Since I have worked here I have witnessed four accidents during work hours and am forced to play chicken with speeding traffic. When I first contacted Pittsburgh’s non-emergency line, 311, about it this is the response I received.

None of the signal warrants are met at this location; therefore a traffic signal cannot be installed. However during evaluation, it was noticed that many of the crashes were at night. Because of this, lighting has been increased at the intersection by replacing a light pole and replacing the light with a higher wattage variety. The stop signs have been replaced to ensure reflectivity. The storage container was on the corner has be relocated to allow better visibility of oncoming traffic from southbound 29th street.

Apparently there are even more accidents happening outside of business hours in addition to the few I have witnessed and documented. Great that they addressed these issues, but none of them address the accidents that happen during the day, nor do they address pedestrian safety issues.

After my coworker was struck this morning I contacted them again and immediately received a response telling me there is nothing they can do and to contact my state representative. The Federal Highway Administration governs the installation of traffic signals and our intersection doesn’t qualify for one.

What about lowering the speed limit? What about a pedestrian signal? Nothing. They don’t care. I am afraid that just like on Braddock Ave outside of Frick Park, that it will take a death to address the issue.

This the city’s idea of traffic calming? It clearly isn’t working.

If you have the official Twitter Facebook application installed, remove it now.

Install yakket. Yakket will allow you to add filters to prevent tweets that match a certain criteria from updating your Facebook status.

Follow yakket’s instructions for configuring the app. Once that is done and working, pay special attention to the following set of instructions.

• Step 2

  • Add the following keywords, via, rt, http://, #

• Step 3

  • Select, “Sync Tweets to Facebook UNLESS I use my keyword(s)”

• Step 4

  • Select, Do not post tweets containing @
  • Select, Do not post retweets
  • Select, Do not strip hash tags from my tweets (if your keyword is a hash tag, yakket will still strip the keyword hash)

Once that is all done you should be all set. I can’t promise you won’t annoy your friends anymore, but at least it won’t be because you use Twitter to update your status.

What about my links?

Links are ugly in a Facebook status update, use Facebook’s attach feature to share links. It adds a nice preview of the website and you can add your thoughts about it without mucking up your status with a link.

How about sharing my Foursquare or Gowalla or {insert app here} updates?

Any website or app worth their salt will offer Facebook connectivity so you can share your activity in a more native fashion. For instance, when I check in on Foursquare it posts a link, my status update and a thumbnail of the location.

Landmark health care reform heads to Obama’s desk
A sweeping bill overhauling the U.S. medical system goes to President Obama’s desk on Monday to be signed into law.

Stupak Called ‘Baby Killer’ on House Floor
Following the vote on the massive health bill, Republicans challenged the Democratic bill’s language barring federal funding of abortions, saying it was weak and would effectively allow public funding for abortions.

The House passed the overhaul — now what?
Relieved Democrats may still be celebrating the passage of landmark health care overhaul legislation, but Republicans in the Senate still have an opportunity to try to derail the bill.

Health Care Bill PASSES
After more than a year of virulent debate, Democrats marched through a throng of jeering protesters, whose slurs recalled a Washington of the 1960s — when the party forced civil rights legislation and Medicare through a fiercely divided Congress. Against unified Republican opposition, they built on that foundation Sunday with the passage of a health care reform bill that extends coverage to 32 million Americans and tightly regulates the insurance industry.

US House passes historic health reform
The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

route: 86b inbound

Below is the complaint I sent to PAT and to their CEO Stephen Bland.

I was traveling on my bicycle at around 15-20mph passing through the intersection at Penn and 31st. I was in the middle of the right lane preparing to clear the intersection and ride on the bike friendly section of Penn Ave. A bus approached from behind, honked their horn, started to change lanes and pass me. If it would have ended there I wouldn’t be sending this complaint.

Instead of completing the pass, the driver began to turn into the right lane while I was still in it. I could have reached out and touched the bus without extending my arm he was so close. For the next three blocks I kept my same speed and kept up with the bus. Not sure what the hurry was that he had to pass me like that and risk my life.

This isn’t the first complaint I have filed like this. A very similar incident occurred on Liberty Ave on May 21st of last year. I ride the bus regularly and I feel that incidents like this need reported and dealt with.

This is the second complaint I have submitted like this. In fact I searched my email and replied to Mr. Bland using the same email from last year and added my new complaint. He responded and said he would look into it.

Today at one of their downtown Pittsburgh locations rather than stop the line from moving while they waited for their register to restart they gave each customer their lunch for free.

They know why people choose Qdoba for lunch and didn’t want something like a cash register failure to change that.

Penelope Pooping

John Gruber writes,

Seriously, this is the real deal — full-screen H.264 playback with no Flash, no browser plugins, full iPhone OS support, and sane CPU usage, better in every single regard than any video player ever made with Flash.

Have a look for yourself.

What I experienced is nothing like Gruber describes. I saw my browser lock up and my CPU usage spike and stay spiked while the video played. I sent it to Matthew and he experienced the same performance issues.

I look forward to better implementations and support from browsers. Better performance, real full screen, sharable implementations.

Download the code & example files