Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

It’s been a crazy week, but a few people have been asking how things are going with our new scooter/moped (more here) lately. After driving it for about three weeks now and racking up over 125 miles on the odometer, it looks like we’re going to need to fill up the tank again.

All 1 gallon of it.

So that means we’re getting about 125 miles per gallon with our scooter, which we’re obviously pretty pleased with, and on top of the fact that it costs us about $2.95 to drive that 125 miles, it feels good to know we’re cutting down on the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases we produce.

We recently purchased a 49cc (the size of the motor relieves us from having to get a separate motorcycle license) moped to do something about getting gouged at the gas pump every time we go to fill up and today was it’s initial ride to work for me.

After years of complaining about the high price of gas and supporting big oil, Jenny and I thought it was time to finally do something about it, so when the chance to purchase a moped for a very reasonable price popped up, we jumped. The cost of the moped is roughly equal to filling up our xTerra eight times, which is crazy when you think about it, and the moped - with it’s 1 gallon tank should get us around 75 miles per gallon. On top of the money we’re saving, it also feels good to know that we’re doing a small part to cut down on the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases that we produce.

Jenny will be the primary rider since I have to take two kids to daycare three days a week, but on the days I don’t, I’m looking forward to riding it to work and to run quick errands around the neighbourhood.

Today’s maiden voyage was a rude reminder of how terrible many of Milwaukee’s drivers are. Quick tangent: did you know that upwards of 90,000 people in Milwaukee County drive with suspended or revoked licenses?

People who normally do 45mph on a 30mph street seemed extra eager today to swerve and accelerate around me. But I have to admit I felt a certain degree of smug satisfaction when I would catch them 30 seconds later as they waited at the next red light. At the same time, I also felt very good about our decision to purchase a helmet right after we purchased the moped.

I think I finally understand why people have those “Share the road with motorcycles” bumper stickers on their cars.

One other thing I noticed today on the ride in is how much more aware of my surroundings I was as compared to a car. I’m sure motorcycle riders have been noticing that since day one, but for me it was interesting to notice a lot of the little things along the road that I’ve never noticed before in two plus years of driving the same route.

While our story isn’t the “Motorcycle Diaries” or anything, it feels good knowing we’re doing something to curb our support of big oil and helping the environment at the same time.

The extension of the deadline for completion of the “testing area” of the Milwaukee Wireless Inititiative passed last March (more here) has now come and gone without fanfare.

The official update site for the project from the City still has the 120 day extension as the most recent news item as well.

There was a short article in last Saturday’s edition of the MJS which doesn’t provide much new information other than the admission from Midwest Fiber Networks (the company building out the network) that on-time completion of the entire project due next March is “not a feasible option”.

For those who’ve been following this story for the past two and a half years, this is hardly a surprise as the project has been stymied by delays and missed benchmarks from the beginning. And while the completion of the testing area, which hasn’t yet been confirmed, is an important milestone in this project, it’s unfortunate that the goalposts for completion of this potentially exciting project keep getting moved back.

The next update I assume we’ll receive will be at next Wednesday’s Public Works Committee meeting. There’s no agenda available as yet for the meeting, but one can only assume that Midwest Fiber Networks will be appearing to give an update on their progress regarding the testing area and the overall buildout of the entire city-wide network. I plan on being there and will provide more information as I find it.

At this morning’s Public Works committee meeting of the Milwaukee Common Council, Midwest Fiber Networks was given a 120 day extension to complete work on the “demonstration area” of the Milwaukee Wireless Initiative that was originally scheduled to be completed in mid-January.

Milwaukee’s CIO said that out of the 120 street post antenna’s that are planned for th 5 square mile demonstration area, 22 are currently installed and working. A Midwest Fiber representative said that although it takes an average of 1-2 days to install each new antenna, she was “100% confident” that the company would meet the extended deadline in 120 days.

That would mean they’ll have to install those 100 remaining antenna’s in under a day each to meet the 120 day deadline, and was a point I wish one of the Alderman would have asked for clarification on.

The question I have now is what happens if and when the new deadline for completion of the demonstration area is missed? Another extension?

Making a few more cosmetic changes to my site, sorry about any temporarily broken links.

I’m no Bryan Buchs when it comes to the frequency with which I alter the look of my website, but I’m doing my best.

An article in today’s MJS reports on the growing frustration with IT projects at the Milwaukee Police Dept. The focus is on one in particular that’s supposed to identify “problematic” Milwaukee police officers.

The “Early Intervention Program,” first pitched by Chief Nannette Hegerty more than three years ago, still is in the works. The Police Department’s latest projection is that the program, budgeted to cost $500,000, will be working by late April.

