You get the gist. I do not go over this bridge often, maybe once a year. Some who traveled the bridge more often claimed that it was wobbly and the deck was deteriorating, which has no affect on the underlying steel structure but may be a representation of the quality of upkeep of the rest of the bridge. Interestingly enough the current construction project on the bridge was fixing up the decking.
Contrary of many other regions of the United States, in Minnesota it is supposed to snow, and MNDOT loves to salt the roads heavily. This past year they employed a liquid pre-snow deicing agent which happens to be a corrosion agent. Whether or not this had an effect on this particular bridge who knows. Sadly, since MNDOT is responsible for the maintenance of this bridge, and thus the collapse is their fault, the entire thing will be covered up. Why? We are talking about the metropolitan area that has the second worst traffic problem in the nation just behind LA. MNDOT is filled with a bunch of incompetent fools that would never be able to create a successful transportation system in Sim City 4.
Worst of all, MNDOT is crying about funding now. This is what happens when the state diverts money away transportation and places it into social programs and education. In the past election cycle a referendum on alleviating the current misappropriation of tax dollars from transportation was passed. Sadly, the bill was flawed in forcing a minimum amount to go to mass transit, but no minimum for roads and bridges. Unlike the many idiots in the ‘great’ state of Minnesota, I did not vote for the flawed referendum. In the great way of all politicians, politicians are calling for tax increases to ‘pay’ for roads and bridges. As has happened in the past, these funds, if received will be diverted to further social programs.
-John Havlik
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Busy as usual, but with the added freedom of deadlineless bliss. In the midst of this the reality of next week’s work load creeps up slowly. Three tests, plus what ever else has to be accomplished, leading one to have no life next week, which must be compensated for this week. None-the-less some coding has been taking place, in one mind set it qualifies as studying for the C++ Lab test next week. This coding is for a client for whom one is doing a website redesign. Hopefully that will be finished by tomorrow so that the project mentioned in the previous post can make an alpha appearance on this blog by the weekend.
With temperatures in the 60s, short and tee shirt weather arrived early this year. This is a real motivator to start running again, especially after lack-luster dedication during the past summer and fall. Studies are partially to blame for this, as is the almost broken toe. Speaking of that toe, it is still slightly discolored and a bit swollen. However, it no longer hurts and running no longer has unbearable pains associated with it. Running right after eating is a big no-no, the food stayed down but the pace sucked, only 3 miles in 30 minutes on a treadmill. Ideally 5 miles should have been covered in that amount of time, a pace of 6 minute miles rather than the awfully slow 10 minute mile pace.
-John Havlik
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Believe it or not, the internet is practically a necessity today. Seven years ago when one built one’s first ‘modern’ computer the internet had little meaning. That computer never connected to the internet for another two years. Dial-up sucked, and one will never go back to it. When the cable internet is out or flaky, life begins to suck, especially if any work has to get done. Lately the internet has had some issues, dropping out for no reason, or being as fast as DSL (intolerable speeds of 256k down). Naturally, this magically occurs when it is pertinent to get work done using the internet. When it is not acting up however, it is great. Mediacom recently upped the speed to 8Mbit, which on a good day it is possible to get maintained downloads of 1MB/s. This is no where near as-fast-as using the internet at the U, but it is nice. The problems stem from the cabling in the house being older than one, and the cable modem isn’t directly off of the first split. When the addition/remodeling takes place, new cabling will go in which should clear up the issues (age deteriorates the dielectric in coaxial cable causing problems in frequency transmission). When everything goes fiber to the TV, yeah screw coaxial all together, things will be nice, as fiber is all digital, and doesn’t seem to have aging problems (except for some cheap plastic core stuff).
-John Havlik
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Yep, forget it, use GNU Octave instead. For calculus 3, rather linear algebra and differential equations, there is a lab which requires the use of MATLAB to due things that can get ugly. One particular use is for Gaussian elimination for finding values of several variables that solve a set of equations. Occasionally a write up is required for certain parts of the problems completed in lab. Checking work previously done in lab when doing the write-up is always reassuring. Going back to the computer lab is not convenient, and the 200USD that it costs for a student license of MATLAB can go to better use. That’s where GNU Octave comes in; it’s GNU’s MATLAB replacement that accepts nearly all of MATLAB’s commands. For Gaussian elimination, Octave sure beats writing a PHP script to do it (which I did on Monday).
On a side note, getting Aptana to work on Gentoo is fairly painless, though its installation doesn’t comply with the Gentoo philosophy. Maybe when it comes out of beta I’ll help get it into portage. I’ve also written a simple bash script for loading Aptana, which will be available in the tools section on this site once I figure out exactly where Aptana’s files should go to be consistent with Gentoo’s installation methods. Since at the U of M they don’t automatically load the modules necessary to run MATLAB at login, and the matlab command doesn’t do it automatically I’ve written a simple bash script that should take care of this. It’s available for download in the tools section.
-John Havlik
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In the Computer Science/Electrical Engineering building at the University of Minnesota, there are several computer labs, some run windows, others “UNIX”. These “UNIX” labs consist of Sun workstations (with the odd keyboard, not sure if they are SPARC or Operton based). Instead of running Solaris or Open Solaris, both closer to being “true” UNIX distributions, they run Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution, not a UNIX distribution. Heck, GNU is a recursive acronym that stands for “GNU Not UNIX”. Yes, it is UNIX-like but it is still very different in a theological sense. The oddest thing they did with Ubuntu is to use the Gnome login manager, but they aren’t using Gnome as the desktop manager, instead they are using the stupid desktop manager built into X server. EMACS and g++ are the ‘tools’ that are to be used in the class. Today, however nano replaced EMACS in one’s group. Mozilla wouldn’t launch on any of the terminals, so links2 was substituted in one’s group. Everyone else just complained and twiddled their thumbs as the internet wasn’t ‘available’ for them to complete their lab.
-John Havlik
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WordCamp NYC
