Chicago polorized over red light camera

Yep, speeding cameras are coming to Chicago this summer and we got our shorts in a bunch about them. Rumblings of this first appeared on Everyblock.org last fall when the State was looking into the cameras and have only increased since Governor “Haven’t Been Indicted Yet” Quinn approved them last week.

As with any message board discussion, all the finer points pretty much get presented and discussed to death on all the various threads, with all the usual manners and finesse the anonymity of the internet bring and this issue is no exception.

There's a major ideological division going on over the cameras. Some people are in the if you don't speed, you will not get a ticket Camp while others are in you cannot fool me; this is more about revenue than safety Camp.

My take is that if the collective We that makeup society could police ourselves enough to not drive all bat shit crazy and not bend or break the rules of the road, we wouldn’t need these cameras in the first place. Obviously, we can’t.

Even when the Don’t Speed Camp begrudgingly acknowledges the Revenue over Safety Camp, they do so with a resounding: SO WHAT.

The So What are these cameras are the technical details are weighted to maximize violations. Kinda like the House winning more often in Vegas than the average Joe.

From The Expired Meter, no clue where he got it from

The Parking Ticket Geek posted on his blog The Expired Meter a list of the 79 locations of red light camera intersections which qualify for speed camera status by their 1/8 mile proximity to a school or park. Based on the map, it will be difficult to get from one part of town to another without encountering a speed camera.

You can tell by some of the comments on EB – if not the actual commenter’s avatar tags – are by people who have lived in the city a long time. They know firsthand how the city has a track record of making poor decisions under false pretenses or alternative agendas...parking meter lease deal anyone?

I’m smart enough, old enough, and cynical enough to know that this isn’t being done exclusively for my “safety and security” a war cry we have heard since 9/11 and will always hear.

Some people have used this as a platform to complain about everything from Union pensions to the war on drugs. Others feel the cameras are the wrong way to go and we should hire more cops to issue these speeding tickets. I disagree. Cops should go after the heavier law breakers especially if there is a feasible technological solution that works as well.

A year ago, I was almost exclusively using the El so something like this wouldn't have concerned me too much. The driving I do on weekends is relatively minimal.

These days I commute to the suburbs for work. They drive differently in the suburbs than in the city. Much differently. And I think these are the people who are going to get caught the most.

• People who live in the city but work in the suburbs
• People who live in the suburbs but their work brings them to the city

In the burbs, the yellow lights and turn arrows last a lot longer than the 2-3 seconds they do in the city.

In a lot of suburbs, there are sensors that can extend the light/arrow a few seconds longer to keep traffic flowing.  Imagine how that switch in paradigm is gonna affect those two sets of people.

Sidenote:  I’ve found myself in the left turn queue 8 – 10 cars back and watching the light turn green and it’s a good 5 seconds before the first car wakes up and realizes he can go. In the city that would prevent everyone from being able to legally turn though it wouldn’t stop the first three cars from trying.

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Hang in until the end in Olympics Trials and Super Bowl

It otherwise counts as a long training run:  I was watching the Olympic Marathon trials a few weeks ago and some interesting things came to mind.  I seem to recall they use to hold the trials for men and women on separate days.  Now it seems they hold them on the same day with a 15 minute delay between waves.This makes sense from a televising point of view because it's easier and more cost effective for a crew to shoot for an extra hour than to set up and break down twice.  It could also be a benefit to the crew because they might prefer an extra day off with family.  It also benefits the athletes too because they get the same weather so there's no "oh you had better conditions than we did".

What I did notice about the race that I never realized before is that many of the runners bow out after 20 miles.  To take a DNF (Did Not Finish) It makes sense if you think about it.  Only the top 3 make the team (i don't know if they have an "alternate" system) and the difference between the front runners and the rest of the pack is somewhat insurmountable by the final miles.

I did notice that the fourth place person didn't quit even when it was obvious that he wasn't going to be able to overtake the runner in front of him.  That makes sense too.  He and she, respectively, have an additional incentive to stick with it.  While slim, one of the first three runners might have an injury that takes them out of the race.  By sticking with it, the fourth place person keeps hope alive.
 
What about the 5th, 6th and 10th place person?  Shouldn't they stick in just in case #3 goes down and they can edge out #4?  Sure, but that scenario is infinitely slimmer than the previous one.
It's also more of a character builder because the distance between qualifying and 4th is less than the distance between qualifying and DNF.

