As of this post... wow, 22 months since the last post!
First off, stop worrying. I'm not dead. I've just had massive equipment failures both of the computer and automotive variety. I'm only just getting back on my feet here.
With gasoline prices being what they are, I can't afford to travel (and therefore get pictures) anymore, especially with the only running vehicle here being a SUV. Yes, one of those things I swore I'd never ever own. (Technically I still don't own one - it belongs to my roommate.)
Hopefully things will start to look up soonish. If things go right, my income situation should improve soon, the Deathmachine will be back on the road, and I'll hopefully get some new pics of the area... before I move.
Yeah, the Louisiana Roadgeek Girl will hopefully be moving by year's end.
In the meantime, I've found my old camera, which should have some pics from (of all places) Idaho, Utah, possibly Colorado and Texas as well.
So keep the faith.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
31 August 2011
19 February 2009
Warning: Very Profane Rant.
Times-Picayune - State vows I-12 link in St. Tammany will be built
You vow, huh? Ain't you been vowing to get the damn interchange built for years now? I seem to remember that it was supposed to be built in the '90s as part of the LA 3241 project. As a standalone, it's been pushed back several times in the last few years alone. I'd still be willing to wait even now if waiting for that highway was an option. But at a time like this, it's not optional anymore. There's a school going up soon, a high school that will choke a "minor secondary highway" to the point of being absolutely useless. Ten miles of peaceful driving will soon become ten miles of brain-numbing gridlock.
There's plenty of problems with that scenario. First off, LA 1088 isn't "minor" or "secondary" to the people who live on it. It's our lifeline to the rest of the world. As it is, I have to go way out of my way to get anywhere now without having to pass through a damn school zone. I'm sure others here feel the same way, they're just too scared of getting lynched by the pro-family morons to make a peep. There's also the fact that any traffic coming in from the west or south have to go through a residential neighborhood to get to that school, until the interchange is built.
Seriously, what the hell are you idiots at DoTD smoking? Do you bastards remember how badly LA 59 was choked in the 90's having to support a high school, and how much it worsened when the junior high opened up next door? Those kind of schools, a two-lane highway simply can not do the job. Even a two-lane highway with a turning lane of some kind can't handle it. High schools in this area require four lanes at minimum to ease any impact on traffic.
Remember, you not only have to deal with bus traffic, car traffic from parents dropping their kids off and more car traffic from faculty going to work daily, you also have to deal with hundreds of stupid teenagers trying to get in there at the last possible minute because they overslept. You hope they were cramming for exams, but they were probably either getting high or getting laid. Most likely, both. The teenagers around here are far from being angels, after all. (I speak from personal experience.)
In case you've forgotten about all this, feel free to drop by any time. The gridlock's still there, all those years later.
At the least, though, LA 59 has an interchange at I-12 that helps relieve some of the traffic. LA 59 North past the Interstate is a breeze even during school zone hours. Ah, but LA 1088 doesn't. It needs it before anyone even thinks of opening a damn high school. Yes, I'm also talking to you, St. Tammany Parish School Board.
What makes you think some of us want a gridlock and beaten sheep factory on our highway anyway? (Calm, calm... I will not be a NIMBY, I will not be a NIMBY...)
Fact remains, at the moment, the roads in the area of that new school can't possibly support it. Aside from being a lonely two-lane highway, there are no lights... in fact, there's nothing nearby. The nearest Sheriff's substation is about 12 minutes away. 12 minutes is a lot of time for mischief and mayhem. It's a ton of time if someone gets hurt or worse. There's no services nearby - if you run out of gas or overheat your car, you're mega-screwed. In fact, that school's almost begging to become an unofficial annex of Lacombe (which is the crackhead and crime capital of the parish).
They may as well call it Lacombe North already.
At the least, can't they hold off opening the thing until there's an interchange, so a residential neighborhood can be spared a lot of headaches, unnecessary emissions and noise? More importantly, so my sanity can be spared? Some of us like being able to start the day with a few miles at max speed before hitting Congestion City, after all.
They can't and they won't, naturally. Delays are only tolerable so long as a school isn't affected. "Think of the children," after all. I say to hell with the damned children already. "Why" is a matter for a different post entirely, probably on the Livejournal.
Anyway.
