It's 11:56pm on Sunday, Sept. 30 as I start to write this. In four minutes, the Charlottesville Transit Service (CTS) will officially kick off an ambitious month-long experiment in fare-free bus service. That's right: throughout the month of October, anyone can take public transportation in Charlottesville for free. This isn't the first experiment with fare-free transit in our area; the enormous success of our fare-free Trolley service (between UVa and Downtown) and the recently-launched partnership whereby UVa students, faculty and staff can ride our city buses for free (which is already resulting in significant gains in ridership) indicate that eliminating fares does indeed get more users onto the system. This is no surprise to UVa's own University Transit Service (UTS), which has been operating fare-free for decades and has huge ridership. (It doesn't hurt that UTS also operates with shorter headways and takes its users exactly where they need to go relatively quickly, which are things that CTS can learn from as well.)
Assuming this month-long experiment in system-wide fare-free transit does result in a substantial increase in ridership, I am going to push for us to consider a year-long trial starting in FY2009. My argument is this: we (City/County/UVa/State/Feds) already subsidize about 90% of every CTS trip as it is, so why not go the extra 10 cents on the dollar if it is going to help us achieve one of the most important goals we all have for our community: getting more people out of their cars. And the extra funding that would be required to cover the cost of eliminating fares is quite literally pennies on the dollar compared to the amount of money we put into subsidies for road construction and maintenance. It's not even close, actually.
As the USA Today noted back in May, Charlottesville is not the only community looking into fare-free transit, but I do think this would be one more important step we can take to demonstrate our community's commitment to improving our environment and our quality of life.
OK, it's now October 1 as I conclude this post. Take a free ride, Charlottesville!
Matthew Rosenberg on
September 30, 2007 at 9:53 pm
If only all weekends could be this good. Every once in a while the stars and planets align to deliver a gem that you swear will never happen again. Until it does. Most people would be very upset about working a weekend, not this intrepid photojournalist. Saturday was great, but I want to share a few more pictures from Foxfield . The fall races benefited Service Dogs of Virginia. Things started pretty spectacularly with a skydiver trailing the flag. I couldn't stay for all the races but during the fifth race a horse threw its jockey and decided to finish the race without him. The jockey appeared un-harmed thankfully and the horse had a little fun dodging the handlers.
I can't spell anymore. In eighth grade, I went to regionals—I was the best speller in my entire middle school. Fact. (I lost regionals on the word "haggard", thanks for asking.)
I blame my acquisition of Spanish. The most recent culprit: "occasion" vs. "ocasión".
Rising gas prices cause unrest in Myanmar, General Motors cuts a deal with the union, and finally: is support slipping for the Puget Sound’s Roads and Transit package?
The Rug Company, based out of London, as a huge selection of designer (designed by everyone from Diane Von Furstenburg to Lulu Guinness) rugs in everything from more traditional designs to totally contemporary ones, reminiscent of 1960’s pop art. All rugs are handmade using traditional processes and with hand selected wool. Rugs are a great way to add texture and color to a room and last forever. Check out the great website to see the rugs and learn about the designers.
Bars: I can’t think of any new creative ways to describe Fridays at bars on the downtown mall or the corner, so I’ll leave it at “You know, the weekend.”
Vegetarian Festival: It was everything a vegetarian festival should be: homeless animals up for adoption, meatless jerky and kettle corn, anti-war signs, and long lines of “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m actually an omnivore!” folks waiting to buy Ethiopian and Indian meals. I got a kick out of Sha-nay-nay’s review too!
OXO: Oh-la-LA. After this weekend, we promise not to bring it up so much. Why? Maybe because it was packed on Saturday night! I think a lot of people there were “apres-tailgate,” because I witnessed many a faux-pas. Thor?
216: The only lines longer than those at the veg fest and OXO’s bar were 216’s on Friday and Saturday nights. I’m so proud of this city!
For the fun of it, I’m including two more “I Spy” pictures of our amazing quirky city. Were you there?
The slave doesn't even need to be running. In fact, the tool doesn't use SHOW SLAVE STATUS at all. This has lots of advantages: for example, it tells you how far the slave lags behind the ultimate master, no matter how deep in the replication daisy-chain it is. In other words, unlike SHOW SLAVE STATUS, it won't tell you a slave is up-to-date just because it's caught up to its master. If a slave's master is an hour behind, it will report that the slave is an hour behind, too -- because it is.
