Year: 2010

TSA Doing Bag Checks on NYC Subway?

ssegraves

This news from Gothamist is bothersome. The TSA has partnered with NYPD to provide the New York transit system with “random and unpredictable security measures, like mobile screening in rail environments and at mass transit stations across the country”. The last few words are the most interesting, “across the country” implies that the TSA will be rolling this out across the U.S.

Yes, this is the same TSA who had an agent leave their post unattended, resulting in Newark-Liberty Airport being shut down for six hours. Can we imagine for a minute, what would happen to any of the transit systems across the country if the TSA had such a breach at one of them? It would be pandemonium, people looking for ways to get home and finding no options.

The big question I have is whether or not the TSA actually has the authority to conduct such searches. If they don’t, then hopefully someone stands up against this on a legal base. If they do, then I’d like to know who granted them such authority.

The Movement Outward

ssegraves

It’s 6pm, you are just getting home from work. You immediately freshen up and head to a nearby restaurant. You arrive at the restaurant, take out your cell phone and “check in” to Foursquare or Gowalla. You are seated, you order your dinner, take out your phone and tweet something you heard or saw go by. You finish your dinner, tweet how amazing it was, pay the bill, and then tweet again about what bar or establishment you are going to next for after dinner entertainment.

This seems to be the evening of a lot of people, as evidenced by browsing Twitter and the location based services I noted. I’ll be the first to admit it has been one of my habits. But, after a great deal of thinking about it, I wonder what these services really add to anything we do in our day to day lives, particularly the location based services.

What’s the Matter With Us?

Twitter has its place, it is a communication tool. Different people use it in different ways that make sense to them. Foursquare and Gowalla do not share the same kind of necessity as Twitter, just a niche novelty that, honestly, is kind of cool. Do we need such tools? My guess is that we don’t; They are just a new form of entertainment. Maybe it is just me, but I feel as though I am pulled in a bunch of directions by these different things. Add on top of them Google Reader for keeping up with news and other blogs, e-mail, Facebook, and whatever else you can think of, and it seems to become more work than it is worth.

The few times I have been incommunicado, the more obvious it has become that I need these tools less and less. Sure, their novelty is nice, but at what cost? What else could I be devoting my time to rather than letting people on Foursquare (some whom I don’t even know) see where I am at?

Is there a bigger trend here? Have we created the beginning of a time when verbal communication is no longer completely necessary? A lot of people think that children who are homeschooled are socially inept, to which I disagree and point out that more kids text today than talk on the phone. Not only do they text, but they have created a subset, shorthand language to do so. Maybe they are not inept but they have certainly begun a move away from “normal” communication, making further moves even easier.

Sure, there are other time wasters out there, there always have been. The difference now is that the time eating opportunities are constantly with us, no matter where we go. For me, this seems to speed daily life up, like fast forwarding an old VCR Cassette. We’re having the information thrown in front of us so fast that we do not have the time to really consume it. In a way, this pushes us apart. We are listening to people, but not really hearing them because we are distracted.

Can We Fix This?

We already have started to try. There are a number of people who have abandoned Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare, MySpace, and Facebook out of a need to slow down and get back to normal. I am not suggesting the tools are causing the problems, they are simply making it easier for us to go through the motions of less communication and less interaction.

For me, fixing this means moving away from the tools as my entertainment and instead using them when necessary and filtering them often. A mass delete of the applications is not going to help you and it certainly is not the answer. Understanding what kind of time you spend on the services and how it affects your day to day activities is the way to start. From there, it’s up to you on whether it’s too much and how to correct it.

This definitely is not a call to abandon ship, it is me looking at what I have noticed over the past couple of years and asking others to do the same. What are your thoughts? Is this a bad path we are following or am I completely crazy and paranoid?

Spring Has Sprung

ssegraves

The cold has finally been whisked away by springtime and a few weeks ago we took advantage of the weather by taking pictures in the fields of bluebonnets near Chapel Hill, Texas.

BluebonnetThe recent rains we have had along with a little longer and cooler winter have really helped the flowers bloom this year.

The only downside to this wonderful weather and its causes are the allergies. Oak pollen has been rampant and those of us with allergies are suffering. This also means summer is only a few months away.

