As I was on a short-timer's schedule, I called Roberts Camera of Indianapolis, Indiana to see if they had a GH4 and would do a trade-in of my GH3.
It seemed a bit confusing to the first person to answer the phone, but the second person made it clear--they had no GH4s in stock and three on the waiting list.
Today, I'm nowhere close, though I may try a dealer in New Jersey where they've also done Panasonic presentations. I believe they are Unique Photo. Equally, Adorama is across the river in Manhattan. I trust Adorama to help me, but I hear about many bad experiences dealing with the various personalities in the store. Maybe, the people are not from the Northeast. I used to hear many stories about people from New Jersey, New York, or Philadelphia. In my experience, they were misinformed. These rude, hateful people are some of the most genuine, loveable people you'll ever know. They just say what they mean, and so do I. I lived in Philly for eight years, and supposedly, my biological father came from Philly.
In any case, I want to trade the GH3 and the closest dealer in California to where I'll be living does not trade. That doesn't mean I won't be able to find a shop, but I'd rather deal with New Jersey or New York where I can trust the person will show me the contempt, rather than try the schmooz me into doing what they want. (I really liked Roberts Camera for their no-nonsense approach to dealing with people and cameras--give the customer good advice and a good deal.)
Maybe, Unique Photo will be able to help. I really hate driving into and out of the city (New York City) but parking is worse. Of course, if New Jersey Transit is working, it might be a piece of cake in a few days, to get to Adorama.
Update 2014.06.08: I was at Unique Photo this morning. They were friendly and knowledgeable. They expected a shipment last week and didn't get it. They have 3 people on the list ahead of me. It sounded as though they had a significant quantity arriving, so I may just get the body this week.
They also tempted me with the Panasonic GM1, which is clearly a dear and tiny camera body. I'd really like to see it on the end of my Olympus 35-100mm f/2.0, with the tripod mount attached to the tripod, of course. Otherwise, it's not quite balanced. I was impressed with how very tiny the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro was.
Update 2014.06.11: I returned to Unique Photo since I hadn't heard anything and I wanted to make sure that they weren't going to send a GH4 to an address I no longer occupy.
They didn't get their shipment yet. Maybe, they'll get it this week. They didn't know. Rather than have the GH3 and a GH4, I traded the GH3 for US$500, which is low, but you can sometime get a new GH3 for under US$900, so it's better to get US$500 than having it collect dust. I bought an Olympus E-M1, which I will still use after I buy a GH4.
I still feel that the E-M1's battery and grip are too small, but I was tempted to buy a Panasonic GM1, so what's more weird? I don't know. Hopefully, the E-M1 will work well with my Four-Thirds lenses in real-life situations. I still have my E-5 and E-1.
It's taking a while to charge the battery, so maybe it will last longer than I remember. I hope Panasonic will have their stock soon.
Update 2014.11.30: A few days ago, I finally got my GH4. Stock is not only good, but they've had a $200 instant rebate on the camera body. When I tried my extra GH3 battery in the GH4, it seemed to be full, after nearly six months.
Mike's camera was fairly close--about 33 miles from where I live now. Their people are not brand fanatics and are willing to talk intelligently about any brand you might want to buy.
It's a long time to go without. The E-M1 has been good and the GH4 seems to be everything the GH3 was but better.
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Friday, June 6, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Public transportation works--we need more
The continental U.S.A. is roughly 3000 miles wide. It took me three 15 hour days to drive from Orlando, Florida to Los Angeles, California and an equal amount of time to return home. Many of the states are the size of a country elsewhere. There is a lot of what seems to be empty land. Mobile phone service is generally available but not available everywhere. Many people use satellite-based TV because cable companies aren't there, and antenna-based TV only works at short distances--shorter since digital TV arrived.
I've used public transportation on both coasts and in Japan. In Japan, you can set your watch by it. I did. In the U.S.A., you might as well throw out your watch. When the train or bus arrives, it's there, and that's all that matters.