So I'm putting any of the politicians who have any chance of getting either the school delayed or the interchange sped up on notice here - if you open that school sooner than an interchange is built and we suffer here due to it, you're not only getting a no vote from me, but from others. There are more than just me who think as I do, and I will rally them. Me personally, if it's you versus Charles Manson in the next election, I'll vote for Manson just to spite you. If it's you versus Satan himself, then I'm wearing my "Satan (next election year for your seat)" button proudly. I don't care if your next opponent's a thief, a serial killer, or if they eat babies. You will become the greatest of all evils in my eyes. I'll do everything in my power to put them over and shut you down.
Build the interchange first before you even think of overloading our highway system, or you will find out how bleak your careers are in the face of an angry voter with no life. I don't care if you in Baton Rouge have to use some of the one-time surplus this year... I don't care if you have to use it all, every last dime. Get this thing done, pronto!
P.S. - You should have never re-paved the section of 1088 north of I-12, DoTD. It would have been nice to make all those "elite" idiots lose their suspension for a year or two on that road. :P
You vow, huh? Ain't you been vowing to get the damn interchange built for years now? I seem to remember that it was supposed to be built in the '90s as part of the LA 3241 project. As a standalone, it's been pushed back several times in the last few years alone. I'd still be willing to wait even now if waiting for that highway was an option. But at a time like this, it's not optional anymore. There's a school going up soon, a high school that will choke a "minor secondary highway" to the point of being absolutely useless. Ten miles of peaceful driving will soon become ten miles of brain-numbing gridlock.
There's plenty of problems with that scenario. First off, LA 1088 isn't "minor" or "secondary" to the people who live on it. It's our lifeline to the rest of the world. As it is, I have to go way out of my way to get anywhere now without having to pass through a damn school zone. I'm sure others here feel the same way, they're just too scared of getting lynched by the pro-family morons to make a peep. There's also the fact that any traffic coming in from the west or south have to go through a residential neighborhood to get to that school, until the interchange is built.
Seriously, what the hell are you idiots at DoTD smoking? Do you bastards remember how badly LA 59 was choked in the 90's having to support a high school, and how much it worsened when the junior high opened up next door? Those kind of schools, a two-lane highway simply can not do the job. Even a two-lane highway with a turning lane of some kind can't handle it. High schools in this area require four lanes at minimum to ease any impact on traffic.
Remember, you not only have to deal with bus traffic, car traffic from parents dropping their kids off and more car traffic from faculty going to work daily, you also have to deal with hundreds of stupid teenagers trying to get in there at the last possible minute because they overslept. You hope they were cramming for exams, but they were probably either getting high or getting laid. Most likely, both. The teenagers around here are far from being angels, after all. (I speak from personal experience.)
In case you've forgotten about all this, feel free to drop by any time. The gridlock's still there, all those years later.
At the least, though, LA 59 has an interchange at I-12 that helps relieve some of the traffic. LA 59 North past the Interstate is a breeze even during school zone hours. Ah, but LA 1088 doesn't. It needs it before anyone even thinks of opening a damn high school. Yes, I'm also talking to you, St. Tammany Parish School Board.
What makes you think some of us want a gridlock and beaten sheep factory on our highway anyway? (Calm, calm... I will not be a NIMBY, I will not be a NIMBY...)
Fact remains, at the moment, the roads in the area of that new school can't possibly support it. Aside from being a lonely two-lane highway, there are no lights... in fact, there's nothing nearby. The nearest Sheriff's substation is about 12 minutes away. 12 minutes is a lot of time for mischief and mayhem. It's a ton of time if someone gets hurt or worse. There's no services nearby - if you run out of gas or overheat your car, you're mega-screwed. In fact, that school's almost begging to become an unofficial annex of Lacombe (which is the crackhead and crime capital of the parish).
They may as well call it Lacombe North already.
At the least, can't they hold off opening the thing until there's an interchange, so a residential neighborhood can be spared a lot of headaches, unnecessary emissions and noise? More importantly, so my sanity can be spared? Some of us like being able to start the day with a few miles at max speed before hitting Congestion City, after all.
They can't and they won't, naturally. Delays are only tolerable so long as a school isn't affected. "Think of the children," after all. I say to hell with the damned children already. "Why" is a matter for a different post entirely, probably on the Livejournal.
Anyway.
So I'm putting any of the politicians who have any chance of getting either the school delayed or the interchange sped up on notice here - if you open that school sooner than an interchange is built and we suffer here due to it, you're not only getting a no vote from me, but from others. There are more than just me who think as I do, and I will rally them. Me personally, if it's you versus Charles Manson in the next election, I'll vote for Manson just to spite you. If it's you versus Satan himself, then I'm wearing my "Satan (next election year for your seat)" button proudly. I don't care if your next opponent's a thief, a serial killer, or if they eat babies. You will become the greatest of all evils in my eyes. I'll do everything in my power to put them over and shut you down.
