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I hate the iPhone. A lot. But, this isn’t a post to rant about that. This is a post to alert all you iPhone users about an impending firmware update that needs to happen to improve the device.

Ever since the 3G iPhone came out, a lot of US users have been angry about the poor performance from it. They traced this to an actual problem with the device, and after further testing, they discovered that it’s software-related.

Apple quickly released a firware update that was supposed to fix it. Except, it didn’t. Users reported no improvement after applying the patch, which led to people blaming it on hardware and screaming bloody murder. However, an anonymous source from AT&T claims that the problem is a combination of phone firmware and network issues, and that enough people applying the patch will correct both issues.

So, if you have a 3G iPhone, and it’s not living up to expectations, try the patch. It’s not like it can make it worse.

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The city council where I live is proposing a ban of all through truck traffic from the downtown area, in an effort to revitalize that particular spot. On the surface, it’s not a bad idea; less truck traffic would really improve the aura of downtown Harrisonburg, make it quieter, and so forth. However, it’s been proven over and over again that Harrisonburg’s government fundamentally fails at traffic management, and this is no exception.

Harrisonburg’s downtown district is quite small, only two blocks wide by 1 mile long. However, the center of the downtown area is Court Square, a peculiar block that forms the intersection of the two major highways through the city, US-11, and US-33. Rt. 11 runs north-south, and Rt. 33 runs east-west. Now, Rt. 11 isn’t that big of a deal, because there’s an alternate route (VA-42) that, for several miles in Harrisonburg, runs parallel to US-11. Plus, there’s Interstate 81 that runs parallel to US-11 for its entire length. Us-33, however, has no real parallel route that bypasses downtown Harrisonburg, and it’s the only shipping corridor between Virginia and West Virginia anywhere near here.

There is one street that allows truck traffic that runs roughly the same direction as US-33 and bypasses downtown, but it represents a very major detour. And that detour could add as much as three miles to trucks trying to reach businesses in certain parts of the city, because there are no cross-streets between the detour and US-33 that allow truck traffic. Much of central Harrisonburg (our downtown district is right in the center of the city) consists of residential neighbourhoods that already don’t allow trucks, so they already are limited to a very small number of routes. This proposal would eliminate the biggest one, and it would dramatically increase the amount of truck traffic along other truck routes (two of which are semi-residential/light commercial).

I really hope the truckers and businesses (not the ones downtown, who are pushing for this so they can take up sidewalk space with “alfresco cafes”) in the area raise holy hell about this before it gets passed.

Typical country divorce song, with male singer
“Well, she left me
I never saw it coming
She just disappeared
What did I do wrong?”

Typical country divorce song, with female singer
“He should see this coming
I can’t take it anymore
He doesn’t even know what he did wrong
But I can’t do this anymore.”

Conclusion: Straight people suck so badly at communication in relationships that there’s practically an entire genre of music about this.

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Sidenote: George Jones is my hero. He’s almost 80 years old, still touring, still selling out shows, still releasing albums. And, what’s even more awesome is that instead of sticking to the same material for the last half-century, his new material is continually innovative, without losing his grip on the heart of country music like so many newer artists are prone to do.

FA is down. They have no idea why.

I lol’d.

Then I got frustrated, because I read through my LJ friends page. People are starting to use FA again, and FA still sucks ass despite having obscenely overbuilt new hardware. So, $16k later, the site’s uptime has seen only marginal, if any, improvement.

Lame. Not surprising, but lame.

In an effort to keep up with local news, I’ve been monitoring the RSS feed for the local news channel’s website in my feedreader. Since they apparently use the same feed to drive their text-message alerts, the snippets in the RSS feed are very short, making them easy to skim. So, I don’t pay much attention that anything that doesn’t happen in this town.

However, this snippet caught my eye just now:
A vehicle fire Monday morning came pretty close to igniting a house in Stanley.

Is it just me, or is “pretty close” a very unprofessional choice of words to use in a news story? Like, something that will be mentioned on the next news broadcast?

For giggles, I decided to read the whole article:

A vehicle fire Monday morning came pretty close to igniting a house in Stanley.

Chief Terry Pettit says his department was able to put it out in about five minutes, but the SUV is a total loss.

Source - Vehicle Fire Nearly Ignites House

You know you live in a small town when an insignificant vehicle fire, that caused relatively little damage, in a town that is barely in the station’s viewing area, makes it on the newscast.

This image was part of a series I took around Christmas time, I wanted to try some night shots of decorated houses in the area.  Unfortunately, most of them didn’t come out particularly well, but this one had some potential.  So, after some digital manipulation to improve the composure (the moon wasn’t in the right place in the first one), this was the result.

View the main article for this image here, in the Photography section.
View more pictures of Christmas lights in Harrisonburg here, in the gallery.

For those who haven’t heard, Burger King has a new gimmick.  They’re using a set of artwork called “Veg City”, depicting anthropomorphic vegetables.  All of them are fairly disturbing, but this one in particular left me with a WTF? reaction for quite awhile.  It features an onion getting strip-searched at the airport by a pickle who looks like a gay biker, among other things…

Article: What Is Burger King Thinking?

