Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Weekly 103bees search feedback report for September 27, 2007

These search queries are a sample from 103bees of what's hitting this weblog this week. Your feedback is welcome on any of them. I've linked each of them that are easy to link to - mostly to Arborwiki pages, which will in turn link back to this blog if appropriate; the tag "warning:indirect-selflink" is appropriate.

VACUUM (http://vielmetti.typepad.com)
> detroit tiger stadium
> cafe ambrosia ann arbor
> borders books blogs
> what kind of spider is this? michigan
> what spider in illinois resembles a mushroom
> "address book" fields mac
> michigan northville regional psychiatric hospital sale lawsuits
> pull from webdav into gmail
> prices of pumpkins
> has problem accents request tracker

VACUUM QUESTIONS
> related:alumnac.com/personal_page.php?id=112344
> what kind of spider is this? michigan
> how long does it take to run or walk 1.5 miles
> google-security system residential wireless- how does it work?
> what do pelicans eat

Ann Arbor power outages 9/26/07

My blog regularly gets search hits when there's a power outage. It looks like there was a DTE spike this morning (data from MyBlogLog):

07:16 Google Search: ann arbor loses electricity 2
07:09 Google Search: primo coffee ann arbor 1
06:43 Google Search: dte outages 3

The DTE Energy current outage map shows the whole Washtenaw County area clean as of 12:15pm. Carry on.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, dte, ann-arbor-loses-electricity, dte-outages

Michigan who? 34-32 - Division I-AA Appalachian State beats #5 Michigan at home

Waiting to see who carries these t-shirts locally - my guess it would be Elmo's if anyone (they carred the Pfired shirts).

Detroit Free Press:

All I do know is that week one is over, Michigan has a lot of work to do, Appalachian State paraphernalia will become the most popular items of dress whenever a team from Ann Arbor goes to visit another school and Lloyd Carr should not be fired.

Beyond Page One - editor's blog for the Watauga Democrat

Miss S.C. Teen USA Caitlin Upton defended her Friday gaffe on the Today Show and announced she would be attending Appalachian State.

Facebook search for "Fire Lloyd Carr":

Group: FIRE Lloyd Carr!!!!
Network: Global
Size: 904 members
Type: Sports & Recreation - College Sports
New: 878 More Members, 7 Board Topics, 142 Wall Posts

Who do i call to report noise pollution in Ann Arbor, Michigan?

The Ann Arbor city noise ordinance is part of the city code. You can find the Ann Arbor city code online (you'd be looking for chapter 119, NOISE CONTROL), or you can find the relevant parts of the city noise ordinance on Goodspeed Update.

If you need a noise permit in Ann Arbor, fill out this form (pdf). It will need to be approved by the Ann Arbor Police Department and by the City Clerk's office. You need 5 days notice and a $7.50 permit fee.

There's a recent post on Ron Suarez's blog noting loopholes in the city noise ordinance regarding commerical lawn care services.

The loophole concerns an exception to the Ordinance allowing lawn services to operate in residential neighborhoods at a very loud noise level (up to 90 decibels). The specific section in the Ordinance is Chap. 119, Sec. 9:364-365. This allowable noise level is louder than the noise from the average factory (75 decibels) and nearly as loud as that in the front row seats of a rock concert (110 decibels).

City Council regularly hears requests to change or modify the noise ordinance. The marching band was the target of a 2003 complaint:

After several years of waking to the music, Van't Hul requested Tuesday that the Ann Arbor City Council change the city's noise ordinance law so that loud public music can only be played after 9 a.m, extending the current law by two hours. This would force the marching band to change its practice schedule.

"Nothing the University has done is illegal," said Van't Hul. But he added that the noise is a problem that could be changed quickly. "All it is, is just postponing (the marching band's) drums for a few hours. That's all. There's a lot of working people in Ann Arbor who need to get some sleep."

Enforcement of the noise ordinance is done by the city police. Here's a 2006 fall party season account of enforcement (Michigan Daily)

Police may issue noise violations after 11 p.m. if any noise can be heard beyond the property line.

Dresleski said officers rarely show up at house parties unless the department receives a neighbor's noise complaint.

"We don't care if you party all night unless it interferes with others' rights to peace and quiet," said Dresleski.

The Ann Arbor police now chart noise violations by address - instead of by person receiving the violation - and the price of the ticket goes up with each offense.

(inspired by a query that came to my blog; my neighbors are for the most part quiet enough, and if there's any loud noises at 11pm from my house it's from my two year old crying)

Technorati Tags: annarbor, NOISE, a-little-bit-louder-now, a-little-bit-softer-now

m.*.com directory of mobile sites updated

I've updated the m.*.com directory of mobile sites. In this edition I added links to mobile versions of Facebook, Youtube, and Clusty, and to Tiny Twitter. Haven't tried Youtube yet (I don't think my phone has any hope of doing anything useful with video), there's a review of Clusty, and the Facebook mobile site is really quite good.