The article goes on to point out the fact that some in City Hall are none to pleased about the what’s turning out to be chronic problems with IT projects at the Police Dept.

Ald. Bob Donovan, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, wants to know why the police have so many problems with computers.

“Anything technical at the Police Department is always millions over budget and years behind schedule, and I don’t know understand that. We need to get to the bottom of this, and in a hurry”

Like most rhetorical questions, this one also has an easy answer. IT projects are always late and over budget because the MPD doesn’t have the technical staff on hand to implement such projects as well as they should be.

And why is that?

Again, as with most things, it’s all about the money. A few years ago when I was in the job market, there were a number of positions at the MPD that caught my eye until I saw the ridiculously low salaries. While most people would look at the salary and say, “Gee, that’s a lot of money”, the fact is that you just can’t find the kind of good experienced IT talent you need for projects like the “Early Intervention Program” for $40,000 or $45,000 a year.

Why would any experienced IT people leave their jobs where they can easily make twice that to work for the MPD? And just to clarify, it’s a problem for every IT position in the public sector, not a situation that’s unique to the MPD.

The crazy thing is that hiring more qualified staff would actually save taxpayers money in the long run by keeping projects like this on time and on budget. But the fact is that the MPD budget is stretched thin already and their priorities are understandably focused on areas other than IT.

So while Ald. Bob Donovan may be asking the question publicly to raise awareness of the issue, I have to believe that in his own mind, he knows the real reason for the delays and knows the real solutions.

Now comes the tough part for him: taking that knowledge and proposing some solutions for the problem.

I picked up a new Macbook Pro today, which believe it or not is the first new computer I’ve ever owned that I’ve didn’t assemble myself… It’s just as dreamy as I thought it would be!

Is it just me or is anyone else noticing serious flakiness lately with the Journal Sentinel website, jsonline.com? It seems like every other page takes a few minutes to load if it does at all.

Maybe they put Paddy Mac in charge of the servers and he’s blocking “angry liberal bloggers”?

See if you can spot the irony in this news tidbit about the CEO of Waukesha-based RedPrairie:

John Jazwiec, top executive with Waukesha-based RedPrairie Corp., renewed his call Friday for major tax cuts and an end to “the welfare system” as part of an effort to attract creative people to the Milwaukee area and build a knowledge-based economy.

To end “the welfare system” we should be doling out tax breaks to huge corporations like his?

So Jazwiec wants to see the end of welfare for regular people, but corporate welfare on the other hand should be encourged. Right.

From the wierd but true files…

My weblog is currently the #1 search result on Google for last month’s media sensation of the century, John Mark Carr. Even more wierd: judging by the amount of traffic coming to a previous entry in my weblog about him, a fair number of people actually still care.

As you may have noticed, the ‘recent comments’ section on the left side of my weblog has been filled lately by two types of comments: those pushing various poker, casino, and other card type games and those from ‘real’ sounding people telling me what an “Interesting wonderful great site you have! I will be sure to come back in the future” followed by a few paragraphs of crap about whatever product they’re hawking.

It’s the commonly known problem of comment spam, robots crawling the Web and posting comments on weblogs with links to their own site to boost their page rank with Google.

For the first few months since I switched to the dancody.org domain name, I didn’t have a problem with comment spam bots at all because my own ‘page rank’ with google was so low that there was nothing to be gained out of having a link from my site. In the last month or so though, I’ve been posting a lot more, and a few of my posts have been linked to from well known weblogs, two journals, and last week the web site of the Washington Post.

In fact, the month of December has been the busiest ever for my website (going back five years with five2one.org) with about 1,000 unique visitors a day and 5,000 - 7,500 page views a day. Nothing huge in the grand scheme of things of course, and not anything that drives what happens here, but interesting none the less. It’s also slightly gratifying that after years of talking about the issues I talk about - in the way that I talk about them - that I’m making a small difference and being looked to for opinion of my own from time to time. And as all of my good friends now, if there’s anything that I’m all about, it’s self gratification.. Kidding of course ;)

All of those things have increased the page rank of my own site, which makes it more attractive for spam bots to post their links here with the hope of increasing their own page rank. To be honest, what is getting through in terms of spam on the site is a very small amount of what the spam bots are trying to get through. I block probably about 90% of the comment spam attempts every day before they make it to the site, but a few do trickle through.

There are some other ways to stop it, but I don’t want to make people ‘register’ for my site just to post a comment, nor jump through any other hoops like moderation from me. Bryan mentioned to me last week that the new version of Movable Type has some increased functionality with regards to comment spam, so I might be upgrading to that in the next week, which should take a bite out the comment spam so you can see in an instant who is berating who in the political slugfest of the day :)