Blog Baltimore

It’s nice having a bus and bike lane in Baltimore to bike to work in. Recently though, it seems that the cars have started to ignore this fact. Over the past month I’ve started to see drivers disrespect these lanes, pulling out randomly on bikers and other cars alike. Even though there are signs posted every other block and the city has (almost readable) bike lane markings, drivers feel that they should drive in these lanes and speed excessively. Not only are drivers pulling into these lanes without really looking, they are also taking the opportunity to go as fast as possible down the street – as if they have more important things to do than wait for lights, pedestrians, bikers, and buses.

There was a sign posted when the city first designated the far right lane on Pratt Street for buses, bikes, and turning cars. It stated, “Bus lane violation $90 and 1 point.” If the city would like, I would love to start snapping photos of all the violators, including the license plates. I am sure I could save a few jobs from layoffs with the amount of revenue I could generate.

This would also include the taxi cabs that still refuse to obey the no stopping signs by the ESPN zone.

• Looks like @wypr's twitter account got hacked. Don't click the link #hack #hijack #talkradio #
• @SylvanElf this is FF XIII right? How are you liking it? in reply to SylvanElf #
• @gerdalti @SylvanElf its so sad how true that statement is in reply to gerdalti #
• Anyone experiencing painfully slow google searches right now? #
• @FOXBaltimore great, cutting fire, police, air and, marine support. Baltimore should be a bustling drug harbor again real soon #mdbudget in reply to FOXBaltimore #
• @MolliMegasko would this be considered spam? I'd love to report it as spam. Looks like spam…spam? in reply to MolliMegasko #
• @SylvanElf @gerdalti Does it have that old school Final Fantasy hold? 12 just didn't keep me. 4,6,7,9,10 did. in reply to SylvanElf #
• @fourmajor what were you using? Firefox? in reply to fourmajor #
• @gerdalti @SylvanElf if you actually beat it Jay, I know it's a keeper in reply to gerdalti #
• @fourmajor I made the transition about a month ago. I'm annoyed by the massive amount of chrome.exe processes but I'll survive. One per tab in reply to fourmajor #

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Newegg’s memory finder will be blocked by Adblock Plus. If you want to use Newegg’s Memory Finder, you’ll need to not block adds on Newegg’s site. The memory finder is a link through Crucial that feeds back to Newegg’s site so the adblocking applications will see this as an ad and then hide it.

With Chrome’s adblock plus add-in you can easily install a white list button and white list Newegg’s site. This is also a smart thing to do with Google’s adsense so that you can actually log in to the site.

• One nice thing about working for an educational institution is you also get spring break! #
• @als0822 I work for the Dental School in downtown. We're using our furlough days, otherwise we'd use saved up state holidays. in reply to als0822 #
• @Linkedin you're almost as annoying as classmates.com with your spam. You've been closed. It's been fun (not) #spam #
• @MySpace To Sell User Data http://bit.ly/9SQvxZ #privacy #myspace #
• Any suggestions for keeping the rats away from my tomatos, in the city, this season? #garden #plants #farming #
• @KathieLegg of which are part of the 150,000 regular Apple fanatics that are still waiting for Jobs to direct them to drink the Kool-Aid. in reply to KathieLegg #
• Baltimore police helicopter "foxtrot" is over southwest paterson park right now #

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Entering 3 years of fiscal drama and short falls, the State of Maryland has still not chosen to raise taxes to help with the budget. Instead the State of Maryland is choosing to further slash wages, jobs, and benefits for state employees. The latest bill by House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell goes as far as:

1. Repealing Stem Cell Research Fund, Commission, and laws providing State-funded research
2. Eliminating 1000 state positions
3. Excluding funding for the State Aid for Police Protection
4. Reducing Maryland Public Television by $1,000,000
5. Eliminating 500 positions (they don’t mention state, they just say positions. Who knows who they’re just going to fire?!)
6. Reducing funding for the Maryland Zoo at Baltimore by 10%
7. Eliminating 10 positions in the Maryland State Police that would be used for speed monitoring systems
8. Charging half-priced tuition (from full reimbursement) for employees attempting to get their degrees

