zappos.com -- WOW!

i spend so much of my time complaining about stuff here that i needed to balance it out with a recent positive experience. i am still amazed at the speed in receiving two new pairs of shoes from zappos.com.

i ordered the shoes at 220pm.
the shoes departed kentucky at 456pm.
they arrived in connecticut at 653pm.
the ups guy knocked on my door the next day at 255pm.

so within 24 hours the shoes were ordered and delivered from kentucky to massachusetts!

add in the fact that shipping is free (both ways, even on returns) and i dont know why everyone wouldnt order their shoes from zappos.

thank you for the great service.

what recession? part deux

right on cue after my last posting, today the boston herald reported on all the new hiring done by the state this year. according to the article, the state has filled over 1300 new positions this year. though an aide stated that 236 of those people have since been laid off, it still amounted to $46 million of new spending...

...during a recession.

argh!

what recession?

file this under the government just not getting it...again.

according to a usa today analysis of federal salary data from december 2007 until june 2008:

** federal employees making greater than $100,000 increased from 14% to 19% - before overtime and bonuses are counted

** the defense department made out the best with pay increases. eighteen months ago, 1868 employees made $150,000+. now 10,100 earn that amount!

** the treasury department used to have one solo person making $170,000+, now there are 1690

** this growth in salaries pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206 compared with the private sector's $40,331

apparently this is an area where bipartisanship actually works as these pay raises are due to new salary rules and pay raises put into place by both president bush and president obama.

while the rest of america is struggling with cutting back personal and corporate budgets and unemployment hovering around 10%, the federal government just keeps taking more for itself.

everyone should be outraged.

gotta love massachusetts politics

current state rep and mayor-elect william lantigua of lawrence is, to me, representative of how politics works in massachusetts. lantigua won the mayoral election but has vowed to stay on as state rep even once hes sworn in as mayor. of course this also means collecting both salaries - $100,00 as mayor and $61,000 as a legislator - and both pensions.

what makes this especially grating is that the city of lawrence has recently declared that they can no longer pay their bills and is requesting $17 million of state aid.

thankfully state rep thomas golden of lowell has stepped in to say he will file a bill to prohibit lantigua from his double-dipping shenanigans. only time will tell whether lantigua is grandfathered in by the bill.

reason #189 why i love living in a city

sure theres benefits to heading to the suburbs. but im willing to bet the suburbs dont offer the chance to catch a glimpse of a homeless guy wearing jean shorts over his red velvet santa pants, festive santa hat and black cape with fur trim.

happy festivus to us all!

sometimes i want to be a city planner

i spend a lot of time in my car which gives me an intimate view of the layout of the streets around boston. there are two specific intersections that get me particularly frustrated. i dont land on the road rage end of the spectrum but i have personally witnessed how other drivers get escalated to this level.

intersection #1 - cross st and north washington st, north end
















this intersection is one of the errors resulting from the big dig. there are two lanes on cross st coming out of the north end, making a soft right hand turn onto north washington st. immediately after making the turn, the left hand lane (labeled A in the photo) becomes a left hand turn lane allowing drivers to make a u-turn to head back towards i-93 south. the light is timed so that A lane drivers get a left hand turn signal and the straight traffic lane (labeled B) remains at a red light. thankfully boston drivers dont recognize lane A as a dedicated turn lane so once the light turns solid green, all lanes proceed straight. unless of course youre stuck behind a car that needs to turn left. so the frustration arises in two lanes of traffic trying to merge into one lane while making a turn. an additional issue is that some drivers, either out of frustration or confusion, make an illegal u-turn instead of waiting for the light.

my simple solution is simply to keep two straight lanes and add a dedicated left hand turn lane.


intersection #2 - university rd and comm ave, boston






















this intersection has more personal meaning to me as another driver actually threatened me here one day, all due to the layout of the road. coming from the brookline direction, there are two lanes that intersect with comm ave. the lanes are clearly marked during the turn to indicate that the left hand lane (labeled A) makes a left onto comm ave towards the bu bridge. the right hand lane (labeled B) goes straight onto university rd toward storrow drive. the problem comes from both lanes trying to make the left hand turn. this wouldnt be as big of a problem if there were still two lanes to turn onto the bu bridge. however, for an unknown reason, the city has instead decided to create a giant median and only one turn lane. you could argue that the reason is because of the bridge construction reducing the traffic to one lane. but isnt this construction temporary, meaning it eventually will have two lanes in each direction again?

i see two solutions. either strictly police enforce that only the left lane can turn left onto comm ave. or allow both lanes to make the left hand turn but reduce the size of the median and return to two turn lanes onto the bu bridge.

roll back the sales tax

great news today from carla howell and the alliance to roll back taxes! thank you to all who signed the petition.

