Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

House: Closing on November 20

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I just realized that I neglected to mention we now have a date set for closing/settlement on the house. It will become officially and legally ours on Friday, November 20. This is good, since it’s (as they promised) before the $8,000 tax credit goes away on December 1. We really want that tax credit.

We’ve been warned that we should begin our wrist exercises now, since settlement apparently requires us to sign more paperwork than all previous life events combined. I found that hard to believe (do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in buying a car?), but friends and acquaintances who have been through this process confirm it. I think I might just have a signature stamp made ;-).

We’re also embarking on all kinds of other fun (sarcasm). We have to get quotes for the windows treatments, for the security system, for the move itself, arrange for utility hookups, make sure we have Internet access arranged for, put in change of address forms, get a new UPS Store mailbox, and probably a lot more things that I’m forgetting. We’ll also have to change banks (there is no Wachovia in a reasonable distance from where we’re moving . . . go figure). For the record, I really hate moving. It’ll be worth it though.

Tentatively, we’ll have all the utilities and stuff ready to go before the twentieth so they’ll all just click on at the right time on that Friday. The weekend will mostly be getting stuff installed (blinds, security system, etc.) and moving some key items we want to do ourselves (like the cats; they dislike being packed in boxes and moved by movers). Then on Monday and/or Tuesday the real move will happen and that will leave us a few days to get everything buttoned up at the apartment.

Of course, any and all of this can change. It’s exciting, but it’s also very stressful and a lot to plan.

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Reducing Road Rage With Correct Speed Limits

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I think there are a lot of contributing factors to road rage, and the road infrastructure is one of them. Artificially low speed limits, poorly timed traffic lights, and poorly designed interchanges all add to driver frustration. I was reading in the National Motorists Association blog today that Michigan authorities have started to address this problem by setting reasonable speed limits on some of their thoroughfares.

On Interstate 496 outside of Lansing, Michigan, the speed limit had been 55 miles-per-hour. Some drivers drove the speed limit (and probably some in the left lane). Some drove above the speed limit at speeds that were probably safe, despite being illegal. This differential resulted in people jumping around between lanes, tailgating, and exhibiting other hallmarks of aggressive driving. When authorities raised the speed limit to 70 miles-per-hour, all these behaviors stopped because everybody was going roughly the same speed (and the number of accidents decreased too).

Contrary to what the fear-mongers will tell you, increasing speed limits has negligible impact on average speeds. It does, however, have a positive impact on flow. Most traffic engineers agree that speed limits should be set at the 85th percentile of free-flowing traffic in good conditions (i.e., if 85 percent of cars on a road on a clear day are going 65 miles-per-hour or under, the speed limit should be set at 65 miles-per-hour). Most states, however, set their speed limits much lower than this so they can raise more revenue from punitive speeding tickets.

Speed limits should be set for safety reasons, not to generate revenue . . . and the evidence suggests that higher average speed limits are, in most places, safer.

Distrusting the ‘Cloud’

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The trend in technology right now is to move everything into the ‘cloud.’ What this means is, for example, companies are using Internet software hosted by others (like Google’s Gmail email system) to replace traditional products they used to run themselves in their offices (like Microsoft’s Exchange email server). It’s also increasingly the trend for personal information—people are storing all their data in Facebook instead of on their computers themselves.

I don’t like the cloud. I don’t like it for business purposes, and I don’t like it for my own personal purposes either. I don’t like it because, when you rely on the ‘cloud,’ you are relying on the people and systems that run the cloud and hoping (praying?) that they care half as much about your data as you do. If a company uses Google’s email and documents systems to conduct their business, the company grinds completely to a halt when their Internet access (or Google’s servers) go down, and the company can do nothing to fix it except wait.

Users of the Danger Hiptop—generally known as the T-Mobile Sidekick in the United States—are learning this now. Their phones stored their data up in the ‘cloud’ on servers run by Microsoft, which bought Danger and their Hiptop business a few years back. The server crashed hard, and there apparently weren’t any usable backups. Sidekick users have simply lost their information.

I use the ‘cloud’ for some things. This site, for example, is hosted by Dotster (as is my main email account). But I rely on the cloud only as far as I have to, and my desktop email clients regularly sync my messages to my hard drive and I regularly back up my site database into my machines as well. I am a stickler for backups—I have an external hard drive and a server with a RAID array, both of which contain full backups of my important data, and I also have a periodic off-site backup procedure in place. I know where my data is, I know how it’s backed up, and if I lose anything I have nobody to blame but myself.

I don’t trust Google, Microsoft, or anybody else to store and back up my data with anything close to the diligence I use, so I generally avoid using the cloud for anything important. Even when I have to use the cloud (my employer now uses Gmail), I do everything I can to make sure I have my own backups to use when the cloud goes down. This has made me a minor hero once or twice when Gmail goes down and I’m the only one who can pull up an email we desperately need from my local archive.

Various Little Adjustments

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I spent a bit of time this evening making a handful of small, mostly administrative updates to the site that I’ve been stewing on for a few weeks:

  • I finally added our new shotgun to the Firearms page; I totally slacked on this for the last month.
  • All site policies and rules have been brought together on one new Policies & Rules page.
  • I’ve added a new Technology page under About the Site to highlight all the products and tools that go into making this site work. Most people won’t find this too interesting, but a few might.
  • I’ve promoted the old Web & Software page to the main menu, re-named it Software, and set it up to be able to support any new software projects I might take on.

Nothing too earth-shattering for now. Enjoy!

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Fairfax Sewer County

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sewercountyI’ve lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, for much of my life—about 18 years of it now, believe it or not, in three different stints. I have always hated the Fairfax County Sewer manhole covers. They’re intended to say “Fairfax County” around the outside and “Sewer” in the middle. Well, maybe there’s something wrong with me, but every time I’ve seen one of these—as a child, as a teen, and now as an adult—I instinctively read it as “Fairfax Sewer County.”

Not exactly the message they’re trying to get across.

There are obviously much more important things for Fairfax County to worry about, but really guys, come up with a clearer label for your manhole covers. How about putting “Fairfax County” together as a phrase on the top and then upside-down on the bottom so it can be read from almost any angle. Or, maybe we should just not put the county’s name. We know we’re in Fairfax County, so it really just needs to say “Sewer.”

Just a thought.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.