Video of substation fire

Yesterday I came across this cool video posted to YouTube from Florida Power and Light. In 2001, an electrical substation in Miami short-circuited and blew up – and all of it was caught on tape by a FPL employee. Watch as the high voltage slices through the substation, finishing itself off in a massive fireball. It reminds me of the fire at the substation at the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and East Street in 2001.
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Grade 9

Grade 9
Barenaked Ladies

I found my locker and I found my classes
Lost my lunch and I broke my glasses,
That guy is huge! That girl is wailin’!
First day of school and I’m already failing.

This is me in grade nine, baby, this is me in grade nine
This is me in grade nine, baby, this is me in grade nine

I’ve got a blue-and-red Adidas bag and a humongous binder,
I’m trying my best not to look like a minor niner.
I went out for the football team to prove that I’m a man;
I guess I shouldn’t tell them that I like Duran Duran.
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Facing the bottles

I’ve been fortunate not to have to travel much lately but when I do I usually do it alone. I like to eat good meals when I travel as there is only so much fast food one can consume before losing one’s mind. Thus I’m often walking into restaurants as a party of one.

What many hosts and hostesses like to do is to park single customers at the bar. While I would rather not take up a 4-spot or 6-spot table with my lonesome, I find a bar seat to be a bit wanting.

When I’m eating alone in a new place, I like to spend my time absorbing the surroundings. A fly on the wall, if you will. Unfortunately, a lot of bars aren’t configured this way, making customers at the bar face a wall of glass and mirrors rather than the rest of the restaurant.

Restaurants that put the bar out in the open are the ones that get it right, at least for people-watching clientele like me.

Home Depot recycles CFL bulbs

Remember my post about the dangers of not recycling CFL bulbs? I just got word from the City of Raleigh’s recycling program that Home Depot will accept CFL bulbs for recycling. Says Linda Leighton, Raleigh’s Waste Reduction Specialist:

Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are lighting more homes than ever before, and Raleigh Recycling encourages our residents to use and recycle them safely. Carefully recycling CFLs prevents the release of mercury into the environment and allows for the reuse of glass, metals and other materials that make up fluorescent lights. Until now CFLs had to be taken to one of Wake County’s Household Hazardous Waste Facilities, the North Wake facility open the first Saturday of each month and the South Wake facility open the third Saturday of each month.
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Misleading

Today’s News and Observer headline story about Mary Easley’s so-called pay raise may be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my being an N&O subscriber goes. I have no great love for the Easleys but the only way to describe this is overblown if not downright misleading.

Mary Easley is an accomplished lawyer in her own right. She lectures at NCSU and she recently went from part-time to full-time there. Her salary, while quite large from my point of view, is a pittance to what most attorneys earn. The N&O is twisting the facts. I can’t hep but think its punitive after the governor ducked out on an N&O reporter and his email deletion policy came to light.

Trust is critical to any news source; lose it and its gone for good. I have been an avid newspaper reader since I learned to read but that’s about to end. Unless the News and Observer cleans up its act pronto, it will find itself with one fewer subscriber. At least.