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.

the ideology of dogs

Shelley Boyle says having a vegan food option for her dog, Cleo, allows them to share the same ideology.

oy, ve.

can we get a quote from the dog, please?

why your body is an Excel spreadsheet

from this guide on how to lose weight:

Example:

Mary's BMR is 1400 calories and she burns 900 calories in daily activity with regular exercise, walking around and doing household chores. To maintain her weight, she should be eating 2300 calories but, after keeping a food journal, Mary finds that she's eating 2550 calories every day. By eating 250 more calories than her body needs, Mary will gain one pound every 2 weeks.

that's exactly right, Mary will gain one pound every two weeks. that's 26 pounds a year, 260 pounds in ten years, and by eating this way for 40 years, Mary will have put on over one thousand pounds.

all Mary has to do is eat 500 fewer calories per day, so that in 40 years Mary can weigh around -1000 pounds.

costco, item of interest #1

three times the heat of *what*, exactly?

i stopped a shopper and pointed at the sign which i thought was so hilariously ambiguous. not understanding that i was pointing out a flaw, she was dually impressed that this item did, apparently, offer three times the heat.

realizing she didn't quite get it, i said, "do you see? it says three times the heat. but three times the heat of what?"

"wow, that's a lot of heat," was her response.

indeed.

automotive FAIL

i've seen coupe-types turned into convertibles, but never the reverse. wtf were you thinking, woman?

i remain nitpicky

i think they mean the food is affordable, as i like to think that the prices are free. "How much for a burger and fries?" "I'll tell you for only twenty-nine cents."

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.

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.

CBS technology fail = my gain

at some point during the Ravens / Patriots game (i think just before half), the software package that "draws" first downs and play counts on the field failed.

and i love it.

i *like* having to be more aware of the down. and i like having to look to the sideline to see the first down marker, just like the players do.

i reckon i won't get to enjoy this again, unless i watch games from "the old timey days".

oh yeah: go Ravens!

update: damn, they got it fixed. oh well, i'm happy the Patriots lost. and in a bad way.

a hummus-style disaster

i made hummus last night, first time in a long time. this was to go with the lamb patties and taziki (sp?) sauce the gf made.

mistake #1 was dumping two cans of chickpeas into the food processor, without taking into account that not only was there not enough tahini for those two cans, but i was meant to leave some spare for the taziki sauce.

mistake #2 was dumping a good portion of that tahini sauce on the floor while trying to open the stupid thing (must containers really be so challenging? i mean, if i must struggle with it while using a pair of pliers -- COME ON!)

i will confess i was somewhat distressed, but the gf came to the rescue by suggesting i use some of the greek yoghurt.

along with white pepper, greek yoghurt may become secret ingredient #2 for my hummus.

suddenly, it all started coming together. with the addition of EV olive oil, lemon juice, hot paprika and sea salt, it ended up possibly being the best batch i've made.

i'm enjoying some now w/ a little extra EV olive oil (the really good stuff we brought back from Spain) and some "normal" paprika.

how hard is it to program a microwave oven?

i don't mean as an end-user, i mean as a developer.

What I want, as an end-user, is that if i program it for 2 minutes @ power level 5, for it to run at half-power for 2 minutes. No microwave oven I know of does that, so I suspect there may be an issue with running at less than full power. Let's take that as a given.

Thinking as a developer, I now have the task of running the oven for 2 minutes, but applying full power for 1 minute. I'm probably also looking at a minimum time of "engagement", i.e. the hardware guys tell me that the MTBF plummets if the engagement time is anything less than, say, 15 seconds.

Okay, now I have my parameters. Engage for 15 seconds, disengage for 15 seconds for 2 minutes. But I quickly -- and by quickly I'm comparing 5 minutes vs 30 years -- realize that for those last 15 seconds, the oven will not be engaged. Just spinning uselessly with the light on, but no heating taking place.

I then think to myself, "hey, as a developer, I could probably write a simple algorithm whereby the oven is always engaged when the timer starts, and when the timer ends."

And that may be a thought that has never occurred to any programmer of microwave ovens, ever, at any point.

so what gives? are there no "real" programmers programming these devices? is it all forestry majors and electrical engineers? (sorry, i think traditional-discipline engineers make crap programmers). Perhaps there are, ultimately, just one or two manufacturers of microwave oven control chips, and all the logic is built into there?

what gives? why is this so hard?

in rather bad taste

Verizon just started running a new Droid commercial with stealth fighters. here is a link, though i'm not certain for how long it will be good.

i must say, in this post-bush era, the image of US stealth fighters dropping payloads onto american soil is a little disturbing to me. and maybe it's simply my cold-war era sensitivities, but seeing missile streak through the skies while people watch from the ground, confused and concerned, does put me off.

but to do this just a couple days after the Fort Hood shootings? that seems to be in pretty bad taste. i don't know if there are a lot of people making such associations, but i doubt that's what Verizon wants in our heads.

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***.

the death of the service industry

from the other day, on the phone:

me: i'd like to order a pizza for carryout.
her: pickup or delivery?
me: carryout.
her (very uncertain): uhhhh.... delivery?
me: okayyyy, pickup.
her (back to normal): okay!

maybe i'm being naive, but i'm rather under the impression that a pizza phone answering job 1) isn't terribly complex, and 2) has a rather limited jargon set. there are really only four terms for describing three options for accessing the pizza: dine in, carryout, pickup, delivery. MAYBE takeout, for those used to ordering Chinese.

this isn't even a training issue! and i will cite not-a-language-barrior, as the order-taker was a white teenager from the chicago suburbs.

these are the people who will be running the country when i'm retired. egads.

oh, you crazy signmakers pt. 2

just found this one online...

oh, you crazy signmakers

the stupidest person i ever met was a waiter i worked with at a Pizza Hut in southern Indiana. the two of us worked the lunch shift. he, with his one or two tables (more than he could handle, really), and me handling the other twenty.

at least 5x a shift, he would ask me the price of breadsticks. "$1.79," i would reply, my answer always the same. sometimes i would point him to the menu at our station, that we could use to look up prices if we'd forgotten something. he would react as if it were new.

waiting was only one his jobs. he was also a signmaker. discovering this suddenly put into perspective all the "professional" signs i had seen with spelling errors, bad grammar, and all the horrible misuses of quote marks.

today, I am relieved to know that if my writing or speech ever become unclear, or if i go off-message too frequently, that I can use any number of well-known international therapies to get me back on message.

CNN genius "polling"

i love CNN's Quick Vote polling. they have a special skill in formulating questions and options that provide ambiguous or incomplete results.

last week, they asked if Palin should run for president, and provided Yes and No as options. how many people voted yes because it would be a disaster, versus how many actually want to support her?

no idea. thanks, CNN.

today, they asked if "you" wear your seatbelt while flying. the first option seemed reasonable enough:

"Yes"

... until juxtaposed with the second option:

"Yes, unless I have to get up"

Oh! so the original "yes" meant, "yes, even when I get up and move about." brilliant!

oops, i have done it again

i went for my post-dinner piece of dark chocolate, not realizing that the chunk i grabbed was from the same 100% cacao baker's chocolate bar that i took a bite of a couple weeks ago. only this time, i wasn't expecting it.