Oh No, No More Hummers

http://www.leftlanenews.com/gm-to-shut-down-hummer.html

Less than a month after General extended its contract to sell its Hummer brand to China’s Tengzhong automaker, The General has announced that it will not complete the deal. According to a statement released to the media Wednesday afternoon, GM will permanently wind down the off-road division as a result.

Won’t miss them.  The only reason I know for the existence of Hummer at all is for my Republican boss to make jokes about how he’s going to run my bicycle-riding-environment-saving-ass off the road in one.

Yet Another Reason Not To Run Over Cyclists

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/02/teen-driver-road-rage-attacks-cyclist-police-officer.php

I hate road rage, I truly do.  The idea that you’re sharing the road with someone who, for whatever reason, might decide that it’s perfectly ok to kill you, just because he had a bad day and thinks that there’s a defense that will allow him to get away with it?  Not cool.

In this case that person is a stupid 18yr old who decided to terrorize a cyclist, screaming at him to “Get off the road or I’ll kill you.”  Not an idle threat, he apparently actually did force the guy off his bike and chase him into the woods, hurling rocks and such at him.

And then Karma joined the fun and laid some serious smackdown upon this moron, because the cyclist was a police officer who simply noted the license plate, then had the idiot arrested.   “Can’t I just apologize?” junior was heard whining as he was handcuffed.

The worst part of the story is where he got a suspended sentence and a 2 year ban from driving a car.  How about taking him at his word, treating it like attempted murder, and putting him in jail for, I dunno, ever?

Make Use Of Your Commute, Know What’s Near You

It’s easy to think of your commute, no matter how long it is, as dead time. Maybe you listen to the radio, maybe you read the paper, but there’s not much room for flexibility.

Or maybe there is, especially for driver/walkers.  Lifehacker’s post on Tools For Finding Stuff Nearby can come in handy if you’ve got any wiggle room in your trip from point A to point B.

Take your morning coffee and bagel, for instance.  Does your current stop having WiFi so you can fire up the laptop?

If all you want is a connection, we've got you covered. Gina's definitive guide to finding free Wi-Firecommends such tools as WeFi and JiWire, along with other means of hopping on the net from almost anywhere. If you want somewhere you'll actually enjoy being with your laptop,LaptopFriendlyCafes.comcovers 104 spots in New York City (and a scant few shops elsewhere), or type "laptop" or "wi-fi" into local review aggregator Yelp and see what comes up.

Similar tools show you the good restaurants in your neighborhood, so why not bring home dinner for the family sometime?

And don’t forget GasBuddy so you know you’re getting the best deal before you fuel up!

Dear Toyota, Hire Woz.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10445564-64.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple Computer,  is something of a legend among computer geeks.  He is a “hacker” of the true and original form, a systematic finder, dissector and solver of problems.   Better than many people are even capable of understanding, he identifies the boundaries of a system, the variables, their influences on each other, and the optimal methods for manipulating that system.

He also owns a Toyota Prius that accelerates under demonic influence(*):

"Toyota has this accelerator problem we've all heard about," Wozniak said. "Well, I have many models of Prius that got recalled, but I have a new model that didn't get recalled. This new model has an accelerator that goes wild, but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again--safely."

Trust us geeks.  There are people who will call up customer support and say “But it does this every time!” and yet when we stand over the person’s shoulder, it of course does not do that.  This isn’t what Woz is talking about.  Chances are that by the very act of owning and driving a Prius he knows more about how it works than many of the engineers that worked on the thing.  That is his nature.  (“It’s what he does! That’s all he does!” to steal a Terminator line.)  If he’s telling you there is a problem with your software, it is in your best interest to listen.

 

(*) A million years ago I had an Audi, and much like Ford’s “Found On Road Dead” that is the acronym we used to use -- “Accelerates Under Demonic Influence”.  Apparently a long time ago Audi had a similar problem.  Anybody remember what I’m talking about?

What’s the Ideal Commute?

So it turns out that my latest company, which is a bike ride (3 miles) from my house, is being sold. That almost certainly means no more 5 minute commute for me!  Given that any commute is going to be longer, I’m left wondering what would be good and what would be bad.

I used to do 90 minutes each way.  Drive to train, train to city, walk from train station to office.  Repeat backwards at night.  That was awful…but at the same time, different.  I listened to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, for example.  And I got to sit on the train with laptop and do real work sometimes.  With a 5 minute commute I don’t even get to listen to my shows anymore.

So a longer commute wouldn’t be so bad, as long as you can make appropriate use of the time.  How will it affect my ability to help my wife get the kids to school in the morning?  Will I be home for dinner?  Those are the important questions.  Whether I’m in the car for 5 minutes or 15 minutes isn’t really the most important question in the world. Some people like to fill up that time with music, some with talk radio. I like my audiobooks.

We shall see what I end up with.  Best hope is not to have to go into Boston again, and maybe keep the commute under 20-30 minutes or so.  That wouldn’t really be a bike ride anymore, but it’d still be short enough (while providing a wide enough area of cities where my new owner could put us).  Fingers crossed!

What Would A $446 Ticket Mean To You?

I bookmarked this article that asked whether LA’s new traffic camera system, which apparently generates very high priced tickets (that’s over double the highest ticket I’ve personally ever seen) made the streets safer, thinking it’d be some statistical info on answering that exact question.  Instead it’s the first person account from an author who got such a ticket, and then goes about arguing why the system doesn’t work.  Big surprise.

I still contend that I’ve never met anybody who’s looked me in the eye and said, “Yeah, I got a traffic ticket the other day – and it was totally my fault, I so deserved it.”

I have so little sympathy for this.  Every day I see people pushing their luck, supposedly within the limits of the law.  That “right on red” rule being one of my pet peeves.  Right on red does not, under any circumstances, mean “Oh, it just turned green going the other direction, and the oncoming traffic has not yet had time to accelerate, so I’ll go ahead and pull out in front of them.”  That, however, is what people do every day.  And if you ticketed them for it they’d say, like the guy in the article, “Fine, now I’m gonna be a d*ck about it and never turn right on red ever again, screw the people behind me.”

A friend of mine once argued, in apparently all seriousness, that you should not ever be ticketed for driving recklessly, only for actually causing an accident.  Because, he said, some people are just *better* drivers, and are capable of doing all that high speed lane switching stuff safely.  If they don’t cause an accident, they should be allowed to do it.

My favorite quote is the one that argues the cameras *cause* accidents:

Costa Mesa reported a 13 percent increase in total collisions and a 20 percent increase in rear-end collisions after cameras were installed. In 2008, a University of South Florida study found the same. “Red-light cameras don’t work,” says USF Professor Barbara Langland-Orban. “They increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections” after spotting the cameras.

Aw, what a shame.  Here’s an idea, maybe you should actually STOP and the STOP LIGHT whether there’s a CAMERA there OR NOT.  And so should the guy behind you.

Here’s my addendum to that study : A percentage of drivers on the road are bad drivers, and the only way they’re ever going to get caught is if they get a ticket or get in an accident. The cameras apparently identify these people.  Whatever works.

No Lamborghini For Me!

http://www.justaguything.com/the-top-ten-gas-guzzlers-of-2010/

I don’t know what I expected in a story about the top 10 gas guzzling cars but … this wasn’t it.  Let’s just say that I don’t think any of us are in danger of sitting in traffic and having one of these bad boys sitting there next to us so we can point and laugh about what they’re doing to the environment. :)

When the BMW M6, Porsche Cayenne and Ashton Martin are tied for *last*, what the heck is at the top?