Copper thieves targeting Raleigh utility poles

This pole on Edmund Street is not protected against shorts and lightning due to a clipped grounding wire (lower left).


I happened to take a glance at the utility poles my dog was peeing on this morning and was aghast to see that many of them were missing their copper grounding wires! I’ve blogged about lightning protection before, and during last summer’s thunderstorm season I had read about how important these grounding wires are to the safety of our homes and the safety of the linemen who work on the electrical gear. Here were a half-dozen poles on this short street that were missing the first six feet of their grounds.

I sent out an email to the neighborhood, urging folks to call in any other broken poles they saw. While I didn’t hear back from my neighbors, I did check the poles on Glascock as I drove to the grocery store this afternoon and saw many poles in the same sad condition.

I don’t know when these thefts took place but it makes me angry that some metal-thieving asshat is jeopardizing the safety of my family just to make a few measly bucks. If lightning hits a utility pole within a few blocks, my home could burn down because of these missing grounding wires.

This is a serious safety issue and there’s no telling how hard Raleigh has been hit. I’m hoping these get discovered before people find out the hard way that their homes are sitting ducks for lightning.

(As pure coincidence, WRAL ran a story today about these utility pole copper thefts occurring in Wayne county.)

Discovery’s final flight

Nasa HQ


I found out only this morning that the space shuttle Discovery would be making its final “flight” today, strapped to the back of its 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for delivery to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. I quickly tuned in the NASA channels on my FTA satellite and soon I saw the shuttle appear on the horizon.

Then something unexpected happened. Watching the shuttle and its carrier pass low over Dulles gave me chills. I did not expect to be so moved by this aging spaceship taking its victory lap, but I was. Suddenly I was a 12 year old kid again, cheering as the very first shuttle, Columbia, made its maiden flight. The thought occurred to me, am I watching the end of manned spaceflight?
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Engagement anniversary

It was 14 years ago that Kelly and I got engaged.

You see, some men really do win the lottery.

The tornadoes, one year after

Raleigh Tornado, 16 April 2011

It was a year ago this past Saturday, 16 April 2011, when the deadly EF3 tornadoes roared through Raleigh, damaging over a thousand homes and killing three people. While the lives lost can never be replaced, the homes are returning to normal. The East Raleigh neighborhood of Lockwood held a celebration of the anniversary on North King Charles St this past weekend.

I never posted all of my photos from that devastating day last year, so here’s a link to my Picasa album documenting the damage only minutes after it occurred.

Also, check out the Google Maps satellite imagery of the neighborhood, showing before and after photos. It will be a long while until these neighborhoods regain their leafy shelter.

High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover

Wired has an absolutely fascinating story about how the U.S.’s border security paranoia has unwittingly made it very difficult for spies to use false identities. With biometric checking in effect, the days of a spy entering a country on a false passport are quickly coming to an end.

The increasing deployment of iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. ”So it’s a one-time thing — one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

via CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com.

CharO unfairly slams Craigslist

The Charlotte Observer reported this week how a man was robbed of money after he posted an ad seeking a car on Craigslist:

Similar “robbery-by-appointments” have become a growing problem since classified ad websites like Craigslist have become popular online sources to buy or sell anything from pets to electronics and cars.

Of course, nowhere does the Observer mention that this is not a problem inherent to Craigslist. The same crime could’ve been set up from a flyer stapled to a neighborhood bulletin board, a notice posted in a library, or even (gasp) a classified ad placed in the Charlotte Observer! A commenter on the story also calls the paper out:

Did this type of activity just never occur with newspaper classified ads?

Sure it did, but you don’t think the paper would bash itself, do you?

Look, I get that the newspaper industry has an axe to grind against Craigslist, blaming it for the massive loss of classified advertising. The truth, though, is that the rise of the Internet killed classified advertising. If Craigslist hadn’t done it, some other company would have.

Ads are ads, no matter what the medium. They connect strangers seeking a transaction. Just because someone using Craigslist experienced a crime doesn’t imply that newspaper advertising (or any other kind of advertising) is any safer. Spinning this as a Craigslist-only problem is disingenuous.

Dear recruiters

Dear job recruiters,

I will never, ever, ever work for AT&T. Not if it’s the last job on Earth, not if I get exclusive use of the corporate jet, not if they paid me a million bucks, not ever.

You may pass your “exciting job opportunity” to someone with lower standards than mine. Thank you, have a nice day.

Best Buy CEO Resigns Amid Competitive Pressures

Best Buy catches up with reality.

You know how much I dislike shopping at Best Buy? I was given a Best Buy gift card well over a year ago and still haven’t used it. How bad is a store when I can’t even be bothered to spend free money there?

I’d also say that in spite of the reporter’s speculation, people probably don’t use Best Buy as a showroom, mainly because they hate going into Best Buy as much as I do.

There’s ever-growing speculation that Best Buy now is serving too much as a showroom for its possibly toughest competitor yet, online retailer Amazon.com. The thought is that customers are perusing the aisles at Best Buy, trying out or considering games, cameras and phones, then buying them cheaper online, and sometimes with less sales tax, through Amazon or some other online merchant.

via Best Buy CEO Resigns Amid Competitive Pressures, Search for Direction – Yahoo! Finance.

The costs of jury service

I found out yesterday that the jury duty I almost had to perform was for the Kathy Taft murder case. While I was willing to serve, I am feeling very fortunate today not to have been tapped for this case. I work as a contractor and get paid by the hour and the contracting firm that employs me would’ve only paid for the first 40 hours of jury service. The Taft case will likely drag out for months, putting us in a significant financial bind. The $50 a day with which the court would’ve compensated me would not have come remotely close to bridging the gap. This all aside from the emotionally traumatic impact the case will have on all its jurors.

If these factors often weed out good juror candidates, what does that leave for our justice system? What can be done to allow people like me to serve without the risk of putting us in the poor house? Should trials be shortened solely to minimize the disruption on jurors, or would that be denying the defendant his or her due process rights?
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