 MB model. Then it was two truly ahead-of-their-time 19.2 Kbps Fastcomm modems, two phone lines, and we had our own bulletin board system in 1987 (another anniversary at 25 years ago this year) with over 300 users.

Thanks again, Dad, for bootstrapping my career!

Costco marketing email has fake unsubscribe link

I signed up for Costco’s emailed specials a while back and decided today that I didn’t need them anymore. Mousing over the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email didn’t seem to do anything so I decided to look at the message’s HTML to find out why.

It turns out Costco’s unsubscribe link isn’t a link at all, but is just made to look like one. Here is the code:

< p > In the past you provided Costco with your email address=C2=A0 [EMAIL REDACTED]. Occasionally, you will receive brief advertising ann=
ouncements regarding special items and services. If you no longer want to r=
eceive these advertisements, please click < a > < span style=3D"text-decoratio= n:underline;color:#069" >unsubscribe< /span >< /a >.=20

It’s a span, not a link. Here’s how it renders in Thunderbird:

There’s an “update email preferences” choice also in the email but, like the unsubscribe “link,” it isn’t real and doesn’t go anywhere, either.

I think Costco is a great company and I trust them. Still, I’m curious about why Costco felt the need to include fake links in their marketing email.

How the Hacked by Mitt Romney page got its name


I’ve seen comments out there about the “cute” URL the Hacked By Mitt Romney page has, http://www.facebook.com/MittYouDidntBuildThat.

The truth is I would’ve loved to call it simply http://www.facebook.com/HackedByMittRomeny but Facebook would not let me for some strange reason. As I mentioned before, I went through a ridiculous number of iterations until I landed on the current address, so many of them that I began to take screen shots of the rejections.

http://www.facebook.com/YouDidntBuildThat:

You Didn’t Build That


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No opting out of Facebook sponsored stories


A few days ago I wondered if Facebook had ignored my “dont-put-my-name-in-ads” Social ad setting when I appeared to endorse Mitt Romney without me knowing. It turns out that Facebook users have no way to opt out of being listed in a Sponsored Ad. Thus Facebook can use your name as fodder for any advertising campaign that is seen between your Facebook friends.

From Facebook’s page explaining Sponsored Ads (emphasis mine):

Sponsored stories
Many of the things you do on Facebook (like “liking” a Page) are posted to your timeline and shared in News Feed. But there’s a lot to read in News Feed. That’s why we allow people to “sponsor” your stories to make sure your friends see them. For example, if you RSVP to an event hosted by a local restaurant, that restaurant may want to make sure your friends see it so they can come too.

If they do sponsor a story, that story will appear in the same place ads usually do or in your News Feed under the heading “Sponsored” or something similar. Only people that could originally see the story can see the sponsored story, and no personal information about you (or your friends) is shared with the sponsor.

Your Show my social actions in Facebook Ads setting only controls ads with social context. It does not control Sponsored Stories, ads or information about Facebook’s services and features, or other Facebook content.

I’m guessing that whomever is hacking accounts for Romney is doing it almost exclusively to put these names in the ads. It’s probably not just to pad the page fan numbers as any old fake accounts could do that. It seems very closely tied to the advertising. Advertising, as I have said before, is one of those things that Facebook tracks very, very closely.

More Romney hacking stories


Got this in last night from a victim of Romney Facebook hacking:

I had been off my Facebook account for about a month, when I suddenly started getting messages from friends that my site had pro-Romney and Republican Party stuff on it! I don’t have a phone that has texting so I had not made a mistake with a mobile phone application.

This is appalling. The Republicans have stooped to violating indivual expression.

And this one came in yesterday:

My mother ran up the stairs and told me my cousn, [NAME REDACTED], is a Romney supporter and had liked his page. At first I thought, she’s older, perhaps it was a mistake.

Literally hours later I got several phone calls from friends, family, and colleagues asking me is I was now “turning”. I couldn’t believe it. Someone had falsely liked Romney’s page under my profile. I have been apart of many events to rally for the Obama vote so imagine the tone of some of those people when they called me. I’ve spent several hours explaining myself. This is a huge violation and I’m not surprised if Romney is behind it.

The sad thing is, my cousin doesn’t even know how to remove a like.

Overnight the Hacked by Mitt Romney page gained 89 more users (Real? Fake? Hard to tell anymore.). I’ve already been Slashdotted, so what other site could be driving traffic? Reddit? Fark? Anyone know?