Why don't they implement cameras at intersections

Dear Bermuda Government,

After watching other jerks such as the rider of AW081 blatantly run a red-light at the Cedar Avenue/Victoria Street intersection (the light was red when he approached it, he overtook me as I waited then went through after looking both ways, - he watched his Sesame Street, I suppose), I urge you to consider implementing a system of cameras at traffic lights and other intersections to catch violators of the law and dangers to our pedestrians and other motorists.

After you complete your most-worthy $25,000 private car park for Ministers that will surely be of great benefit to the community, perhaps you can spare a little time to address this issue before there is a serious collision. It may very well save the life of one of you.

Don't get me watches, sunglasses or other accessories

Even though Washington Street (North) is a two-way street, the rider of AT815 figured a good way to get to the head of the line was to overtake using the other lane and go from there. She had to make a quick adjustment when she discovered that a car (shocking!) was turning into that particular lane. The sad thing is that I think this happens more times than not, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a car driver make the mistake of believing the street was two-way.

Just about a month after I spent $75 on a pair of sunglasses (recall, my eye infection - and was recommended to purchase a pair asap), they're gone. In a bout of laziness/carelessness, I was attempting to carry a bunch of items home and decided it was smart to put my cap in the front compartment of my bike and slide my shades on top of them while putting one of my bags in the seat compartment and hanging the other bag on the hook in front. Stupid. Somwehere along the line they probably slipped out and I didn't notice, I suppose because I was thinking more about getting home in the rain.

So I get home and realize they're missing. Made a phone call but no luck. One of the things that I was loaded with was a batch of egg rolls and somehow I forgot to put them in the fridge as my mind was elsewhere (I had KFC, go figure) with getting dinner and worrying about the shades. So yesterday afternoon I discover that and have to throw the egg rolls away. So 2-for-2, although the shades were way more important.

Historically I've never had any success with accessories. Watches get lost (or stolen), shades get lost (or broken), and the two times that I've had jewelry (once a bead necklace thing, once a gold bracelet thing - don't ask, because you know I don't even like men's jewelry) they've been stolen. So please, never ever get me accessories.

Meanwhile I'm going to have to get a new pair of shades. I'll be at the pharmacy getting some el cheapos if I can. No more brand-name stuff. Ever.

Back up to speed

The Forums have been tidied up for the time being thanks to the upgrade and adding some mods to allow users to register via visual confirmation and this should discourage the pesky bots from getting in and whatnot.

I'll be resuming my mini-projects sometime soon, such as the Hearts guide, new icon pack and eventual conversion of the Whappenings to something more controllable by myself.

I haven't ranted about traffic craziness here in some time, but I have a couple of observations.

The first is again how some people still don't get the protocol regarding roundabouts. It is [b]not[/b] about who gets there first, it's about giving way to traffic coming from the right and proceeding otherwise. I saw a woman stop at her Give Way sign and try to wave someone through when she had the right of way. Luckily there was only a single motorcyclist behind at the time. But that kind of behaviour could easily lead to a collision.

The second one is a bit more hazy. When I first went to Barbados to study, I was perplexed at how regular pedal cycles had licence plates. It didn't seem to fit. However, now that I'm back here and see some people on the streets doing their wheelies and swerving about in the road and the sidewalk, perhaps implementing legislation should be considered. And no, I'm not talking about putting this on kids' new little bicycle with training wheels and the like. Just bicycles that are to be ridden on the roads. Provide some accountability. And those who race in sanctioned events would be allowed a bit of leeway when they are in competition. Plus it will help when reporting the jokers for their violations (especially the ones with no headlights after dark) and they can be identified by more than "on a black mountain bike", for example. I could really use some feedback on this.

Congratulations to the Hacker

A malicious hacker has succeeded in his mission to frustrate me with the website. I'd give him mad props for wasting 20 minutes of his time which led to me wasting as of now 3 days (this number will grow, believe me) trying to restore things. I hope he was able to gather up more than the measly 10 e-mail addresses that he can sell to mass-spammers.

In a bout of frustration combined with tiredness, I attempted to upgrade the Forums with the latest version of phpBB, but I think I erred and overwrote the config.php file and now I'm stuck with what could be a irrecoverable situation. That plus the fact that I can't blog anything (I will be manually putting this entry onto the site) turns my site into the old 1990s style lask-of-updates kind of craphole.

In other news, I was a passenger in a car that was side-swiped by some driver in a hit-and-run situation. My belief, as well as that of the police officers who came to file the report, is that the driver was likely drunk and didn't want to stop because they'd get booked for impaired driving. If there's a silver lining, it's that he or she took a good chunk of damage himself or herself. After all, we managed to get their BLUE headlight cover as our souvenir (well, until the Police took it for their records, heh). I'll be watching the streets for the jackass, though.

Trying to post again

I've downloaded a copy of Movable Type and Nucleus CMS, and will be evaluating them sometime soon as an eventual replacement for Blogger which at this time is still not publishing my blog with any success.