Whatever the BK marketing team is smoking, they’d better share.

Star Trek Voyager: Pathfinder (Season 6, Episode 10)

I watched the last bit of this episode, and I swear this has one of the lamest endings in the entire Voyager series. It concludes with Barclay and Troi drinking champaign, and making small talk with retarded jokes, right after a huge moment in the series (making live contact with Earth).

It’s as if they ran out of script during filming, and said “Shit! We finished a minute early! Do something!”

</random-thought>

For those who aren’t aware, I’m deathly afraid of insects, spiders, bugs, and other assorted crawly-things. It’s a pretty severe phobia for me (and should not be joked about), to the point that if there’s a bug in the same room as me, and I see it, it must die. And even then, I’ll be jittery and on-edge for the next hour or so.

So, I was doing some late-night scripting a bit ago before bed (had some inspiration in the shower, yay nerding), and I spotted a cricket across the room. I took care of it, grabbed the carcass with some long-handled needlenose pliers (short-handled ones are too short to comfortably handle an insect for me, and things like paper towels are out of the question), and prepared to toss it into the parking lot. This, btw, is not normally a post-worthy occasion, I usually have to kill bugs once a week.

However, when I opened the door, I spotted something that nearly threw me into a panic attack. See, for the last couple months or so, there’s been a huge spider spinning huge webs on my porch. The spider is about 2″ across, including legs, and his webs are 3-4′ in diameter. Now, normally, this would trigger my “eww, kill it!” response, and I actually almost did at one point. However, he and I have been living in harmony ever since I first saw him; he and his web stay far enough away that I don’t have to walk near him, and he kills a ton of moths, which like to congregate near my porch light. But, tonight, he crossed the line, big time. At some point in the last five hours or so, he spun a 6′ diameter web in my DOORWAY, right in front of my doors. And, he was right in the center. So, when I opened my door, he was in mid-air right in front of my face, about a foot away. For that, he must die.

I took a minute to collect myself and decide what to do. I didn’t have a good way to get to my door without actually walking through it, and I would’ve had to crawl on the porch to get under the web safely. Even still, that would be tricky, and would risk him falling on me. So, I couldn’t attack with a blunt weapon. Attempts to hold my hands steady enough to grab him with pliers didn’t work very well, and despite my bug-phobia, I lack decent spider spray (DEET repellant doesn’t work nearly as well as an offensive weapon). So, I settled on using PC airduster, that canned stuff, to freeze him. I’ve done this before, and it’s very effective at quickly cryogenically freezing bugs (hold it upside-down to get the super-cold liquid, it flash-freezes everything it contacts). Even if it doesn’t kill them (larger bugs sometimes wake up from it), it holds them motionless long enough to kill them in a quicker manner (crushing, for example). Well, not this guy. I don’t know what the deal was, but after emptying nearly a quarter of a can directly onto him, he was still moving! Granted, he had slowed down quite a bit, but he was still alive and kicking.

After concluding that he wasn’t going to freeze as well as I’d like (I’d gone through about a third of a can at that point), I decided to just go with it. The spraying process, and the turbulence created by it, got him so tangled in his own web that it took a couple minutes to get him down, where I crushed him as fast as possible. I felt a little sad, since he’d been around so long, and I wish I could’ve killed him in a more humane manner. But, well, you just don’t build webs in my doorway :-\

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I wasn’t going to go looking through spider identification sites, because after awhile, they start to freak me out as much as the real thing. But, I decided to take a look, and this appears to have been a Marbled Orbweaver. Harmless to humans, but I reiterate, it built a web in my doorway.

Also, to the webmaster of the spider ID site who thought it’d be cute to have one of the images in a grid animated, and delayed? Fuck you. I literally jumped out of my chair when I saw that.

First, I must clarify that I hate this show. A lot. For those who aren’t familiar with it, America’s Next Top Model is a reality show where girls from all over the country compete to win a modelling contract with [insert huge cosmetic company here] and get some money. Hosted by Tyra Banks, the show plays on all sorts of stereotypes about the modelling industry, and is littered with typical reality-show-drama at every possible opportunity. Definitely not my typical show. However, my mom and little sister absolutely love this show, so I hear about it constantly.

Today, my mom felt it important to show me the contestants on the upcoming season; in particular, she was so excited that there’s one on the show from the nearby town of Charlottesville. As if she actually knew this girl. But, what caught my eye was that one of the contestants, 22-year-old Isis from Prince George’s County, Maryland, is transgendered. They quote her describing herself as “a woman born physically male”, much more accurate than the “woman trapped in a man’s body” line that usually gets plastered everywhere. And, the tabloids, which aren’t known for being trans-friendly, are even consistantly using the proper pronouns (just “she”, no dancing around it).

I may even tune in to an episode or two, just to see if this works out well, or if it turns into the usual circus that happens every time a transperson steps in front of a TV camera. I’m cautiously optimistic; the few episodes I’ve seen of this show before have shown a very progressive attitude when it comes to gender (on the few occasions it comes up, one of the judges/coaches appears to be in mid-transition in every episode), but not from the other contestants.

Anyway, just thought this was interesting. Real post later.