The San Francisco Bike Coalition keeps talking about how great it would be if Market Street in San Francisco were car-free. In this post on the San Francisco Streetsblog, they made their standard jab in that direction. (see image).
I wrote this comment on the post:
>How great would a car-free Market Street be?
Not so great. Go ahead and click the link above
“New York City has embraced livable streets principles” and watch the video that points to New York City’s revitalization program. There is talk about temporarily making a car-free corridor for the but no talk at all about any permanent car-free spaces.
Maybe 1-4% of SF rides a bike on a daily basis. In the recent French bike experiments, bike ridership has roughly doubled. So that’s 2-8% biking in SF. What about the 92-98% that would not be helped by making a car-free Market Street?
The best way to kill the vitality of a street is to remove the traffic.
I tried selling residential solar for 5 months last year. It didn’t go well. I didn’t sell any. :-(
Before that, I sold yellow pages to try getting my feet wet with direct sales… eh.
Over the last few weeks, I found myself babysitting a bit… for Binka’s 11 month-old and Jessica’s 6 and 9 year olds.
SWARM brought me to Scottsdale Arizona and we got paid real money but that money goes to SWARM. Maker Media brought SWARM to the Head Royce school but they pretty much paid gas money.
I’ve been working on making this t. pen invention… but not enough.
I started working part-time with Rich Humphrey. Something could develop there to make it more than a couple days a month but it’ll take a good while first.
I’ve been working a couple days a month for Charlotte sporatically for Kern…
Last year I tried selling residential photovoltaic solar systems. It didn’t go well. One thing that convinced me not to pursue it further was that a prospect of mine priced out a Do It Yourself system and ended up paying a lot less than what I would have charged him. I spoke to him recently and he’s very happy with the system.
He installed the system with the help of a contractor and it’s been running for a few months now just fine. He bought the hardware through Mr Solar.com (phone 888-680-2427) and had it installed by Thomas Houghton, owner of Sun Energy Engineering (phone 925-217-1629) in Pleasant Hill, CA.
He said he has had no problems with the equipment and that the manufacturer’s warrantees are all very good. And the contractor was excellent though he had to call and pester him a little to get him on the job. You can’t really fault the contractor too sharply on that because, well, that’s how it always ends up going.
M. K. said that Sun Energy Engineering was able to get about a 20% discount off the prices published on the MrSolar.com website.
I was able to sell a 5 kilowatt system at about $8/kilowatt. That’s $40,000 complete. I estimate that M. K. got his system for maybe $24k + $3k installation = $27,000. That’s $13,000…. 1/3 off! Of course, he had to manage the process himself and figure out all the paperwork. The paperwork can be a bother but it’s certainly not $13,000 of pain!
The prices I’m mentioning don’t include city, state and federal rebate programs which often end up reducing the price of a system by half.
I ordered 2 Burning Man tickets. They recently arrived and it had an Atomic Fireball in the envelope. I love the sentiment, thank you!
It would be much appreciated if I had received one Fireball per ticket. That way, both my partner and I could have our Fireballs. Last year I ordered two tickets and received just one Fireball as well.. :-(
You spent the effort (and used that big envelope) to include a Fireball, having one per ticket is only right. :-)
Here was the response from Frog at Burning Man
Hi Lee. The secure mailing option as required by the post office says we need to have our envelopes 3/4 inch thick so your package can be signed for. We thought it would be fun to send something useful that keeps the envelope 3/4 inch thick for the post office requirements, but we found that if we sent more than one fireball the flap on the envelope has a tendency to come open and tickets have been stolen in the mail. So, as much as we want to make people happy by sending a piece of candy to each and every one of you, we would rather you have your tickets safe and sound.
I did a little digging and.. yup, the least expensive way to send a letter that requires signature confirmation at the receiving end is to make sure the letter is at least 3/4″ thick. That way you can call it “First Class Package” and get Signature Confirmation service for $2.20. Total price for a 3 oz letter is under $4. Otherwise, you’d have to use Priority Mail with Signature Confirmation for $7.15.
So it looks as though if you give USPS a letter that can’t be machine sorted, it’s less expensive than if it’s machine sortable. Hmm.
I have a few terrific bookmarks that I use all the time. They are javascript code. I put them all in a text file so you are assured of getting the formatting just right. Take a look. They work equally well in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.
worked for Rich H all day. We figured out the majority of running an LDAP server for user authentication (it’s amazing how something so straightforward can be so convoluted!)
This evening
had a good conversation with Charlotte
and with SWARM..
picked up a shelving unit that Erik S donated to SWARM (and had an adventure “stealing” it back from its former basement home
chatted up about robots with my SWARMie friends
helped install lighting Michael donated to SWARM for the container. It looks great!
installed the shelf in the container. It’s amazing how much stuff fits on a shelf :-)))
made some hooks with Jon to hang stuff on the walls of the container.
Last Friday Marnia and Jessie and I presented SWARM to 3 assemblies at the Head Royce school in Oakland. It was a lot of fun! It’s amazing how the 3 different crowds, 6-8 grade, 9-12 grade, and 4th grade needed COMPLETELY different presentations. And over the course of the 3, we all became better presenters :-)
Also presenting was Ken Murphy of Blinky Bug fame and Dan Goldwater with is POV and acrylic bike :-)
Great Thanks to Michelle Hlubinka AKA Binka from Maker Media for inviting us!
We got a followup comment from a teacher:
When I picked him up, [the student] said that today was the “best day of the entire school year.” He was enthralled with the “Make” guys and knows that he “wants to be those guys.” Owen, [the student] plans to talk to you to find out how he can connect with them with the goal of working with them in the summer or the future.
Thanks for getting one teenager very very excited about the future.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition keeps talking about how great it would be if Market Street in San Francisco were car-free. In this post on the San Francisco Streetsblog, they made their standard jab in that direction. (see image).