Dumping, Impassable.

OK the assholes that dump in the middle of the street did it again. I discovered it at 2 AM on my way home from Kristin's birthday party. This time, they put the stuff square in the middle, so no vehicles could pass though. However, they made a fatal flaw. They dumped a recent computer on the street. I am going to hook it up to a monitor and find out if there is any clue to who the machine belonged to, and contact them and bitch them out for being part of the problem.

I got my gym membership. It set me back $274 for six months, paid in one installment. Yes, that's expensive. But it's convenient, and includes one meeting with a personal trainer per month, and if it is what helps me get hired as a State Trooper, it will be worth every penny, and then some. In case I don't get hired as a trooper, it will bring me into better physical shape, which will make me feel better.

I looked at the computer(s) I am considering today, in person. I like the HP a lot more, and since I have had good luck with my HP laptop, I will probably end up with the machine. On my way from the Comp USA in Glen Burnie to Baltimore, the ramp from MD 10 NB to I-695 inner loop was closed. I ended up having to go over the Key Bridge (the ramp to Curtis Bay Road was backed up with about 100 cars waiting to exit), and then go up Broening Highway to I-95 and go though the Fort McHenry Tunnel. That cost me $4.00, but since it is billed to the EZ Pass, I won't really notice it.

It's time for this man to go to bed.

Prince George's County Police = Bad?

OK, as I think that Jack Johnson can't get any worse with the Prince George's County Police, he has done it again.

He is blaming the spike in crime on about 150 bad officers that are doing nothing. Never mind that most of the officers with no stats are either on desk duty, FTO duty, or medical leave. The chief is supporting our racist county executive's assertion that the police are responsible for the crime increase. These brownbeatings are going to decrease officer moralle even more, resulting in less work being done. Prince George's County is at a cross roads, where it can become the new urban poor enclave where crime runs rampant, and people live here out of need, not choice. Or it can move forward, break the crime cycle that is causing residents to leave at an incredible rate, and recover to being a decent and affordable place to live. However, with leadership, such as Jack Johnson and Marlyn Bland at the helm, I believe the county will suffer further decline. Young white professionals such as me that live in the county are here just because their parents have not moved for whatever reason, and most people like me are planning an exit strategy that involves either Charles County or Baltimore City for affordable housing, or if they make even more money, Montgomery County, Arlington or DC. Prince George's County is a depressing place to live, with it's high crime rate, lack of middle to upscale shopping opportunities, restaurants, poor quality of service at establishments and from the county government, and even racism directed by newcomers towards the remaining white people. I know my patience is wearing VERY thin, very quickly.

In another Washington Post article, yesterday, they talk about an oak tree growing out of a ten year old pothole in Fort Washington. Potholes are not supposed to remain in roads for ten years, leading to mature oak trees growing out of pavement. There are other county maintained roads in Prince George's County that are in similar shape. Rosaryville Road in Upper Marlboro, a major commuter road with at least 20,000 vehicles a day traveling on it, has not been repaved in over 20 years. South Osborne Road has not been repaved in over 15 years. There are parts of Old Crain Highway that are literally washing away. The pavement quality on Good Luck Road is substandard. The list can literally go on. Montgomery County does not seem to have the same problem with road maintence as Prince George's County does. Nor does the State Highway Administration, which has repaved MD 223, a road that connects with Rosaryville Road at least six times in the past ten years.

I think I have had it.

Last night

Last night I threw up around 3:30 AM, EDT. It was mostly lettuce. However, my dad, with all his heart problems was going though the symptoms of a heart attack. After that, I could not get back to sleep until nearly 5:00 AM, worried that I was just having a heart attack. At 25, a heart attack was probably very low (however not impossible) on the list of things that could make me throw up. I think I just had improperly handled lettuce from one of the salads I ate yesterday.

I'm going over to the rental property for like three hours today, to do some painting, then I am getting ready to go to a party in Baltimore.

And I bid everyone a good day.

