Ask me about Honda transmissions bumper sticker

Honda transmissions suck


After becoming disgusted with American Honda’s refusal to own up to the problems with the Honda Odyssey transmissions, I decided to create a bumper sticker which will help spread the word about Honda’s shoddy treatment of its customers.

Feel free to share!

Update 1:25 PM: It seems Zazzle has removed my bumper sticker without explanation. My email is down at the moment but when it returns I hope to hear what happened. I certainly hope it isn’t a case of Zazzle getting nervous about me exercising my First Amendment rights. Certainly there’s nothing defamatory about a product that simply reads “ask me about Honda transmissions,” is there?

Wade CAC nominations

It was a busy day! Not only did I attend the Glorious Church meeting but this evening I presided over the second special meeting of the Wade CAC. This meeting was the one where the candidate nominations were taken and nominations closed. It was the first meeting of the Wade CAC in its new meeting room, the aptly-titled “Meeting Room” in the newly renovated Jaycees Community Center on Wade Avenue.

The meeting began with city reports from the police and parks department. Following that, the list of existing candidates was presented and nominations taken from the floor. One new candidate was nominated and things went very, very smoothly.

For new business, two upcoming rezoning cases were mentioned but I didn’t have many details to share as I’d just been told about them at noon today. Also, one member expressed concern about the daytime closing of Dan Allen Drive and wanted some CAC members to study that.

It looks like the difficult stuff is behind us now and I expect next month’s meeting to be a smooth transition to the new officers. I will then happily step back and return to my other endeavors. While I think I’ve served an important purpose for the CAC, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the personalities of the Wade CAC. Perhaps I’ll be back as a visitor someday.

Myth Dispensing: The Whole ‘Spotify Barely Pays Artists’ Story Is Bunk

Listen up, David Lowery.

One of the key talking points that we’ve heard from the "haters" of the new music business models is the claim that Spotify pays next-to-nothing to artists. This is really based on a few stories, taken totally out of context, concerning a few artists who received relatively small checks from Spotify. David Lowery actually used this as a key point in his screed against young music fans and their supposedly "unethical" behavior: to him, even if you are listening to a legal, licensed service like Spotify, you’re "unethical" because he’s heard rumors that Spotify doesn’t pay enough.

However, the more you look, the more you realize that Spotify actually pays out quite a lot. A few months ago, someone at one of the music collection societies told me about an analysis they had done concerning the amount of money paid per listen — comparing Spotify to radio, iTunes and lots of other things. When you knock it down to a per listen basis, it turns out that Spotify pays a hell of a lot more than any of those other sources.

via Myth Dispensing: The Whole 'Spotify Barely Pays Artists' Story Is Bunk | Techdirt.

“Natural leaders”

One thing I keep hearing about our kids is that they’re both “natural leaders.” Next to hearing how considerate they are and how helpful they are, this is some of the highest praise I can hear about our children. We saw this in action at Travis’s engineering camp last week when, in a room full of 150 people Travis fearlessly raised his hand and shared with everyone about a broken bus adventure. Hallie’s equally fearless about holding an opinion and not being afraid to share it. I wonder where they get that?

I’m not sure what professions each will pursue but I’m sure it won’t take them long to establish themselves!

Glorious Church noise issue in committee

Raleigh’s Law and Public Safety committee met at 3 PM today with the Glorious Church noise complaints on its agenda. I attended the meeting, not as a community leader but more as an interested party as the church is in my neighborhood. Before I could declare my neutral position, chairperson Mary Ann Baldwin was meeting with me and fellow neighbor John Seitz to “hash out the ground rules.”

Both John and Bishop Spain are neighbors of mine, so I sympathize with both sides. John has a right to enjoy his home in peace and Bishop Spain and his churchgoers have a right to worship any way they’d like. The only way I can see both of these rights being fulfilled is for the church to accept the neighborhood’s offer to raise money to upgrade the church’s windows. With some soundproofing in place everyone can be happy. If the soundproofing includes new windows the church will undoubtedly save money on its heating and cooling bills, too.

The upshot of today’s meeting is that the community and church agree to meet again within two weeks to plot next steps. Though I just expected to sit quietly on the sidelines today I wound up being asked by Councilor Baldwin to help set this up, so now its time for me to pull the resources together. It’s not the role I expected to be playing in this situation but I’m honored that Councilor Baldwin and the various parties involved think enough of me to ask for my help in brokering a solution.