Sofie in the Bluebonnets

We were able to take a few shots of Sofie but for the most part she was not a fan of walking in the thistles.

The drive to the fields is easy, we just followed 290 west and found as many bluebonnets as we could before pulling over. The further west you go, the more bluebonnets there are. Go far enough west and you will hit Brenham, home of Blue Bell Ice Cream.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s supposed to be another wonderful set of weather this weekend too!

Why To Avoid Fry’s Opened Box Sale Products

ssegraves

We all enjoy finding bargains or deals when shopping, especially on more expensive electronics gear. What I experienced last night at Fry’s may change your mind what’s really a bargain and what will cause more headache than money savings.

I bought a router from Fry’s about a month ago and finally had some time to play with it this past weekend. The router in question is a Netgear WNR3500L, a gigabit router with a USB port for an external harddrive. I specifically bought this router because it had the ability to network a USB drive.

After playing with the router, I found that it was not able to actually mount the drive and make it viewable on our home network. I troubleshot it and was still not able to get it to work. The internet worked great on it but the different harddrives I plugged-in just would not show up. I decided to take it back last night, so I packed it up and drove to Fry’s.

The girl who processed my return seemed nice at the beginning of our conversation, but I soon realized that it was too good to be true. She took everything out of the box to make sure it was all there, then compared serial numbers, that’s fine with me. Then it took a turn for the weird. I explained that the networking features worked fine on it but it was unable to mount a harddrive. She proceeded to pick up the router and look at each port on the back. What she was looking for, I’ll never know. Maybe she thought it was an NES and I had tried to blow in the back of it like a game cartridge.

Apparently my explanation for why I was returning it was acceptable and she printed a sticker, an open box/restocked sticker with a new price, $95.99, and stuck it on the box. This confused me, so I inquired as to whether or not Fry’s would flash the operating system of the router to reset it and then test it. The employee looked up at me and with a straight face said, “They will plug it in and make sure it lights up”. Wow. I replied, “But the USB port either doesn’t work or something is wrong with the firmware”. She continued doing her work and did not reply. My receipt was handed to me and I watched as she took the router, halfway in its box into a restocking room, where she dropped the router, then stuffed it back in the box.

The moral of the story is, do not buy restocked items at Fry’s unless there is a well documented return policy for the item. I should also mention that I purchased the router for $99, so the restocking “savings” is really only $3.01. Is it worth $3 to possibly get a non-functioning, dropped, piece of electronics?

Perplexed Neighborhoods

ssegraves

Today’s question is simple in structure but unbelievably complex in application. Can we restore old neighborhoods without turning them into overpriced and underused parcels of land?

After walking and driving through a number of neighborhoods in Houston that are in dire need of restoration and in the end, residents who care about their community I pondered that question. My quick, off of the cuff answer, at least for Houston, is that it cannot be done. My long, thought out answer is that it can be done but would require numerous people and organizations working together to make it happen.

Just east of downtown there is an area that used to be a warehouse district, complete with a massive rail network. Over the years, as the need for freight in the downtown area has dropped, those warehouses have moved further out of town and left a swath of land with nothing on it. The land is walking distance from downtown, yet most of it stays empty. There has been some development, but for the most part it is just grass. The townhomes that have been built were done quickly and from the looks of it, very cheaply, leaving a lot of them empty. There are no grocery stores or even convenience stores, just warehouses next to grass lots.

The city has decided to build a light rail line through the area, connecting downtown to a slightly more populated neighborhood further east. One would think that this would spur development; It hasn’t. They have also built a bike trail; It’s hardly ridden on.

What’s my point in all of this? The City of Houston and developers have an opportunity to make this area a great example of what urban living could be like. This is a great chance to add to the urban population without making the costs completely unreasonable.

Developers, this is your chance to build capacity without sacrificing history or usability. How you ask? Row style housing at affordable prices, it’s that simple. Build a few blocks of row style houses with maybe a garage on the bottom and people will start to move in. Give the homes small backyards and decent spacing between the front door and the road and people will be happy.

City of Houston, setup the neighborhoods with decent parking markings for street parking, add a few bus stops, and repair the roads. The people will move in. These are large investments for predicted returns, but they’re worth it. Right now that land is barely generating anything as far as property taxes, there is nowhere for it to go but up.

