Blog

Miscellaneous blog-style posts that don't really fit anywhere else. Some were imported from my old LiveJournal, others were imported from an old Wordpress installation I used. But, some are more recent.

Writing

Social Networking Platforms
Posted: March 6, 2013, 11:26 a.m. Where does a person go to be truly social on the internet? This is a question I find myself asking all too often, and once I settle in somewhere, I seem to have to find somewhere else to go. Today, Twitter announced that they were pulling all...
Thanksgiving 2012
Posted: Nov. 22, 2012, 12:13 a.m. You may find yourself in another part of the world You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? Thanksgiving is...
Superbowl Commercials
Posted: Feb. 5, 2012, 4:59 p.m. It's Superbowl Sunday, and everyone's crowding around the largest available TV for the big game. If you're watching it because you're a fan of American football, fantastic. I'm not here to rain on your parade, and while I don't understand the appeal...
First Smartphone
Posted: July 10, 2011, 12:20 a.m. After many, many years of holding out, I now have a smartphone. It's the HTC Evo Shift, an Android device from Sprint. The Evo was their flagship 4G (WiMax) phone, with every feature you can possibly think of, and it was intended to be the "iPhone...
Eminent Domain
Posted: March 25, 2009, 7:58 p.m. [ Click for Article ] Once again, Harrisonburg utterly fails at city planning. This is getting really old. In an effort to turn every square foot of undeveloped land into high-density townhouses/apartments, the city let a developer pretty much go...
VDOT: 2 - Youtube Videos
Posted: March 16, 2009, 7:56 p.m. In my last post about VDOT, I railed the agency for cutting back pretty much all rural services and rest areas because of a budget screw-up that left them billions of dollars short of what they needed/expected. I wasn't able to actually find any...
VDOT: 1 - Budget Problems
Posted: March 16, 2009, 7:55 p.m. Click for Article Thanks to a state budget screw-up, Virginia is planning to close a ton of rest areas on its interstate highways to save money, including all but two along Interstate 81, the northern and southern welcome centers. Which means that...
Abstinence-Only Sex Education
Posted: April 28, 2005, 9:51 p.m. Yesterday, my 14-year-old sister brought home a video & curriculum from her Family Life class (which is sex ed, for those of you who didn't grow up in Virginia's public school system). According to the accompanying letter, it's something for the...
California Politics
Posted: Nov. 12, 2003, 9:54 p.m. In the political simulation I used to participate in, we had a debate about whether recall elections should be allowed on the national level. Reproduced below is my opening argument for that debate. The thing that worries me the most about the...