Life Kills: August 2007 Archives
Those that think that Florida doesn't have a mass transit system clearly don't know about Tri-Rail. In fact, if they did know about Tri-Rail, they probably wouldn't amend their statement about Florida not having a mass transit system. Tri-Rail, unfortunately, sucks.
In theory, it's great - it's supposed to be an inexpensive, fast, convenient method of traveling the North-South orientation of South Florida. In practice, it gets expensive, it's nearly always running late, and the 'convenience' of the stations is questionable at best... I mean, who puts a Tri-Rail station on Yamato road?
Granted, the whole location of the stations is (sort of) offset by the bus system in place, which is horrendously bad as well, but that's a whole different story. The point of taking Tri-Rail, for me at least, is to save some loot on gas. I can leave my Jeep at the station, go home on the train, then the next morning take the train to the car and drive on in to work. Sounds neat, right? Well, at $8 a day for the roundtrip ticket, that's not exactly the finest bargain in the world. Figure this - $8 will get you about 2.5 gallons. Even my Jeep, at 10 miles per gallon, will get 25 miles out of that. Now, the office is about 15 miles away (30 miles round trip.) These calculations are what got me taking the train in the first place, mind you. So, theoretically, I'd be saving myself about a half-gallon of gas a day. That's about a tank of gas over the course of the month, give or take. Not bad, not bad. $30-40 a month is nice little slice of the pie.
Thing is, the amount of time lost waiting and dealing with the Tri-Rail is absolutely out of control. I'd pay $40 a month just to not be 2 hours late to work because of the trains. I'd pay more than that just to not have to sit in the sun for 45 minutes because a train is delayed for God-only-knows what reason. If I didn't have any place to actually be on time, then this would be a moot issue - I can burn time if needed - but it's awfully frustrating when you're already late, and then you call Tri-Rail (whose customer service is, admittedly, very very good) who tells you it'll be 15 to 45 minutes. That's quite a range!
It may be worthy for you, or it may be a big fat waste of time. Either way, the scenery is pretty sweet, and I do have to admit that it's nice to not have to deal with traffic or even to drive. I can read, get some work done, design something, sketch, whatever I can cram into the approximate 30 minute ride. That's almost worth it, right there, just to gain 30 minutes of my life back. Hm. I'm taking the Tri-Rail thing one week at a time. We'll see what happens next week. Maybe I'll finally get a new car and this strange obsession with riding a train will magically disappear.
In theory, it's great - it's supposed to be an inexpensive, fast, convenient method of traveling the North-South orientation of South Florida. In practice, it gets expensive, it's nearly always running late, and the 'convenience' of the stations is questionable at best... I mean, who puts a Tri-Rail station on Yamato road?
Granted, the whole location of the stations is (sort of) offset by the bus system in place, which is horrendously bad as well, but that's a whole different story. The point of taking Tri-Rail, for me at least, is to save some loot on gas. I can leave my Jeep at the station, go home on the train, then the next morning take the train to the car and drive on in to work. Sounds neat, right? Well, at $8 a day for the roundtrip ticket, that's not exactly the finest bargain in the world. Figure this - $8 will get you about 2.5 gallons. Even my Jeep, at 10 miles per gallon, will get 25 miles out of that. Now, the office is about 15 miles away (30 miles round trip.) These calculations are what got me taking the train in the first place, mind you. So, theoretically, I'd be saving myself about a half-gallon of gas a day. That's about a tank of gas over the course of the month, give or take. Not bad, not bad. $30-40 a month is nice little slice of the pie.Thing is, the amount of time lost waiting and dealing with the Tri-Rail is absolutely out of control. I'd pay $40 a month just to not be 2 hours late to work because of the trains. I'd pay more than that just to not have to sit in the sun for 45 minutes because a train is delayed for God-only-knows what reason. If I didn't have any place to actually be on time, then this would be a moot issue - I can burn time if needed - but it's awfully frustrating when you're already late, and then you call Tri-Rail (whose customer service is, admittedly, very very good) who tells you it'll be 15 to 45 minutes. That's quite a range!
It may be worthy for you, or it may be a big fat waste of time. Either way, the scenery is pretty sweet, and I do have to admit that it's nice to not have to deal with traffic or even to drive. I can read, get some work done, design something, sketch, whatever I can cram into the approximate 30 minute ride. That's almost worth it, right there, just to gain 30 minutes of my life back. Hm. I'm taking the Tri-Rail thing one week at a time. We'll see what happens next week. Maybe I'll finally get a new car and this strange obsession with riding a train will magically disappear.
