Weapons of Mass Distraction

Heatwave July 23, 2011

So with the temps scraping 100F around here past few days I thought it would be appropriate to center music on the theme of Heatwave, be it part of the title or the group name:

To kick it off, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’s, my favorite:

Another one by the above group that I love:

The 7th Avenue with Miami Heatwave:

Heatwave – The Groove Line:

A Phil Collins remake of Heatwave:

We’re surviving the heatwave. Fans, AC, the whole nine. I’ve resisted buying an AC unit for the living room because I don’t want to pay to run the damned thing. The fan is enough.

Oh well, so long PEAC April 20, 2010

So I note that Eric Rehder, Paul Lynch and Renae Chaves all unfriended me on Facebook. Eric even called and told me I’m not welcome at tomorrow nights PEAC meeting.

I’ve shut off all dropbox access at this point. Why should I continue to manage it if I’m no longer part of the group?

All because I called someone a stupid cunt. Now I’m sexist AND a danger to women. It’s fucking ridiculous.

Consider – it all started with less than ten words wherein I said that they were being discriminatory toward Providence residents and that MERI had already done such a video. That lead to an email and a digression on the meaning and syntax  of the term ad hominem.

This touched off an odyssey that to this day isn’t completed. But it’s going to be completed. The report was filed and the investigation has begun. A knock on the door should happen soon.

ヘザーカーリーは、刑務所に起こっている400ポンドレズビアンであるため、

すぐに400ポンドのレズビアンは、警察からの訪問を 取得されます。私はそれがあなたです警察は私のためにそれを証明しな ければならない知っている。

More Information April 4, 2010

I spoke with Paul Auger this evening. Ok, it’s been agreed that the email that was sent out was a bit ambiguous. They want people from ALL OVER RI. I’ll say it again, they are not excluding any community.

The whole thing started with Heather Curley’s facebook email to me. The way I am to understand it, she went off reservation with her ad hominem attack and it is being addressed.

As to the frequent commenter Lauren – she is not a representative of Queer Action RI.

At this point I have redacted Stacey’s phone number. But all the other information stands.

From this point forward the less I hear of QuARI the better. It isn’t worth wasting any more time on this. And I’m locking out comments on all the posts related to this too.

In case you were wondering April 4, 2010

So this is the first paragraph of the email Queer Action RI sent out:

We have a director and camera person for the next two weeks and really need people to interview from around Rhode Island. We especially need you if you live outside Providence! We need stories from across the spectrum of GLBTQI and straight supporters as well as all ages.

That’s what kicked off my comment about discriminating against Providence residents and copy-catting other sites with videos that do THE SAME THING. It’s a redundancy issue.

As a result ere are some of the things Curley said to me in the comment thread on facebook:

“Why don’t you take your comments and keep them to yourself?”
“You truly need to get a life Tony and stop being such a hater.”
“You disgust me.”
“If you are going to be on grammar patrol you should at least make sure your grammar is flawless before insulting someone.“

Is it really any wonder I went off?

But you really need to read the comments. The QuARI members and their supporters are coming off as being rather unhinged about all this. I actually hope they do show up at the meeting on Tuesday. Because they aren’t going to get a chance to say a word.

So now someone resorts to threats against me April 4, 2010

This is great. They’re really showing their true colors here.

It’s not fun Tony and it’s about to get a lot less fun. This blog is making it’s rounds. And you don’t look like you are in a good light at all. Let’s first take down other’s phone numbers. And then let’s take off childish insults. You may be laughing now but you won’t be for long. We will all see you at the PEAC meeting on Tuesday unless you give an apology and take it down. Say this to our face. See you Tuesday!

I tried to respond via email and of course the email bounces with a 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account

So I can only reply here.

Phone numbers? What the hell are you talking about? As to childish insults, now you know what ad hominem is. Good for you.

So I can’t wait for Tuesday. Hopefully they’ll be there with pitchforks and torches!

–Update–

I’ve been informed that the comment was posted by someone NOT affiliated with QuARI.

Update2: This is all coming from Heather Curley’s IP address.

The squabble continues April 3, 2010

So the owner of the thread that Heather Curley and I were having a comment war in has deleted all the posts. Fortunately one feature of Facebook is that I receive the email notifications so I’ll just use those.

First we’ll start with Mz. Hurley’s comments. I explained in one post that if she was going to resort to ad hominem she really should know the facts before coming off as an ignoramus.

She replies:

“hahahaha tony it’s homonym…if you are going to pick apart grammar learn how to spell.”

I told her again she had her facts screwed up and even gave her the Wikipedia link defining Ad Hominem.

If you’re going to be a stupid bitch at least have the decency to google the term. (I know, the ad hominem wasn’t truly necessary but I had to do it.)

But the dumb bitch goes further:

“ahhh tony tony tony…normally I think it’s classless to stoop to someone on your level but you aren’t doing yourself any favors with that last post. You know what they say about people in glass houses. First of all it’s homonym and secondly it’s add. if you are going to be on grammar patrol you should at least make sure your grammar is flawless before insulting someone. “

Actually peaches, you need to get on a pretty tall ladder to get to my level.

You obviously haven’t been educated else you’d know a few Latin terms used in picking apart logical arguments.

She can play the whole wounded/offended thing but if you’re that fucking stupid I want nothing to do with you. In fact I’ll just continue to call you out on your stupidity because it amuses me greatly. Seems like QuARI attracts people like Curley. Don’t get me wrong there are some good people involved with the group but for some reason I just attract the dipshits in the group.