It's a really smart approach. And you can daemonize it, and it'll keep a file up-to-date with running averages (by default it averages the last one, five and fifteen minutes, but of course you can choose that). Now your monitoring scripts can be as simple as "cat /var/log/slave-delay" or some such.
It's not a hard tool to write, and I suspect lots of people have done it, but I bet that between Jeremy, whoever worked on it at Six Apart, and me, we've produced a pretty good version of the tool. It's part of the MySQL Toolkit, and the full manual is online.
My music collection, both store-bought and digitally encoded, numbers in the thousands of albums at this point, yet I go through periods of feeling burnt out on every bit of it. For the past couple years I’ve been finding alternatives to get me through the workday - talk radio, lectures, news, comedy, variety.
One option is ListenToAMovie.com. Everyone thinks it’s weird I’d want to arrive at work, strap on the headphones and listen to Red Dawn or Caddyshack while concentrating on design. But I only stick to movies I could practically recite from childhood, nothing too emotionally complex or distracting.
Then there are podcasts, my favorite being Tom Scharpling’s “Best Show on WFMU”. Tom plays the disgruntled host who hangs up on callers and slays sacred cows like Tom Waits (”Yeah, Insane Clown Posse are making a lot of money, too.” — Tom, countering a claim that financial success makes Tom Waits good) and The Jesus Lizard (”I’d put Ringo Starr. His recorded output in that era. Little more tuneful.” — Tom, offering a replacement for The Jesus Lizard as Best Band on Earth circa 1989-1993). His guest callers include comedian friends like Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt and Zach Galifinakis who sometimes check in to say hi. Tom’s comedy partner in most shows is Jon Wurster from Superchunk who plays a range of extremely damaged fictional characters. The music portions are also excellent and even though they’re excluded from the podcast, they’re available on recidivism.org, a blog providing hilarious Best Show highlights.
A similar podcast is created each week by AVerySpecialThing.com, one of the more engaging online comedy communities. A lot of its contributors overlap those from the The Best Show: Patton Oswalt, Tim & Eric, Jesse Thorn and so on.
Pete's father is a dear sweet man. He's just so nice and so very kind and I adore him. Like most people, my FIL has some endearing quirks that are just part of his personality. For example, he cannot go anywhere, at almost any time of the year, without taking a sweater with him. Sometimes, he takes a sweater and a lightweight jacket. You just can't be too careful about getting chilly. And, if we are with him, he invariably asks if we need a sweater too.
The personality similarities between my father-in-law and my older daughter are quite pronounced. So much so, that others have commented on it.
On a related note, the temperatures here in Virginia are registering FALL. Highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s. Cooler than summer weather, but definitely not winter weather.
Graceful has already started wearing sweaters and fleeces most mornings. It was cool this morning as she was dressing and she asked if she should wear a turtleneck and maybe even some thick fleece pants. I advised against it, so she went with long pants and a long sleeved shirt. For some reason, she didn't put on a sweater, as is her usual habit.
The girls and I got in the car to go on our orchard outing and waited for Pete, who was still in the house, getting his shit together.
Thirty seconds later, I was walking through the kitchen door and headed for the bedrooms. Pete asked what I was doing.
"I'm getting a sweater for your father's granddaughter."
This is an oldie but a goodie. This is a real news story from California that discusses whistle tips. Those are the little attachments that are welded to exhaust pipes that cause them to whistle as the car drives by.
Evidently some junior grade reporter stumbled upon a gold mine when she found Bubb Rubb and his buddy Lil Sis. These two have been Internet sensations for a couple of years, and their trademark "whooooo" adorns many t-shirts.
Watch and learn [or cry]; you'll never be the same again.
You can do it everyone. An inspiration for the world. Right here is another version of the complete flow in which all creation blesses the web. In other words, suck down this internet junk. Enjoy!
The next step in JoeKilller.com multimedia ladies and gentlemen. The first ever, JoeKiller.com podcast. JoeKiller and Crazyredbeard discuss the meandings of the universe as well as current music events coming up around the east coast. Listen for some phatty tunes and a different take on life. This podcast features announcements of upcoming Crazyredbeard Events such as the October 19, Fiasco in Allentown, PA at the Brew Works with Funtown, as well as NYE plans. Cheak out Crazyredbeard.com for more information. Our featured tracks are of Natural Breakdown’s CD release party September, 8 2007. Enjoy our presentation. We will bring these every Tuesday from now on.
