Greg In The Desert

The city of Rio Rancho has been putting in roundabouts all over the place and installing “road diets” which I didn’t know what they were called. I learned about them in a Rio Rancho Observer article.

Road diets, according to the United States Department of Transportation, are often conversions of four-lane, undivided roads into three lanes. The fourth lane may be converted to bicycle lanes, sidewalks and/or on-street parking.

The Federal Highway Administration touts roundabouts as being safer than four-way stops.

Roundabouts are touted as being safer because there are less points of conflict than with a four-way stop. Eight with roundabouts, compared to 32. There also are no right angles, meaning less of an impact if a crash were to occur.

According to the Department of Transportation, roundabouts have contributed to a 90 percent reduction in traffic fatalities, a 76 percent reduction in injuries and a 35 percent reduction in crashes. The DOT also says the roundabouts are safer for pedestrians.

According to Live Science, a few dinosaurs were still roaming around New Mexico 500,000 years after the great apocalypse that killed the rest of them.

The whole idea that a space rock destroyed the dinosaurs has become controversial in recent years. Many scientists now suspect other factors were involved, from increased volcanic activity to a changing climate. Either way, some 70 percent of life on Earth perished, and an asteroid impact almost surely played a role.
Scientists recently analyzed dinosaur bones found in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. Based on detailed chemical investigations of the bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found, the researchers think some dinosaurs outlived the crash that occurred 65 million years ago and stuck around for a while.

New Mexico is a popular place for Dinosaur hunters because of how well fossils has been preserved.

• Federal Trade Commission’s plan to change rules on ad endorsements, testimonials worries marketers — chicagotribune.com – Updated guidelines on ad endorsements and testimonials under final review by the Federal Trade Commission—and widely expected to be adopted—would end marketers' ability to talk up the extreme benefits of products while carrying disclaimers like "results not typical" or "individual results may vary."
• News : Small store hanging in there with big boys – Rio Rancho Observer – Owner George Meyerson was asked the secret to staying in business for 20 years, especially in light of the large home-improvement stores moving into the area, not to mention a Kmart and several Wal-Marts?

  Observer '�” Gary Herron photos The silver hammer sign at True Value Hardward, at 2108 Southern Blvd SE, has been a steadying presence in Rio Rancho. The business is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a 20 percent off sale today and tomorrow.

  “The right products, reasonable prices and good service,” is his answer.

• An old engine learns new solar-power tricks – Mar. 24, 2009 – J.D. Sitton's mission was to find a new market for a 193-year-old engine that nobody wanted. His innovative answer: turn it into a solar power collector, then persuade top auto-parts suppliers – currently eager for work – to build it.
• Green By Design » Barefoot Dreams in the Dead of Winter – Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the radiant floor heating is that it creates not just a warm room, but an entire warm floor. The heat still rises, but it’s rising uniformly from ground zero instead of from a single fixture or a couple of vents. The result is often that rare anomaly, barefoot comfort in the dead of winter. Such systems are particularly good for homes with high ceilings, where forced-air heat often ends up where it is least needed unless the homeowner is endowed with the agility of a bat.
• Rear Engine Front Driver – Not all of Gregory’s front wheel drive experiments were racy. This particular 1947 Gregory sedan features front wheel drive and a rear mounted engine.
• Direct Stock Purchase Plans: A Better Way to Invest – Hundreds of companies that trade on the major stock exchanges allow you to buy shares directly from their transfer agents for very little or no money.
• Mexico’s health insurance success offers lessons for US reforms, Lancet study suggests | Science Blog – As America considers major healthcare reforms, it may have lessons to learn from Seguro Popular, Mexico's ambitious plan to improve healthcare for its estimated 50 million uninsured citizens, suggests Ryan Moore, co-author of a study published April 8 in The Lancet, a leading international medical journal.
• Why We Need the New York Times – When the Jayson Blair story erupted, I realized that if the Times couldn't even properly and effectively assess their own, how could they be relied upon to assess public officials and figures? It was then that I stopped buying the paper. A lot of people did. In Manhattan, copies of the New York Times often pile up everywhere.

