government

Rochester's Broad Street

~ randyaa ~ 7 Comments

The plans to rip up Broad Street and reconstruct the original Canal Aqueduct over the river are progressing.  I’ve mentioned the plans before and I’ve always thought it was kind of a neat idea but never thought it would get anywhere.  Now that it seems to be getting some traction it deserves more thought.

I for one think it’s completely ridiculous, and the City has more important things to do with its money.

The following is a letter I sent to:

  • Louise Slaughter
  • Paul.Holahan@cityofrochester.gov
  • info@broadstreetcorridor.com
  • Hackt@cityofrochester.gov
  • info@cityofrochester.gov (The closest I could find to Mayor Bob Duffy)
  • Patricia.malgieri@cityofrochester.gov
  • darryl.porter@cityofrochester.gov

Regardless of how you stand on the issue, I suggest you do the same.

Broad St Closure – A Concerned Citizen

The closing of the broad street bridge this week has me frustrated.  It’s something I cross on the bus at least once a day and has increased my bus commute time by about 5-10 minutes in each direction. In the morning due to the detour, and in the afternoon due to the additional build up of traffic on Exchange st.  Even in the past two days, the inconvenience this has created has been significant.  This has also been during a week of school closures and lighter than usual traffic.  I’m concerned how the effects would be during events at the Convention Center and War Memorial.

Why is the bridge closed anyway? Are we really going to tear out the bridge and flood the original aqueduct to create a POND over the RIVER?  Or are we just going to blow millions of dollars planning it and studying the effects of possibly doing it and then do nothing?

Rochester citizens have watched many other big projects fail and cost them millions of dollars with no gain.  Sure we got a new port building from the Fast Ferry debacle, but now it sits mostly unused and unoccupied.  One of the few ideas (The Casino) which stood to bring in direct revenue for the city was even voted down.  Now we plan on sinking millions into a plan to create another Manhatten square Park or another Genesee Crossroads with a manmade water feature in the middle instead of a river.

Rochester has proven time and time again that it can’t deliver on ideas like this.  Therefor we need to spend the money on things like better public transportation systems, Better education, maintaining (or improving) the parks we do have.

We don’t need another money pit, we need something with some real return on investment.

Stop wasting our money and end the study of the Broad St bridge closure early.

A Concerned Citizen,
Randy Aldrich

Religion in the Courtroom

~ randyaa ~ 5 Comments

bibleThe recent story of a Texas jury who consulted the Bible before sentencing a man to death got me thinking.

DISCLAIMER: I AM COMPLETELY FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

I agree when people complain about the 10 commandments in the courtroom and when they demand ‘in god we trust’ be removed from our money or ‘under god’ be removed from the pledge of allegiance.  All of that stuff creates a direct tie between our government and a specific religion which I don’t agree with, regardless of my political or religious beliefs.  I just don’t think a country founded mostly due to religious discrimination has any right to associate itself with a specific religion when it claims it’s open to all people regardless of belief.  That’s like saying “Sure come on in, but we’re better than you.”  It just doesn’t jive.

Religion is a moral guidance tool.  People lean on it when something happens they don’t understand or if they don’t know what to do about a situation.  Whether it’s the Christian Bible or the Muslim Qur’an, It defines right and wrong and the consequences for those who believe its lessons.

To me, this Jury story is different.  The people in the JURY consulted the bible, not the JUDGE.  They were looking for moral guidance.  I don’t have a problem with this.  A jury should be made up of your peers.  It’s pretty safe to assume that a certain percentage of your peers are going to be Christians or have at least grown up in a Christian household.

The Jury would be leaning on its’ teachings whether they actual read a passage during deliberation or not.

Time Warners Timing is Everything

~ randyaa ~ 7 Comments

Eric Massa held a town hall meeting in Pittsford NY today which some Time Warner representatitves attended.

We couldn’t have a better representative than Eric Massa gunning for us against Time Warner.  He really understand the issue and he seems well informed.  He brought several new pieces of information to light, for example, the federal government subsidizes a large portion of any internet infrastructure enhancement work, also billions of dollars in the economic stimulus plan have been dedicated to projects just like that.