I was reminded of this 4th place runner the other day when I posted about how tough it was to increase my readership.  I was beginning to feel like the runners in the DNF group.  It would be easier to just quit trying to get anyone to read my blog on a consistent basis. 

DZ from Crib Chatter was giving me grief about a few of last week's posts.  Apparently I'm cutting and pasting too much.  Pretty easy for an anonymous person who doesn't even log a comment on this site to say.  Yet he/she is right.  I do need to get back to what this blog is about: writing about my adventures navigating the Mysteries of Life and if I happen to be witty or informative that's a bonus.  [increasing readership and revenue wouldn't hurt -- Nightingale does want a new house.]

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We use to watch it just for the commercials.  During the Super Bowl I checked my Facebook account and wasn't surprised to see all the real time updates and status comments.  What did surprise me was that in between the dozens of Super Bowl related posts, one or two friends would actually post about something unrelated to football.

It's perfectly understandable that not everyone is into the big game though I've always thought that the SB was an equalizer.  If you aren't into football or sports, you can certainly appreciate the commercials. 

 While this has occurred ever year that I've been on Facebook, this year it seemed more noticable. I think that's because the few non-Super Bowl posts had something in common: these friends weren't choosing to post about something besides the SB; these people had no clue that something else was consuming everyone's attention because they were just too caught up in their own world, just like any other day.

And now for Something a Little Different

This weekend deviated from the normal routine. Nightingale generally works late on Fridays. This will be the status quo until she gets a new job after she passes her boards whenever she gets around to taking them. And most Fridays I simply come home, feed the cats and watch TV.

 This Friday however I stopped by a hospital to visit my uncle who had heart surgery on Tuesday. This meant that I didn’t get home until after 9pm.  Unfortunately, we were supposed to stop feeding our cat (Austin) so that he could fast before a vet visit. Since cats cannot be trusted to fast on their own, this meant being home in order to feed them and then removing the food so that neither could eat after 9pm. 

This still could have worked if Nightingale had come home since this was the first Friday in forever that her shift ended before 8pm, but felt the pull of guilt from her sister (Sister-In-Law to me) moving back to Michigan, so she went over there after work and neither of us was home in time to feed the cats before beginning his fast.  

That wasn't the worst because we could simple reschedule Austin's appointment.  However Maggie, our other cat, needed to have her heart rate checked.  We've been feeding her special medicine which we ran out of Thursday.  Nightingale was supposed to pick up the replacement medicine but forgot on Thursday (her day off) and neither of us could get it Friday.  We thought missing one day wouldn't be the worse thing but the Vet pointed out -- something Nightingale already knew -- that without being on the medication consistently, we cannot accurately determine if the medicine is working or not.

So our vet is mad at us for being the kind of parent that my SIL despises.   And you'd think we'd learn our lesson and rush right out after the vet appointment to get the medication, but nope.  We automatically drove to SIL's house to help them pack the final truckload for their move to Michigan.

Saturday evening Nightingale went out with some of our mutual friends for Girls Night Out.  The spouses of these ladies and I have yet to establish Guys Night Out but we are working toward that end.  In the mean time, one of my Polish Peeps invited me to join him and his crew at Stereo the former Jedynka Niteclub in Little Warsaw. 

Jedynka, as most Poles still refer to it, was a little kept secret.  A combination of neighborhood dive and Euroclub.  It's a very good thing that I don't speak fluent Polish and didn't discover the club in my younger days.  When my friend has these Euro Nights, they are usually late nights that involve heavy drinking and dancing until we close the place down. 

Since we both had late nights, Sunday was sleep in and diner for late breakfast.  When I was single one of the things I longed for was someone to have breakfast with at a nearby diner while we ignored each other and read the Sunday paper.  Now I'm living the dream. 

You can bet I just rushed out to answer this one

A short time ago I ordered something through Groupon. It wasn't the typical 80% off a massage at a place you can never get an appointment to, or $50 for $25 off at a trendy restaurant where you'll spend $50 before you even see a menu.

No the latest from Groupon is the buy a discount from us that works on another discount site.

I ordered a Metrokane Electric Houdini Corkscrew. We go through a lot of wine in this household and it seemed like a good deal. unfortunately, after I purchased the groupon, I experienced problems with the partner site. Problems you would not anticipate checking for before signing up for said Groupon, so there was little opportunity to vette it.

