Just how drunk do you have to be?

This guy drove into a Portland light-rail tunnel Saturday morning. He told police he was on his way home. I guess the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Apparently, he was under the influence. Who would have guessed?

Driver drives car into MAX Westside lightrail tunnel

Back in action in aloha land

I gave up writing this week for a while. I felt awful and since nobody wants to hear someone just complaining about being sick, I just decided to keep quiet, since feeling awful was pretty much all I was thinking about. To paraphrase all mothers, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Or the governator, "You whine like a girly-man."

Anyway, I've pretty much gotten over whatever it was, although it made for a long couple weeks. Last night I actually went out wandering around Waikiki for a while, and even enjoyed some Cold Stone Creamery.

Other than feeling crappy, I've had a decent stay here. It's been a bit rainy, as is more or less normal this time of year, but other than that, it's been okay. The hotel I got put up in this time is pretty nice; a lot nicer than the Super 8's and such that I normally travel to. I also did pretty good on the car. My boss reserved a compact car, in the hopes that they would be out and have to upgrade me. However, they had several Toyota Yaris's, which wouldn't remotely hold two people's stuff. So I had to upgrade, and the next step up that was available was a full size, which in this case, means a brand new (244 miles) bright red Dodge Charger. I like this car. The only downside is that this island is maybe 30 miles across and choked with traffic, so I haven't really opened it up much. But it's still fun. I could get used to this car. I like it a lot better than the Chrylser 300 we rented that's basically the same thing with different styling. I'm not sure what exactly is different, but this one handles much better and seems to have more kick. I wish Franny had been here for that. She's been waiting to drive one of these for ages.

Waikiki is a trip. The area is pretty much entirely dedicated to tourists. There is a long strip of mainly high-end shops and really nice hotels. Along the strip, there are a number of regular street performers looking for tips. There're the silver guy, a bronze cowboy guy, two different gold guys (one of which wasn't even trying), a robot, a rastaman with a steel drum, a regular stoned guy with plastic buckets, a seriously tarted-up psychic with prominently displayed cleavage, a couple magicians, some missionaries being ignored, a spray paint artist who was wearing a respirator while everyone around him sucked noxious fumes, a group of capoeira performers, and someone calling himself "The Basketball Guy". I don't really know what he did. He was dressed in orange and black and there were several basketballs on the ground, but he just pretty much wandered around the sidewalk in a circle dancing like a mental patient. There are some back streets of not-quite-as-high-end shops and other hotels. Lots of restaurants and souvenier shops and convenience stores and nightclubs and, for some reason, indoor gun ranges. There's a public golf course right behind Waikiki that claims to be the busiest course in the world. I can't verify that claim, but it's had people on it every time I've looked out my window. Waikiki is is oppresively touristy as far as I'm concerned. When I come over here, it's interesting to wander through the mayhem once, and then I'm done. Yesterday was it. It was mildly amusing, but later in the evening, when the prostitutes came out and inquired into my need for "company," I figured I had seen enough and it was time to get out of here. So today I leave.

The best part about it is that Franny is on her way here right now. I'm meeting her at the airport and we're flying to Hilo for a few days of vacation. Without the Mizz. I miss him a ton, but my folks are sitting for a few days so Franny and I can get some much-needed alone time. It's been almost three years and I'm guessing after the second one, it's going to be even tougher.

I know that complaining about the weather is not usually interesting, but Hilo's going to be a bit soggy, even by Hawaii standards. I expected showers here and there, given that we're here during the wet season, but the last week's been extreme for the state. Everybody got excited Tuesday because there was snow on three different volcanos: Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island, which is normal, and Haleakala on Maui, which is not. Yesterday, they had epic rains on much of the Big Island. Hilo had 11 inches of rain and there were several major roads closed due to flooding, although it looks like not the ones near our hotel. Another place on the island had over 17 inches of rain yesterday. It's even rained some in the Kona area, which doesn't happen all that much. The entire Hawaiian island chain is under a flash flood watch through today. How's that for timing your vacation? It's supposed to lighten up tomorrow to a more normal level, but I'm not really holding my breath. Oh, well. We'll have a rental car. If there's a sunny spot on the island, we'll find it. And even if there's not, we'll still sleep in tomorrow morning, which will be nice regardless.

How's traffic in your town?

This elephant apparently got mad during an elephant polo match in Sri Lanka. I can't say that I blame him. (Yanked from Yahoo! photos)

Tagged? Are you kidding me?

