Wayne and I were given a free cruise this past February that stopped at Key West Florida and Cozumel Mexico. We walked lovely Duval street in Key West, had some famous key lime pie, a few margaritas at Margaritaville (D-Lish!) and then spent a day on a private beach in Cozumel. The trip was fabulous. The cruise ship crew were wonderful. And the food was to die for.
July 28, 2008
Excuses Excuses
Posted by tomboy jane under It's Not News, it's CNN! | Tags: asphalt, oil, roads, sustainable |Leave a Comment
I was reading an article today on CNN about how the rising cost of crude oil is affecting our state’s ability to keep up with the cost of maintaining our road / bridge infrastructure. Here is a quote from the article that gets me the most…
Rising oil prices have contributed to an increase of at least 50 percent in the price of steel, asphalt, concrete and earthwork over the past 2½ years, the report says, forcing repair delays.
“Thirty months of unprecedented construction inflation are forcing state officials to delay important bridge replacement projects,” the report stated.
“Nearly every state faces funding shortages,” it says, preventing them from doing work to “keep their bridges sound indefinitely.
To that my friends, I call BULLSHIT! If you are at all aware of the RAC system, you understand how absolutely ridiculous this sounds. Using old tires in asphalt has been around for decades. There is no reason why today, 38 years after this system was created, we are still not harnessing this technology in every state. Instead, we’re dumping tires in landfills and offshore, causing more environmental strife by doing so. Here are some of the highlights of RAC (rubberized asphalt concrete):
“A two-inch-thick rubberized asphalt concrete overlay can save as much as $50,000 per lane mile when compared to a four-inch-thick conventional asphalt overlay.”
“… lasts much longer than conventional materials–often 50 percent longer.”
“… noise can be reduced as much as 85 percent in some instances.”
“… for a one-mile section of a four-lane highway, over 8,000 scrap tires can be used in creating a safer, quieter, longer-lasting road!”
So what’s the deal??! Why are we still using such an archaic technology when pouring our roads?
October 15, 2007
Austin, TX 2008
Yes, I am setting my hopes high this year. I really want to go to South by Southwest and maybe run into Bret and Jemaine. Maybe an uber cool Platinum Pass wrapped as a nice little Christmas present this year (Wayne, hint hint wink wink) 
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October 13, 2007
After running into a few snags with Apache (I had to update my XCode Tools and then install Apache 2) I am now sifting through the daunting config file to find a change that was made that I now need to unmake. Yes I was lazy and did not back up the file before editing it!
iMacX:~ root# apachectl configtest
Processing config directory: /*****/*****/*****/*.conf
Processing config file: /*****/*****/*****/*****/gennipher.conf
Syntax OK
Finally! Horray for dyslexai!
October 12, 2007
After months without my iBook (no worries, I have a 24″ iMac and a 10.1″ Panasonic Laptop to keep me busy) I have finally gotten it fixed. Horray for faulty motherboards! I had to send it to California to be fixed. Much nail-biting ensued. But it came back without a scratch and with an extra power cord! Oh, right, and a working motherboard .
September 14, 2007
Sunday September 9th-12th, 2007
Wayne was sent to Washington D.C. for work so I decided to tag along for a little mini vaca. Let me first start off by saying, D.C., ya’ll have the most effed up street system EVER! I don’t mean to offend anyone, but for someone who is used to one lane streets (heck, we’re lucky if they’re paved down here!) that was certainly a learning curve! Of course, now that I’m not there I can navigate them with ease in my head. But just trying to use my Blackberry with GPS and not rear-end someone was a challenge! And what’s with the circles??? If I ever get caught in one of those again, please shoot me. Thankfully I’m a competent driver 
.
I have to say, I was very impressed at how courteous everyone was! Not only the people that worked there, but even people just passing by on the sidewalk. Maybe everyone was just having a good day all 3 days we were there. I got to visit Barack Obama’s office, Ron Paul’s office, and my local reps offices. The girl working the desk in Ron Paul’s office was by far the nicest person there, although I did get to nab some Jellybellies from Barack’s office. And I got some great pics of the Capital.
