Things that I don’t understand, and the Feed

Here at Casa De El Poeta we have taken in roomers to help make ends meet. One is our son, the other is an elderly woman who may not have both oars in the water, has come slightly unclipped from one pedal, not playing with a full deck, and nine other euphemisms for not entirely sane. I have discovered a recipe for a rice porridge that makes a wonderful breakfast (a less sweet version of the vegan rice “pudding” I made a few weeks back) so I bought a full bag of brown rice to make sure I had the ingredients to make the recipe (2 cups of brown rice, 8 cups of water, 3/4 cup sugar and cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny dash of ground cloves and a little salt) so that there would be no “issues” with the recipe (which makes enough to feed me about 4 breakfasts). So I have all the ingredients, and go to get the slow cooker, and there’s a brand-new in the box fondue set where the crock pot is supposed to be. I tear the kitchen apart looking for the crock pot and it’s nowhere to be found. So here I am ready to cook, and the device I need to cook with is MIA/AWOL. In its place is a fondue set, which is lovely but in no way substitutes for a slow cooker. My son has no notion of what happened to the slow cooker, and claims this was the first time he had seen the fondue set. As he has demonstrated no previous desire to “do” fondue in the thirty-mumble years I have known him. I believe him. This leaves one other person to mess with the slow cooker and leave a fondue set, the crazy lady in the other bedroom. I know Mrs. the Poet would not substitute a fondue set for a slow cooker as 1) this would require spending money she does not have, and 2) she has no more desire to consume fondue than my son. So by process of elimination we have only one suspect left… and I still don’t get to make my rice porridge.

LA cyclists have been dealing with a minor spate of attempted murder on the roads. Second cyclist struck by hit-and-run driver in Ascension The know the second vehicle was a white F-150 pickup from debris left behind while the first vehicle remains unknown because of a lack of debris from the wreck. Hit-from-behind protocols to avoid, and prevent homicidal maniacs from having access to weapons of mass destruction to prevent. Also some decent inter-urban bicycle infrastructure would be of great help, both in keeping the WMD away from the vulnerable road users, and in giving the homicidal maniacs some other way of getting around after they get out of prison/the nut-house.

One of the drawbacks of aftermarket lighting for bicycles, they don’t stay put in a wreck. Bicyclist injured on Milledge Avenue The GA cyclist was hit head on by a vehicle turning into his lane from another street, and they are more upset the cyclist can’t locate his headlight after the wreck than the fact the driver was in the wrong lane? TANJ! Intersection protocols to avoid and get the idiots off the road that can’t see a cyclist until he’s sprawled across the windshield to prevent. And make headlight brackets strong enough to survive a wreck that was survivable by the rider, I can’t tell you how many headlights I went through back when I was working the convenience store down the street (that was very bumpy and full of pot holes), but I averaged about one per week until I bought a full-suspension MTB. This was in the days of halogen bulbs as the state of the art in bike lighting and getting more than a few hours out of a set of batteries meant you bought really expensive batteries, and the (cheap) batteries were lasting longer than the lights I put them in. I postulate that a similar situation befell this cyclist, either the light fell off just before the impact, or did not survive the impact and investigators were unable to locate the remains of the light in the dark.

A cyclist in Oz is involved in a similar wreck to the GA wreck listed above. Teen cyclist injured in crash at Foxground The cyclist in this wreck fared much worse than the GA cyclist as he had to be transported with serious multiple injuries after the wreck. As of the moment the cyclist was not accused of riding salmon so we have to assume the driver crossed the centerline of the road for some reason.

What a dead cyclist “means” in Enn Zed. The impact of a cyclist’s death I can see the video but not hear it, so I don’t know what the people are saying on it, but as this includes the funeral of a woman killed by a truck that passed too closely, I’m assuming it is at least somewhat positive.

And a cyclist that died in Thailand will have to be identified from DNA records as he was hit so many times not enough pieces of him (?) were left intact to identify him. Horrific death for cyclist (pix) hit-from-behind protocols to avoid, and get the idiots off the roads to prevent. I mean seriously hit guy was hit so hard that tiny shreds are all that is left, even though the bike was almost undamaged. This implies a buzz job at an immense speed for the initial impact, something well in excess of 100 MPH (160Km/hr).