So I got tagged by this "8 Facts About Me" meme. From what I can tell, a "meme" is a trendy new cultural thing that everybody who's anybody is supposed to know about and, I guess, feel good about themselves because they know about it. The particular meme seems to just be a blogging version of a chain letter. I've seen it bouncing around and I guess it was inevitable that it got to me eventually, despite the fact that I am hardly trendy and am effectively a dead end on the blogworld street map. Anyway, I'll give my best effort to play along and not be a total stick in the mud.

First, the Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged



Whatever. I've never been a stickler for rules on things that don't matter, especially those that come uninvited via the internet. We'll see how I do.



Some facts:

1) I hate the word "meme". It just drips of elitist internet speak. (Or 1337, if you're that into it.) I'm aware that the word was coined before the internet, but it seems to be everywhere now, since the internet allows a complete explosion of new trendy things you're supposed to keep track of. Google "meme" and you get 322,000,000 hits. It's right up there with "blogosphere" as a word that I wish will go away, but I know will only get stronger. This is probably why I am unlikely to ever be trendy.

2) I used to drive a bus for the University of Virginia. It was a pretty cool student job, as far as student jobs go. We had fairly flexible scheduling options and decent pay, and we didn't have to wear aprons and slop mashed potatoes. We did have uniforms, but they consisted of either a crappy blue shirt or a slightly less crappy blue jacket (I still have mine.) which, as we wore them, made us quite possibly the least professional looking bus drivers you've ever seen. Maybe they've gotten better, but I wouldn't count on it. When your main customers are either irritated nurses or drunken students, it's hard to get worked up about your appearance. The best thing about it all is that it's where I met my wife. I admit I didn't recall her right away the first time I saw her. She was one of a group of new trainees that I met all at once. I'm pretty sure she remembers me though. I was the longhair in a red bandanna rolling around in a wheelchair. I wasn't damaged at the time; I was just showing the newbies how the work the lift on the bus. Romantic, huh?

3) I was a pretty good bus driver too. Each year, most bus companies host a competition among their drivers called a Roadeo. (See the brown box near the bottom of the linked page.) You drive bus around a cone-filled obstacle course, check out a rigged bus for problems, and take a written knowledge test. The top four finishers go to the state Roadeo and the winner from that goes to a national competition. I went to the state Roadeo 3 times, having won ours twice. I came in 3rd once at the state level. I may have come in 2nd once as well, but I could be remembering wrong. This, despite the fact that we kind of made a joke of our competition. The last obstacle on the course was the "controlled stop". You are just coming out of the "diminishing clearance" obstacle, in which you floor it and go through a set of traffic barrels that start with one foot of clearance on each side of the bus and end with one inch. Some people tried to do this right, but many just tore through the barrels on one side, with the logic that if you aren't really going to try anyway, at least you only lose half the points. What we really liked was taking this now-speeding bus, and doing the "controlled stop". This consisted of a cone straight ahead of you. You are supposed to stop within 6 inches of it with one constant controlled braking application. You can't see the cone by the time you are that close, so, to do this right, you need some skill. We, however, preferred to call it the "panic stop." Our method consisted of keeping the speed up until the last minute and slamming on the brake to skid to a stop. Yes, you can skid a bus. It's quite a rush and can't be good for the vehicle. Some people occasionally got close to the cone, but most proved that it's a good thing nobody sat in front of it. We fished a lot of cones and barrels out from under buses. Anyway, the point is that, despite that level of training, I still managed to do well at the state Roadeo. Yay for me. (This is probably more pathetic than Al Bundy continuing to subsist on the glory of one high school football game, isn't it?)

4) Speaking of driving, I drove a race car in college for a short time. It was a Legends car, which is a small race car meant to be a relatively cheap way for people to get into real car racing. The UVA Mechanical Engineering Department bought one, along with several other ACC schools, and we competed against them several times. The program was just getting started as I was leaving, so there wasn't much to it at the time. Several professors were working on getting a motorsports curriculum started, which is now up and running and I think it involves two cars and quite a few students. I didn't actually compete in the car much. I wasn't a bad driver, but others were much better, although, unlike several of them, I never crashed it.

5) I've lived in 6 states and one foreign country. As well as I can remember, I've visited 38 states and 5 countries, staying at least one night in 28 and 3, respectively.