  But lately, the alternatives seem wanting. In the Times recently was good reporting about the poor documentation of the deaths of deportation detainees by various state and federal agencies. Another article recently captured the abyss of disputed workmen's compensation cases and the endless troubles that greet those who fall into it. I don't see that on MSNBC. Frankly, I don't see that on TV at all.

• Road Tested: Voltaic Systems Generator laptop bag – I had a chance to road test one of these incredibly cool bags for a month and was very impressed. What makes it so special? Well, it could be the big photovoltaic panel on one side of the Generator that provides 15 watts of power to feed your electronic devices. Voltaic points out that the Generator is the "first solar bag powerful enough to recharge a laptop." That panel charges an internal 58Wh Lithium Ion battery pack that can run most laptops.
• The Road to Area 51 – Los Angeles Times – As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. "They wanted to see if there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to the crash." The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for the reaction of his wife, Jane.

  "Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

The first article I’ve seen on the new iPhone 2.1 features is from MacWorld. Beside the things noted there I noticed they changed the way the text message alerts are displayed when the phone is locked. Before if you had the SMS preview button turned to off it would show the name of the person who sent the text but not the text. That always bugged me because anyone looking at my phone would see who was texting me. Now it just shows “text message” with no name.

So far I’ve found it to be much snappier but I’ve still had a few applications crash

Update: I found when I updated an application on the phone, it will download the application and place the icon in the first available spot but then move it to where it originally was.

Rapid Weaver 3.6 has some great features. Enough to make me switch. I soon found out it had so bugs, specifically it would publish the enitre site instead of just the changes, even when I select “publish changes.” 3.6.1 & 3.6.2 were suppose to address this, I think. For me no dice. 3.6.2 was worse, it would crash while trying to publish anything.

Rapid Weaver 3.6.3 Beta seemed to finally fix both of these issues. I used it for a while and now it started crashing again. What the hell

I submitted bug reports and I hope they help, but I’ve had to switch back to 3.6.0.

Grrrrrrr…

So sad…

Joe Ranft, Pixar Animation Studios’ head of story for more than a decade and a cornerstone of the company’s creative team, died Tuesday when the car he was riding in plunged into the ocean after running off the road in Mendocino County, Calif. He was 45.

The guy who allegedly shot down the helicopter on the west side of Albuquerque has been arrested.

Authorities said they arrested Jason Kerns, 29, Monday night in the driveway of his home in the 9900 block of Columbus Circle in northwest Albuquerque — not far from where the crash happened Aug. 6.

As part of an arrest warrant released Tuesday, Kerns was said to be one of the first on the scene the night the chopper went down. Court documents indicate that Kerns came under suspicion almost from the get-go.

He stated hearing a gunshot and seeing the chopper fall, but police officials stated his story was misleading.

In a written statement, Kerns describes the chopper as disturbing his dog and said he was getting annoyed because it was there so long and flying so low.

Sheriff’s records released Tuesday showed that Jason Kerns told investigators it would be no problem for him to “make that shot.” He faces charges of assault with intent to commit a violent felony upon an officer, criminal damage to property and tampering with evidence in the Aug. 6 shooting.

Intuit has finally released an update to Quicken 2004 for Mac. This has been one of the buggiest versions of Quicken I have ever used, it certainly has taken them a while to come out with it.

You can download the update via MacUpdate. Here is the very long list of fixes:

General improvements/additions:

