Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

So I am constantly amazed by what radio stations choose to censor or not. I really like Kid Rock’s summer hit All Summer Long, but was surprised when it played on our toned-down adult pop station. This is the same station that plays an edited version of Tom Petty’s You Don’t Know How It Feels. How do they say it is OK to play a song that references “smoking funny things” when they can’t play a song that references “roll another joint”? I personally don’t think they should censor either song, nor should they stop playing either song. It just seems weird to me that there doesn’t seem to be any consistency. But at least when they play Tom Petty they use a different version that changes the line to “hit another joint” instead of the butcher job they did on the video…

After driving in many States I have to admit I hate the way that New York decided to number the exits on its higways. For some background, New York numbers its highway exits sequentially (sort of, more on that in a bit) so for example exit 66 would be the next exit after exit 65 if travelling in one direction or after 67 when travelling in the opposite direction. Other states number their exits after the milepost the exit is located, so exit 66 would be at milepost 66 and the next exit might be exit 78 12 miles down the road at milepost 78.

Theoretically the sequential numbering of exits should work. However, in practice it is very frustrating. There is no standard distance between exits, so it is impossible to tell how long it will take you to go from exit 12 to exit 66. Actually you can’t even say it is 44 exits away, since the sequential numbering of exits is thrown of by such things as exit 33N and exit 33S, or worse 51A through 51D.

The naming of exits after the milepost location is the most logical way to do this. I would know if I entered at milepost 112 and I had to go to exit 342 that I had 230 miles to travel. More importanly though is that at any point in the trip I could look at the milepost marker and after a simple calculation know how much longer there was in the trip.

Real world example. I drove about 230 miles to exit 66 on Rt 17/86. I knew I had about a four hour drive without stops. However things like construction and stopping for a bathroom break delay the trip. So then when the girls ask how much longer until we get there I actually had no way to give a good estimate. I could estimate generally, but not very accurately. But if the exit was named based on the milepost I could know very accurately how far away we were and give a good estimate on the time to get there. But knowing we are 33 exits away is meaningless, especially when there are more than 33 exits between exit 33 and exit 66.

So hopefully New York will join the ranks of the logical and re-name the exits based on milepost location instead of some arbitrary number.

more graph humor and song chart memes

So I’ve been toying with the idea of learning how to ride a bicycle for a while now. To that end I picked up a nice bike from the folks over at Spoke Folk on Wednesday. I haven’t ridden a bicycle since I was a little kid, so I am pretty much learning from scratch. I spent a little bit of time practicing after mowing the lawn today and then probably for an hour after dinner. I think I am really close to figuring this whole thing out. Maybe Bella and I can learn together.

I don’t want to take the effort to open a Twitter account so I can Twitter about updating my blog and blog about updating my Twitter and Twitter about someone blogging about updating their Twitter and blog ad nauseum but wouldn’t it be fun?