6) I was a pole vaulter in high school. By the time I graduated, I held the school record at 12' 6". Those of you who know anything about pole vaulting probably already realize that, although it's over twice my height, that's not a very impressive number. I only did it for a year and a half, and there hadn't been any pole vaulters for a few years. The track coach got us started, but he didn't know what he was talking about, and we only got to about 8' 6" that first season. I and one other guy that had some skills went to a pole vaulting camp that summer and came back to coach ourselves the next year. By the time I left I had that record I mentioned, but nobody outside the school was impressed (and most people in the school were unaware). The other guy was two years behind me and got to something like 14' the next year. He ended up getting a scholarship somewhere to continue, maybe even with real coaching. (I also tried high jumping for one season, and actually jumped 5' 10", which is over my head. Nobody was impressed though, because in the spring when the basketball players came back to track and field, they were hurdling our bar. Real high jumpers are up over 7 feet in high school.)

7) I'm a pretty good cook if I have a recipe, or at least some general guidance. However, if left to my own devices to come up with something, I look at the kitchen like it's Chinese market and I have no idea what's in the various packages. This works out well with Franny. She has no trouble breezing into the kitchen and grabbing random stuff out of the fridge and coming up with something good. However, it's almost comical to give her a recipe and see what actually comes out. I've seen 7-layer dip with only 6 layers. We make a good team though. She's an artist with no tolerance for details and I'm a computer who won't do anything until told, although I will do it well once pointed in the right direction.

8) I never would have guessed it, but I actually enjoy yard work now that I own a yard. All I remember of growing up was being forced (coerced/bribed/whatever) to mow the lawn. I was also cheap labor for Dad's planting and digging and building projects. Apparently I learned something from all that though. Now that I have a yard, I find myself interested perennials vs. annuals, ground cover, fill-in plants, flowers, trees, bushes, mulch, compost, and gardening gadgets. Who knew?

9) I do enjoy home projects as well. I learned a ton of this kind of stuff growing up. Dad and I always did pretty much any home improvement project ourselves. We rarely had anyone else come in. We did have an electrician tie our electrical additions into our breaker box, but we had done the rest of the wiring already. We also had a plumber install some copper piping. Other than that, we did pretty much everything else. Carpentry, electrical, drywall, painting, furniture building, concrete, hardware installation, repairs, whatever. I won't claim to be an expert at any of that, but I find that I'm not afraid to try most projects and I'm willing to find out how to do most anything. This is a source of continual amusement for Franny. "You don't know how to do that!" Sometime I do and sometimes I don't, but I'll try anyway. I haven't done anything too bad yet, although I occasionally do pull off some bonehead mistake that takes a bit of time to fix. Anyway, I usually get to impress my wife with my house skills. It's all about picking your audience.

10) I was in Navy ROTC for a year. I didn't get booted or anything, but I did feel like I didn't belong. Most of the other guys (and gals) were WAY too into marching in straight lines and keeping their hair buzzcut. I kind of figured that if the Navy ever decided they needed me enough to draft me, I'd be back, but until then, we were both fine without each other. I did however enjoy being on our pistol team. I never knew I had it in me, but I was pretty good with a .22 target pistol. This came back to me later when somebody pointed out that I had a very weird stance at an arcade shooting game but that it was kind of scary how good I was. It's been a while though, so I'm not sure it's still there.



Oops. Too many facts. I kind of got on a roll there. Too bad. Now you have some facts about me, along with a good deal of rambling. Congratulations if you made it this far. I'm not sure I know any bloggers who haven't already been tagged, so I'm just tagging everyone willy-nilly. If you feel tagged, put a link in the comments and I'll add you on here. In fact, I think I like the chain letter thing via a blog better than the e-mail way anyway. I can amuse myself with this silliness without foisting it on anyone else.

What's a little more debt?

Check out our new ride. It's a 2007 Hyundai Tucson SUV. (If you look close, you can see the top of Mizz's head trying to take it out for a spin already.)


I have to say that it's been about 8 years or so since I bought a car, and after today, I think I can wait another 8 for the next one. I knew going in that I'd have to play the car-sales, if-I-can-can-get-your-payment-down, let-me-go-check-with-the-guys-in-the-back, I'm-really-trying-to-make-this-work-but-I-don't-think-they'll-go-for-it, how-about-that-undercoating, what's-it-going-to-take-to-put-you-in-this-car-today game, but it's still incredibly frustrating when you get into it.

There even seemed to be an extra layer in the process. The first salesman sat with me for a while writing down random numbers that must have been beamed into his head because they had almost nothing to do with what happened later. Then he disappeared into the back and summoned ANOTHER salesman, who then proceeded to do the running in and out of the back hard-sell part of the process while the first kid just sat there looking bored, I assume to keep me from wandering too far.