Maybe I am a daydreamer or grasping at straws, but I do have hope that Houston sees the different run down neighborhoods around the city as potential, rather than lost causes. I talk about this subject with my wife pretty often, usually as we are driving through these neighborhoods. I’ll look at an old building and make some remark like, “Wouldn’t that be an awesome office?”, maybe someone with the time and wherewithal has the same feeling.

Frequent Flyer

ssegraves

I occasionally get asked why I fly so much or why I go to Europe for the weekend. Well, a few months back a documentary was made about my slight obsessive compulsive behavior when it comes to flying. It is a hobby, just like any other, except it goes around the world at 600 mile per hour. Flight has always been an interest of mine, but it was not until college and then traveling for work that I became interested in doing it for fun. There is just something about knowing that the furthest points of the Earth are only a flight away that fascinates me.

On the scale of how much I fly, I am a lightweight compared to some of the people in the movie (and know a few of them). Just like the video says, there is a whole community devoted to mileage running and travel. Watch and enjoy, maybe you’ll learn a little about my obsessive compulsive desire to travel.

Washington D.C. – The New Elementary School Playground

ssegraves

It has been known for some time that D.C. is full of back-room politics, the occasional backstabbing, and sometimes, verbal attacks on other politicians. What I did not realize is that lately D.C. has become a reincarnation of the elementary school playground. The intellectual level of the disagreements and attacks has dropped to an all time low.

Robert Gibbs takes a jab at Sarah Palin
Robert Gibbs takes a jab at Sarah Palin

The first example (and probably the most poignant) is Rahm Emanuel’s use of “F***ing retards” in his belittlement of liberals who wanted to air ads targeting fellow Democrats who are against healthcare reform. This sounds less like a President’s Chief of Staff and more like a kid throwing around petty insults. My advice to anyone is that if these type of insults are the only thing that you can think of when responding to someone, you are much better off keeping your mouth shut. Emanuel’s choice of words was offensive at the least and downright childish at worst. Maybe his critics are right, he’s Obama’s Dick Cheney.

Scott Gibbs, the President’s Press Secretary, is the other example. During a briefing yesterday, Gibbs decided to take a jab at Sarah Palin by writing “hope and change” on his hand and pointing it out to the press.

I wrote down ‘hope’ and ‘change’ just in case I forgot that.

While this is not offensive, it is childish and in my opinion, a poor showing for the White House. Mr. Gibbs’ job is not to belittle those who are on the other side of the aisle, his job is to inform the public via the media. Taking little potshots, while somewhat funny, should be left to SNL and MAD TV.

I am sure that I will receive e-mails and comments about Republicans/Conservatives pulling similar antics and shame on them too. They should be focused on their job and save the comedy for when there is nothing to do in D.C.

The Deficit is the Work of Bush?

ssegraves

You read that title right, now the $1.3 trillion deficit is being blamed on Bush in a February 6 editorial in the New York Times. Where to begin with this notion is something I have been wrestling with all morning. The author is correct in his assertion that Bush did little to combat the deficit but misses the mark on a few, key, factual points.

What is even more breathtaking is the Republicans’ cynical refusal to acknowledge that the country would never have gotten into so deep a hole if President George W. Bush and the Republican-led Congress had not spent years slashing taxes — mainly on the wealthy — and spending with far too little restraint.

Am I the only one that sees the gigantic factual error in that sentence? A Republican-led Congress? The 110th Congress was a Democratic majority with the only Republican leadership being Dick Cheney. The author is mincing words by trying to distract from the fact that it was a Democratic Congress that approved Bush’s plans. The Congress had the chance and the power to go against Bush’s wishes but instead they buried their heads and let things fall into place.

This leads to the other issue, the tax cuts on the wealthy. I am not even sure why this is an issue anymore, if we continue to think that taxing people who make a large amount of money a lot more than those who are in the middle class, we’ll do nothing but discourage the wealthy to keep their money here. I would argue it is more harmful to the funding of projects, to philanthropy, and to business in general to tax the wealthy a great sum more than everyone else.

You can read the article yourself and come to your own conclusions but it seems that the author is gripping at straws to try and push blame to the past for something that is a very real-time indicator of the present.