Ironically enough about 20 minutes after the meeting began Time Warner released a new press release containing new/different tier information.  The following is a breakdown of the new plans.

Plan Name Cap Price Speed Overage Charges Current Equivalent
Lowest Tier 1Gb $15 768Kbps Down, 128Kbps Up $2/Gb NONE
Lite 10Gb $30 ?? $1/Gb NONE
Basic 20Gb $40 ?? $1/Gb NONE
Standard 40Gb $50 ?? $1/Gb NONE
Turbo 60Gb $55 ?? $1/Gb NONE
Turbo XL 100Gb $75 10Mbps Down, 1Mbps Up $1/Gb RoadRunner – $40/Month, Unlimited, 10Mbps Down 380Kbps Up
?? ?? ?? ?? ?? RoadRunner TURBO – $50/Month, Unlimited, 15Mbps Down 1Mbps Up

Their new plan does offer unlimited service but for a hefty price.

Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.

This means that for the Low Low Price of $150/month you can have exactly the same as what you get for $40/month right now.  That’s right, their TURBO speed is slower AND you’ll be paying almost 4x as much as you do right now.

My friend Dean threw together a great graph illustrating the Monthly Cost vs Bandwidth used per plan.

graph

From the graph it would appear that the lowest tier would always be the best, but we know that the lowest tier is crippled (most experts agree that 768Kbps shouldn’t be considered broadband at all).  We really need to get speed information regarding these plans but they have yet to release those figures.  Given that TURBO appears to be crippled according to their current speeds, don’t hold your breath for good numbers.

massaThe feeling couldn’t be scrubbed that the new press released was perfectly timed with the town hall meeting and Time Warner did it this way in order to claim during the meeting that “We just recently released a new press release which has a drastically different pricing scheme and which you may be happy with.”  They did say this and I suspect they timed it this way to quiet some of the more vocal people in the town hall.  Luckily, some of those who had mobile devices had already read the new proposal by the time they announced it in the meeting and they were quite vocal that the new plan did nothing for anyone (I also spoke up to that effect).

Eric Massa suggested we convene at a latter date to discuss the Time Warner issue specifically.  It was interesting to see because it felt like Massa was throwing down and challenging Time Warner to just try to cross his line in the sand.  The Time Warner representatives seemed to agree to this on the spot (whether they have the authority to do so is still to be determined so time will tell) so I suspect we’ll be seeing another event soon.

In summary, it’s great to have Eric Massa with us but Time Warner’s new proposal is laughable at best.

Your move TWC!

Some Hope In Todays World

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Hoover DamSomething reminded me today of a story from when Rachel and I were at the Grand Canyon. Well, actually this particular story is from the Hoover Dam.

The parking at the Dam sucks. If you want to visit you need to park along the east side of the canyon. I’m sure you’re aware that the Dam is pretty large and as such, getting to the entrance (which happens to be on the west side of the canyon) is quite a hike from the parking lot(s).

We’d been camping in Williams Arizona for roughly a week at this point. I’d been faithfully (like the good ol’ boyscout I am) carrying my knife the whole trip. This particular day was no exception. As we walked up to the entrance there was a sign that stated, among other things:

No Knifes Allowed

Well crap. As I shuffled my way back to the walkway to take my knife back to the car, one of the many vendors setup outside the entrance called me over. She darted her eyes around to check if anyone was looking and said:

Act cool, just hand me your knife. When you come out give me 5 bucks and it’s yours again.

Thoroughly puzzled (and entirely not cool) I said “you mean you can’t just hold it for me.” After some more quick glances around she told me that this is government property and they’ll fine you if they catch you with them. She could get fined simply for holding them if they find out. “Ok, $5 is worth saving the walk” and I handed it over.

It’s a good thing I did. There are metal detectors right inside the entrance and we would have been up a creek. A gentleman got pulled aside ahead of us and shown a knife he had placed in the bucket before going through the machine. I’m not sure what happened (they were still there talking with the security guards as we left the room) but I’m sure it wasn’t good.

I paid my 5 bucks when we got out and the government was non the wiser.

Originally I was writing this thinking about the helpful actions of the woman vender. After writing it though I also realize that I’m also thankful for the actions of the security guard and their no knife policies.