In the midwest, where I went to school, my mum and I took the bus once. It wasn't really good or bad, but we didn't have to walk.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I used trains and buses regularly (I likely still have my route pamphlets), and went one summer without a car. It was demanding because I worked outside the city and after dark, services are less available. What was a walk in the morning, and about 40 minutes on trains and buses, at night, took four hours on two buses, including a trip into the city and back out to the edge.
Transportation around New York City is no better, no worse. Getting around Manhattan is easy--uptown, downtown. Getting into town, you end up at Penn Station or Grand Central Station. If you're going to Long Island, you board the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station, and wait and wait and wait and fall asleep and miss your stop. I didn't fall asleep but I swear that it was the slowest train ride I had since being in rural Japan, taking a local train.
In San Jose, I used (Santa Clara) Valley Transportation Authority light rail. It was smooth and fast enough. Planners were thoughtful enough to put a connection to San Francisco through Caltrain. At this same San Jose Diridon station, you can also use the Altamont Corridor Express to Stockton, as well as points along the way. Caltrain was reasonably good, although I've seen plenty of mistakes since I used it. I'm just happy I wasn't on a train with a problem, and that the temperature was moderate.
One thing I really liked about Caltrain is that they had dedicated storage for bikes. I didn't pay too much attention to how you could lock your bike but they mounted the bike with the front wheel up. I don't know that I would use it, but it was an effective way to keep the use of cars down. Since then, they have introduced some bike-rental-sharing scheme.
When I was in the Bay Area, I didn't use my car that much but when I did, I was rarely stuck in traffic. I did not drive into San Francisco, though. On the other hand, I've driven through Manhattan, Queensborough, and Brooklyn and don't want to do that again, and that's with major public transportation. I swear I used almost every bridge and tunnel in the NYC metro area, except for the George Washington Bridge and Verazzano Straits Bridge, all in one day.
Having lived in the Orlando, Florida area for 11 years after Philadelphia, I wanted to use public transportation. There was a bus stop in front of my first apartment complex. The bus that stops there went to a mall. I did some research and the mile between my apartment and my work had zero Lynx buses, for some reason, even though there were buses on either side of the stretch. The lack of sidewalks and the high humidity made walking an unlikely adventure, as I would need to clean up after walking to work. In all those years of living there, I never found a situation where I could ride a bus. The Orlando Sentinel used the headline "FloriDUH!" after the 2000 elections and I've used the nickname ever since. What the planning people are thinking is beyond me. They're working on implementing light rail now. It looked great, but whether Lynx buses will match up with it or not is anyone's guess. They're now trying to implement SunRail, their soon-to-be light rail solution from Volusia to Osceola counties. I could only hope that they've planned to connect bus routes to the light rail stations.
While public transportation doesn't make sense in many farming communities, it makes sense for small towns and medium-sized cities. I might use public transportation now, except that I'd have to walk two miles to Main Street or the shopping centers to get a bus that probably doesn't go where I want. If they had not paved over all the trolley tracks, I wonder if the town would be very different now.
Maybe obviously, taking a mature city and implementing train or trolley service requires a lot of construction, especially with subways. The other day I saw something about BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) finally after 30, 40 years making its way to San Jose from San Francisco, along East Bay. The comments about it were rude, ranging from drugs making their way to San Jose to the horror of detours for construction. I can't imagine that people would choose to be in a car waiting in traffic, rather than sitting in a train, for the same amount of time. It is overdue, but at least, it's on the way to a finish, even though Caltrain already handles the western side of things.
I don't want to pay extra for parking or find my car damaged when I return, even in a company-owned lot. I avoided that in Philadelphia, at least, paying for parking, by taking SEPTA trains into work. At that time, $56 per month got me unlimited access to the city via trains, trolleys, and buses. $64 got me a parking space. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a $6 VTA day pass got me unlimited trips around Santa Clara county on VTA buses and light rail, and the $18 day pass got me unlimited Caltrain use between San Jose and San Francisco. Besides, you don't have to remember where you parked your train.