And they weren't kidding about the undercoating either. Both salesmen pushed it and were shot down. Then the guy at the end, who seemed much nicer and more relaxed and was mainly just the sign-here-and-here-and-here guy, also surprised us by pushing it and having to be denied too. Then, when it was all finished, the first sales guy asked again if I had gone for it. I assume the majority of the cost would have gone into paychecks. No thanks, guys.

In the end, we got what I feel like is a decent deal, although we won't win any haggling awards, I'm sure. We ended up with a fair price on a very safe and reliable vehicle that gives us more flexibility than the beloved but busted ole' Corolla. (Sorry Franny, but the missing hubcap, the puddles on the floor and the fuse-frying taillights probably indicated that it was time for her to retire. I'm sure she's going to go live on a farm where she can play with other old Corollas and be happy.)

I just wish I didn't feel like I had just gone 15 rounds with Jackie Chan by the time it was over. Jackie and I both felt like we came out of the deal okay, but neither one of us seemed to enjoy it much. I don't mean to be completely negative. I like the car and I'm happy with both it and the fact that we can put car hunting behind us. I just wish the experience didn't have to suck so much.

At least we made the Mizz happy. His only request when we asked what kind of car he wanted was "Blue." I suppose Arctic Mist will do.

Funny what you find on your desk

Just cleaning up my desk and I come across half a page from the Oregonian newspaper. I think it was not too long ago, but I can't be sure. I save and squirrel away too much stuff and I can't quite tell why I kept this. However, it did have an interesting factoid on it.

Apparently, Portland ranks number one as the most courteous city, displaying the least amount of road rage, according the "In the Driver's Seat Road Rage Survey" commissioned by AutoVantage. We are followed by Pittsburgh and Seattle/Tacoma as number 2 and 3, respectively. The least courteous were Miami, New York, and Boston. I can't speak for Boston, but I can see the other two easily. What I wonder is how Washington, DC didn't take the worst honor away with flying colors. Even after enduring the endless horns and middle fingers of New York, I've still always found DC area drivers to be much more self-centered and furious about it.

(Now I can get rid of the paper. What fun.)

Movie Review (PLUS+): Who Killed the Electric Car?

We watched Who Killed the Electric Car? recently. It came out in 2006, but it seems at least 5 years older than that. It's a pretty good documentary about an electric car experiment in California in the mid-90's. California tried to mandate lower fleet emissions for the car makers and the only way the companies could pull it off was to introduce low- or no-emission vehicles. Several companies floated options, but the only one to make much headway was the EV-1 from General Motors. This film documents the rise of this car, the admiration it got from its drivers, and its eventual fall when the car companies got California to get rid of the mandate. It then tries to decide who's fault it is that the car disappeared. The movie definitely has an agenda. It's clear from the outset that the assumption is that the electric car was infallibly good and anything that had to do with it's demise is inherently evil. Understanding that point of view, it's still an interesting look at a phenomenon that went mainly unnoticed by most people. You should definitely check it out if you are at all interested in alternative energy sources or corporate motivations.

Now for the PLUS+

Part of the reason this movie seemed slightly dated is that it doesn't have much to say about more recent developments in this arena. It makes the assumption that if the electric cars had stayed on the road, most people would be driving them now. It seems to miss the point that we have a very entrenched gasoline-based transportation system that is unlikely to be duplicated by a string of delay-causing charging stations. It does touch momentarily on Bush's "hydrogen economy" that everybody knows isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Now, I'm all for an alternative to running my car on dead dinosaurs that are mainly buried under dictators. However, I'm realistic enough to understand that there are going to have to be some stepping stones on the way out of that world. The hybrids are the current best option, but they're really just improvements in fuel economy. They still get all of their energy from the same dead dinos. There are also ethanol and biodiesel, which get us away from the fossil fuels, but they are only marginally better, as they are more expensive (especially considering farm subsidies) and potentially interfere with our food supply capability.

The next realistic option coming down the pike are the plug-in hybrids. Like the hybrids, they have dual gas and electric power systems, but unlike the hybrids that charge their batteries solely from their gas engines, they can be plugged into the electric grid and charged, giving them 50 miles or whatever of range before the gas engine would even need to be turned on at all. For most people, this means that the majority of their driving would be on purely electric power, but if necessary, they would still have the convenience and range offered by gasoline. This approach is a more workable alternative that does not require a completely redundant energy delivery infrastructure.

This is also something that is realistically in the works. As of July 27th, Toyota had announced that it was going to work with the University of California in Berkley to road test two plug-in hybrid Prius cars. Unfortunately, as of August 9th, Toyota has delayed this series of cars, because, according to this article, Toyota's type of batteries, "have shown a tendency to overheat, catch fire and even explode."

