IL crosswalk law: good intentions and probably more deaths

some years ago, when commuting to Park Ridge for work, i noticed a curious plastic sign in the middle of a crosswalk. it had a pedestrian symbol, a stop sign symbol, and the text "State law: Traffic must stop for pedestrians in crosswalk."

And for the most part, traffic did stop. It was all very civil.

But i had not heard of this law, and saw no other mention of it. Until recently.

Recently, Chicago has been placing these plastic signs at seemingly random intersections in the city. I've noticed they're not quite as successful as that first one in Park Ridge, but about half the drivers seem to get it.

But Chicago is doing a couple curious things. First, they're not putting them everywhere, and where they don't appear, drivers don't stop. Second, they'll move them about, as if they only have a handful to spread around. So any given intersection may lose its sign, and as before, drivers no longer stop.

This is causing havoc. I'm worried as hell that, as a pedestrian, any given driver may know the law or not. And even if one does slow down or stop to let me cross, who knows if the guy coming the other way -- or the one behind who thinks the first guy is an idiot and whips around to pass -- is going to yield to me?

in fact, as a driver, on Damen last week a couple walked out onto the street right in front of me (which turns out is against the law) without warning. had i been paying just a tad bit less attention, it's quite possible i could have hit them. yes, they were in a crosswalk, but no, this one did not have the temporary plastic sign. imho, the pedestrians were a bit too optimistic about driver behavior.

given the general ignorance of the law, and infrequent signage, nobody knows what to expect anymore at any given intersection whose rules are not already indicated by a stop sign or traffic light.

to make matters even more confusing, the city has been painting new crosswalks here and there, but with different patterns. on the corner near my house (pictured), they've got two different styles going. is it supposed to mean something? as both a pedestrian and a driver, i have no idea what they mean and how my behavior is supposed to change. at least until the plastic sign makes its temporary appearance.

i like the zebra crossings in London. i think it's smart that they're not as prevalent as Every Single Intersection, and doubly smart that they're frequently not at road intersections, so drivers can react to the pedestrians only, and not worry about turning or other vehicles crossing their paths. i think there are far too many crosswalks in Chicago to make this practical, if pedestrians expect to be able to step in front of a speeding car and survive every time.

United Airlines and the opposite of sense

on a recent trip to nyc, i elected to pay $25 to check my first bag, for each leg. i rightly guessed that by the time i boarded, there would be no overhead space left.

on the return, United announced at the gate that the flight was full, and rollerboards would be gate-checked for free. naturally, i do not expect to be refunded my $25. why should i, when my pre-planning helps them to load the plane more quickly and have a better chance at on-time takeoff.

does it not make more sense to charge people for carry-ons, and grant free checking of the first 2 bags? am i correct in thinking that incenting people to reduce what they carry on, rather than incenting them to increase it, will save money? am i correct in thinking that granting passengers that much extra space, and doing away with at least some of the fighting for shared space, will improve the experience for everyone involved?

is the cost of baggage handling really so prohibitive?

what am i missing?

a little credential standardization, please

just a small rant about sites, especially financial ones, enforcing silly rules for usernames and passwords that vary wildly from one site to the next.

some require special characters in passwords, some can't handle them! is my letters and numbers-only password really secure enough to protect my money?

i had a standard 6-character username, which in the past couple years became insufficient for banks. several financial sites required 8-character usernames.

great, now i have to remember which sites are the username exceptions, along with whatever peculiarities the password rules may have.

this week, i made logins for two more sites where i have some investments. one required a 10-character username, but couldn't handle special characters in the password. what security purpose is served with unwieldy usernames? and what kinds of backends do these sites have that the policy is to exclude special chars? injection-prone php servers? doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

car 14, where are you?

there's a lot to love about Polish rail.

you get your typical (mostly) on-time European performance. the stations have reasonable signage and platform information. it's cheap -- three intercity trips for three people, in first class, came to under $300 USD total.

but it gets better. there is a generous mix of new carriage and (very) old, depending on the line/route. i traveled with my mom and my gf between Warsaw, Lubin and Krakow, and all rides had older cars with the compartments and side hallway. Poles love to stand in the hallway with the windows down, enjoy the breeze, and watch the scenery roll by.

i had opted to go with first class, as the seats are assigned. i found out later that the compartments have 6 seats instead of 8, so they're a little more comfortable. the WC, however, is just as disgusting as that in second class.

the thing i didn't love is that, without some intimate knowledge of Polish rail, you will have trouble finding your car. on our first ride, from Warsaw to Poland, i was confounded on how to find car #14, our car. we ended up in 2nd class, with people glaring at us because of some unwritten rules we'd broken about not overloading compartments (we doubled the passengers from 3 to 6).