I know that public transportation wherever it is, is no complete fix. It is usually a huge burden on the taxpayers, even with great ridership. It costs money to power it, and unions are often disagreeable. I'm not just talking about the U.S.A. It wasn't that long ago that the German rail workers union went on strike, and they probably had a fairly good deal already. When I was riding a SEPTA bus, the drivers would often tell of how the union was going to strike many months ahead of contract negotiations--regardless of contract negotiations.
If the world has all these great minds that think about economies all the time, why is it that they can't find a good, balanced solution for transportation? If power was free (solar, wind, etc.), would public transportation be affordable? (I just remembered one serial dream I had. I was explaining to the rest of my class my idea of self-propagating electromagnetic propulsion for trains, but unfortunately, I can't remember any serious details.)
Update 2014.04.11: I'm looking to move somewhere between San Jose and Stockton, California, so that I can use the ACE trains and live cheaply, until such time as I have money for a house, should I ever choose that again. I'm not 100% sure of job prospects, but if I end up with a local retail job, I can always take the train to San Jose to visit museums and other attractions. I think I'll have to drive the car to Palo Alto to IKEA, unless I'm also going all the way to San Fran on Caltrain. Public transportation takes more research and preparation, which reminds me how I forgot to learn about San Francisco's MUNI ahead of time and ended up hurting my feet the several hours I was there walking.
Update 2014.04.20: Apparently, living out by California state road 99 and I-5, you have some options to get to the San Fran Bay Area. The ACE train is one and there is a bus from Modesto (MAX) to the BART station at Dublin/Pleasanton. Everything seems to result in a 4 hour trip, if you're going all the way to San Francisco. The Caltrain trip from San Jose to San Francisco was somewhere between 1.5 hours and 2.0 hours, depending on taking express or local trains. Obviously, the bus will take longer because it has to sit in traffic with all of the commuters who moved to the Central Valley to save money.
I also took a moment to look at getting to Los Angeles. It seems that Amtrak goes from San Fran to Stockton by bus. You leave Stockton on the train but just to Bakersfield, and then, you're on another bus to Los Angeles. I'm confused. Is the ground so unstable that they don't have passenger trains running the length of the state? My trip up the state from Barstow to San Jose by car included switching roads in Bakersfield--from SR 58 to SR 99, which led to I-5, and across the Pacheco Pass Highway to US101, which took me to San Jose. I'm sure that getting a train across the mountains could be difficult, and Pennsylvania has a "horseshoe" that PRR used and Amtrak now uses from Philly to Pittsburgh. I guess it's not so simple in California.
In Los Angeles, I know that they have some trains. I've seen the station at the far end, at Angels Stadium in Orange County. I wonder if they're used much, other than for the baseball traffic. There didn't seem to be any dedicated parking, other than that of the stadium. Perhaps, when there are no games, people use it for Park-and-Ride?
Update 2014.05.01: Central Florida's SunRail went live today. There were some minor problems, of course, and running on time couldn't be expected. There was one photo of an older couple and a man with a walker was trying to get out of the train. There was no ramp, so he put his walker on the ground that was lower than the platform, in order to get to the final step on the train. I would imagine that he then picked up his walker to put on the platform, and likely fell trying to step over the gap.
It's still amazing to me that people don't test for wheelchairs and other devices. One of my first experiences in Central Florida was when Montgomery Road was being widened from two lanes to four lanes with an additional turn lane. They added sidewalks--with light poles in the middle of them. I'm not saying that it only happens there, but Floriduh, you do it far too often. At least, they somehow all agreed to get the light rail going.
Update 2014.05.07: The people behind SunRail are getting quite a bit of experience in their first few days. While some may be experienced in other places, there is no place quite like Central Florida. I'm just thrilled that they all cooperated and got light rail into production. Someone mentioned that they were adding a third car to some of the trains today, to handle the rush. That's certainly better than living people behind in frustration, when you have extra cars available. Why not put them there in the first place? It's likely the cost of the energy to drive them. You would hope that something called SunRail would have solar panels on the top of each vehicle.