Build the interchange first before you even think of overloading our highway system, or you will find out how bleak your careers are in the face of an angry voter with no life. I don't care if you in Baton Rouge have to use some of the one-time surplus this year... I don't care if you have to use it all, every last dime. Get this thing done, pronto!
P.S. - You should have never re-paved the section of 1088 north of I-12, DoTD. It would have been nice to make all those "elite" idiots lose their suspension for a year or two on that road. :P
17 July 2008
Like Slater, she loves the Linux.
You may know this, or you may not. Well, I'm here to be telling you. I'm a Linux user. Been one since 2004. Started with Redhat 9, now I'm using Xubuntu 8.04.1.
I think I've finally gotten this particular Linux install the way I like it. You see, my old desktop bit the dust last month. I got tired of doing piecemeal repairs, so I got a new (ok, used) machine to replace it. It works decent under WinXP, but I spend a lot of time logged into the Linux partition instead.
Anyway, here's a screenie.
(Warning: It's a .png file, so it may take some time for those of you on dialup to see, should you click to the fullsize. It's worth the wait, though.)
Try doing this with your Windows install without spending enough for a week of food or pirating a bunch of skinning software! Basically, here's the details that you need to Google to make yours anything like mine (assuming you use the *NIX):
XFCE theme: Symphony
GTK theme: Unity
Icon set: Black-White
XMMS skin: Glorification Reborn (Actually, it's a Winamp skin)
Wallpaper: The Birth of Europa
Font: Purisa
Terminal font: DejaVu Sans Mono
I think I've finally gotten this particular Linux install the way I like it. You see, my old desktop bit the dust last month. I got tired of doing piecemeal repairs, so I got a new (ok, used) machine to replace it. It works decent under WinXP, but I spend a lot of time logged into the Linux partition instead.
Anyway, here's a screenie.
(Warning: It's a .png file, so it may take some time for those of you on dialup to see, should you click to the fullsize. It's worth the wait, though.)
Try doing this with your Windows install without spending enough for a week of food or pirating a bunch of skinning software! Basically, here's the details that you need to Google to make yours anything like mine (assuming you use the *NIX):
XFCE theme: Symphony
GTK theme: Unity
Icon set: Black-White
XMMS skin: Glorification Reborn (Actually, it's a Winamp skin)
Wallpaper: The Birth of Europa
Font: Purisa
Terminal font: DejaVu Sans Mono
25 May 2008
Posting from the new machine
My iBook arrived via FedEx yesterday. Let's see what's all there...Ok, so it's not the most advanced bit of tech on the planet. It's going to practically require a teardown to put in a bigger hard drive (I have a 40GB waiting in the wings) and another 256MB stick of RAM (that I might be able to harvest from my Thinkpad) - best to replace both during the same teardown. As it's configured right now (hardware-wise), I can't even install Xcode, making installing necessities like irssi and mpg123 impossible due to the lack of a compiler. Also, it has to be run wired until I get ahold of a USB wireless interface (preferably with a Ralink chipset.)
- Processor: 800 MHz PowerPC G3 750fx
- Memory: 384MB
- Storage: 6GB 2.5" IDE
- Optical: Sony CD-RW/DVD-ROM
- Expansion: FireWire 400, 2 USB 1.1
- Networking: 56k, wired Ethernet
- Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4.11
Still, despite all that, I'm loving this machine. Some Linux users can't stand OS X, but once I install Xcode, I love it. I'm also looking forward to the challenge in upgrading the hardware bits on here. I could use the experience in it if I'm ever going to get people to pay me for doing this kind of stuff. (Hint, hint!!)
In keeping with the naming scheme for my previous machines, this one is known as latias.
14 May 2008
This isn't news.
Well, I broke down. I priced out how much it would cost to fix the Deathmaschine, and I bought a used iBook G3 800MHz. I might tackle fixing the car sometime next month. It can't be that hard to replace a radiator... right? Please tell me it's not that hard.
...Okay, fine, I'll ditch the "defenseless girl" act...
That's all for now. Road news is sloooooow around here...
...Okay, fine, I'll ditch the "defenseless girl" act...
That's all for now. Road news is sloooooow around here...
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