And those are all the live links that gave me fits today, that last link in particular >shudder<.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Running super late, and the Feed

I had another visit to the Lab Rat Keeper today (with no breakfast until after the visit was over, blood tests again), then a massage on the way home. Most of the day was actually spent riding some kind of transit, or waiting for transit to show up. And the worst part was the massage was not very good, either. It wasn’t bad (nothing was worse after the massage), but it just didn’t fix much except for one small section, that has been bothering me lately. That’s fixed. not that with everything else still tied up in knots I can do anything with what’s no longer tied up in knots.

And all I have in the Feed are multiple links to the same story of a UT man that was hit when he crossed under the guard arms blocking a railroad crossing. Utah cyclist killed by second of two passing TRAX trains and Cyclist killed by TRAX train identified also Cyclist killed in TRAX accident near 4000 S. At this point it looks like the cyclist went under the crossing guard arms after the first train passed, which was blocking his view of the second train that hit him. I have lost track (no pun intended) of how many times I have posted here that trains are the easiest vehicles in the world to avoid getting hit by one. Just don’t be on the tracks when the train is coming. If the guard arms are down and the signal lights are flashing then there is a very strong possibility that there will be a train on that track very soon, like now. Unless you can see that the tracks are empty for a considerable distance, not just in front of you, then you don’t need to cross the track with the arms down. And by “considerable distance” I mean something on the order of a quarter to half a mile, or 15 to 30 seconds if the train is moving @60MPH. Most crossing systems will be up at that distance/time separation.

And that’s all I had today, except for the UK links that didn’t link to anything I can use to help y’all.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Still getting a massive number of clicks, and the Feed

I’m not going to fib, I expected a few more clicks than normal when I started the contest, maybe a new record for site views, but I did not expect anything like what I got. Monday and so far today are equal to my record day before this week. Tuesday was almost FOUR TIMES THE PREVIOUS RECORD. I am happy that WordPress has huge bandwidth servers, because if this had been on a dinky low-bandwidth server like this blog was originally started on I would have gone through my monthly data allotment by the end of the day yesterday. Of course part of that is the image that is taking up way more bandwidth than my usual wall of text, but that does not even compare to the number of site views I got yesterday, I mean yesterday would have been a very nice WEEK from before.

And I have already gotten my first entry in the contest, from the founder of Cool Cat Studios herself, Giselle Lagace who submitted a very nice redhead on a unicycle done in the style of Archie comics (a company she now works for). I can’t show it for obvious reasons, but take my word for it, it’s cute and uses the shape of the scar as a frame so plus points for that. You still have lots of time to come up with your own design as the contest won’t close until June.

Well, I just opened the Feed folder to nothing but dead links, and UK links which might as well be dead for all the information they contain about the wrecks. Waiting for the afternoon Feed has resulted in one live link.

A Clovis CA rider is killed by a driverless car run amuck. Cyclist killed Tuesday morning in Clovis Have I mentioned how much I hate articles like this:”The cyclist was struck by a car around 5:30 a.m.” that make it seem like cars are a force of nature that can’t be prevented from killing people? It gets worse “…in the area that has become very popular with bike riders but can also be very dangerous.” It’s dangerous because people are letting their cars drive around unsupervised? Or because area drivers have no comprehension that cyclists are human beings that feel pain and are not there just to screw up their morning commute?

In India bicycle infrastructure takes a back seat to motor vehicles as it seems to have done in just about every Anglophone country leaving cyclists to fend as best they can. 2 cyclist killed on e-way in hit-and-run cases In spite of the fact that the majority of the people in the country walk, use transit, or ride a bike for all their transportation, motor vehicles are the only mode of “traffic” that gets taken into account when building transportation infrastructure. No Idea how to avoid these wrecks with the built infrastructure, but getting the infrastructure right would probably prevent wrecks like these as they would keep high-speed motor vehicles away from soft and fragile human beings.

And those are all the links that stayed live long enough to put them in the post. And if the tone of today’s post was a little volatile I have been reading a bunch of reports about pedestrian hit-and-runs, as well as people killed by cars driving on the sidewalks. It’s enough to make a guy want to get a rifle or bazooka and take out some cars before they take out tons of people. What keeps me from doing that is the knowledge that there are actual people inside those cars, most of whom don’t deserve to die. I’m sure some do, but I have no way of knowing which ones are which, so I don’t.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Art contest and rules, Wreck-Free Sunday

I have been making this announcement for several days, that I would be having a contest for a tattoo to put on this.