Success! Today We Filed a Bullet-Proof, Challenge-Proof Number of Validated Signatures to Roll Back Sales Tax from 6.25% to 3%

Today, at 10:30am at the Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Carla Howell and several volunteers filed the last batches of validated signatures for this petition drive.

"We filed a bullet-proof, challenge-proof number of signatures for our ballot initiative to roll back the sales tax from 6.25% to 3%," said Carla Howell.

"We needed 66,593 validated signatures to qualify. Today, we turned in the last of over 75,978 validated signatures - 9,385 more signatures than the law requires."

Why did we need to carefully collect 94,000 signatures? Massachusetts' Draconian ballot petitioning laws. Regulations and court rulings that allow legally registered voters' signatures to be disqualified. Plus, an aggressive teachers union that loves tax hikes and hates tax cuts.

Results? We're headed for the November 2010 ballot.

if you want more information about carla howell and this organization, you can go here. but more importantly, be sure to go to the polls next year to vote the lower tax rate into law.

civics class

below is a link to a short 12 question quiz to see how well you pay attention to the news. can you pass it?

take the quiz

the lovely mass pike

so we drove from massachusetts to pennsylvania yesterday to spend thanksgiving with my family. we left around 8am and hit a little traffic but it wasnt too bad. im told by some friends that left around 9am that the mass pike was at a crawl. thankfully we left on the earlier side. obviously you have to factor in the holiday and that there are generally more cars on the road. however the mass pike drives me crazy...so i had to address it.

tolls in general
the tolls should be removed. they were originally put into place to pay for the building of the mass pike and the taxpayers were told that it was temporary and once the turnpike was paid for, the tolls would be removed. yet they remain, and the rates continue to rise.

we had a chance this year to add a ballot measure that would have allowed voters to decide whether the tolls should be removed. however the folks at close the tolls did not receive enough signatures to get the measure added to the ballots. i know i had some of you sign the petition, but lets work to get it added to the 2010 ballot.

there is another group called the toll equity trust that is actually suing the turnpike authority for misappropriations of collected toll monies. according to them, 58% of collected tolls are used to pay for big dig debt and not for turnpike expenditures.

fast lane
from what i could find, approximately 40% of drivers use the fastlane. the turnpike authority reports that they save an additional $0.30 for every toll dollar collected when drivers use the fastlane. so why isnt more emphasis placed on rewarding those with a fastlane pass? by getting more people to use the fastlane, it means less money lost paying for toll collectors.

check out how many actual fastlanes exist at tollbooths and where they are located. on our trip yesterday i noticed that at the sturbridge tolls (a notorious choke point for traffic) that there were 7 open tollbooths. of those seven, 2 were for fastlane users, 4 for cash payers, and 1 that could be for either. again, why are we not rewarding fastlane users?

wasted revenue
david hartgen is a professor of transportation studies at the university of north carolina charlotte and a fellow of the reason foundation. in july 2008 he produced his 17th annual report on the performance of state highway systems. you can find it here. there is lots of valuable information about every state in the report. the one area i wanted to highlight was the amount of money spent per highway mile. massachusetts ranks 2nd only behind new jersey with $749,070 per highway mile! should there be a pothole anywhere in the state with that amount of money spent?! where does all of this money go?


enjoy the rest of your turkey day celebrations.

the year ends...kind of

so street cleaning ends on november 30th. our street is on a tuesday sweeping schedule. so that means today is the final day i have to be concerned with which side of the street im parked on, what time it is if i am parked on the wrong side, whether the sweeper has come by already and its safe to move my car back, how to get to the tow lot to get my car back, and how much its going to cost to pay the ticket and get my car out of the tow lot.

fun fact: for fiscal year 2008, the city of boston issued 1.53 MILLION parking tickets, collecting $63.3 MILLION! thats an average of $41 per ticket. the fine for a street sweeping violation is $40. that cant be coincidence can it?

beat it meter maids, sorry parking enforcement agents. see ya april 1st.

football and overeating

for me, yesterday officially kicks off the holiday season of overindulging.

six years ago yesterday i met my beautiful bride for the first time. she had just purchased a tambourine and was taking part in a two person parade through the north end of boston. long story short, they came over to my place for from grilling and college football and six years later we continue to celebrate november 22nd as what is now known as parade day. so yesterday we had some friends over to enjoy a roast and a whole chicken and our friends brought all the delicious side dishes to accompany them. add in a few bud lights or red wine and the pats/jets game and the holiday season was underway.

