My local urban woods to become subdivision

Urban deer


I received confirmation yesterday that the Weatherford property, the beautiful 10+ acre woods beside my neighborhood, is under contract by KB Homes. I believe their plans call for a 40-home subdivision with upscale homes similar to the ones in my neighborhood.

Checking KB Homes’s map of its other subdivisions in the Triangle area, this will be the first to be positioned so close to a downtown. That makes me wonder if we’ll see smaller, fancier, less car-centric homes to appeal to the new generation of homebuyers.

I will miss the nearby woods, though. I’ve grown used to mornings quiet enough to hear the call of barred owls, and the occasional encounter with urban deer grazing near my yard. I’m also expecting increased traffic as the dead-end street I live on gets extended to the new neighborhood, bringing more traffic through my neighborhood.
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Twitter Updates for 2012-08-28

Twitter Updates for 2012-08-28

Other Facebook users report Romney profile slamming


Other Facebook users have been reporting that their Facebook accounts were signed up for Mitt Romney’s Facebook page without their permission. Here are a few quotes from the Facebook help page topic:

“This happened to me, as well.”

“Happened to me too i wouldnt piss on that Douchenozzels shoes if his feet were on fire”

“That keeps happening to me, not only with the Mitt Romney page, but with several other pages–mostly commercial things like Amazon and Target, whose pages I never even visited.”

Here are a few from another Facebook help page on the topic:

“Betcha this year’s tax return’s will show Mitt Romney’s the biggest shareholder in Facebook. My page is flooded with his face”.

“My facebook is also flooded wiyh Mitt Romney posts, how can we rid of them.”

I’ve heard from friends of friends who have had this happen to them. I’ll see if I can get quotes from them, too.

Also, I’m starting to see this topic show up on message boards around the Internet. Word is slowly starting to get around.

Update 12:10 PM: Here’s another response on the Centrist Word blog:

“I had this happen to me, and as an outspoken Obama supporter, I was horrified. A friend spotted it on Facebook and texted a screen shot to me. A whole new low in political campaigning.”

Chart reveals unusual patterns in Romney’s Facebook popularity


I discovered a company called Inside Facebook which has been tracking the popularity of the Presidential candidates’ Facebook pages.

Take a look at the graph above. Obama’s growth has been extremely predictable and steady, while Romney’s has been all over the place. It shows extreme swings. Now, I don’t know if waves of actual Romney supporters are getting on board his train or if someone’s padding his numbers on his behalf but the stark difference in the two candidates’ patterns does raise questions.

Little Raleigh Radio planning downtown broadcasts

Little Raleigh Radio grew up a little bit more today when the News and Observer covered its successful Kickstarter campaign. I hope we see many new volunteers at tomorrow’s open house at Kings!

Downtown is on its way to having its own radio station – and the community is invited to be part of the broadcast.

Volunteers are starting an internet broadcast called Little Raleigh Radio, and they hope to launch in October with an eclectic mix of music and talk, all produced by locals. Starting a radio station from scratch in 2012 might seem like a long shot, but the group has plenty of support. Within weeks, they raised more than $10,000 on the Kickstarter grassroots funding website.

via Little Raleigh Radio planning downtown broadcasts – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Profile slamming

I was thinking that there isn’t much out there that describes what I believe Mitt Romney’s campaign (or one of its allies) is doing to surreptitiously set Facebook accounts to like the campaign’s page. Is it account hijacking? Hacking? Vandalism? What do you call it?

Then I recalled telephone slamming, the practice where unscrupulous telephone companies steals the customer of another telephone company by switching that customer’s long distance provider without their knowledge or consent. This happened to a company I once worked for and stunned me in its audacity.

I think that manipulating someone’s social media profile without their permission is similar in some ways to telephone slamming. Since no one else seems to have come up with a name for this practice, I will call it “profile slamming.”

Godspeed, Neil Armstrong

The first man on the moon was here


Travis and I were at Durham’s excellent Museum of Life and Science yesterday for his friend Patrick’s birthday party. I had just finished playing with one exhibit where the museum visitor aims a satellite dish to various audio sources, one of which was from July 21st 1969.

“That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind,” crackled the voice of Neil Armstrong from a distance of 43 years and 239,000 miles.

Moments later I learned from my smartphone that Armstrong has rejoined the heavens, having passed away at 82 from complications arising from his recent heart surgery.

I never met the man and wouldn’t know what to do if I had. I probably would’ve been too excited to speak. Armstrong was a “recluse’s recluse” as Dave Garrett, a former NASA spokesman, says. Still, I’ll long remember the thrill I got just by viewing the signature I saw in the guest book of the Lowell Observatory during our visit to Arizona two years ago.

The man who first left his mark on the moon also left it here. Pretty cool.