I can agree with a lot of these but I have a hard time agreeing with changing how the State handles tuition remission. We have a lot of dead weight in the University and State employment system. By eliminating the ability for employees to benefit from continued education the state would just hurt it’s employees growth and ability to give back to their employer. It’s not just the over paid professors and rich doctors that benefit from these but also the underpaid state employees. Some employees just continue to suck up salaries with the state system so they can push their kids through school for little to no cost, this I don’t agree with. If you put your years in, take your retirement and go home. Don’t sit around and waste your coworkers time and patience by sucking up valuable resources that could benefit the school and state. After discussing with some sources about the job cuts, I can understand and agree with necessary state and educational cuts. I alone can think of at least 5 employees that should retire and stop taking away from the opportunities of younger, brighter, and more enthusiastic options.

According to the Census Bureau we’re top 15th out of 50 states for employees of the state and 20th out of 50 states for population size. I’ve been involved with the state for 5 years now and I can attest to the fact that often times its easier to just remove responsibilities from employees until they have nothing to do and eventually retire than to get rid of them. Not only is this demeaning to the employees but its horrible management practice.

Give these people the opportunity to better themselves with education instead of taking it away and shoving them in a corner.

I was on my way to Canton Hair Studio and had the pleasure of seeing George Agelakis’ replacement to Caesar’s Forum had also been shut down. I haven’t verified but from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty much packed up and left town. One less blight on the city to deal with. His glorious sign is still hanging: “Formally Caesar’s Forum” I wonder if I could pull a Baltimore City and put the sign up on Ebay like they did with Sheila Dixon’s crap.

I want to write about things in Baltimore but all I see is snow. I did see a ton of dump trucks taking snow to Pier 5 to dump into the water by Mccormick and Schmick’s. Those have got to be some cold fish. This is also whats screwing up traffic on Presidents St. at Fleet and Eastern. Oh and also biking in this mess is NOT fun.

Baltimore City’s new Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, was tweeting all through the blizzard that just struck Baltimore. Her twitter account shows activity starting as early as Feb. 3rd and right after that, a huge increase, with a significant amount of updates and information regarding how the city crews are operating and how the city was faring.

Twitter was very alive through the entire storm. Many of the local news tweeters were spreading information around about the quality of the roads and the openings of places for food and groceries. InsideCharmCity, http://twitter.com/insidecharmcity, was making a huge effort to coordinate between individuals to keep everyone updated, tweeting and retweeting.

There was a drastic difference in the level of news quality between that of twitter and the local news stations. The feeds on twitter were locally oriented. There was coverage about local restaurant and bar openings where city residents could walk to. There was discussions and tweets about snow ball fights, accidents, school closings, local gatherings.

With the Mayor’s continued feeds from twitter, it makes it much easier to follow a lot of the goings on in the city. Hopefully this isn’t just a trend and that the city will start to provide a easier way for its officials to feed information to the communities.

I should also add a thank you to insanebaltimore.com for spreading the news about mayorsrb being on twitter.

I declare tomorrow, Feb 6th 2010, national east coast blizzard snow fight day! If you see a friend or a neighbor, Baltimore, put down your guns and throw a snowball instead! Show your support by throwing snow balls in fun! Bloods, crypts, food coloring can be effective in marking snow balls.*

*this post is simply suggestion and in no way shape or a call to harm or hurt anyone.

I have to give it to Accuweather.com. this is by far the greatest weather report I’ve ever seen. This is Jim Kosek giving Baltimore’s weather cast right before the storm hits.

The video used to be linked on the site but due to the nature of their video hosting, I think it rotated. Now they’ve got another video by Jim Kosek up here http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=1671939093.

The Business Insider has an article on Jim Kosek and they seem to echo my sentiments that we need more people like this guy,