before our 2nd journey, i emailed the service that sold me the tickets (official polish rail outfit? ticket reseller? who knows, but the tickets were good) and they told me to look for the 1st class cabin, identified by the number 1 on the side (easy enough) and the gold stripe "across the windows". For the 2nd journey, i noticed that *all* the cars had gold stripes across the windows and two first class carriages.

once aboard, i was able to find the 4" x 4" piece of paper inside the vestibule that said "14". huzzah!

so, we managed 2 of 3 trips in first class. not too bad.

oh -- for the first journey, i did find a conductor and showed him my ticket. he "helpfully" pointed behind me. whether that meant i was on the right car and my compartment was behind me, or on the wrong car entirely, i couldn't tell.

extra clicks = extra good

i receive a junk email to my inbox in Outlook. the following quick steps are all i need to deal with it:
1. select the email
2. right-click and select Junk email/Add sender to block list
3. observe that a new, unread email is now in my junk drawer
4. select the junk drawer
5. re-select the email
6. right-click and select Mark as Read
7. right-click and select Delete

simple and straightforward. good.

now what about that nightmare known as Apple's Mail?
1. select the email
2. press the Junk button

what? how can that be it? what is this magic? how did it know to automatically add that address to a block list? WHAT IS APPLE TRYING TO PULL HERE?

slowwwwwww

why can't escalators in the US haul ass, like they do in Hong Kong? i'd like to save time *and* my knees.

busting mythbusters

i get a little frustrated with Mythbusters sometimes (often?).

i recently watched a show where they were testing the idea that Hungarian horsemen, firing arrows into people, could generate twice as much power as they would if stationary.

part of what frustrates me is the sloppiness with terms. "Power" is a specific term that can be measured, but at no point did they go about defining what they meant or how they were going to measure it. rather, it quickly became about measuring the penetration of arrows shot into a foam target.

in the end, using a crossbow mounted to a moving jeep, they "busted" the "myth" because the crossbows shot from the jeep penetrated @ some 9", versus some 7" when stationary.

obviously, that's not twice as much "power".

they did not discuss the relationship between said depth of penetration and power, nor did they do any experiments on the substance under target to determine if that relationship is linear. all that was simply assumed, which I suppose is kind of irrelevant as the original claim suddenly transformed from "measurement" of "power" to what kind of killing effect the arrows had on their opponents.

i'm assuming they have all kinds of advisers behind the scenes, telling them how sloppy they're being, and then being overruled by producers concerned with "making good TV" and "not losing the audience."

this could be a good, informative show. I have to think this isn't at cross-purposes with being popular.

that's how they get you

many of the crosswalks in Chicago have timers, conveniently letting you know how much time you have until the yellow light.

only it's not so convenient, as the countdown isn't, in fact, expressed in seconds. It's insidious, somewhere around 7-8 tenths of a second.

i know this, but can't get used to it. it's so ingrained for me to think of that "14" to mean 14 seconds.

it does not.

who do they hire to make these decisions? no one walking to work, i'll assume.

hey, makers of automated voice systems

how about starting off like this:

our offices are now closed, but we offer a number of automated options you can access now. to hear our hours, press 1. for automated access, press 2.

i'd like that better than spending 5 minutes navigating your system, hearing all kinds of automated payment information, and then being told your offices are closed when i'm finally presented with an option to speak to someone.

end rant.

you can't get there from here

youtube has a nice warning system in place, letting me know recently that my version of Firefox would soon no longer be supported by their site. And they made some recommendations, including FF 3.5.

so i went to see what version of FF i was running on my (vintage 2004) ibook: FF 2.0.0.20.

okay, that's a little old, let me go to "Help / Check for Updates..." and see what I can get. Mozilla makes it easy to upgrade FF versions, downloading/installing in one step and even restoring your open windows. nice touch.

it updated me to 3.0.15. Not even close to the 3.5 I would need to keep using youtube. At this point, I began to get a little worried that my hardware, and OS (Tiger), are a little too outdated to run the latest of FF.

So back to "Help / Check for Updates" and BAM it installed 3.0.18 for me. Try again: BAM now I have 3.6. Try again: I'm at the latest.

I assume there's a good technical reason that i couldn't go straight from 2.0.0.20 to 3.6, but I'd love to know what it is.