While Wayne was in class all day, I spent most of my time going to all the Smithsonian Museums I could fit in. My favorate was probably the Freer Gallery of Art. They had an excellent Asian exhibit on display.
The rest of my waiting was spent in any of the many Starbucks Cafes. No scoffing!! I live in a town where there are NO Starbucks, let alone one on every corner. I take them where I can get them!
Tuesday night we went to see Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy at the Warner Theatre. This show was brilliant. I think I was more entertained at the reaction of the kids in the audience, I could tell they were thoroughly impressed! The show was fantastic!
On Wednesday, our last day there, we went to the Smithsonian National Zoo. That zoo was beautiful! Not that caged animals are an awesome sight, but the way the zoo was laid out, it almost reminded me of Disney World. There were many different angles to view the exhibits from, which I felt was very engaging. They really took alot of time and effort into planning the exhibits. I also loved the observatories where you could see the zoo keepers at work (for instance, in the Panda exhibit). I also liked the research facility, and that you could actually interact with the displays.
Alas, all good mini vaca’s must come to an end. Oh, one more comment, I think all the buildings in D.C. reflect the size of our politicians egos, HUGE!
April 20, 2007
San Francisco, California
Thursday April 19th, 2007
Yes, I did it. I spent 8+ hours in airports/on plane to spend 3 hours at the Digg 1 Million User Celebration. I did not work up enough nerves to get a picture with Kevin Rose, I did, however, meet Martin Sargent. He was a really sweet guy in person, nothing what I expected. I also got to meet Matt (one of the founders of Mosuki) who was really awesome and got me a free water. Thanks Matt!
Although I was slightly jaded at how uneventful the party was, I was even more jaded by the thought that I did not get to spend nearly enough time with my uncle. As I flew home today, I started to feel guilty that I didn’t leave the party and go to the Warfield (he had an extra ticket by chance that night). I know I would have had a much better time with him. I haven’t seen my uncle since I was 4 (my family is very spread out across the country so we really don’t see each other often). Yesterday we were having sushi, sharing some sake and Asaki beer, just catching up. Now I’m planning my next flight to Cali. And not just for a day.
March 20, 2007
Friday March 16th-18th, 2007
I have to start this post by saying, from now on, when I travel I will only stay at the W Hotel. I think we had more fun in our hotel than we did touring the city. Perhaps this is because it was friggin freezin while we were there (hey, 70 degrees is cold to me!), but I really think it was the fact that our hotel turns into a club after hours, DJ and all!
So Saturday we got to see the river dyed green, and boy was it lime green! It snowed (yay! I’ve only seen snow 3 times in my life). We ate at the Billy Goats Tavern (awesome btw). Went to the top of the John Hancock Tower for a 360 degree view of the city (muy impressive, muy dizzying). And flew back on Sunday. While we were at the airport in Chicago waiting for our flight, one of our good friends called, he had just landed and had a connecting flight from the same airport! It really is a small world!
February 3, 2007
Finally! So I’ve successfully installed Ubuntu on my G3 iBook while maintaining my OS X partition. Although It took 3 days (no I didn’t work on it for 3 days straight, I baked a cookie here or there in the meantime…. I am a girl you know!) and multiple reformats, it was fairly simple and straightforward when it was all said and done. I have not worked up the courage yet to even think about redoing from scratch, although I should. The instructions I had, even though they were excellent, I think they could have used a girls touch (and I think some areas of knowledge were assumed that should be noted).
January 28, 2007
Oh new 24″ Intel iMac how I love you so, let me count the ways… Your bootup time is blistering fast, I can RDP to my office computer in full screen without using up my entire screen (gotta have room for some Diggnation!), and your pixels are so bright I gotta wear Shades.
