Random Thinking

The second city has installed our product, BusTime. The Chatanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) has fitted their buses with our product and installed our BusTime prediction system. If you go to the website and click on “Bus Route Tracker”, you can see the product in action. If you live in the Chatanooga area and use the buses, this should make taking the buses more convenient. But even if you don’t live in the area, what could be more fun than watching buses move around the streets of Chatanooga?

This is an enhanced version of the one currently installed in Chicago. This version allows you to register on the site and get email alerts for service bulletins and bus arrival predictions. The next version will support text messaging as well. Don’t worry Chicago, this version will be there eventually, too.

Update: Here’s a news article from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Chattanooga: Bus system zooms into 21st century

Sometimes the fates are against you and perhaps are trying to tell you something. The message that French yachtsman Jean Le Cam was sent may have been, “It’s time to find a new sport.” Le Cam was competing in the Vendee Globe solo yacht race when his boat capsized off of Cape Horn in South America. He was rescued after a few hours by fellow Frenchman Vincent Riou. As they headed towards port in Argentina, the mast of Riou’s boat snapped and the engines failed. They both had to be rescued by the Argentinian navy. Last month another Frenchman was rescued in the Indian Ocean so maybe this race is just a jinx for French yachtsman.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the police are looking for an unusual sex fiend. He has broken into sex shops three times and stolen a blow up doll each time. “He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley,” the owner of one of the shops said. Apparently all the dolls were the same model, “Jungle Jane.” Grainy camera images suggest that the perpetrator is a skinny, white man. “It’s totally bizarre. It’s a real concern that someone like that is out on the street,” said one of the owners of the adult sex shops. I think we all agree that it is totally bizarre.

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) was a German composer and music teacher whose work was enormously popular during his lifetime (and since) and brought the German fugue tradition to its peak. Pachelbel died when he was only 52, but the list of his works is endless. Pachelbel is best known for his Canon in D Major, the only canon he wrote. A canon is a musical piece where the melody is repeated after a given duration so that it is repeating but offset. A simple example (called a round) is Row, Row, Row Your Boat. The Canon in D Major became very popular in the 1970′s and was used as the theme for the movie Ordinary People in 1980.

That brings me to why Canon in D Major is the music I have chosen for this week. Beth’s English teacher gave her class a choice of books to read and one of the books on the list was Ordinary People which is the book Beth chose after I recommended it to her. This reminded me of the movie which was a truly amazing film and won the Oscar for Best Picture for 1980. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, it is about a family with two sons, one of whom has died in a boating accident. Timothy Hutton plays the surviving son and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Mary Tyler Moore is fantastic as the mother who you hate and was nominated for Best Actress. Judd Hirsch was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as the psychiatrist treating Timothy Hutton’s character.

I can’t listen to the Canon without thinking of the film. If you haven’t seen the film you must. If you haven’t heard the Canon then the YouTube version is excellent. Does anyone else feel the same way about the film or the music?

Sweetheart
by Chelsea Cain

A novel doesn’t have to be 100% believable but if an author is going to make the story absurd, she has to at least build up to the absurdity. In this novel the author makes no effort to make any part of the story the slightest bit believable. Right from the start we get Archie who is back on the force in spite of constantly popping pain killers. Does anyone really think a man who takes four Vicodin at a time would be trusted with a gun?

===spoiler alert===
But then the whole premise of the story is ridiculous. Does anyone really think that the worst serial killer in a state’s history would be able to escape from prison? Does anyone really think that a guard would help her escape the day after another guard that was helping her was killed by her?
==end spoilers===

Please, if you want to write a fantasy then add dragons and magic spells. The story started off fairly promising with the death of a senator and a link to a possible serial killer. But then the author just couldn’t give up Gretchen, a character who is so powerful in this novel that she practically does cast magic spells and ride dragons. I found myself rolling my eyes and predicting what would happen next by simply thinking of the stupidest possible plot twist. So I recommend that you don’t waste your time on this book.

It’s 30 degrees out and the wind is blowing cold and strong so where did Mikey and I go today? Yep, we went to the beach. In spite of the fact that we live on an island and are never more than 12 miles from the ocean, this was the first time I had brought Mikey to the beach.

Mikey had a great time throwing shells and stones into the ocean. I finally had to drag him away when his fingers and ears were turning red from the cold.

Look at the ocean! How come you never take me here?

Wow! Look at those waves. They’re almost like the bathtub when I’m splashing!

Watch me throw this shell, daddy. I hit the ocean!!!

I like the beach. Even if it is freezing and windy.

Throwing shells is fun daddy. Can we do more?

This happened in New York and has been on the news here quite a bit but I’m not sure if it has been reported outside of the area.

Ed Wynn Rivera, 22, is mentally disabled, has cerebral palsy, and can’t speak. Every day he is taken by bus to his special needs program in lower Manhattan. At 3PM every day, the bus returns him home. But on New Year’s Eve, the bus didn’t show up at his East Harlem home. His frantic parents contacted the school and then the police but Ed could not be found. Since he was last seen getting on the bus, the police and Ed’s father searched the bus yard but Ed was not found.

