Fortune Favors The Bold

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Sep 08
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The Cotton Killer

Horror movie night in the lovebirds’ household. “(500) Days of Summer”. Most terrifying movie I ever watched. Blood and guts everywhere! Zooey Deschanel is the most villainous, violent, wretched creature in cinema. Even as the end credits were rolling, I thought she was still going to jump out and stab him again. 

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Sep 07
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artyucko replied to your postLast-ranked in the NFC East? 19th in the league?…

…feels so good at the bottom, but beware of the bends. “Chiefs picked as Division winners by ESPN” = LOLOLOLran out of LOLs.

I wish I got the joke on that one. I guess they finally built on this?

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Last-ranked in the NFC East? 19th in the league? So this Giants season is starting off in the opposite direction, eh?

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skidder:

jdel:

Cab drives into the side of coffee shop on 1st Ave and 3rd St. No reported fatalities, but at least 1 person was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.

JAMES DEL INVESTIGATES

This story has been posted everywhere, but let’s review what we know (and what was repeated among multiple news sources):
A cab was going north on First Avenue with at least one passenger. Around that time, a Jeep was traveling west on East 3rd Street and making a quick right turn onto First Avenue. Some witnesses claim the Jeep ran a red light.
The cab, unable to avoid the Jeep, swerved and hit the other vehicle… but then also crossed the parking lane, the bike lane (hitting and injuring two cyclists) before jumping the sidewalk and crashing into/through the front window of The Bean - also hitting a customer inside who was badly injured.
Let’s say the Jeep was totally at fault. This doesn’t explain how a late-model compact SUV taxicab with anti-lock brakes managed to go over 100 feet from the time of seeing the crossing vehicle to stopping… through the intersection, across a parking lane, across a bike lane, across the sidewalk… with multiple energy-absorbing collisions (Jeep, cyclists, curb, trashcan) along the way! At most, without impacts, the cab should have traveled 75 feet.
OH, WAIT, MAYBE THE CAB WAS SPEEDING. After all, the passenger in the back of the cab broke her teeth on the plexiglas divider in at least one of these collisions, indicating that a nearly full-speed collision happened as one of the collisions along the way. 
What’s worse, this is a really big intersection, and in most cases you’d have a lot of time to react to a vehicle jumping out from East 3rd… The Bean is on the complete opposite side of the avenue from where traffic emerges from East 3rd, and there’s a bus lane and parking lane separating the traffic flow from that emerging side of East 3rd… it would be really hard to get in a full-speed accident in that intersection if you were traveling at the speed limit, and even harder to end up in a shop window. Of course, if you do not hit the brakes, or if you are already speeding, this is absolutely possible.
Would you believe that the commenters on the news stories linked are trying to blame the bike lanes for this mess? Of course they are. Eliminate the bike lanes and speeding, careening cabs will no longer be a problem. No one ever got hit by a cab before Janette Sadik-Khan started messing with the city.
In reality, before we reconfigure any bike lanes, we need to address the problem of crazy traffic on the streets. Our streets and intersections are designed for something like this to NEVER happen, even if a vehicle does slide through a red light. That’s why we have curbs, parking lanes and wide intersections. The fact that this cab crashed into a storefront - and could have killed people - should be a serious indicator to the police that traffic laws are being routinely broken by avenue traffic, especially taxicabs. The speed and erratic behavior of traffic in Manhattan is putting everyone in danger. When will we get serious about addressing it?

skidder:

jdel:

Cab drives into the side of coffee shop on 1st Ave and 3rd St. No reported fatalities, but at least 1 person was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.

JAMES DEL INVESTIGATES

This story has been posted everywhere, but let’s review what we know (and what was repeated among multiple news sources):

A cab was going north on First Avenue with at least one passenger. Around that time, a Jeep was traveling west on East 3rd Street and making a quick right turn onto First Avenue. Some witnesses claim the Jeep ran a red light.

The cab, unable to avoid the Jeep, swerved and hit the other vehicle… but then also crossed the parking lane, the bike lane (hitting and injuring two cyclists) before jumping the sidewalk and crashing into/through the front window of The Bean - also hitting a customer inside who was badly injured.

Let’s say the Jeep was totally at fault. This doesn’t explain how a late-model compact SUV taxicab with anti-lock brakes managed to go over 100 feet from the time of seeing the crossing vehicle to stopping… through the intersection, across a parking lane, across a bike lane, across the sidewalk… with multiple energy-absorbing collisions (Jeep, cyclists, curb, trashcan) along the way! At most, without impacts, the cab should have traveled 75 feet.

OH, WAIT, MAYBE THE CAB WAS SPEEDING. After all, the passenger in the back of the cab broke her teeth on the plexiglas divider in at least one of these collisions, indicating that a nearly full-speed collision happened as one of the collisions along the way. 

What’s worse, this is a really big intersection, and in most cases you’d have a lot of time to react to a vehicle jumping out from East 3rd… The Bean is on the complete opposite side of the avenue from where traffic emerges from East 3rd, and there’s a bus lane and parking lane separating the traffic flow from that emerging side of East 3rd… it would be really hard to get in a full-speed accident in that intersection if you were traveling at the speed limit, and even harder to end up in a shop window. Of course, if you do not hit the brakes, or if you are already speeding, this is absolutely possible.

Would you believe that the commenters on the news stories linked are trying to blame the bike lanes for this mess? Of course they are. Eliminate the bike lanes and speeding, careening cabs will no longer be a problem. No one ever got hit by a cab before Janette Sadik-Khan started messing with the city.

In reality, before we reconfigure any bike lanes, we need to address the problem of crazy traffic on the streets. Our streets and intersections are designed for something like this to NEVER happen, even if a vehicle does slide through a red light. That’s why we have curbs, parking lanes and wide intersections. The fact that this cab crashed into a storefront - and could have killed people - should be a serious indicator to the police that traffic laws are being routinely broken by avenue traffic, especially taxicabs. The speed and erratic behavior of traffic in Manhattan is putting everyone in danger. When will we get serious about addressing it?

(via iaminlikewithmybike)

Sep 04
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Look at what Carolyn got for her birthday! No, not the cat. He’s been around a while. The ring is new, though.

Look at what Carolyn got for her birthday! No, not the cat. He’s been around a while. The ring is new, though.

Sep 03
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(thx Mandie)

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fletcherlives:

vbs:

Whenever someone at our office bitches about being overworked, our stock response is “Beats digging ditches.” While the express intention of the statement is usually not-so-supportive, we think it’s a healthy reminder that at the end of the day, we are all basically professional emailers and should be thankful for such…

Fuck that, I’m a coder. I’m building shit all day. Shit that makes $$$$$$$$$.

And to be honest, I’d happily trade off half of my stressful-enough work day (but not the whole thing) to do something with some element of physicality, because it IS brutal to sit at a desk all day. It may not be fun to burn a lot of physical energy on labor, but at least it’s something that, once you get used to it, is easier than being chairbound. 

Then again, being in a line of work that compensates much better than any readily-attainable job in the physical labor world, with the caveat that you rarely move around from 9am till whenever… it’s a nice problem to have.

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marco said: Congratulations, Aaron. Regardless of how you feel now, you’ll probably look back on this in a few months and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Good luck.

Left as a comment on this post

Is it just me, or does it appear that Aaron was unwillingly dismissed from his job? If so, this comment is LOLworthy. “Congratulations” indeed.

And yeah, let’s find Aaron another job!

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