[Doofrat]

I didn’t realize they did this until the person posted on Piggington way back. It got me thinking about it.

When they installed the cameras in Del Mar, it took them 3 days just to calibrate one intersection for running the red light straight through the intersection. The cameras they used in Del Mar do not use a coil, they just rely on the images and map areas on the picture where someone ran the light.
My guess is that the camera itself isn’t smart enough to detect a rolling right turn on red, so at the intersections where this is common, a cop just reviews the video.
I did a right turn on Red after a full stop in downtown where they have one of those signs that says no right turn between 9 and 11 and 2 and 3 and 5 and 7, and of course a camera. Didn’t read the sign before I went through. It was between 2 and 3 and I didn’t get a ticket, so it lends credence to the idea that this isn’t automated.

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[quote=spdrun]Never got why 9/11 pushed Americans to accept violations of civil liberties.

A few thousand people died. So what? More than 10x that number of people die of car crashes and gun violence every year in the US, and people scream bloody murded whenever their rights to drive or own guns might be infringed.

Talk about hypocrisy.[/quote]

Because a lot, and I mean a lot, of Americans are dumb, easily spooked, herd animals.

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I like the butt of the Corvette better on the Ferrari Italia they stole it from, but nice try none-the-less.

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In the place we currently rent, I think the landlord failed to mention no pets the first time he rented the place. The people before us had two or three big dogs. Tore up the hardwood floor downstairs, tore up the carpet upstairs, etched claw marks in the sliding glass door, pissed off the neighbors with the barking.
I can’t count the number of times the landlord asked us “You don’t have any pets right?”

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[quote=zk]

“Many lives” doesn’t necessarily mean “many lives in the U.S.” The CDC is sending staff to the four affected African countries. In Africa, where this disease is actually a problem, they frequently perform rituals after people die. Rituals that involve exposing themselves to the bodily fluids of the dead. That’s the main reason it spreads so much there. And that’s the reason there isn’t a realistic chance that it’ll be widespread anywhere else (at least anywhere else where they don’t regularly subject themselves to sick/dead people’s bodily fluids).

If you’re the type who always sees storm clouds gathering or an apocalypse coming, this is a perfect opportunity for you to panic. But nothing is going to happen to you. There will be no pandemic.[/quote]

When Swine Flu was killing everybody in Mexico City, a guy I work with (who’s from Mexico City) was totally unworried. He said that because the people generally aren’t the healthiest there and the air is so bad, any time there’s a Flu, it kills a lot of people there. I think it’s the same thing with Africa.
The one advantage to Ebola is in how fast it kills.
Sure, there’s the off chance that you end up on a plane with an Ebola victim who’s travelling on holiday from Sierra Leone to Maui, but that’s pretty remote. Then there’s the scenario that every body’s worried about of the contagion spreading. While in Maui, you come across a traveller that has contacted the Ebola patient from Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone patient coughed up infected blood all over said traveller and the second person got ingested it through an open wound or inhaled droplets. A person who is at the point of hemorraging Ebola virus is going to already be in bad shape, and your fellow traveller is going to take a while to build up enough virus to start hemorraging it and at that point will probably be too sick to contact you in a way to make you sick. Then they only have a small number of days left to infect fellow people. I just don’t think it’s that contagious.
Also, Ebola’s been around a while and despite the poor sanitation and post mortem practices in Africa, it still hasn’t exploded into a huge outbreak there.

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I actually read a book about Ebola long ago. I forget the title, but it went into the Ebola (and closely related virus like Marburg) outbreaks in Africa and the United States (Yes, there was an outbreak of Marburg in the US). In it’s present form, Ebola has a strange contagion profile that they didn’t understand back then, maybe there’s more info now, but it seemed to not be as contagious as you’d think. Even when gobs of the virus were around, it wasn’t always easy to catch. IMHO, I think the virus is more amenable to the living conditions in Africa where someone gets it and people don’t realize and hygienic conditions are a little more lax.

[Doofrat]

Should add a range for say bedrooms and bathrooms.
When I search for houses, but I also set the configuration for pool, I’m getting condos and townhouses. When I go back and set houses, it gives me houses with no pool. Great App though!

[Doofrat]

Portable AC units suck. The problem with them is simple physics. With a window mount or central air, the hot exhaust is cooled from outside air and released to outside air. With a portable unit, the hot exhaust air is cooled from internal house air and released out side. But where does it get this internal air to cool? It sucks in warm humid air from somewhere in the house into the very room you are trying to cool thus mostly nullifying the cooling you were trying to accomplish. All this at the cost of the unit, lugging it upstairs, electricity (a lot), and noise (a lot).