We also just want to give a shout out to monkeys. And midgets. You’ll see.
Lisa Provence of the Hook joins Coy Barefoot to talk about the woman who was wrongly held in prison for a month after a grand jury failed to indict her on charges of obtaining money on false pretenses.
How about a picture-heavy post for a change? And you'll notice in many of these pictures that the sky is crystal clear. It was 75 degrees and sunny here in central Virginia this weekend and we took advantage of the beautiful weather. On Saturday we walked downtown for the 11th annual Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival.
First stop was the food court and the lines were long but we waited patiently for some good grub.
The offerings at the African place looked good and we started there since they came up from Richmond and we can't get this stuff locally. Interesting that they covered up the word "meat" on their sign but we didn't let that bother us too much since everything on offer here was vegan.
We splurged and got the sampler platter which included, well, a sample of everything. In front is jerk roasted vegetables next to red beans and rice covered with a mock chicken stew. In the back is mixed greens, fried plantains, ginger plantain and rice cake, and fried bean cakes (which despite the rather plain name were probably the best thing there).
After sharing that big platter we still wanted something more so we headed over to the Ethiopian food booth. I was disappointed that the person in front of me got the very last of the spicy red lentils but the collards, yellow split peas and mixed vegetables were still delicious. As was the lentil sambusa poking out in front. I think there were actually fewer food choices than in years past but still we came away pretty darn full. For more on the veg. fest check out this post over at the "Where's the Meat?" blog.
We woke up this morning to another clear blue sky and after going for a walk we headed up to Carter Mountain Orchard for another round of apple picking.
The only variety available for picking was Golden Delicious, but these were indeed delicious - nothing like the bland mush you find at a mainstream grocery store.
We came home and promptly started making apple jam. And I'm looking forward to cracking open one of those jars to have with my oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow. I'm also looking forward to leftover soup for lunch. For those of you who haven't seen this yet, Isa has posted some sample recipes from the upcoming Veganomicon. We made the Chickpea Noodle Soup for dinner tonight and it was D-lish!
Woolen Mills resident and Realtor Roger Voisinet joins Coy Barefoot on WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” to talk about the recent destruction of the Woolen Mills dam.
I got an email last week, as I often do, from Neiman Marcus. Typically they are telling me that new stuff has come in, or there is some trunk show or another. However, this email was different. In celebration of their 100th Anniversary, they are having a sale on shoes, $100 off any regularly priced shoes over $300. Now, I am not one to shy away from pricey shoes, and I NEEDED black heels very badly since my only good pair is currently at the cobbler until Saturday and I wear them every day for work. So, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get another pair of black heels. For $100 off. Brilliant.
Except, the good people at Neiman Marcus know what they are doing. The shoe department was PACKED. And every woman was buying several pairs of shoes (the promotion was only good for one pair). So, at the cost of $100 to them, they were getting women to buy several hundreds, and in many cases over $1000 on shoes. And I was no exception. I left Neiman Marcus with four pairs, two heels, two flats, all gorgeous. Somehow I was duped into getting far more shoes than I intended!
And so I say, well played, Mr. Marcus, well played.
I went to a beautiful wedding yesterday, but with great beauty comes great anxiety. I sat in the church pew and thought of all the ways in which I might inadvertently ruin the bride and groom’s big day. During the ceremony I chewed a piece of gum, because I encountered no trash can at the back of the church. What if when I went to give the bride a congratulatory kiss on the cheek, I accidentally I spit the gum into her hair? The updo, the picture-taking, and possibly our association would be over. But I did all right. At the reception I managed to limit myself to two plates from the buffet, I only caused one physical fight (but the principals were under three feet tall), and I found a pretty white purse to replace my green one (I’m just kidding, Lisa. I did not steal your purse. I hope it turned up by the end of the night.). Darren danced with me, which was awesome, and I got lots of compliments on my cleavage, mostly from the hot lesbians at Sian’s post-wedding birthday party. I might start showing up to all parties in fancy dress, saying that I just came from a wedding. I love any excuse to wear a push-up bra. I will post some pictures in a little while.
