I should clarify. Avoid the new downtown west interchange at all costs. (Update: West bound)
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New West Hills Interchange
Tdot
sucksUpdate: In all fairness, they are still transitioning and do not have all the lanes open yet. -
Get Entertained and Fight Cancer
Tonight is a good night to go out on the town. I heard on the radio and found details in the MetroPulse that musicians and artists will be performing at 10 different locations to raise money for the Thompson Cancer Survival Center.
If you go out ever, anywhere in Knoxville, chances are you’ve seen Laith Keilany play his guitar. You heard him accompany the likes of Jodie Manross and the Mikel Grubb Band. Or, perhaps you’ve had the unique pleasure of seeing Keilany play the oud, an 11-string middle eastern instrument. He’s played all over Knoxville, and around the Southeast and East Coast. And, it’s not uncommon for Keilany to be playing for free. For years, Keilany (along with Manross) has been the go-to guy when a benefit or fundraiser is in need of a good musician with a good heart. So it’s only fitting that the fourth annual Knoxville at Night will benefit the Thompson Cancer Survival Center and Keilany, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. [Source]
Starting next week Panera will be selling a pink, cherry flavored bagel in the shape of a ribbon to support the fight against breast cancer. A portion of the purchase of these bagels will be donated.
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Hybrid Indoor Lighting with Sun, Flourescent and Fiber Optics
This is a really cool way to light a building with sunlight! I really like the first picture.
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Senator Ted Stevens Technophobe – Outted!
Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace it!
There’s a bipartisan Senate bill that would actually do something good for a change. S. 2590 would create a Google-style public database that would show who gets government money through contracts and grants. But a single anonymous senator has blocked the bill. [Source]
You guessed it! Looks like Senator Ted Stevens. You might recall Senator Ted Stevens as the guy who explained the Internet as "a series of tubes." He is in charge of regulating the Internet and Ted Stevens does not even get it!
It is worth noting that your government may not be living up to your expectations because the elected officials, the ones your vote or lack of vote put into office, are a bunch of old coots. And spare a minute and a half to see John McCain make Jon Stewart spew his coffee while discussing Ted Stevens. (The 3:35 version of the same interview.)
Redstate has further commentary regarding the Pork Busters legislation.
The legislation, also known as the “Federal Funding, Accountability, & Transparency Act”, would create an online, searchable database of federal earmarks. The database would list which member of congress obtained the earmark, how much the earmark is for, what the purpose is for, which local contractors are involved, etc. [Source]
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Feed the conspiracists
Cathy likes to joke about my conspiracy-mindedness. I like to makeup conspiracy theories as jokes. Here is some fuel on rigged elections. The comments make some valid points about why this would be hard to do in practice such as the injected number of votes not matching the recorded number of voters.
I really like the comment that suggests we get a vote receipt like an atm receipt. When the polls close all votes are published on a website. You could then match your vote receipt to the published vote to see if it differed. If it differed then you could dispute it. This would not allow for changing votes because you are reporting that it is different than the information printed on the vote receipt, not that it is different from your memory.
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Install buggy code for free!
Microsoft is offering 100,000 free downloads of its new operating system Windows Vista. This is a beta 2 pre-release candidate 1. That means it should probably work with no problems but you could also end up with a disfuctional computer.
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*cough* back to school *cough*
With 4 children in 4 different schools, we are guaranteed to catch everything! But I am feeling better today thank you.
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Site Tools – URL Investigator
I have posted about the tools I use when looking at a url, ip address, etc. URLInvestigator is another one new to the scene.
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Google Maps vs Yahoo Maps and Geotagging
I love Google Maps! I used to use Mapblast and still contend its line directions are the best way to present driving directions. Are Google Maps accurate? Using Sergey Chernyshev’s tool to compare Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, I am surprised to find that although Google Maps has more detail in Europe, Yahoo maps appears to be more accurate in the US (at least in the areas I checked).
I found Sergey Chernyshev’s site while reading Thomas Hawk’s review of Flickr’s new geotagging option. Thomas Hawk is the Chief Evangelist for the photo sharing site Zooomr which makes his review of Flickr so much better. Zooomr was reviewed by C|Net 7 days ago. Geotagging is the practice of associating GPS coordinates with a picture, blog, post, or other information. GeoURL is a service mapping URLs to specific locations on the planet.
Geotagging is unhealthy for the paranoid because placing coordinates on a photo, or blog entry, publishes publically (in most cases) your exact location at an exact time. Some people may decry this a privacy issue (remember, you voluntarily put the information in the public’s eye) or declare it dangerous as "the bad people" could derive patterns in your life and track you down. It may be wise to not geotag your house or neighborhood but in reality does it really matter if people know that on Tuesday at 3:03pm you were standing by a cool statue? Personally, I wish my camera automatically put the coordinates with the EXIF information on the pictures and that the photo services would automatically grab that info. Some cameras do this already.