Some malicious joker invaded the Forums and hacked the index page. Grr. But it did alert me that I needed to keep the Forums updated with the latest versions for all the security leaks that may be exposed from time to time. So sometime soon I'll be attempting to upgrade the forum pages.

A good friend of mine apparently will become a new parent - so the streak continues. I'm getting called "Uncle" quite a bit recently. I love kids. But it's a little bit weird.

My girl, Andrea, that's right, I'm claiming her because after all we were the tightest of physics buddies back at Harrison College (and let me tell you, A-level physics was really tough), continued to rock with a 6th-place performance at the Worlds. Just short of a medal, but imagine being classed as one of the top racers in the world. Incredible.

Email: Worried about my eyes

Once again I'm now wondering about my own mortality.

Went to the opthamologist's office today. Oddly enough a third different doctor was on hand to examine my eye. Apparently the prescription has worked well and I can now begin to gradually wean myself off of the Pred Forte. However the doctor thinks that there may be something else with my eyes, and asked me to check up on my family history relating to glaucoma.

Dang. Glaucoma is one of the common words you hear about concerning eye problems (along with cataracts). So now I'm pretty concerned. I'm doing some research today at http://www.glaucoma.org/ to learn about this ailment. I'm still under 30 so it would be rare for me to develop it just yet but I probably am at higher risk due to my ethnic background and possibly family history (I'm not sure of the whys but both of my parents do use prescription eyewear at times).

I cherish my vision and would not wish to lose my sight so I'm taking this stuff very seriously. My field test isn't until November but I'm going to be wary of everything up to that date.

Email Blog: Booking and more Bad Spelling

I'm Booking driver of taxi T1396 for failing to signal left before
turning off, in addition to the failre to realize where the line to stop
at a traffic light was.

So, in the spirit of Lynne Truss, I spot my first egrerious punctuation
catastrophe on a banner outside the Four Star Pizza restaurant (soon to
be renamed) in Flatts Village. Yep, the sign was for "Gourmet Pizza's".

Let the revolution begin. Why is it that only English is getting mangled
by people? You don't hear of bad grammar in French or Spanish or Russian
being contagious all over the place.

Politics of Education and other news

UBP candidate Christian Dunleavy in a newspaper column called for a public inquiry as to why the graduation rate from Bermuda's public schools was only 53%. The Minister of Education responded with something that attacked Dunleavy on the grounds of his own educational upbringing, deemed him unqualified to comment, did a bunch of things, but really gave absolutely no answer as to why the rates were so abysmally low, or what the Department plans to do to try to get the numbers to something close to okay.

Yes, Dunleavy could possibly be using it as a political football. Yes, he could be questioning openly the parents or whatever societal constraints are leading to such results instead of Government. But the fact remains that nearly half of the students leaving high school aren't qualified to do so. And something should be done about it.

And I just realize that I've probably broken a couple of grammar rules in the previous two paragraphs. I may need to re-read that Lynne Truss book again.

Peter Jennings passed away Sunday night. Of all the U.S. news personalities, I enjoyed him the most. He had great knowledge of the events that he covered and appeared to take such a personal interest in them, including the international news that went ignored by others. Many people will miss him.

To the rider of BF956, not only are you Booked for some dangerous overtaking in the Flatts area, you also have a missing (broken?) tail-light. That is all.

And this? What the heck? It's a couple of years old, the story, but dang.

The World Track and Field Championships are going on right now, not that you'd notice unless you stumbled onto it randomly on the Web. Obadele Thompson, the pride of Barbados, struggled in the 100m. Hopefully he'll bounce back to championship form in time for one more Olympics.

Web publishing whatzits

So now, I'm having problems publishing the ol' Whapennings Column. I'm not sure if the fault is with the Blogger service or with my web host. I need to investigate this a bit and perhaps tinker around with some settings on both ends.

I came across a couple of variations of the Nigerian 419 scam, this one pertaining to seeking roommates. Be watchful, dear readers. It's serious stuff.

After further browsing along this intriguing topic I wandered onto the www.419eaters.com site which deals with baiting the scammers, and beating them at their own game sometimes! Fun, but I wouldn't want to try this myself. Me, I just delete the emails as they come in (I used to get a fair bit of these e-mails a while ago but it's died down recently).

Of course my favourite Urban Legends debunker, urbanlegends.about.com, has a small listing of 419 scams to go along with all the other good stuff about spam, urban legends, hoax alerts and the like. Visit that site.

I'm back in business

For now, anyway. Got home internet access working for the time being so I'm milking this baby until I fall over. Have a lot to catch up on.

I want to post about my completion of Lynne Truss's (or is that Truss', eh?) "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", but I'll do that later.

My eyes feel much better, but I still have to take these two sets of prescription eye drops for the next 12 or so days. Hope these fix the problem for good. My right eye has never looked better. However, from the other side, it's blurry looking out of it right now. Hopefully that will clear up shortly.

Cup Match, our annual TWO-DAY HOLIDAY set up primarily for a cricket match, was good, with a thrilling conclusion and some very controversial aftermaths involving possible xenophobic statements, on-field altercations, questionable umpiring, and a tussle over broadcasting rights. Crazy. But St. George's won... yay!