Parking Permit Process for Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center

In my guise as Raleigh parks board chair, I had a concerned citizen call me two weeks ago asking if there was anything that I could do about the lack of parking around Pullen Aquatic Center. She had witnessed handicapped pool patrons turning away when all the pool’s handicapped spaces were full.

I told her that I would bring it up at this month’s Parks board meeting and that’s what I did. Fortunately, the Parks staff has already been working on a solution: a parking pass system will be give pool users exclusive access to the Pullen Aquatic Center parking lot.

This isn’t the only remedy being considered but it’s one that might offer immediate relief to the pool parking issues brought on by the wildly-popular Pullen Park.

Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center will now be using a parking permit process to ensure patron access to the facilities. Parking permits will be issued to Community Center and Aquatics participants for the duration of their class, program, pass or rental.

Permits will be required during normal operating hours and for all after hour events at each facility. Signs will be placed at the entrance of each parking lot indicating that a permit is required. You may obtain your permit from Pullen Aquatics front desk for aquatic participation and from Pullen Community Center for community center participation.

via Parking Permit Process for Pullen Aquatic Center and Pullen Community Center – The Official City of Raleigh Portal.

Shaffer: How much does your soul weigh?

The N&O’s Josh Shaffer takes a look at the upcoming experiments at the Rhine Center in Durham, attempting to weigh the soul. Shaffer calls it an “oddball” branch of science, but I prefer to call it “offbeat,” myself. It is science and no one knows what the experiments will find until they’ve been tried.

I look forward to the results!

DURHAM — For at least 100 years, the more oddball branches of science have struggled to answer this metaphysical head-scratcher: How much does the human soul weigh?

In 1907, a Massachusetts doctor named Duncan MacDougall settled on the figure of 21 grams – the average weight loss experienced by six terminal tuberculosis patients he strapped to a scale at the moment of death.

A dozen years ago, an Oregon rancher named Lew Hollander tried to measure the souls of one ram, seven ewes, three lambs and a goat. His findings: The animals actually gained weight as they shook off this mortal coil – anywhere from 18 to 780 grams.

Now this summer, the Rhine Research Center in Durham will host the latest experiment aimed at nailing down the intangible essence of mankind.

The method: 1.) Stand on a scale. 2.) Have an out-of-body experience. 3.) Record weight.

via Shaffer: How much does your soul weigh? – Shaffer – NewsObserver.com.

Scientists crack RSA SecurID 800 tokens

Remember when I said we are living in a world without secrets? The security tokens that provide two-factor authentication for a number of companies and organizations have been broken. Instantly, countless confidential files became unprotected.

In the age of globally-distributed mathematic expertise, high-speed computers, and Internet collaboration, codes and ciphers that once looked impenetrable now fall on a weekly basis.

Scientists have devised an attack that takes only minutes to steal the sensitive cryptographic keys stored on a raft of hardened security devices that corporations and government organizations use to access networks, encrypt hard drives, and digitally sign e-mails.

The exploit, described in a paper to be presented at the CRYPTO 2012 conference in August, requires just 13 minutes to extract a secret key from RSA’s SecurID 800, which company marketers hold out as a secure way for employees to store credentials needed to access confidential virtual private networks, corporate domains, and other sensitive environments. The attack also works against other widely used devices, including the electronic identification cards the government of Estonia requires all citizens 15 years or older to carry, as well as tokens made by a variety of other companies.

via Scientists crack RSA SecurID 800 tokens, steal cryptographic keys | Ars Technica.

Haves and haves-not

I learned two things this weekend:

  1. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison spent over $500 million buying himself a Hawaiian island, the island of Lanai.
  2. Only 0.58 percent of Liberians have electric service to their homes. The hydroelectric dam needed to increase supply needs $165 million in repairs.

I went to bed last night wondering how someone like Larry Ellison can purchase such a luxury when there are people in the world who consider electricity a luxury. Malcolm Gladwell said that 50 years from now no one will remember Steve Jobs but they will remember Bill Gates, because Gates’s wealth is being put to good use in charities working to improve health, among other things. Looks like people will be saying “Ellison who?” in the future as well.

Cheap Thoughts: Solar roads

How long do you think it will be before someone invents a way to easily coat roads with photovoltaic cells so that they generate electricity? Think of how much power that would generate!

Roads and silicon cells are both made of sand, so why not combine them?