Goodbye Hecht's

One of the last Washington/Baltimore homegrown chains will be no more. It will disapear into the minds of people, along with Woodward and Lothrop, Garfinkels, Dart Drug, Jumbo Food, Hot Shoppes Cafeterias, Hechingers, People's Drug, Lansburgh's, Hutzler's, Crown Books, Sutton Place Gourmet, Erols Video, Drug Fair, and Waxie Maxie's. Each have been bought out or been forced out of business. Even the Nextel cellular provider has been purchased by Sprint, who knows if they will be around much longer in their current form. Federated's impending merger with May Company will leave Hechts to become Macys, and will involve the closing of the Wheaton, White Marsh, Owings Mills and Marley Station (Glen Burnie) Hecht's locations. It's sad to see one of the last DC/Baltimore region chains disapear. I bet that the Baltimore area stores to close end up as either Boscov's, Bloomingdales or Lord and Taylor. Federated has not yet decided anything (at least in the public's eye) for the Lord and Taylor chain, though I suspect they may become Bloomingdales. However, White Flint Mall in Bethesda has both a Lord and Taylor and a Bloomingdales. Will Lord and Taylor disapear too? Time will tell. While it's sad that the DC area has none of it's home grown chains left, we still have AOL and XM to call their roots to DC. And for the time being, that may be the best we can do.

And I bid everyone a good night.

Praise the Lord, but not the child

This is actually from Fairfax County, but it sounds like it is So Prince George's County.

A woman left her four year old son along side the Beltway and drove away, because he was misbehaving. The Washington Post tried to contact her home, and got a full voice mail box, but a recording of the mother and son saying "Praise the Lord" and ending with "Have a blessed day". The mother should be focusing on praising her son, and not leaving him alongside the Beltway. She was only caught because she was in a car accident down near Richmond and the VSP came out to the scene. Leaving your son along side the Beltway, yet having a voice mail message with "Praise the Lord" and "Have a blessed day" is So Prince George's County.

It appears that bad parenting has run amock in the DC region in the past few months. Not one, not two, but THREE parents have had their children put in the trunk of a car. One, in Frederick County MD, had an excuse of "The kids wanted to ride in the trunk." The second one, a parent from Alabama driving though rented a Nissan Sentra, because it was "cheaper", had the car overloaded and with people in the trunk. The third, at the Cosco in Prince William County, locked her kid in the trunk because it was misbehaving. While I will agree that being a parent now days is probably harder than it has ever been, it appears that these parents have not figured out how to be responsible. Locking kids in the trunk, leaving kids along the Beltway, the public outburts are really becoming unacceptable.

Also, it appears that Charles County is going from film red light cameras to digital ones. The intersection at Acton Lane and 301 has been changed already. Howard County has been using digital red light cameras for over a year with much success. These systems do not use a flash, which means that the reflective covers and paste people are putting over their license plates will be useless. I wonder when DC and Prince George's County, the land of the reflective license plate covers, will go digital? Already the town of Morningside is starting its changing over, and I am sure Greenbelt and Cheverly will be next. The only thing about these digital red light cameras are they are ugly compared to the film ones, which looked very tasteful (except the ones that were deployed in Baltimore City, Prince George's County and DC). I am 100% in favor of the use of red light cameras, but I am 100% opposed to the use of photo speed cameras.

I've decided on a new computer. I hope to be buying it sometime next week.

Lastly, I have matched Tricia on something. :-)

the Wit (78% dark, 39% spontaneous, 16% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on dark You scored higher than 58% on spontaneous You scored higher than 0% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Hot Hot Hot

I hate the heat.

Seriously, I worked today in the Basement of Capitol Hill, sans air conditioning, but with a dehumidifier. It was very hot, I drank the equivlent of six liters of water, and a liter of Gatoraide. At least I got the ceiling up in the bathroom, and got some of the drywall up on the sides of the room. Tomorow I finish putting it all up, and start the mudding.

My parents asked me to water over at the rental property, my dad had planned on doing it, but today he tried, and became overcome with the heat. So I will have to water every evening on my way home from work.

I think I have decided on a new computer. It's a HP, with a 3.0 GHz P4 processor with a 800 MHz bus, 1 GB of Ram, 250 GB of HD space, a DVD burner, and a seperate DVD rom. I just need to find out if I can upgrade the video card, and if I can, that will be my machine. Right now they are priced at about $850 with a $50 rebate.

It's time for me to take a shower. Stay cool!

Dad's out.

My dad is out of the hospital as of Saturday. That's good news. He seems to be recovering nicely.

This heat here in the DC area is just plain nasty. I already have a low tollerance for heat, and now we are having the hottest temperatures in a few years, with oppressive humidity levels. Heat indexes for Tuesday may reach 120. I don't work inside air conditioning at the job I am doing right now. But oh well.