this year we will spend traveling to PA to be with my family. and having an italian mother, there is never a shortage of food. i swear that my mom doesnt actually eat any of the food she prepares. she just serves it, then starts preparing the next meal. the football this year will come in the form of several of the family alma maters in the playoffs. villanova (mom/dad/sister) hosts holy cross. william & mary (me) takes on weber state. elon (brother) goes to richmond. UNH (wife) heads to mcneese state. and appalachian state (sister again) hosts south carolina state. of course very few of these games will actually be on tv but hopefully we can at least catch some scores throughout the day.

so loosen your belt. get in some exercise when you can. try to take everything in moderation. be ok with putting on a few pounds. and enjoy yourselves, your family and friends these next couple months.

federal debt

at the urging of my buddy todd i watched the movie I.O.U.S.A., a 2008 documentary aimed at educating the public about the exploding federal debt and how scared americans should be. the sad part is that most people in the general public just have no clue. and worse yet, more of an interest in watching american idol or dancing with the stars than learning about this "boring" stuff.

in 2000, the federal debt was approximately $5 trillion. by the time this movie was made, the debt had risen to approximately $9 trillion. as of november 2009, the debt is now a little over $12 trillion. the country can not continue on this path.

no matter what side of the political aisle you reside, the information in this movie is compelling, shocking, frightening and should be common knowledge of the general public. if you are a netflix kind of person, you can even watch it instantly.

need some laughs?

ive been addicted to comedian bill burr's monday morning podcast recently. look for it on itunes.

he does another podcast with a comic named joe derosa called uninformed radio. you cant find it on itunes yet but you can listen from their website.

My ideas on street sweeping and trash collection

i had to address this issue first because my friends have heard me talk about it enough. my friend thereasa even wrote about the issue after hearing my rantings one too many times. ive written emails to my local rep and mayor with my ideas but didnt even receive the polite generic "thank you for contacting us" response.

so heres the issue in a nutshell...
in doing a little research on the city of bostons website i found out that most of the street sweeping (63%) is done prior to trash collection. while the trash collectors do a relatively fine job, there is inevitably going to be some trash that doesnt make it onto the truck and thus sits in the street for a week until street cleaning occurs again. so essentially the street is clean for 1 day out of the week.

i believe that if just a few changes were made to the scheduling of these two events during the week that the amount of time with clean streets could be maximized.

heres the breakdown of street sweeping..











scenario #1 - the easier solution
move trash collection day from wednesday to tuesday. even without changing the street sweeping schedule that means that 64% of the street sweeping occurs after trash collection.

scenario #2 - the more involved solution
very little street sweeping is done wed PM (8%) or thursday (1%). move trash collection to tuesday and all/some of tuesday street sweeping to wed PM or thursday. this would result in nearly 100% street sweeping occurring after trash collection.

so what are the potential pitfalls or problems?
* all the signage pertaining to street sweeping would need to be changed which potentially could be costly. however with a little planning it may just require moving a sign from one street to another, not creating a whole new sign.
* residents would get confused about when to put out the trash or when they need to move their cars. perhaps at first but then wouldnt everyone just learn the new pattern?


am i missing anything else as to why this is a bad idea? of course this becomes a moot point in a week as street cleaning ends november 30th.

i have further ideas involving the street sweeping schedule and snow removal....but lets wait for the winter to really get here before that conversation starts.

In the beginning...

my first posting on my first blog. its very odd considering i dont know who is going to read this.

so what does the blog name mean?
i tend to get up early on saturday mornings while my wife enjoys sleeping in. i make myself an iced coffee and take our dog millie for a walk around the neighborhood. when we get back home, millie jumps back into our bed and goes back to sleep. thats when i tend to sit down in front of the computer to read the news and research topics that interest me. the topics can run the gambit -- political, sports, local community, or just weird facts. if my political leaders tracked when they receive emails from me, im pretty sure it would reveal that 95% of them arrive on a saturday morning.

as a kid i once wrote short stories revolving around a character named dirk hannah and ive always had a general interest in writing but have never really pursued it in any capacity. for a few years right after college i kept a journal. it started as a way to document a cross country trip but then morphed into just my daily musings on my life. this blog will help me continue to catalog some of my thoughts.

i may post more often then only saturday mornings but i hope you find some level of enjoyment or amusement in the things rattling around my head.