That is what I have had to deal with every day of my life for the last 11 years, reminding me that the LEO assigned to my case was of the opinion that the wreck was mostly my fault for not being in a car, not the nutcase that made the u-turn to get on my side of the road and come back to hit me.

What I’m looking for is a design that either covers the scar, or that integrates the scar into the design in such a way as to make the whole thing beautiful rather than an ugly reminder of death and destruction.

The rules: the submission must be on this image as a base layer. It is suggested that the submitted image be integrated into a single layer while saving a separate image of the design without the leg image for the tattoo artist to work from to apply the design to the leg. The canvas (me) will be the final arbiter of what looks good on my leg. The contest starts today, and runs through June 1, 2013. The wining entry will be posted in the Wreck-Free Sunday post the next day. The winner will either get Five Benjamins in his/her hot little fist if located local to DFW, in which case the option to get a picture posted of the transaction in the following weeks Sunday post may be exercised at the agreement of both the artist and the canvas (me), or a credit union check (guaranteed payment by my “bank”) will be sent to non-local or otherwise unable to get the $$ physically. There will be only the one prize, and all entries remain the property of the submitter until selected as the winner. Winner will retain the option of publishing the work on their web site first, with posting on my blog to happen either with the announcement of winning, or when the tattoo is completed at which point it becomes my artwork to publish (my leg, my artwork on the leg).

Judging criterion: Totally arbitrary. Since the scar is almost totally numb I’m not concerned about how much I’m going to get poked and stabbed during the tattoo process although I would like to minimize this. The design will be judged on how well it integrates the existing features of the scar into the design or on how well it obscures the scar from view. Your choice on what way you want to go, work with what’s already there to make it beautiful, or cover it up to make it beautiful. The operative phrase on this is “make it beautiful”. Make it something I will love to look at instead of something I hate.

HOW TO SUBMIT AN ENTRY Make a comment to this post that you have an entry to get an e-mail addy to send the image to. Sorry about forgetting to put this in with the original post…

PSA, Opus

Still waiting for the money, and the Feed

So this is what Limbo feels like… Seriously we have a sum that is almost equal to our annual income after taxes sitting in my bank account, with almost nothing to eat in the house, and we can’t get to the money to buy groceries. If I wasn’t brain damaged I would be a raving maniac. Seriously, this is just so aggravating, and there is nothing I can do about it. If I ever had any money that I could just “spend” any time I wanted then not having access to this money might make me a bit more agitated than I am now, but since I’m only familiar with the concept of “disposable income” in the abstract sense, the fact I have money I can’t spend just means I still don’t have any money, status quo. I’m trying to come up with something I can slap together for the pot luck at the Full Moon ritual tomorrow, and all I can come up with is we have brown rice and Spam…

Up first the driver that killed a cyclist by pushing him into the path of a commuter train was driving basically blind (as well as without a license and as an illegal immigrant). Driver charged in fatal crash involving FrontRunner train in Provo The driver was trying to get around with only a tiny peephole cleared in front of her, and just did not see the cyclist waiting at the crossing. I’m still trying to figure out how an illegal immigrant could get such a late-model Escalade, one of those costs more than my house. There was nothing the cyclist could have done to avoid this wreck as he had stopped for the train to cross, the only thing that could prevent this would be preventing people who don’t have a license from getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

Closure in a wreck in IN. Elkhart court hands down 18-year sentence for cyclist deaths The cyclists were hit from behind at a high rate of speed with virtually no chance of avoiding the wreck, this sentence is the best thing that could be done to prevent a similar wreck in the future.

Expect more about both these wrecks in tomorrow’s blog post. I know I call it Wreck-Free Sunday, and there will be nothing about the wrecks in specific.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Well that was fun (not), and the Feed

I just want to tell what a rip-off I got from Target when I went to exchange some clothes that were the wrong size. I first had a problem because I didn’t get a gift receipt, the second problem I had was after I finally found the same merchandise as I got in my gift I was charged for the exchange because the price had changed. The price changing was not my concern, I exchanged like for like in a different size and should have gotten a direct exchange, not charged the current price after being refunded the original price. This is a common rip-off method used by big-box retailers to extract more money from exchanges. At least I got a 10 mile ride out of the deal, riding through the maelstrom that is the pickup after school for a middle school on the bike route I took on the way. Something needs to be done about that mess.