I looked at the discussion board and after seeing that no one else was experiencing a problem, I posted my question and editoral.


________________________________________

Icarus, Dec-09 11:14 am (CST):

First, it is kinda a ripoff to be charged $6 for each one on multiple orders -- it comes in the same Freaking box! Not Groupon's fault, I know. However, the Redtag website isn't working properly. I cannot add shipping info or check out. And their contact us page appears to be broken too. Can you help?

________________________________________


Then I got the following response:

Lori F, Dec-10 02:35 pm (CST):

Hi Icarus,

Thanks for your post! I can assist you directly with this request. Sorry for any confusion. Please follow the instructions as listed on the Groupon:

1. Pull up Groupon with our mobile app (or print it out).

2. Visit direct page that corresponds to the color as specified on your Groupon and select 'Buy Now':

Red: http://www.redtag.com/groupon/603207438.aspx

3. In the shopping cart, enter the redemption code located in the center of your Groupon into the 'Do you have a coupon code?' field, select 'Apply' and proceed through checkout. Please allow 12 days for delivery of your goods from the date you redeem.

4. Enjoy!

You'll want to use your redemption code, which is: CRSLP2JF

Hope this helps! Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

Regards,

Lori F.

Groupon Customer Support

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Yeah they're never this cute either

Yeah, not even in the ballpark.  They must use software that matches something you said with frequent problems and solutions because no human could possibly be that far off, even with a language barrier. 

The issue itself was resolved, probably by more people writing in and complaining, though it didn't make it past the moderation part of the community comments the last time  I checked.  I did however get another email from Groupon asking me to rate their service. 
 
________________________________________


From: Groupon Support [mailto:support@groupon.com]

Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 3:12 PM

To: Icarus

Subject: Request #6267864: How would you rate the support you received?

## Reply above this line ##

Hello Icarus,

We'd love to hear what you think of our customer service. If you feel the issue has not been resolved, please simply reply to this email and disregard the link below.

If the issue has been resolved, please take a moment to let us know how Lori did by clicking either link below:

How would you rate the support you received?

Good, I'm satisfied
Bad, I'm unsatisfied

Below is a reminder of what your conversation was about.

Thanks,

Groupon Customer Service Quality Team
________________________________________

Being a former Support Engineer myself, I provided a healthy dose of How to Improve and Please Kiss my ass.

It's hard to pimp out a blog

So last week I played around with expanding my readership.

First I created a post that was sure to interest the Chatterati on Crib Chatter. And it did increase the page hit count. I even got a few of them to click through the ads to help the car-buying fund. Unfortunately, I don't think that trick will work too often and it can be exhausting writing something that draws that crowd in.

Twitter was essentially useless because most of the people and robots that follow me, follow so many others that even if they did see my Tweet, they probably didn't bother to click the tiny URL that came with it.

I also created a FB page and invited at least 30 friends to "like" it. About a third did, which is a pretty good return rate although it also reminds me that many just people won't bother doing anything that doesn't bring them an immediate benefit.  It also stands to reason that many of the people didn't see the invite or realize what it was in the first place.

The following post went from 5 hits to upwards of 150 all because it had pictures relevant to something posted on Everyblock.  Alas, no new subscribers or commenters. 

Losing the Battle but Winning the War

My kind of Luck: so I'm walking to the bus stop one morning and decide to make a phone call. The street is deserted except for one guy about two blocks away pushing a snow blower. I dial the number and switch the phone to my gloved hand while trying to get the other glove back on my dialing hand. There is no answer but I get a voice mail greeting. A very long voice mail greeting. The greeting finally ends and the beep to leave my own message sounds at the same moment I get to the guy with the snowblower such that it drowns out my voice as I'm leaving a message.

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Because the Church doesn't have anything else going on:  During our wedding rehearsal, the priest shocked us with a surprise. He didn't want anyone taking communion if they hadn't been to confession recently. And by recently, he really would have preferred five minutes before our ceremony but recognized that might be unrealistic for heathens like our friends so any time between rehearsal and ceremony would do.

Note: our rehearsal was on a Thursday and Nightingale and I already had to go to confession because it is standard practice...and we were already living in sin.