I've used public transportation on both coasts and in Japan. In Japan, you can set your watch by it. I did. In the U.S.A., you might as well throw out your watch. When the train or bus arrives, it's there, and that's all that matters.
In the midwest, where I went to school, my mum and I took the bus once. It wasn't really good or bad, but we didn't have to walk.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I used trains and buses regularly (I likely still have my route pamphlets), and went one summer without a car. It was demanding because I worked outside the city and after dark, services are less available. What was a walk in the morning, and about 40 minutes on trains and buses, at night, took four hours on two buses, including a trip into the city and back out to the edge.
Transportation around New York City is no better, no worse. Getting around Manhattan is easy--uptown, downtown. Getting into town, you end up at Penn Station or Grand Central Station. If you're going to Long Island, you board the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station, and wait and wait and wait and fall asleep and miss your stop. I didn't fall asleep but I swear that it was the slowest train ride I had since being in rural Japan, taking a local train.
In San Jose, I used (Santa Clara) Valley Transportation Authority light rail. It was smooth and fast enough. Planners were thoughtful enough to put a connection to San Francisco through Caltrain. At this same San Jose Diridon station, you can also use the Altamont Corridor Express to Stockton, as well as points along the way. Caltrain was reasonably good, although I've seen plenty of mistakes since I used it. I'm just happy I wasn't on a train with a problem, and that the temperature was moderate.
One thing I really liked about Caltrain is that they had dedicated storage for bikes. I didn't pay too much attention to how you could lock your bike but they mounted the bike with the front wheel up. I don't know that I would use it, but it was an effective way to keep the use of cars down. Since then, they have introduced some bike-rental-sharing scheme.
When I was in the Bay Area, I didn't use my car that much but when I did, I was rarely stuck in traffic. I did not drive into San Francisco, though. On the other hand, I've driven through Manhattan, Queensborough, and Brooklyn and don't want to do that again, and that's with major public transportation. I swear I used almost every bridge and tunnel in the NYC metro area, except for the George Washington Bridge and Verazzano Straits Bridge, all in one day.
Having lived in the Orlando, Florida area for 11 years after Philadelphia, I wanted to use public transportation. There was a bus stop in front of my first apartment complex. The bus that stops there went to a mall. I did some research and the mile between my apartment and my work had zero Lynx buses, for some reason, even though there were buses on either side of the stretch. The lack of sidewalks and the high humidity made walking an unlikely adventure, as I would need to clean up after walking to work. In all those years of living there, I never found a situation where I could ride a bus. The Orlando Sentinel used the headline "FloriDUH!" after the 2000 elections and I've used the nickname ever since. What the planning people are thinking is beyond me. They're working on implementing light rail now. It looked great, but whether Lynx buses will match up with it or not is anyone's guess. They're now trying to implement SunRail, their soon-to-be light rail solution from Volusia to Osceola counties. I could only hope that they've planned to connect bus routes to the light rail stations.
While public transportation doesn't make sense in many farming communities, it makes sense for small towns and medium-sized cities. I might use public transportation now, except that I'd have to walk two miles to Main Street or the shopping centers to get a bus that probably doesn't go where I want. If they had not paved over all the trolley tracks, I wonder if the town would be very different now.
Maybe obviously, taking a mature city and implementing train or trolley service requires a lot of construction, especially with subways. The other day I saw something about BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) finally after 30, 40 years making its way to San Jose from San Francisco, along East Bay. The comments about it were rude, ranging from drugs making their way to San Jose to the horror of detours for construction. I can't imagine that people would choose to be in a car waiting in traffic, rather than sitting in a train, for the same amount of time. It is overdue, but at least, it's on the way to a finish, even though Caltrain already handles the western side of things.
I don't want to pay extra for parking or find my car damaged when I return, even in a company-owned lot. I avoided that in Philadelphia, at least, paying for parking, by taking SEPTA trains into work. At that time, $56 per month got me unlimited access to the city via trains, trolleys, and buses. $64 got me a parking space. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a $6 VTA day pass got me unlimited trips around Santa Clara county on VTA buses and light rail, and the $18 day pass got me unlimited Caltrain use between San Jose and San Francisco. Besides, you don't have to remember where you parked your train.