Also this is another Mule Day as I need to haul home the week’s food. I glued the reflective strips (in ANSI Safety Lime) from the deceased blinky vest to the back of my ALICE ruck to make me a bit more visible as I pedal to and from the store. You would think I would be visible enough as it is with something that big on my back, but all my online research shows me that drivers in the US are Not Very Bright at looking where they are going and not running into things in the road.

And the only live link I have today is from NZ about infrastructure. NZ researchers create online injured cyclist-door crash map Before you can deal with a problem you need to know what the problem is. This is a good first step as to where enforcement of anti-dooring laws should take place.

And since I have to go make like a mule today, I’ll leave it at that. And send a nasty note to my search provider about sending only a page of ads with no links for the subject I requested.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

I’m back in Texas, who left the refrigerator door open and what’s this white stuff?

I’m back in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell, and just about froze my fingers off when I got here. And it appears to have snowed overnight as well. What is this, I go away for a couple of weeks and everything goes to pot?

Dad’s funeral was good, as funerals go. It was an enlisted man’s military funeral with a 9 gun salute and full honors, and I have some of the spent brass from the salute. My brother got the flag (what would I do with it?), and we both have copies of the eulogy. I got the viewing book.

It was quite plain that my hoarding gene was passed down the paternal line, as Dad kept an amazing amount of stuff, most of which had meaning to him, and only to him. We ended up throwing away about 5 tons of “stuff”.

The ride back from TN was a bit on the rough side and I’m a little sleep-deprived and not thinking my best right now. My concentration is shot to heck and I had more than 50 pieces of mail that required attention (snail mail printed on dead trees). And the cold is making my arthritis hurt and making it hard to type. Anyway, the trip. There was a high wind warning posted on Weather.com for about 2/3 of the route back, which turned out to be accurate and slightly optimistic because the bus rocked and swayed and wandered down the road all night long after we left Memphis, making sleep fitful and only available in fits and snatches.

I’m going to cut this off right now and do a better blog post in the morning with links.

PSA, Opus

Yehuda Moon is going away, permanently this time

Rick Smith (artist for Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery) is moving to greener pastures come the end of November and will wrap up the web comic 12/31/2012. I assume that his means wrapping up all the unfinished story lines but Rick isn’t letting on about that. All unfinished subscriptions will be pro-rata refunded, if I’m reading the e-mail right (and I apologize if I’m reading it wrong). I hope this ends like Calvin and Hobbes with all the arcs at an end and a universe stretching in front of them, not like Peanuts where the artist died in the middle of drawing a page. However since this is a planned retreat and not the artist dying at the drawing board, I’m going to expect the former style of ending and not the latter.

The word is the buffer is full of completed comics all the way to the final one. Let’s all get together in cyberspace to count down Yehuda, Joe, Thistle and Fizz along with Fred and Fenders down the ramp for their final TT.

PSA, Opus

Where Mitt lost it

I think Romneybot 2.012 (and a tip of the sombrero to Patrick O’Grady for the epithet) knew he was going to lose the election way back when he was fundraising and made his (in)famous “47%” comment. If you have 47% of people that will vote for your opponent regardless, then anybody else that votes for anyone else but you is actually voting twice, because all that’s required is a plurality of the votes to win a majority of the electoral college. If you don’t have the majority, that’s cool so long as on a per state basis you have more votes in the states with the most electoral votes. And in almost all of the contests there were no totals that showed more than 49% of the vote to any one candidate. And for some reason all the links I had to the state by state vote counts are now dead. How strange?

Rant post: I hope Bexar county never needs to ask me for any favors

I think I spelled that right, but to be perfectly honest I don’t give a damn if I didn’t.

This post is about the recent jury decision that it’s perfectly OK to drive off a highway at a speed between 14 and 25 MPH over the speed limit and kill someone riding a bicycle. Never mind that the 2 cyclists killed in this wreck were riding a bike the size of a small car. Never mind the fact that the cyclists were wearing those garish yellow-green high-visibility jerseys that stab you in the eye they are so ugly. Never mind the cyclists were not even on the same road as the driver that killed them but were on the shoulder 11 feet away from the road.

Never mind any of that, because the victims were cyclists and the driver was driving an F-350, which automatically gives him much greater right to the roads because he has a bigger penis substitute vehicle than the victims.

Basically what this jury said was the deaths of the cyclists were as a result of their having the temerity to ride a bicycle on roads “built for cars”, and that any person not in a motor vehicle deserves to die a violent and painful death. What I’m saying is “Same to you” to the jury.

PSA, Opus