• Scheduled Updates: For some Scheduled Updates users, Quicken would intermittently crash on launch. This issue has been resolved.
• IRR Report: In some cases, the Average Annual Total column was displaying N/A. This issue has been resolved. In some cases, inflated values were displayed for securities that had split. (Also occurred in the IRR graph, Portfolio Value graph, and Asset Allocation graph.) This issue has been resolved.
• New User Assistant: Previously when a data file was created using the New User Assistant, it was saved in the Quicken Folder. It is now saved to the user’s Documents folder.
• Accounts List: In some cases, editing an account in the Accounts list with the Categories and Transfers list open would cause Quicken to unexpectedly quit. This issue has been resolved.
• One Step Update: In some cases, Quicken unexpectedly quit if the Download Transactions window was closed before the “Quicken has completed the update” sheet had been dismissed. This issue has been resolved. In some cases, Quicken would unexpectedly quit if the One Step Update window was closed prior to One Step Update completing its download. In some cases, Quicken would unexpectedly quit if the Online Account Updates window was dismissed after completing a One Step Update and accepting downloaded transactions.
• Comparison Report: In some cases, the Percentage Difference column in this report was miscalculated. This issue has been resolved.
• Report Export Dialog: In some cases, the radio buttons for exporting options in this dialog were not functional. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, the TurboTax (TXF) option was displayed in this dialog regardless of report type, when it should only have been available for Capital Gains and Tax Schedule reports. This issue has been resolved.
• Investments/Short Sales: In some cases, entering a cover short sale action via the register auto-entered a combined value of the current shares and shares from a previous short sale. This issue has been resolved.
• In the case that one cover short was used to cover two short sales, the Cost Basis was not divided up correctly, which caused the Gain or Loss amount to be incorrect. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, the dollar values for Shrtsell/Cvrshrt were truncated in the Capital Gains Report. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, due to the problem with carrying forward shares that should have a negative balance, the Capital Gains Report was incorrect. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, a Short Sale/Covered Short combination was not being calculated correctly in the Capital Gains Report. This issue has been resolved.
• Investments/Portfolio: In some cases, customization of a Portfolio was lost after section headers were expanded or collapsed. This issue has been resolved. In some cases, a downloaded news headline URL containing an ampersand (&) displayed the ampersand as a question mark. This issue has been resolved.
• Investments/Securities Detail: In some cases, Quicken unexpectedly quit when editing a security via the Security Detail window. This issue has been resolved. In some cases, values which had more than 4 decimals weren’t displayed in the Security Detail window. This mostly applied to indices. This issue has been resolved.
• Quotes: In some cases, certain ticker symbols were not downloading correctly because they contained a space. This issue has been resolved. In the case of using Mac OS 9.2.2 and downloading Canadian mutual funds, the last character of a symbol name with eight characters was dropped, and nine or more characters in a symbol name caused the name to be shortened with an ellipses. This issue has been resolved.
• Tax: In some cases, the header in an exported TXF tax schedule report displayed Quicken Mac 2003 Deluxe R1. This issue has been resolved. The TAX.SCD file has been updated.

For online banking users:

• Online Enablement: Previously, it was possible to disable a WebConnect account for online services with unaccepted transactions in the Download Transactions window. It is now required that the user first accept any outstanding transactions in the Download Transactions window prior to disabling the account to ensure that the transactions are not lost.
• Transaction Matching: In some cases, downloaded transactions were being incorrectly matched to previously downloaded transactions. This issue has been resolved.
• Download Transactions Window: In some cases, the title of the Download Transactions window changed to the current tab name followed by a “/” after hiding and showing Quicken. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, the transaction in the Register (lower) portion of the Download Transaction window was not updated with the newly selected transaction info from the Upper portion of the Download Transactions window after the preceding transaction had been deleted. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, clicking the “Save” button in the dialog presented when closing the Download Transactions window with an unmatched transaction selected caused Quicken to unexpectedly quit. This issue has been resolved.
• In some cases, a transaction recorded when clicking the Save button in the dialog presented when closing the download transactions window after selecting a new transaction did not match to the transaction in the Register. This issue has been resolved.
• Users with more than one account enabled at a single financial institution may have noticed that the account balance always listed the account balance of the first account in the menu regardless of which account was selected. This issue has been resolved.
• Outbox: In some cases, an online payment created in the register appeared in the Outbox with the wrong amount. This issue has been resolved.
• Payee List: Quicken Bill Pay users may have experienced an issue where the account pop-up menu in the payee list did not show Quicken Bill Pay if the Financial Institution also supported online payment through Quicken. This issue has been resolved.
• PIN Vault: In some cases, the PIN Vault sheet could not be dismissed after creating a new PIN and entering the new PIN incorrectly in the Verify the New PIN sheet. This issue has been resolved.