Now when is that damn Macbook Pro refresh coming?

another "wtf is wrong with healthcare" data point

on her last doctor's visit, i had the gf request some additional bloodwork, including 25(OH)D, TSH, T4, T3 and HbA1c. (if i'm dosing her with fish oil, vit D, kelp et. al., i want to make sure i'm not off base). she called today to get the results and, basically, was told by the nurse to f*** off.

initially, the nurse was unwilling to say more than "your cholesterol is good," and the gf had to pry out of her the separate HDL, LDL and tri levels. once she started requesting the 25(OH)D, the nurse said she was too busy to tell her all those numbers and she should come in and talk to the doctor.

she refused to fax them, mail them, or provide them at a later date.

what. the. f***.

is it possible to get a haircut in Crystal Lake?

this weekend, the we drove up to Crystal Lake, IL to visit Walkup Heritage Farm to research next spring's plantings.

after, we stopped in the downtown area for lunch. i correctly determined that the downtown area would be, well, downtownish, and right by the Metra stop. though car-centric, it was reasonably pedestrian friendly and did have some cool old buildings, such as banks and historic houses converted to shops.

if someone had told me beforehand that this area would have a shockingly high number of places to get one's hair done, i would still have been shocked by the shockingly high number places to get one's hair done. it is not an exaggeration that there are fewer restaurants than hair places, and probably not an exaggeration to suggest there is a ratio of 1:4. i may be underestimating.

in fact, we found zero proper restaurants that were open for a late afternoon lunch. we found 4 grill pubs, none of which looked particularly inviting (and one, the Cottage, which apparently has no front door at all, but only a rear entrance off the parking lot -- so much for pedestrian-friendly). there was a french "cafe", but that was more of a bakery than a proper restaurant.

but good god were there hair places. one after the other, some in a row. i half-suspect that the wives of the guys driving the expensive cars (i saw both a Ferrari F430 and an Audi R8 in the area) have opened up shop as a vanity project; I have little idea how an area that small could support so many beauty salons, especially if the "restaurant scene" is a proper indication of what the area can support.

we left without eating, or, astonishingly, getting our hair done.

lincoln square travesty

aside from Meyer's shutting down a couple years ago, the ruining of Lincoln Square continues: a horrible building has replaced the old Big N Tall store and its adjacent parking lot. it really makes the square with the fountain feel like a canyon. i disapprove.

my car is no longer stealth. or, why i shouldn't do anything myself.

when i started the project Make Bug Faster, i knew i wanted it to remain understated, at least externally. i knew the gauges i put in would be a bit of a giveaway, but i told myself, "nothing else!".

i didn't want any of the modified grills, lowering (ugh), extra bits of body decor, spoiler, window decals, tinted tail lights, chrome tip exhaust, etc etc etc.

i even didn't want the underbody neon, if that can be believed.

but i did cave a little bit, when i decided i wanted it to be known that it was a diesel. save for the beetle, the other VW diesels all have a TDI badge. so i opted for an aftermarket one.

there is actually a color-coding to the letters, though VW applies this coding only in Europe (the US ones are always all-silver).

All silver: 90 hp
Red 'I': 110 hp
Red 'DI': 130 hp
All red: 150 hp

What VW does above 150, i'm not sure.

i ordered the red 'DI' before i dyno'ed, which was a bit of a leap of faith. i'd have felt silly if i hadn't dyno'ed at least 130 hp, and even sillier if it was above 150. but, i got it right, and after getting it washed and on a warm, sunny day, i put on my new badge.

first, i carefully lined up the D with the VW badge. then i put on the I, then the T. all by hand/eye, all being very careful. and when i was done, it occurred to me that the T and the I are of different widths, so the badge as a whole isn't centered. ugh!

the gf was "helpful":

it looks fine to me. you're the only one who'll notice. you and everyone who modifies their VW's.

thanks for that.

i'll do it proper if/when i go for 150 hp.

"routed detour"

i've always wanted this to be a palindrome, as well, but...

"Pol Pot's laptop"

no matter how much I want that to be a palindrome, it's not.

negative 15

it's currently -15 F here, and that's not even factoring in windchill. i think we're right at the point where my car won't start.

i should get 3 "it's just too fucking cold to leave the house" days per year at work.

update: yep, this is the first i've not been able to start the car, iirc. after letting it sit all day in the sun, and temps way up to -2, i was able to start it without issue.

Donna

Did i miss an entire season of the new Doctor Who? last i'd seen, David Tennant was saying goodbye to Billie Piper, who I really enjoyed in the series. that was all on DVD, when I had no access to cable.

then i started watching the new series on cable. it started with Tennant, solo, on an airship having fun with Kylie Minogue. "hurray!", I thought, "Kylie should be fun." but in short order he ends up with the uber-annoying Catherine Tate, who seemed to be "showing up again."

I think I missed a bit in the middle. I also think they should drop off the irritating Donna on some uninhabited rock so her cosmic-unpleasantness is spared for all races.