While it wasn't a concern for our non-Catholic friends, our brothers-in-dogma were stunned.  Back in the day, you had to go to confession before you accepted communion and since you were a good Catholic that attended mass regularly, you were going to confession a lot.

You cannot get into Heaven if you don't have Jesus In you

However, Across the Chicago Archdiocese, that old rule was re-interpreted after Vatican II.  Essentially, you just had to go to confession once a year.

Just before our ceremony, I had a quick conversation with the priest. I explained how a good many of my friends do go to church and that places like Old St Patricks, St Vincent DePaul and even Holy Name don't require confession before every Sunday Mass.

Priest: I know how it is in America.  But that is not the way it should be.

Icarus:  Okay, your church, your rules.

As I expected, during the ceremony, many of my catholic friends did come up to receive communion.  So many in fact that he had to go back to the altar for wafer reinforcements.  We both know that none of my friends went to confession. we both also know that he couldn't exactly call them out about it.

Basically, he won the battle but I won the war.

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Here Thar be Dragons

Outside the Green Zone thar are lots of Dragons!

When I worked at the No-Name Software company, one of my coworkers really truly believed that the city limits were only downtown and that anywhere else had to be the suburbs. He honestly believed once you left the Loop, you were no longer in "The City".

Many of my friends who grew up in the suburbs and other transplants who have relocated to Chicago also believe that the city is really comprised of only a few select neighborhoods near downtown and the lakefront  -- River North, Streeterville, the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood and North Center - to name a few.

They believe that if you went West of Western Avenue, a dragon will swallow you up whole and spit out your bones.

At Crib Chatter, a blog I spend way too much time at, they have a name for this area: The Green Zone (GZ).

Green Zone: A sliver of relatively safe and gentrified areas within the City of Chicago proper (read Urban) where housing stock is most desirable based on specific key criteria such as proximity to the Lakefront, access to rapid transit, and other amenities without the inconveniences of gangs or lower income denizens.

There is some debate whether school system impact whether a neighborhood is considered part of the Green Zone. 

http://cribchatter.com/?p=13440

TftInChi (January 19, 2012, 11:27 am)
Comment:

My definition of the green zone changed significantly when I started factoring schools into the equation. There are plenty of neighborhoods that I would consider living in from a safety, cultural, nightlife perspective that have mediocre to awful schools. For someone looking for a long term city home for their family and that isn't in the actual 1%, those places really aren't in the picture. It really narrows your search considerably.

That said, I'd still consider GZ mostly on the basis of safety and access to "stuff". There are plenty of people in their twenties that probably don't need to be thinking about schools yet.Yet. *****************************
Author:Dave M (January 19, 2012, 1:08 pm)

Comment:

The school argument isn't as relevant because you can always pay to send your kid to private schools if necessary - for me it's all about the quality of life in that section of the city, combined with low crime, high income, and amenities. I excluded the Loop and River North from the discussion at this point as there are so many other things in those areas that make the areas not primarily residential (office, hotel, restaurants, etc). Another thing to look at is how easy it is to get a cab (how long it takes to get one)

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Still some people just have no clue... where the GZ is:

Author: jenny (January 19, 2012, 10:54 am)
Comment:
I always imagined the Green Zone to be an area where prices have remained somewhat stable, with little gang activity. Streets are generally clean and store front signage is in English. Very little riff raff on the
streets and no rusted out cars just sitting around.

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Technically that would be Norwood Park, or Edison Park, or even Belmont Heights.  Those areas didn't see the growth other areas did during the boom and have maintained their value during the bust.

Perhaps one of the lone voices of reason says it best:

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Russ (January 19, 2012, 2:35 pm)

Comment:

Greenzone is just a humorous way to say that the neighborhod has been signigicantly genetrified and offers the amenities that most yuppies are looking for in an urban neighborhood. Yes, the term is a dig that those hoods outside of the greenzone aren't safe. We all know that it is a generalization and there are plenty of urban neighborhoods that are safe but aren't really considered alternative neighborhoods for the typical resident who wants to live in the greenzone. Many of the non-greenzone hoods may be more blue collar than white collar. May be less densely populated. May not have the same amenities. Different strokes for different folks.
The choice to live in the Greenzone has nothing to do with race and everything to do with class and having access to certain amenities that members of a particular socio economic class value. The reality is that every major city has their own Greenzones. I don't care what anyone says, no one is rushing to move to Englewood.