I know that public transportation wherever it is, is no complete fix. It is usually a huge burden on the taxpayers, even with great ridership. It costs money to power it, and unions are often disagreeable. I'm not just talking about the U.S.A. It wasn't that long ago that the German rail workers union went on strike, and they probably had a fairly good deal already. When I was riding a SEPTA bus, the drivers would often tell of how the union was going to strike many months ahead of contract negotiations--regardless of contract negotiations.
If the world has all these great minds that think about economies all the time, why is it that they can't find a good, balanced solution for transportation? If power was free (solar, wind, etc.), would public transportation be affordable? (I just remembered one serial dream I had. I was explaining to the rest of my class my idea of self-propagating electromagnetic propulsion for trains, but unfortunately, I can't remember any serious details.)
Update 2014.04.11: I'm looking to move somewhere between San Jose and Stockton, California, so that I can use the ACE trains and live cheaply, until such time as I have money for a house, should I ever choose that again. I'm not 100% sure of job prospects, but if I end up with a local retail job, I can always take the train to San Jose to visit museums and other attractions. I think I'll have to drive the car to Palo Alto to IKEA, unless I'm also going all the way to San Fran on Caltrain. Public transportation takes more research and preparation, which reminds me how I forgot to learn about San Francisco's MUNI ahead of time and ended up hurting my feet the several hours I was there walking.
Update 2014.04.20: Apparently, living out by California state road 99 and I-5, you have some options to get to the San Fran Bay Area. The ACE train is one and there is a bus from Modesto (MAX) to the BART station at Dublin/Pleasanton. Everything seems to result in a 4 hour trip, if you're going all the way to San Francisco. The Caltrain trip from San Jose to San Francisco was somewhere between 1.5 hours and 2.0 hours, depending on taking express or local trains. Obviously, the bus will take longer because it has to sit in traffic with all of the commuters who moved to the Central Valley to save money.
I also took a moment to look at getting to Los Angeles. It seems that Amtrak goes from San Fran to Stockton by bus. You leave Stockton on the train but just to Bakersfield, and then, you're on another bus to Los Angeles. I'm confused. Is the ground so unstable that they don't have passenger trains running the length of the state? My trip up the state from Barstow to San Jose by car included switching roads in Bakersfield--from SR 58 to SR 99, which led to I-5, and across the Pacheco Pass Highway to US101, which took me to San Jose. I'm sure that getting a train across the mountains could be difficult, and Pennsylvania has a "horseshoe" that PRR used and Amtrak now uses from Philly to Pittsburgh. I guess it's not so simple in California.
In Los Angeles, I know that they have some trains. I've seen the station at the far end, at Angels Stadium in Orange County. I wonder if they're used much, other than for the baseball traffic. There didn't seem to be any dedicated parking, other than that of the stadium. Perhaps, when there are no games, people use it for Park-and-Ride?
Update 2014.05.01: Central Florida's SunRail went live today. There were some minor problems, of course, and running on time couldn't be expected. There was one photo of an older couple and a man with a walker was trying to get out of the train. There was no ramp, so he put his walker on the ground that was lower than the platform, in order to get to the final step on the train. I would imagine that he then picked up his walker to put on the platform, and likely fell trying to step over the gap.
It's still amazing to me that people don't test for wheelchairs and other devices. One of my first experiences in Central Florida was when Montgomery Road was being widened from two lanes to four lanes with an additional turn lane. They added sidewalks--with light poles in the middle of them. I'm not saying that it only happens there, but Floriduh, you do it far too often. At least, they somehow all agreed to get the light rail going.