A month ago, Aaron and I decided to buy tickets to the last Phillies game of the regular season. It was the day before my birthday, and we enjoy Phillies games, and so we bought the tickets. Then, the Phillies got in a very close race with the Mets for the NL East Championship, and it turns out the game we went to today was all important. If we won and the Mets lost, we won the Championship, if we won and the Mets won (or, if both teams lost), we tied and there'd have to be a tiebreaker game. And if, heaven forbid, the Mets won and we lost, we would be in second place. Alas.
Anyhoo, now that the game was important it made it all that much more exciting. We had the tickets that everyone in Philadelphia wanted. In fact, I had asked my dad to go, because Aaron's bachelor party was interfering with his ability to go, and although he had a wedding, as the importance of the game became clear, he tried to convince my mother that he shouldn't have to go to the wedding. And I think if Aaron hadn't decided at the last minute that he should go, bachelor party be dammed, my brothers would have had quite a fight over the one ticket we had.
So, as we were going to the game the excitement in the air was palpable. People in red and white we flowing from the subways and the parking lots. Several others held signs begging for tickets, the scalpers had even been cleared out, I realized we could probably get good money for our 400-level seats, but unless they were willing to give enough to pay off my credit card bill (and I would be a little concerned if someone was carrying that much cash around), I wasn't selling.
Now, Phillies fans are an interesting bunch. Generally, Philadelphia fans are interesting. They love their sports teams, but they also are the quickest to turn on their players. They are also batshit insane. The old Vet had not only a jail, but a magistrate to arraign people. Legend has it that this was set up when a fan was operating a chainsaw in the parking lot of the stadium. They will burn things and overturn cars win or lose. The governor of our state started a snowball fight in the stands (not while he was governor, or even mayor yet, but still). The fans have booed santa clause, little kids that throw out the first pitch or sing the national anthem and players lying motionless on the field. They are quite a bunch.
And I generally love the air of fandom. When I go to a game, I will have deep conversations with people I have never met and that I will never see again. I will also high-five them, hug them and boo with them. And this spirit only intensifies when the playoffs are on the line. Today, not only were the fans paying rapt attention to our own scoreboard, but also to the out of town scoreboard showing the Marlins-Mets game (go Marlins!). When the Marlins scored seven runs in the first inning, you would have thought it was us who had. A good time was had by all.
And I don't need to recap the game, except to say that it was the only game where I did not get up multiple times to sample the delicious cuisine at Citizens Bank Park. In fact, I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom. I got up for one hotdog and soda because I was starving and parched, but that was it (a typical game for me involves a trip for a cheesesteak, bathroom break, soda, bathroom break, ice cream or water ice, bathroom break).
But after the game! Oh after the game! Everyone was just overjoyed! There was such an intense feeling in the air, you could taste it. People were running through the crowd, high-fiving everyone they could reach, jumping, screaming, generally causing mayhem. People on the roads honked there horns, the fans walking cheered them on, the police were just trying to keep things from slipping into total anarchy. And the things people say and do. One guys was pounding on the windows of a passing school bus (locked in gridlock) and saying "How do you like THAT! Yeah! How do you like THAT! Wooooo!" And another guy near Aaron and I, said the line that is the title of this post. People in cars were hanging out the windows and sun-roofs of their cars. Ah, it was sweet, sweet mayhem.
And the Phillies are going to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. They haven't won a World Series since I was an infant. I'd like them to win one I'll actually remember (and if I'm drooling on myself, I want it to be because I'm drunk, not a 3 week old). Maybe this year....
But for today, all I can say is "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
More appropriately billed as a alternative lifestyles or socially-conscious lifestyle festival, yesterday's Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival offered a chance for the area's many green and nice organizations to gather and present their ideas and wares. The parking lot (above) featured most of the vegetarian eats. Limiting myself to walkable restaurants most of the time, it was a chance to enjoy Maharaja, which offered a combination platter. Lee Park accommodated the multifarious booths and tents. C-ville Republicans and the local chapter of the NRA were not present. There were, however, primitivists, dog adoption opportunities, earth-conscious products, and Amesty International. Most of the people there were thin, many fit; all enjoyed the beautiful early fall weather.
Every week Nell Boeschenstein of C-VILLE Weekly drags forth the best of the Web and advises us to Hit This Site. This week’s pick is a literary version of MySpace/Facebook called Good Reads, which advertises itself as a way to:
see what your friends are reading
keep track of what you’ve read and what you’d like to read
get great book recommendations from people you know
Kind of like LibraryThing, but with friends. Authors as well as readers are welcome.