But then I get an email from Stacey Behan:

Hey Tony, I am being told that you are posting negative statements against the documentary I am working on on behalf of QuARI. I have not personally seen any of the posts, so I figured I should just reach out to you. My # is 401-NNN-NNNN, I would like to talk to you about the project if you think we really are doing something wrong. Otherwise, I just want to get my facts straight.

I simply said that they seemed to be discriminating against Providence residents and that Marriage Equality RI had already done a video. Not that you’re doing anything wrong, but it is redundant.

That’s pretty much what I told Behan. What irks me is that Curley felt it was her duty to pass it along to Stacey.

So let make it abundantly clear. I want nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with Queer Action Rhode Island. I find it interesting too that other groups have arrived at the same conclusion.

RI PUC Sinks Deepwater Wind Project April 2, 2010

I’ve previously written about the ridiculous rates that Deepwater Wind wanted to charge. Well, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission voted down the proposal between Deepwater Wind and National Grid. It was a no-brainer.

The key paragraph from the linked article:

The three-member commission voted unanimously against the power-purchase agreement between developer Deepwater Wind and National Grid during a public meeting Tuesday morning in its Warwick offices. In separate statements during the hour-long hearing that capped nearly four months of deliberations, the commissioners all spoke out against the proposed contract, saying that the price of power agreed to by the two sides was too high and that the overall deal — according to the standard set by statute — was not “commercially reasonable.”

The initial offering rate would be 24.4 cents per kWh with a 3.5% per year increase for the next 20 years yielding a price just short of 50 cents per kWh.

Interestingly the Providence Journal posted a story on the town of Portsmouth’s wind turbine. Some interesting stats:

“PORTSMOUTH — The wind turbine at Portsmouth High School earned $281,219 for the town in its first full year of operation — 14 percent higher than projected.

Most of that amount is reflected in a credit on electric bills for schools and town buildings, although a recently enacted change in the law means that the town will instead get checks back every month from National Grid.

The 1.5-megawatt turbine, towering 336 feet into the air, marked its first anniversary on March 18.

According to figures compiled by the town, the turbine produced 3,359,100 kilowatt hours of electricity and took in a total of $516,898 worth of revenue — from the power sold to National Grid.

Debt service on the construction costs, as well as operation and maintenance expenses, totaled $235,679. “

So profit = revenue-expenses and that netted the town $281,219 profit. Not too shabby.

Now the town used some of the 3,359,100 kWh but I don’t know how much. They charged National Grid 11 cents + 4 cents or 15 cents a kWh. That’s more in the realm of reality as opposed to Deepwater Wind’s 24.4 cents. If I run it revenue/power it comes out to 15 cents a kWh.

Cost is what really matters though. 7 cents a kWh. So the reality is you could actually produce wind power for prices competitive with the standard offers from National Grid and satisfy your debt service and maintenance at say 10 cents per kWh. I’d be willing to go wind power for that price.

I see the best avenue for wind power projects being run by the cities, towns and state. This is a disruptive technology and we cannot allow the incumbent power providers to take this and run it under the same scheme we’ve run electric services under for the last century.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is no fan of National Grid especially since his business went without electrical power for three days during the recent flooding here in Providence. The stinker of it was that the bank right next door had power.

But I told him I was glad the PUC tanked the Deepwater project. He started yammering about how this would have put RI on the map, that they’d build the turbines here, etc.

I told him the best we could hope for would be to act as a distribution point for the northeast because in order to sell those turbines at a reasonable price they are NOT going to be manufactured here in the United States but instead in China or India.

And the whole panacea of wind power is that even if we did build them here in the U.S. it’s a short term market. Once you have installed all the wind turbines you can install, there isn’t any sense in continuing large scale manufacturing.

I also told him about how Nikola Tesla’s wireless power distribution was killed by Westinghouse because they couldn’t slap a meter on it. But then I explained that the generators run whether somoene is using power or not. It is for the most part a fixed cost to generate the power.

But that is the other thing about wind power. Suppose Portsmouth’s debt service is for ten years. After that it’s expenses are for maintenance and might total $10K per year.

$10,000 divided by the output gives $0.002 per kWh cost wise. In essence I agree with my friend, wind power gets cheaper as time goes by and debt is serviced.

Why I hate Java April 1, 2010

IMNSHO, Java has to be the absolute worst language out there. Total system resource pig. For example, certain web sites I visit rely heavily on Java to do their thing. At the same time I found out that iTunes also uses Java. You can guess where I’m going with this.

Ok, I’ll forgive Apple for using Java in iTunes. But webbies, especially discussion boards, use PHP. It runs server side and doesn’t fuck my machine up.

Flooding in Providence March 30, 2010

Thus far we’ve gotten 7.2 inches of rain and it hasn’t stopped yet. Did get a brief respite this afternoon but we’re getting more rain this evening.

The first indication that something isn’t quite right:

Atwells Ave Flooding

You can see the section of Atwells Ave, right next to the fire station, that the river is overflowing. Now keep in mind this river runs about 3+ feet below grade level almost all the times so this means there is about a 4 foot swell.

In this shot you can see the river in the left hand background.

Parking Lot

Here is where Eagle St. connects to Valley St. There’s a reason they call it Valley St btw.

Eagle St

They’ve already declared state of emergencies in most counties in RI including Providence. They’re saying this is a flood you get once every hundred years.

And now I’m hearing this is a 500 year flood. Interesting.

Here’s the DOT map of flooding:

DOT Flood Map

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a walk over to the barrier and get pix there.