This delay opens up some space for U.S. auto makers to make up some ground. Toyota had been far ahead, but this setback may allow for some catchup. The movie had a section about an inventor that had sold his battery company to GM for use in the EV-1 after their original batteries turned out to be less than stellar. However, as soon as the EV-1 was removed from the market, GM sold the battery company to Chevron, who essentially mothballed it. However, I happened to be working at a company that tests batteries a couple days after seeing the movie. My contact there had heard of the battery company in question and told me that Chevron had since sold it back to GM, who are using it for their new generation of electric and hybrid vehicles. The EV-1 is gone (most have been destroyed), but the concept Chevy Volt looks like something I'd be happy to drive, and is the type of car that we are more likely to see in the future.

Blue fire...blue fire...blue fire...

This is the Mizz's new favorite tricked-out rice-burner. All he could say was "Blue fire...blue fire...blue fire..." We had to stop and see it again on the way home because he wanted to see the "blue fire car...blue fire car..." He gets stuck on things sometimes. This was at the Woodstock Festival Cruz-in, part of the Woodstock Parade and Festival near our house. Most of the cars were restored classics, but this was the only one that the Mizz was even remotely interested in. If there had been some fire trucks however...

To the guy's credit, the gull-wing doors are a very cool addition.

300 miles from home, 100 miles from where I was trying to be

So I spent the night in Baker City, Oregon. I wasn't trying to spend the night in Baker City, Oregon, but my transmission disagreed. I spent the evening and this morning wondering if I was going to get out of that town today or not, since there was one transmission shop and zero rental cars. Turns out it was just a couple of sensors, but it put me a day behind and stuck in Baker City, Oregon (population 10,035). It was every bit as good as it sounds.

Some More Travel Notes

We eventually got back to my folks' house before we left. We had to return the minivan. That's actually a pretty good vehicle, despite it minivan-ness. Does that make me old or just boring? I got to dig through a bunch of old stuff with Mom and Dad to help with the sorting and packing and such before they move. Over the years I've grabbed or gotten rid of most of my stuff, but I still had a few things there, mostly toys.

Mom and I went through my old Adventure People, our old-school Fisher Price Little People stuff, and my Matchbox Cars. (Incidentally, I've always called them that. Some people use Hot Wheels. I know both are brand names, but are they regionally preferred?) Looking through this stuff, I wonder if we didn't chew on stuff as much or if our parents just didn't like us. Lots of small parts and breakable things, most of which were broken.

Dad and I looked through what was left of our camping gear. Again, I've already taken most of what I wanted, but there were a few things left. It really brought me back to my old Boy Scout days. Some of that stuff seemed cool at the time, but from what I've seen of Firefly's Appalachian Trail gear, camping technology has improved quite a bit. Dad was able to give what we didn't want to some current Boy Scouts, who were apparently very appreciative. I remember using a bunch of stuff that was older than me and now it's my turn to continue the trend. Back to my previous question, I guess I'm old.

Travelling home turned out to be quite an adventure. Due to ice falling off trucks causing accidents, we were much too late to catch our flight out of BWI last Friday. And due to the ice earlier in the week, the best we could do was a three-legged trip the next day. (THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY STORM! Seriously. That's what the papers called it. Slow news cycle I guess. It was pretty bad further in the Northeast, but it wasn't THAT bad around DC. Wimps.) Our second flight out of Detroit (where it was actually snowing) was delayed about 45 minutes for deicing. This meant that after taking 3 different trams to get from one end of Seatac to the other, we missed the hop to Portland. And again due to the ice storm of the friggin' century, the flights were full for several more hours (which wasn't apparently normal). So instead, we decided to eat a few more dollars and rent a car for the rest of the trip. Even with a stop for dinner on the way, we still got home a little faster than if we had sat around the airport trying to entertain the Mizz for hours after he was supposed to be asleep. He slept in that car instead, and we got some quiet time. In the end, we got to claim planes, trains, and automobiles for the trip home, and we've decided that we definitely want to drive to the Family Reunion this summer.

The only good thing about renting the car was that we found we didn't really want a Subaru Forrester after all. That was one of the cars we had been looking at last summer, but after driving one, it's not as cool as we thought. It's pretty noisy, and although it hugs the road like a sports car, you feel the road like a sports car. It also didn't seem to have enough legroom, and neither Franny nor I really need much in that department. Franny was cramped in the front passenger seat and neither of us would have been comfortable in the back seat. It's a fine performing car, but it's not for us.