Update 2014.05.07: The people behind SunRail are getting quite a bit of experience in their first few days. While some may be experienced in other places, there is no place quite like Central Florida. I'm just thrilled that they all cooperated and got light rail into production. Someone mentioned that they were adding a third car to some of the trains today, to handle the rush. That's certainly better than living people behind in frustration, when you have extra cars available. Why not put them there in the first place? It's likely the cost of the energy to drive them. You would hope that something called SunRail would have solar panels on the top of each vehicle.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
The end is near...oh emm gee!
I joke frequently about the end of the world being the fault of the Spanish, whose troops killed the Mayan calendar maker so no more calendars were made.
It's not so different than my joke about 666 being upside down and the correct number was 999, and as FORTRAN programmers will recall, "GOTO 999" was often paired with "999: END" in that language's programmes to cease programme execution. Truly the end.
If anything truly happens, I'll be surprised and delighted. For once, someone will be correct about the end of the world. However, it will likely just include the human infestation (Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and the cockroaches will continue.
People might arrive on the planet millennia later and think that we obliterated ourselves with our stupidity. How could a people be able to put a computing device in their pocket and couldn't stop ridiculous violence?
The whole world has felt the sting of murders, such as those in Newtown, Connecticut and Toronto, Ontario recently. Canada is much less in love with guns than the U.S.A., yet a similar incident happened. How do military weapons end up outside the military?
Oh, and there is another end: the fiscal cliff. This Congress has been in session for 2 years and didn't accomplish anything that I can recall. I can't recall a Congress so useless, even when Pres. Nixon and Carter were in office. This Congress spent all their time trying to undo the previous 2 years and achieved nothing of their own. Now, they're blaming everything on the president, who as they might recall, has no ability to make laws. They are the anchor to this sinking ship.
We've had some tremendous weather today. I'm not talking about sunshine and moderate temperatures. We've had high winds, rain, and overnight, it'll all turn to snow and ice, as the temperatures drop steadily. I just had someone at the door to tell me how some company from New York got the state of Indiana to invest in a natural gas facility. It's awful outside and they couldn't organize months ago? Besides, they should know by now that the holiday season has left a lot of empty pockets by now.
Well, if the end is near, it'll be a welcome change. Life is too stressful at this point, and only a major catastrophe could change that. You never know. Maybe, aliens (from space) will come and take us all away to be enslaved on another planet to serve milk and cookies to Santa Claus.
Hmm...I think we missed out. Durn. I'm still here. You're still here. We had Christmas Day and plenty of people will have to pay their credit card bills for those once-in-a-lifetime items they bought just because the world was ending. Oops.
It's not so different than my joke about 666 being upside down and the correct number was 999, and as FORTRAN programmers will recall, "GOTO 999" was often paired with "999: END" in that language's programmes to cease programme execution. Truly the end.
If anything truly happens, I'll be surprised and delighted. For once, someone will be correct about the end of the world. However, it will likely just include the human infestation (Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and the cockroaches will continue.
People might arrive on the planet millennia later and think that we obliterated ourselves with our stupidity. How could a people be able to put a computing device in their pocket and couldn't stop ridiculous violence?
The whole world has felt the sting of murders, such as those in Newtown, Connecticut and Toronto, Ontario recently. Canada is much less in love with guns than the U.S.A., yet a similar incident happened. How do military weapons end up outside the military?
Oh, and there is another end: the fiscal cliff. This Congress has been in session for 2 years and didn't accomplish anything that I can recall. I can't recall a Congress so useless, even when Pres. Nixon and Carter were in office. This Congress spent all their time trying to undo the previous 2 years and achieved nothing of their own. Now, they're blaming everything on the president, who as they might recall, has no ability to make laws. They are the anchor to this sinking ship.
We've had some tremendous weather today. I'm not talking about sunshine and moderate temperatures. We've had high winds, rain, and overnight, it'll all turn to snow and ice, as the temperatures drop steadily. I just had someone at the door to tell me how some company from New York got the state of Indiana to invest in a natural gas facility. It's awful outside and they couldn't organize months ago? Besides, they should know by now that the holiday season has left a lot of empty pockets by now.
Well, if the end is near, it'll be a welcome change. Life is too stressful at this point, and only a major catastrophe could change that. You never know. Maybe, aliens (from space) will come and take us all away to be enslaved on another planet to serve milk and cookies to Santa Claus.