Me, I’m waiting for MyGoodFaceThing.com, so I can just hit it once and be done. But if you give Good Reads a whirl, let us know what you think.
The Woz comes up about halfway through her interview with Larry King (above) and their repartee about Steve for the remainder of the segment is very amusing.
Peter T. Kleeman on
September 30, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Here are questions 2, 3, and 4 (of 8) from the Sierra Club Candidate Survey with my responses. I hope you will consider your own personal position on each of these issues - and share it with city council by email, letter, phone, or by commenting at an upcoming council meeting. Council needs to know where the community stands on these important community issues. Here is where I stand on the issues of improving local transportation, marketing locally produced foods, and promoting energy efficient building construction.
I will post the other four questions with my answers in the next several days. So, be sure to bookmark this site and visit again. Some of these issues will be addressed at the upcoming candidate forum at city hall at 7:00 pm on Oct. 3. Perhaps you can share your thoughts on some of these issues with council candidates then.
2)Do you have any proposals for the improvement of transportation in the City of Charlottesville, AlbemarleCounty and University of Virginia?
Yes. Below are several proposals I have been promoting over the past several years and will promote if I am elected to city council.
2.1I am a strong advocate for expansion of pedestrian, bicycle, and public transportation opportunities throughout our region. I believe that the concept of an expanded trolley system connecting Charlottesville, AlbemarleCounty, and the University of Virginia should be explored in greater detail along with expanded bus service throughout our region.
2.2I also have advocated for establishment of a true regional transportation authority that includes not only Charlottesville and AlbemarleCounty as currently being proposed, but also including the surrounding counties (Greene, Fluvanna, Louisa, Nelson) that are part of our planning district. These jurisdictions contribute many vehicle trips to and from the Charlottesville and AlbemarleCounty urbanized area that need to be considered in our regional transportation planning.
2.3 I propose expanded development of pedestrian and bicycle paths that connect residential, shopping, and employment centers in our area. Some of these types of facilities have been recently constructed and I will support continued – if not expanded – development of pedestrian and bicycle facilities.
3) The City of Charlottesville has sought to promote local marketing of locally produced foods.Are there any steps you believe the City should take to support local production and sale of healthful foods?
Yes, I believe that a permanent home for our city market needs to be established. I prefer that one market location be in the Charlottesville downtown area accessible to potential pedestrian and bicycle travelers. Additional market areas in other locations, and on different market days will also enhance marketing of local foods and provide added benefits to our environment, community health and our local economy.
4) Solar building design provides a means of reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the City.Are there any steps you would like to see the City take to further promote energy-efficient building design?
Yes. I believe that the city should promote use of solar building technology in all of its own buildings and explore use of these technologies when new buildings are designed and when building reconstruction and renovation projects are done. I also will promote establishment of energy reduction incentives to encourage private builders to use solar or other greenhouse gas reducing technologies in non-governmental buildings. These incentives could be included as guidelines for planned urban developments that require planning commission and city council approvals before necessary rezoning decisions.
Since the last book I read was a bit dense, I wanted something lighter and more frivolous to follow it. This was the perfect choice for me.
When the author’s husband left her for another woman, she goes to Italy to recover. While there, she meets M, a professor from Paris. What started as a vacation romance turned into something more involved and complicated than Fraser had envisioned. The lovers met in various spots around the world and thus the book is also something of a travelogue.
A fun short book to fit in between your larger books.
http://preventmentalillnessmi.org./
There is no proof that giving low dose neuroleptics to children as young as 12 who have no diagnosis is going to prevent the onset of mental illness, yet this group is going ahead with a program to identify and enter into PACT teams and give low dose neuroleptics to kids who they think might [...]
Yesterday's post about stuff I can't remember last doing included buying paper towels and toilet paper in a bricks-and-mortar store.
Since two readers asked within four hours of the post appearing where I get these things online, I figure there are probably 10 or 100 others who for one reason or another won't ask but wouldn't mind knowing.
The XO laptop is getting news-worthy. The mentions of it are all over the popular media that I hear or read (sorry, no TV). I want to buy N to get one. I need to check how many a private user should acquire.
Link to Yahoo’s list of sources and to Google’s news scour. These [...]
