Update: I heard back from the insurance company and the bottom line is that when in an accident, insist on a police report and get some witnesses. I was compensated, but not fully.

Last night, Monday October 17 at around 6:30pm I was involved in a collision with a car. I was riding outbound on Liberty Ave where it meets Aiken. I just finished waiting at the red light at Liberty and Baum and was following two cars who had created a gap in front of me. I was in the middle of the right lane, had a bright blinking front light and reflective clothing on and couldn’t have been going faster than 15mph when I noticed a car with their left turn signal on, waiting to turn left on to Center Ave. This very same situation occurs every day on my way home, but tonight was different. As I was entering the intersection the driver decided to make her turn and there was little time for me to react and I skidded in to her passenger side front door. My rear wheel is ruined and my knee is a little sore, but outside of that I am ok.

I ride through this intersection every evening and the situation is always the same. I have one or two vehicles in front of me, a couple in back, a turning lane to my left, and an awkward intersection with more turning vehicles ahead of me. There is always a driver making a left on to Center just like there was last night. I saw her, I felt it was safe, but when it was too late she made her turn.

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She said she didn’t see me. I don’t think she was seeing much of anything last night given the dark and rainy conditions. This was her second accident this week, she totaled her other car.

There was a police officer on Center Ave and I was able to wave him down to help with the exchange of information. Of all days to forget my wallet. We exchanged information and I called Monica to come pick me up. To my knowledge the officer did not file a report and I should have known not to trust that the card he handed me at the very least had his name on it. The officer did let the woman know that I had the right of way and that she was at fault.

I filed a claim with her insurance and am waiting to hear back on the claim.

Apparently the city of Pittsburgh who claims to be “A Most Livable City” has never heard of traffic calming. If they had, the intersection at 29th and Liberty, where my office, a gym, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre among others, would have received some sort of treatment to help us navigate the highway known as Liberty Ave safely.

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.

There are things that make sense in a Twitter timeline that don’t make as much sense in Facebook’s news feed that can lead to your Facebook friends being annoyed or even confused. These things include @replies, #hastags, retweets, and links in your status updates. Follow these steps to integrate Twitter and Facebook and reduce the chances your friends will hide you from their news feed.

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.

I always find it fascinating to look at the various news websites after something like the healthcare reform vote last night. It’s pretty clear to me that if you’re only going to one news source for your news you’re doing it wrong.

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.

Updated with the bus route on 2010-05-26 because of a post on the Bike Pittsburgh forums regarding the same route.

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.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a Qdoba addict. I not only love their burritos but their no nonsense approach to ordering. They get you in and out in a hurry. It’s good for them and it’s good for their customers.

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.

Digging Out

Penelope Pooping

• update, 2010-02-03 – Tried it again this morning and had the same results. CPU spikes well over 100% and the UI is unusable.

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.