Finally, after 19 hours, Ed was found when a new search of the bus yard was conducted and a parking lot was discovered that the police did not know existed. Rivera had spent the night abandoned on the bus in temperatures below 20 degrees. He has been hospitalized for hypothermia but is expected to be fine.

So how did Rivera end up left on the bus? Was he abandoned by accident after having fallen asleep on the bus? Rivera had been sitting right behind the bus driver and is over 6 feet tall so he would have been hard to miss. No, the matron on the bus admitted that she knew Rivera was on the bus but she was late for church and assumed that somone would find Rivera and take care of him. The matron, Linda Hockaday, 51, of Brooklyn, was charged with reckless endangerment.

“Now I can say honestly it is a happy New Year. I know that he’s OK. My eyes are red from crying so much,” Khristine, Rivera’s sister, said. The family plans to throw a belated holiday celebration for Ed, who usually rings in the New Year by sipping a virgin pina colada and watching the Times Square countdown on TV.

What happened to Emily Hughes is every parents worst nightmare. Only watch the video if you don’t mind crying.

Is the life of one person worth more than the life of another? Is the life of a clean person worth more than a messy person? If so, who gets to decide if a life is worth saving? Two paramedics in Brighton, England think they have the answer to those questions and their answers are yes, yes, and… they get to decide.

Barry Baker, 59, was a friendly and popular man. Although Mr. Baker had recently had hip replacement surgery and walked with canes, he still managed to get to the pub every Sunday to play cards. In the early hours of November 29th, Mr. Baker felt chest pains and called 999 (the British version of 911) for help. They quickly dispatched an ambulance to the scene as they kept Mr. Baker on the line. Mr. Baker soon collapsed but the phone line was still open and being recorded.

The paramedics are heard arriving at Mr. Baker’s house shortly after he passed out. What is heard is a conversation between the two paramedics about how messy it was in Mr. Baker’s home. Pictures of Mr. Baker’s home shows that it is cluttered with papers, clothes, and boxes scattered about. The two men are heard saying that Mr. Baker wasn’t worth saving because of the clutter about his home. The men then discussed what to say to ambulance control and decided to say that Mr. Baker was dead when they arrived.

The two men were arrested earlier this week and according to a police spokewoman, “they were detained on suspicion of wilfully neglecting to perform a duty in public office, contrary to Common Law.”

Mr Baker’s funeral has been postponed while the investigation continues, but a memorial service has been planned for mid January.

It’s a brand new year for the song of the week off my iPod. I forgot to recharge my iPod (I was playing the theme from Kappa Mikey over and over again for Mikey) but fortunately I have a list to fall back on.

Amber Pacific is a pop punk band formed near Seattle in 2002. The members of the band are Jesse Cottam (lead vocals), Will Nutter (lead guitar, keyboards), Greg Strong (bass), Dango (drums), and Davey Rispoli (rhythm guitar). Matt Young was the lead vocalist until 2008 but he left the group to go back to college to pursue a career in public education with hopes of becoming a school principal in “hopes that I can better prepare future generations for what lies ahead.”

The group was originally formed under the name of Follow Through in 2002 when the members were juniors in high school. The participated on the Warped Tour from 2004 through 2007 and released two studio albums. Their second album, “Truth in Sincerity”, which was released in 2007, reached #64 on the Billboard Top 200 and #4 on the Top Independent Albums chart. The song Poetically Pathetic is from their first album, “The Possibility and the Promise”.

Poetically Pathetic
Thinking of the words to say,
I’d like to think that this was fate.
Reference to a song you love,
Spell confusion with a ‘k’.
Like a star without its strings,
I’m hanging here on these two wings.
For that smile and those eyes…(I’m falling)

If time could stop, how could I make this more poetic?
When there’s nothing more pathetic to be said…

You bring me out, show me light,
I’m sorry if I hide, I’m too afraid to look inside.
You carry truth, you make me smile.
If it were you and me tonight,
I would tame the stars and save the brightest one for you,
For you…

If you ever had the chance,
Would you make your life seem right?
Or would you only hold it back,
The good times, the hard, and the bad.
Whatever you say is alright,
Just as long as there’s no doubt.
Could you look me in the eyes…(And say hopes died)

If time could stop, how could I make this more poetic?
When there’s nothing more pathetic to be said…

You bring me out, show me light,
I’m sorry if I hide, I’m too afraid to look inside.
You carry truth, you make me smile.
If it were you and me tonight,
I would tame the stars and save the brightest one for you.

Our wish,
Each time,
Keeps me returning to you,
Night after night…
Lift me up as high as the clouds that warm the sky,
For you and I…

You bring me out, show me light,
I’m sorry if I hide, I’m too afraid to look inside.
You carry truth, you make me smile,
If it were you and me tonight,
I would tame the stars and save the brightest one for you…

You bring me out, show me light,
I’m sorry if I hide, I’m too afraid to look inside…
You carry truth, you make me smile,
If it were you and me tonight,
I would tame the stars and save the brightest one for you,
For you…