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A couple of things about this piss me off:

One is the idea that Marijuana is bad M’kay, so what do you do, you try to slap two felonies on a high school student. How do you think that’ll affect his life, we’re talking about his entire life. I think of the stuff I did at that age that if I’d been caught by these shit stains nowadays my life would be ruined.

Second is how invasive into pupils personal lives these schools have become. Face it, it’s High School, a glorified daycare, and faculty and staff are glorified babysitters. There are some great teachers and administrators out there, but they’re not the students only hope and saving grace. High School is just the last four years of a long mandatory sub par education system.
I think due to fact that schools are somewhat isolated environments, the faculty seems to lose touch with what the real world is like and they pump up their self importance to the point that they are checking to make sure girls aren’t wearing thong underwear to dances, getting passwords to students Facebook accounts, and allowing undercover “Police” into the classroom to conduct undercover stings and not focusing on teaching children to not make long run on sentences like they did when I went to High School.

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[quote=spdrun]^^^

Repo rates are quite high, apparently, so borrowers DO “turn in their old cars and walk” all of the time.[/quote]

Yeah, but at 25% interest on a 5 year loan, you’ve got all your money back at year 2.5, everything after that is just profit. I imagine there are also all sorts of fees and tricky stuff that probably shortens this recovery time a lot.

That said, I did some minor IT stuff for one of these places that services these loans way back in the 90s and the repos they did get back were pretty much worthless. They said the people tended to not do any care on the car at all and wouldn’t even let me consider buying a repo from them.

[Doofrat]

Pretty much the crap you’d expect from a religious lobbyist. No real reason why they want to persecute the gays, just a general threat to the “common good” “national unity” and somehow to “religious freedom”.

Would anybody be surprised if the KKK organized a religion that saw black people as evil and then lost out on Federal contracts because they wouldn’t allow blacks to work for them?

Maybe the contractors can prove their faith by not bidding on Federal contracts and instead rely on God to support them?

[Doofrat]

[quote=CA renter][quote=Hobie]Didn’t know we had so many donut connoisseurs here! Next time you are in Cardiff check out VG Donuts. Good stuff. Across from the Cardiff Kook sculpture which is another reason to go there. 🙂

http://www.thecardiffkook.org/blog/blog/%5B/quote%5D

We love VG Donuts! Thank goodness for my DH who’s not really into sweets. If he were, we’d be in trouble. It’s a shame that donuts are so bad for you. If they were healthy, I’d be living on a 100% donut diet!

And you’re right, UCGal, they are pretty sweet.

Really fighting the urge to go there right now.

———–

Speaking of Cardiff, and totally unrelated to donuts…if anyone likes really good Mexican food, you’ve got to try El Nopalito or Jorge’s. Fantastic!!! 🙂

http://www.el-nopalito.com/

http://www.yelp.com/biz/jorges-mexicatessen-encinitas-2

I think El Nopalito puts crack in their salsa or something. You just can’t stop eating it.[/quote]

Does anybody remember San Simeon Mexican Restaurant that was next to Seaside Market until they kicked them out and foofed up the mall? That was the best place and I was sure the owners would open another restaurant, but AFAIK that never happened?

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[quote=FlyerInHi]Sounds like this is all about fear of future competition from immigrant children.

Are people that afraid that immigrants will steal their jobs?[/quote]

Deleted, I need a more anonymous profile so I can say what I really think they’ll steal. 😉

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[quote=UCGal]

After hearing so much about VG’s I tried it. And then tried it again because I thought I should give it more than one chance.

I’m not a fan. Their icing is far to sweet – to the point of diabetic shock. I’m a cake donut person (vs the fluffy raised donuts) and they seemed to specialize in the raised donuts – and the cake donuts they had were iced with the super saturated super sweet icing.

I know – I should give up my San Diego native card for admitting this.[/quote]

I agree, I used to live in Cardiff and maybe my palate’s not refined enough to detect the subtle differences in donuts, but VGs just tasted like generic donuts to me.

On the Fair, how about those cinnamon rolls? I’m just glad that those Cinnamon rolls aren’t available anywhere else outside the fair as I’d probably have died from obesity related illness by now.

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At a company I used to work for, there was an Indian DBA I worked with remotely who was on the East Coast. One time when I tried to contact him, he got back to me saying his schedule was different as he was now in Australia. Turns out there was some issue with his Visa, but no worries, apparently the company had an office in Australia where they would send these guys and Australia was happy to take them.

My Aunt and Uncle had a Russian student living with them. When she finished college, her visa expired and she had to go back to Russia. She couldn’t get back in the US on a work permit for years. She went through years and years of hassle to get back in.

But for some reason, we let in a bunch of illegal and undeucated people in through the Southern border with no issues?

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