I also added direct links on this page to the Mobile Ride Guide for the two Ann Arbor bus routes I use the most, the 1 and the 5. If you would like a link to your bus status page, so that you don't have to fiddle with a long drop down menu to find it, let me know and I'll add it in.

Thanks to Brian Cors for the feedback and update.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, aata, theride, bus, mobile, facebook, youtube, clusty, twitter

Figure eight school bus derby in Flat Rock, June 16 2007

School is out so it's time for school bus racing at the Flat Rock Speedway!

Saturday, June 16 at Flat Rock Speedway features the wildly-popular Marco's Pizza School Bus Figure 8 races! Picture 8 school buses racing on the Figure 8 track.....fender-banging, door-banging action and the occasional flip of a bus as it enters one of the turns. We'll throw in the Toledo ARCA A-1 Auto Parts Factory Stocks and the Michigan Legends Cars for a great night of entertainment! Reserved seating is just $16 per seat and can be obtained in advance by calling the track at 734-782-2480. ALL general admission tickets (approximately a total of 3000) go on sale the day of the race at 4 p.m. when the front gate and ticket office opens. Racing begins at 7 p.m.

Video of this event!

Here's a photo from Jose of the fun a couple of years ago watching school buses flip over and smash into each other.

Flat Rock is down river south of the airport.

To give you some idea of what this is all about, here's a clip from a race at the Rockford Speedway:

Technorati Tags: crazy, figure-eight, flatrock, racing, schoolbus, schools-out-for-the-summer

Seasonal trends in search patterns

Google Trends is fun. Compare this summer activity:

poison ivy

with this winter activity:

icicle

Technorati Tags: google, googletrends, poison-ivy, icicle

Proximity is the killer application

Jim Benson has a great photo essay on the disruptive effects that a freeway has on community:

Here's an example. Before the creation of I-5, the East Lake and Boston neighborhoods of Seattle were connected. You could easily walk from place to place. After I-5, they were highly separated. Now getting from "Start" above in Eastlake to my "Finish" in the Boston neighborhood is very difficult.

If you didn't know the area, and relied only on automated mapping tools to find your way from here to there, it's a long zigzaggy path. If you know and are confident of your urban wayfaring skills, there's a direct walking path - under the freeway. Who walks under wide freeways?

More so that we realize, the paths that we regularly take determine who we see and what kinds of things we run into. I took the bus most of the way to work today and ran across Spencer Thomas at a new cafe on the ground floor of the building that he works in. Did we plan that meeting? No, but in some sense we didn't need to, because the paths that we both regularly take cross there.

A big reason for doing web development in Silicon Valley or San Francisco (rather than out here in the provinces) is the likelihood that you will run into someone nearby who can answer your question - whether it be how to do a Bluetooth sync between a Razr and a Macbook answered in a San Francisco cafe, or something more organized like shared space for companies working on developing complementary wiki applications in Palo Alto.

Choosing where you live is a big part of living. Choosing where you work, and who you work with, is a big part of managing to be productive and happy. Proximity to support - and to the occasional dose of great weird ideas - makes all the difference in managing your life. Knowing that there are like-minded people around, and organizing some way to be near them and talk to them regularly, is one constant in a world where things are changing all the time.

Technorati Tags: proximity, fire

I hit 3 million steps on Walker Tracker today

The little widget says it all:

WalkerTracker.com
Stats for: edwardvielmetti
3,003,964 steps
since May 11, 06

yay me!

Shitty first drafts, from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

From Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, on shitty first drafts:

Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated.

Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on turning procrastination into your shitty first draft:

The trick is to find that very first point when some part of your thinking can be converted from uncaptured brain droppings into notes, doodles, outlines, or any kind of markings on a page — even though it’s clearly not ready to be shaped into a deliverable just yet. Whether it’s your unified field theory of physics or a 50-word blog post about the molé burrito you just ate, it pays to get something down. Anything. In my experience, getting that hand in motion tends to really stimulate creativity. The rough draft process is where procrastination is finally displaced by clarity, focus, and a fuller understanding of the relationships between the things that have been collecting in your brain pan.

Josh DiMauro uses paper to capture his shitty first draft:

That’s why you start with paper.

Because, again, your first draft is going to suck. You want to get it out and down, so that you can move on, and redo it completely later.

And there’s something about paper that makes it a lot easier to do crappy work quickly: it’s just paper. Who cares if your sketch comes out looking like a frog being taken from behind by an e. coli bacterium? You’re going to move on to the next shitty sketch, and to the next, and to the next. And then you’re going to sift through them, and gather up maybe two or three, and dump the rest.

That’s the whole point. It’s just paper, so it doesn’t count.

Now, on to the project that is calling me to do the shitty first drafts of the deliverables before I start to do the work so that I can see what the gap is between current reality and desired reality.

"Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" (Anne Lamott)

Technorati Tags: anne-lamott, bird-by-bird, lifehacks, paper, hosting