Now that the Fairtax Act is getting national exposure (and apparently it's getting quite a lot of it), there's plenty of opposition cropping up. Seems like the majority of the opposition is coming from the political class, the same people who stand to 'lose' the most when they suddenly have to start paying taxes again. Nice. Anyway, here's a nice rebuttal (that includes the original article - nice one, guys) from the Fairtax organization to the most recent attacks. Very interesting reading, and it's a good primer to the Fairtax Act for those that aren't familiar with it.
This video makes me laugh every single time I see it. I know it's been around forever and a day, but holy crap it never gets old. Suzcataz is particularly fond of it - she used to ride around in my TT blaring this song. Fortunately she was going so fast people would hear the music well after she'd zoomed by. Ahhh, the bad old days of my lil' red rocket.
So a while back I was reading Wired magazine (the best magazine ever, by the way...) and I read about this book that promised to show me a way to abolish the IRS and reform tax law forever. Feeling how I do about the IRS (that is to say, rather negatively at the best of times) and pretty much over the fact that the government really does just sit around with one hand in our pocket and one hand in theirs, I decided to look into it.
It's really just a big propaganda battle. What can we do? Honestly, read the book. There's lots of interesting ideas, even if you're not into the FairTax act as a whole. It'll open your eyes to a lot of facts about the government that I guarantee you didn't know.
The book is called "The FairTax Book" and it's written by some talk-show host I've never heard of and an equally obscure Senator. Thing is, they make sense. You go through the book in a matter of hours (it's a quick read and its written very well), they show you examples and issues, and you walk away feeling a couple of things. First and foremost you feel "Wow, though, what a great plan." And it's true. It's a great plan, theoretically. It's all very neatly proposed and seems to cover all the bases, all the arguments I could think of.
The second thing you feel (and it's unfortunate) is "this will never happen. Congress will never, ever, in a million years let this through." That kind of depresses me. If the government doesn't want something, regardless of whether the people do, then it just won't happen. Hmph. The government is so convinced that they know what's best for us that they treat us like children. The terrible part is that it seems that we've bought into that and just sit back and 'let the politicians politick." To me, that's on par with voting for a politician simply because that's the party you're registered to. Political decisions based purely on something so irrelevant as political party make me ill.
The democrats hate the FairTax act. It takes away the government's power to take away our earnings, which (potentially) threatens the resources available for all the social programs democrats love to dump money into. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I believe our government is so negligent and mis-manages resources so badly that any reform would be a positive step. Republicans don't seem all that pleased with it, probably for the same reasons. One thing I found amusing - politicians don't pay income tax. To me, any resistance to this act smells of greed - greed to keep a hold on that nice 30% of their income that we pay, yet they get to keep. That's a big sweeping generalization, of course. I'm sure there's plenty of legitimate reasons to resist tax reform. I just can't think of any. And the ones I've read about have traipsed all over the spectrum from ridiculous to well-thought-out, but misinformed.
There's a lot of misinformation rolling around. One of the biggest is the whole 23%/30% tax proposal. Opponents to the FairTax love to say "They're trying to sneak a 30% sales tax on you." There's simply no shortage of explanations why that doesn't make any sense. Here's a really good one from their home page.
A few sites that I've found interesting and that may provide information for the interested (and/or merely curious) are: FairTax.org, Citizens for Alternative Tax Plans, and the FairTax Scorecard . There's no shortage of websites dedicated to being negative about the FairTax - here's an example. By all means read the information - but so much of it is uninformed and fabricated information that it just doesn't make sense. It reads like crazy survivalist propaganda.
The second thing you feel (and it's unfortunate) is "this will never happen. Congress will never, ever, in a million years let this through." That kind of depresses me. If the government doesn't want something, regardless of whether the people do, then it just won't happen. Hmph. The government is so convinced that they know what's best for us that they treat us like children. The terrible part is that it seems that we've bought into that and just sit back and 'let the politicians politick." To me, that's on par with voting for a politician simply because that's the party you're registered to. Political decisions based purely on something so irrelevant as political party make me ill.
The democrats hate the FairTax act. It takes away the government's power to take away our earnings, which (potentially) threatens the resources available for all the social programs democrats love to dump money into. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I believe our government is so negligent and mis-manages resources so badly that any reform would be a positive step. Republicans don't seem all that pleased with it, probably for the same reasons. One thing I found amusing - politicians don't pay income tax. To me, any resistance to this act smells of greed - greed to keep a hold on that nice 30% of their income that we pay, yet they get to keep. That's a big sweeping generalization, of course. I'm sure there's plenty of legitimate reasons to resist tax reform. I just can't think of any. And the ones I've read about have traipsed all over the spectrum from ridiculous to well-thought-out, but misinformed. There's a lot of misinformation rolling around. One of the biggest is the whole 23%/30% tax proposal. Opponents to the FairTax love to say "They're trying to sneak a 30% sales tax on you." There's simply no shortage of explanations why that doesn't make any sense. Here's a really good one from their home page.