Hmm...I think we missed out. Durn. I'm still here. You're still here. We had Christmas Day and plenty of people will have to pay their credit card bills for those once-in-a-lifetime items they bought just because the world was ending. Oops.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Be careful who you trounce, you might just know them
Tuesday, I had stopped in the town where I've been helping my friend with his family's Chinese restaurant. They have various stores such as Target and Staples that this town doesn't have and that aren't closer.
After spending some time talking to him, I visited a few stores and finished, ready to head home. Someone in a Buick SUV was in the right turn lane and decided that I wasn't important, so they cut me off. Being that we were getting both heavy wind and heavy rain from Sandy, I thought this was an excellent example of what not to do, unless you wanted to have an accident.
There are over 30 miles from there to my house and it was amusing to find that the person turned into a driveway about 2 miles from my house. I had been following them the whole way since it was also my way home. I can only imagine that there might have been a bit of panic from time to time. "Why is that car still behind me?" and "What are they doing?" would seem to be appropriate thoughts.
Drivers of most cars don't seem to care but SUV drivers seem to think that they can do anything they want, without consequence. I wonder if that person will think twice next time.
Also considering Hurricane Sandy, I had been watching DirecTV's channel 349 where they routed coverage from New York City and Philadelphia television stations. I was saddened to see that the Atlantic City, New Jersey boardwalk was gone, and that a lot of the coastal areas were close to gone. Since the hurricane came ashore in A.C., it's no wonder so much was devastated. They were also talking about Long Beach Island and its million dollar homes. What I saw of it always looked a bit craptacular but I wasn't looking for the buildings.
I heard and read that New Jersey's main electric utility had to shut down power to avoid electrocuting people and causing complicated damage and fires. It was a great decision, but of course, there are people without power. Some people are also getting sick from the generator fumes, but they're probably keeping the generator in the garage so it doesn't get wet.
Having spent eight years in the area, I think of all the people I met and how I hope that they're fine now. Having spent a good portion of late 2004 with three hurricanes and without power for part of that, I know that people will survive rough conditions. I know that people in Philly and New Jersey and New York City can tough it out. I'm keeping them in my thoughts regardless.
After spending some time talking to him, I visited a few stores and finished, ready to head home. Someone in a Buick SUV was in the right turn lane and decided that I wasn't important, so they cut me off. Being that we were getting both heavy wind and heavy rain from Sandy, I thought this was an excellent example of what not to do, unless you wanted to have an accident.
There are over 30 miles from there to my house and it was amusing to find that the person turned into a driveway about 2 miles from my house. I had been following them the whole way since it was also my way home. I can only imagine that there might have been a bit of panic from time to time. "Why is that car still behind me?" and "What are they doing?" would seem to be appropriate thoughts.
Drivers of most cars don't seem to care but SUV drivers seem to think that they can do anything they want, without consequence. I wonder if that person will think twice next time.
Also considering Hurricane Sandy, I had been watching DirecTV's channel 349 where they routed coverage from New York City and Philadelphia television stations. I was saddened to see that the Atlantic City, New Jersey boardwalk was gone, and that a lot of the coastal areas were close to gone. Since the hurricane came ashore in A.C., it's no wonder so much was devastated. They were also talking about Long Beach Island and its million dollar homes. What I saw of it always looked a bit craptacular but I wasn't looking for the buildings.
I heard and read that New Jersey's main electric utility had to shut down power to avoid electrocuting people and causing complicated damage and fires. It was a great decision, but of course, there are people without power. Some people are also getting sick from the generator fumes, but they're probably keeping the generator in the garage so it doesn't get wet.
Having spent eight years in the area, I think of all the people I met and how I hope that they're fine now. Having spent a good portion of late 2004 with three hurricanes and without power for part of that, I know that people will survive rough conditions. I know that people in Philly and New Jersey and New York City can tough it out. I'm keeping them in my thoughts regardless.
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