Month: September 2016

RI Traffic Tribunal ban use of cell phones in cars.

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Go and read this  link.

Now obligatory disclaimer. I know the Chief Magistrate William R. Guglietta. He and I both worked for Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse back in the early 2000’s. Our nickname for him was Googs.

I recall when the new AG came in that Googs went over to the Traffic Tribunal. I went on to other pastures in state government.

There’s one point about the ruling that I have to question. I’ll have to call Googs on Monday and ask him. The question is, and I see this in a lot of cars – what about the dashboard cell phone brackets. It keeps the cell phone at eye level. I see this as allowing police a fishing expedition and it disturbs me. Enough that I’ll reach out the Chief Magistrate of the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal.

 

 

Driving fun today

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So in the past I’ve rented a BMW X3 and an BMW X1. I much prefer the X3.

However today I had the opportunity to drive an X1 again. I’m going to say something here that won’t sit well with fans of Japanese or American cars. Get one of those mentioned up to 80 to 90MPH  and they get squirrely handling wise. The front end shimmies a little bit and well I consider them unsafe above those speeds.

The X1 has some interesting features. No Bluetooth or at least that I could find. However it does have what I have noted of two brands made in Germany, Volkswagen and BMW – that is it handles smoothly at speeds in excess of 100MPH. I had the X1 up to 110MPH today and it was tracking straight on, didn’t shake or shimmy, just automotive perfection. God I love German engineering.  There’s just something about zipping along at that speed in a car that can handle said speed without effort. And the X1 it auto start/stops the engine when you’re stopped for any length of time.

And get this, the X1 had in excess of 20K miles on it. Amazing.

 

Well it seems the network problem got fixed

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So for the past few weeks I’d been noticing between the hours of 19:30 hours and 20:30 house (That’s 7:30PM and 8:30PM – or if you prefer 23:30 to 00:30 UTC) my network connection through Cox Communications would go away for a couple minutes then come back.

So last night I logged into my firewall and watched the status page. First I noted DNS failed for YouTube and then I saw the IP address drop.

Once it came back up I tagged Cox Communications on Facebook. And wonder of wonders the problem didn’t happen this evening.

Amazing.

 

When it comes to shipping

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Here’s how I rank shipping companies:

  1. USPS – always delivers no questions.
    It’s very simple – if it can be left on your porch it gets delivered. If it’s too heavy you go pick it up at your local post office.
  2. Fedex – just like USPS delivers and no bullshit.
    I ordered a pair of Reeboks – I note they no longer ship UPS but Fedex instead. Much better. It means I don’t have to go and pitch a fit at the local UPS office.
  3. UPS – They used to say they love logistics, well they love bullshit.
    They are Shit Wrapped in Chiffon. That’s the best term I’ve heard for them. And I’ve had some epic dealings with them as detailed in other blog posts. I mean truly epic though my takedown of their presidents office was the pinnacle. It ended with me telling UPS President’s office that they were inept and stupid. It did conclude though with them waiving all signature requests for shipments to me.