Obsidian Shards

After a few weeks without them, I finally got a sandwich yesterday that had tomatoes on it. Ah, I had missed those! Yes, an italian sub sandwich just isn't the same without tomatoes. Same with burritos (no pico de gallo!). I think maybe I'll get a burrito today, now that pico de gallo should be back.

Stupid food recalls. Better to suffer temporary flavor loss than to get sick, though. Although it sounds as if restaurants were a little overly aggressive in their haste to toss there tomatoes.

What do you think? Toss to be safe, or roll the dice knowing it's unlikely any of your customers will become ill?

It's no wonder the local government keeps asking the taxpayers for more money. When we have no accountabilities for what that money is going towards, we get wasteful spending. The street just down the block is a huge example of such wasteful spending.

Last year a road project was started to expand the street from two lanes to four lanes (two lanes of traffic in each direction), to help ease congestion on the busy road. I was excited because I use the road frequently and had been backed up on it before.

Now, you wouldn't think simply adding a lane to either side of a road would be such a project, but it did take them quite a while (in the meantime, I've seen several other road projects much bigger in scope progressing much faster - perhaps more man power, but still...)

Earlier this year, they finished the project - kind of. After paving the road over again, what we were left with was a bumpy, uneven mess of a surface. It was clearly not completed, because there was a good two inches from pavement to the bottom of the curb gutter. Yet the utilities in the road - the sewer manhole covers and the like - were all flush. Very odd.

Fast forward three months (yes, three months where NOTHING was happening, just a hellishly bumpy road to drive on), and they are once again blocking traffic, but this time to scrap off the relatively nice part of the road (of course leaving the nasty bumpy part). I don't know why they did this, I never saw them do anything to the intersection where they scrapped the pavement off. Apparantly, they decided to do it just because.

Meanwhile, they have taken out the sidewalk on the other side of the road. I'm happy about this, because it appears they are adding a turn lane here (a sorely needed one). No luck, though, it seems they were widening it for buses to pull over for passenger load and unload. Except they only widened the lane about two feet, if that. So not only did they take out the perfectly good sidewalk, then put it back in and pavement as well, but they accomplished absolutely zero by doing it. Buses still block traffic when they stop at this bus stop. Great.

Fast forward another month, and they finally get around to scraping off the nasty road they put down. But not to repave. Instead they spend another week doing who knows what (running their vehicles up and down the road, is what it looks like. And chatting up the traffic officer they hired to tell us when the light was green).

Finally they seem to get around to actually taking the time to repave (which takes all but a few hours). And this time, they do it correctly.  Ah, finally a great surface to drive on. Devoid of lines, yes, but nice to drive on. Enter the "temporary" lines to show people where the lanes actually are (of course, they had failed to put in a left turn lane at the intersection, causing all sorts of odd traffic problems).

A few more days pass, and once again they are out in the roadway, but this time TEARING UP the new road they had just laid. Looks like they screwed up something around the utilities, as they are jackhammering away all the material around each manhole cover, apparently doing something (maybe), and then refilling it. Odd.

A few more days pass, and once again the road is blocked off. As I pass by, they are AGAIN tearing up the area around the utilities. Whatever they did last time must not have stuck properly, because it seems they have to do it again.

Later in the day, they have the road completely blocked again, this time to burn off the temporary lines and paint the "real" lines on the road (why they didn't just do this in the first place is beyond me). They also put on those little bumpy "turtle" things. I like those. Finally it looks like a real road again.

That was Friday. Finally I thought I would be done with the hassles of road construction and be able to drive on a fully completed road in a normal fashion. No luck, though, as today as I was driving by, they had one lane blocked again. Guess what they were doing? Jackhammering up around the utilities for the THIRD TIME. Who knows why? My guess is they still had some time/money left on their contract and they needed to use it up.

Ah, the completely inane use of our tax dollars! It's your nickel, watch it work. Over and over again.

Tuesday update: The traffic officer was back, with the intersection flashing red in all directions. Hopefully they are fixing the timing of the lights (they've been horribly bad over the last few weeks). But, in addition, they are PULLING UP those little turtles they put down, and now putting in concrete barriers where the yellow lines would be (just at the intersection, to prevent left turns prior to it, I think). Still, another waste of resources... sigh.

A friend of mine stopped by my office today and said, "Hey, did you hear about the snow in the Palouse yesterday?" (He and I both went to college in the Palouse area)

My initial reaction was, "No way! Snow in June?". The Palouse region is typically quite warm during the summer months (normally in the 70s around this time of year, going up significantly as summer gets rolling), a fact that lead to much eye candy when I was a student there, especially when walking down Greek Row.

Then he sent me this youtube video. Amazing (and funny as well, nice musical touch by the vid creator). Here's a news article from local Spokane news about it. I've seen some pretty wacky weather at times, but I never thought I'd see snow on the Palouse in June.

Now we know where all the snow/ice from the glaciers is going!

Browsing around today, I came across a really cool image the Hubble telescope had captured of two galaxies colliding. In that article, I learned that Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way at some point some billions of years in the future. That made me wonder what would happen to our solar system when that happened. Then, I wondered if the solar system would even be around at that point (it should be, the estimate is the sun won't form a red giant until about 4 to 5 billion years from now).

Of course, will the human race as we know it even exist? It seems unlikely, no matter what your beliefs are - evolution dictates humans will have evolved (and perhaps branched), and who knows into what. It's possible we won't even be on Earth anymore, perhaps expanding into the vastness of space (especially the way we consume resources on the planet today - gas is over $4 a gallon in the US, more elsewhere... yikes!). Or, if you are religiously-minded, likely there will be some cataclysm or apocalypse that will bring a heaven on earth (or vice versa). Or, maybe we'll just be extinct.

Either way, I'll never know what is to become of the Earth when Andromeda gobbles us up. But it sure is fun to speculate.

I'm famous now. My name is in the credits of a book. I'd be happy to autograph any and all copies you may have.

D&D 4th Ed credits

See my name? See it? Scroll down a bit. A bit more. Ok, fine, here I'll point it out for you:

...James Johnson, James Ryan, James Wyatt, Jared Farnsley, Jason Andersen, Jason Babcock, Jason Bickal, Jason Crognale, Jason Davis, Jason Farmer, Jason Feldhake...

Oh yeah, I've hit the big time now!