On Saturday, the weather was very nice, after a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Rich invited me to his pool in the evening, and was asking if I could bring some friends for water volleyball. I was able to put Tim, Tricia, Dan, Tara, Nicki, José, Stewart and David up to the task. Rich provided Political John and we had a great time.

I'm off to bed. Please stay cool, your life depends on it!

Posting difficulties

The past 24 hours, I could not get blogger to let me post. I hate it when that happens.

Well, the conclusion on my dad is he needs to have some angioplasty done with stents inserted. One of his three, non bypassed ateries needs a stent, and one of his three bypassed arteries needs a stent. It's a good thing he went to the hospital, without playing around.

The kittens are removed from the road. Poor guys. I still feel sorry for them.

I am looking forward to eating at the new Hooters in Waldorf MD. It opened earlier this week, to great fanfare. I am sure this location will do great.

I hope everything else is going well for everyone else. I'm off to work.

Kittens hit by a car or cars.

There were these two very cute grey and white kittens that have been playing along my street. They were very tiny, the mom a very friendly black cat. Most likely, after the cat gave birth, the owner dumped it with the kittens. I had tried to catch the kittens numerous times, but could not get to them. Last night when I was coming home from dinner, they were dead. I forgot to put this in my post last night, because of all the stuff going on with my dad.

This morning the doctor decided to give him an angiogram, because he had another chest pain last night around 3 AM. Once I hear some results, I will post them here to the blog.

I am off to work for today.

Heatwave. Heatwave.

I passed my boating course. I got a score of 48/50 (96%) on the test. That means I now am legal to drive a boat or a jet ski in Maryland. Jet skis are fun, I am looking foward to being able to drive one, instead of being a passenger on one.

My desktop computer has bit the dust. I ran out of hard drive space, and to upgrade it to what I want would exceed the cost of buying a new computer. I hope to be buying in the next two weeks or so.

My dad is back in the hospital. Today he was supposed to work for me on Capitol Hill, however, on the ride down, he started to have chest pains. I ended up taking him directly to Washington Hospital Center. He said his care in the emergency room was excellent.

I am not happy at all about John Robberts being put up for appointment to the Surpreme Court. In my eyes, he will disrupt the delicate balance that has been struck over the past decade. I definitely would have prefered that Gonzoles be put up. I am sure there will be a fight in the senate, and Roberts might possibly still be brought down.

Alright folks, I am off to bed.

Congrats to Indiana Jon

Indiana Jon had his first pursuit as a police officer. It even made the paper. Too bad I lost the link. The guy crashed into a tree after Jon gave pursuit. At least the bad guy was caught.

Traffic is pretty bad on 301 still, even at 1:30 AM. At least the lane drop will be done in about 24 hours.

Good night.

A nice man, on a nice day, jumped off the (Gov.) Nice Bridge.

This weekend, I-95 Northbound as it crosses from Virginia into Maryland is shut from it's normal three lanes to one lane, as traffic is shifted to a new alignment as part of construction of a replacement Woodrow Wilson Bridge. VDOT is advising motorists to use US 301 to travel North, to avoid the workzone.

However, some idiot decided to jump off the US 301 bridge over the Potomac River, closing it for nearly 90 minutes. God that nice man picked a nice day to jump off the Nice Bridge.

I am enroled in a boating safety course at Prince George's Community College. I've already gone to the first two classes, the last class will be on Monday July 18, where I will take my boating test. Spending time up at PGCC brings back lots of good memories of 1998 and 1999 when I was a full time student of Criminal Justice there. Lots of cars held together with duct tape and inccorect parts abound in the parking lot. I saw a 1997-1999 Toyota Camry with the trunk lid from a 2000-2001 Camry parked in the lot. That's So Prince George's Community College.

Aparently Carl Rove is in a heap of trouble for being the leak. My prediction is that President Bush will fire him within the next two weeks.

The Linden Ave properties still have not gone before the State Board of Estimates. I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with this project, because it seems at every turn, the City of Baltimore is stalling out on holding up to their end of the bargan.

I am very busy with work. I still have two things left to do on the rental property before it can be turned over to tennants. There are other delays because of the landscaper, the plumber and my dad doing the tile work. A project that could have been knocked out in two months, if timed properly, has stretched out to nearly eight months. I want the monkey off my shoudlers, the money I am owed in my pocket, and the free time to get focused on Linden Ave and doing ride alongs. Latest thought: Maryland State Police. I've been told I would make a great Trooper.

OK, who knows when I will blog again. LOL. Everyone have a great summer and stay safe.