A few sites that I've found interesting and that may provide information for the interested (and/or merely curious) are: FairTax.org, Citizens for Alternative Tax Plans, and the FairTax Scorecard . There's no shortage of websites dedicated to being negative about the FairTax - here's an example. By all means read the information - but so much of it is uninformed and fabricated information that it just doesn't make sense. It reads like crazy survivalist propaganda.
It's really just a big propaganda battle. What can we do? Honestly, read the book. There's lots of interesting ideas, even if you're not into the FairTax act as a whole. It'll open your eyes to a lot of facts about the government that I guarantee you didn't know.
Guitar Hero 2 is the freakin' bomb-dizzle-dynamite. No, I know that it's been out forever (Guitar Hero 3 is coming in a month or two) and that everyone and their grandmother has been addicted to this game since the first Guitar Hero, but I was late to the party. Fortunately, this party is easy to pick up and instantly sound like a guitar god!
I mean, I'm already pretty much a guitar god, so it's totally normal for me to rock out, but wow, even T-Bone is rockin' out in high style. The control unit (i.e. the guitar controller thingie) is spot-on, there's no lag, the timing is accurate, the graphics (which are kind of irrelevant to the game, I guess) are still cool to watch, including the random antics of the guitarists when you hit super-sayan mode and start flipping out. It's just too much fun to play.
In terms of that fun-factor, this game is off the chain. It's a bit steep at $90USD, but of course that includes the controller. Is it worthy? Well, now that's a good question. 90 smackers is a lot of loot to dish out for any video game, but I gotta say: I'm glad I did it. I snagged my copy for the sexbox 360, so I got the phatty mcphatster Gibson X-Plorer with mine...and I recommend you do the same. Got the surround-sound hookup, and it's like being on stage... rocking out... makin' that axe wail... ahhh, guitar godliness is too sweet.And doesn't Lars Umlaut look kind of like Grog? There's only one person on this planet that knows the answer to that question, and if he's not playing this game, he's gonna get it for Christmas. Or Hannukah. Or Kwanzaa. Whatever works.
Mikey - ahem, sorry, "Michael" (a.k.a. "Miguelito!") - has himself a new blog. Looks like it's less than a month old, but it's got a lot of his older content.
Holy guacamole batman, it seems like everyone's got him-or-herself a shiny new blog these days. The trick, of course, is actually writing in it. That's obviously harder than it seems. Anyway, without further ado, find Michael Koperwas and take a peek at that shriveled thing he calls his mind.
Cartoon blogger? Indeed. By the way, I love it when someone pronounces guacamole "wack-a-mole". I giggle.
Holy guacamole batman, it seems like everyone's got him-or-herself a shiny new blog these days. The trick, of course, is actually writing in it. That's obviously harder than it seems. Anyway, without further ado, find Michael Koperwas and take a peek at that shriveled thing he calls his mind.
Cartoon blogger? Indeed. By the way, I love it when someone pronounces guacamole "wack-a-mole". I giggle.
The title is a bit misleading - or maybe it's not. I'm not really referring to actual traffic laws regarding pedestrians, but instead am asking whether traffic... 'etiquette' is probably a better word... should be used by pedestrians. For example, walking on the right side of a hallway. Stopping at a busy intersection to let people pass. Passing people on the left side, instead of sneaking up on them on the right. Stuff like that.
Anybody got an opinion? I'd love to hear it.
Anybody got an opinion? I'd love to hear it.
That's right. You read that correctly. Now try reading it 3 times, really fast. This is actually a pretty horrible story, but one can't help but be amazed at the kind of shit that happens in the world. Read the whole story here.
I recently ran across an interesting photojournal. Seems this photographer has been riding around on trains and meeting all sorts of interesting people. Some of the shots are really good, some of them are simply okay, but they're all worth taking a look at. The quality of the shots aside, the subject matter is pretty interesting - I didn't even know people still rode around on trains, hobo-style. I suppose it makes sense... but for some reason I just always had a preconception in my head that involved... much older people. It's a culture of dirt and grime, and finding stuff, no doubt.
The only picture I didn't like at all (because it just seemed gratuitous) is the last one of the possum. The photographer has a couple of these photos in his collection - I recognize the impulse: "Controversy through shocking imagery." Taking photos of the animal in such a state of disrepair - dismembered as it is - just seems disrespectful. Granted, I have a photo of myself holding a fish I'd just finished spearing, but there's no photos of the fish half filleted with guts strewn out. It's a childish photo that brings down the value of the rest of the collection, in my opinion.
Either way, it's worth taking a look at and flipping through. There really are some excellent photos and images that will definitely impress.
