gpscruise

adMob sucks

2011-11-22T17:29:00.001-08:00

I am trying to hock my wares. I mean I am trying to make contributors to wikispeedia happy. I mean I am trying to merely raise $25 to keep our servers at wikispeedia.org running.

Everyone tells me that to sell a new and different product, you have to get "REVIEWS". Of course I am a lazy looser, so in desperation I decide to use admob. Admob are the annoying ads you see in your FREE-APPS. But like I said, I am desperate.

So, eager to hand them money, I look for competitors. Everyone says FREE-app developers make money by auto-clicking the ads on their free-app. I tried it once in the Android emulator, and lo and behold, I made $.05 for a click. Ouch. But I still believe in humanity and "I am desperate" so I give it a whirl.

Oh, let me backup, first I tried paid-ads on stumbleupon.com. I love stumbleupon. It takes up all my free time, just looking at people jumping and riding bikes off cliffs. Its like Jackass, but PG. Or perhaps you could call it Americas Funniest Videos for the ages. Its reality, youtube style.

The beauty of stumbleup is you can buy $1 dollar of ads. Sweet. Surely 20 paid views will yield 20 sales right, wrong. Boy, this post is turning into a "lessons learned in stupidly wasting money on ads".

So then I spent 2 weeks spamming bloggers, reviewers, hocking the SPEEDERASER, a gizmo that controls your car cruise control. Who wouldn't want that! Once I put it on the Android market, I got one sale right away, but no more. You can see it here: http://goo.gl/iIKqD

The cool thing was, after spamming reviewers, I got a review! Here it is at Motor Authority. http://goo.gl/CY8Vw

The even cooler thing was my google-alerts told me about it. I never ever would have known he reviewed it, but I had a google-alert skimming the internet and looking the world over for the word, "SPEEDERASER". Thanks google.

So back to admob. I decided to use them. First problem, the have a FIFTY-DOLLAR-MINIMUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ouch. Even though they are owned by Google, you can't combine the Google-ckout, Google-wallet, nothing with the admob-crap. So I opt $50. Damn... Next you have to get your ad approved. THIS TAKES MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not kidding, it has been weeks. It has taken MONTHS to get replys from their help desk. I could sail around the world and admob still ain't off that egg.

Well, at my age, nothing much scares me, so I file a complaint with the BBB.

I even told admob that I filed a complaint, but they didn't care. Last week they told me my ad was under review, but here it is. No change.

Dec 25, I am asking for my money back. If they don't do it, I will file a suit. Like I said, at my age, risk is fun.

-jim

Almost Canada

2011-10-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

Thank you MN Dot.

I got a call from Mr Nathan Drews, a traffic specialist at MN DOT. He is responsible for the location of all highway signs in the state of Minnesota.

His interest was our highway speed limits, so we shared data.

Lessons learned? They lean toward ESRI standard of UTM data which is meters instead of lat, lon. They meet in Boston with 7 other states for a GIS peer exchange, so hopefully others will share. Also, for sharing, they use Google-Earth, KML, KMZ files as well as shape files.

So to import it into wikispeedia I found software called GeoConvert written I guess by Charles Karney, so I have to give Kudos to him for helping me convert from UTM to Geo (lat/lon)...

So when you use wikispeedia or your new Speederaser (Android market) product, thank Mr Drews or Mr Karney for the accurate speed limits around MN.

I have decided to put all the State communications here.

------------------------------

1) I contacted Illinois, the president is from there so they must be open, right? wrong: doug.keirn@illinois.gov Michael.Gillette@illinois.gov

"I forwarded your email to my boss at her request. This is beyond the scope of what our bureau does, but she will forward the email to our Bureau of Planning and Programming. This is there area, and if they are interested they will contact you."

"Blah blah not invented here". This is why I don't like women bosses. Its a blog, so I get to put my feelings ;-) Maybe she will get back to me whomever she is...

------------------------------

2)
Maine DOTSam Krajewski

Sam Krajewski sent me 35k signs. Thanks Sam!
He was a hoot to talk (email) with! They have ftp issues they are working out. Must be tough handling all that info and communication... Glad its not me.

3) I wrote to Vermont. Got email from their site. They never replied.

4)

Massachusetts DOTRick Conard richard.conard@state.ma.usJennifer Inzana Jennifer.inzana@state.ma.us

I sent email on 2/17/2012

5)

Ohio DOTJonathan Hughes jonathan.hughes@dot.state.oh.usDerek Troyer derek.troyer@dot.state.oh.us

Tennessee DOTBrian Hurst brian.hurst@tn.govKim McDonough kim.mcdonough@tn.gov

Washington DOTPat Morin morinp@wsdot.wa.govAlan Smith smitha@wsdot.wa.gov

FHWA (Federal Highway)Heather Rothenberg heather.rothenberg@dot.govMark Sarmiento mark.sarmiento@dot.govCraig Thor craig.thor@dot.gov

slightly charred

2011-10-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

More no's

2011-09-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

I had applied for 3 grants from TDOT and received none. They actually put 3 no-letters in one envelope. Ouch.

States are pretty worn out these days. Even all this grant money came from the Feds.

What can I say, its not my best day. My wife told me I wouldn't get any and she was right.

City Speed Maps

2011-09-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

There are so many places to get data.

A guy named Basil Berntsen, asked:

" I google searched "speed limit map "city of"" and found a large number of cities that post their speed limits....do you have any plans to try to get their data into your database?

What about publishing a city employee friendly guide to posting speed limit maps in a standardized format?"

So, I gave it a shot. Along the way I met a guy named Dr Wolfgang Glunz who knew of a pdf convert called pstoedit.

Its funny how I never look to windows software anymore. I know its quicker, to find a Linux guru...

So I have a procedure which converts maps like this:
Fargo ND Speed Limit Map
(stick 'em in the chiper...)
into this:
WIkiSPEEDia speed limit database map

In a nutshell, I did/wrote this:

pstoedit -fig fargo.pdf out.fig
xfig out.fig
./pdfwikispeedia -d3 -w30 > file.csv

I have to manually calibrate it for lat,lon which sucks, but its pretty quick.

The downside is its only as good as the initial map. If they just draw a bunch of lines, its sheit.

So look around FARGO on this page and see how it worked out!

Click to see Fargo ND

So thanks to all who helped. Someday we will unleash it on search terms like this: "speed limit map of" which returns dozens of maps just ripe for the picking.

Perhaps some ticket attorneys would enjoy the disparity between posted-signs and published-pdf-speeds. (Reasonable doubt and all....)

CHEERS
jim

bye bye ftp, scp

2011-09-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

I just got a movie off youtube. I wanted to transfer it to my other computer. I spent hours trying to scp, ftp, gmail, USBstick it to the other computer.

Then for grins I tried a torrent! On one computer I used qBtorrent (linux) and on the other was (rtorrent win). Oddly enough, they found each other locally and the meter said 100MBYTE per second transfer rate. WOW!

So if you need to transfer a file and you don't care if the world sees it, use a torrent!

10 years in the making

2011-08-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

We just released a cruise control for your car.

It links to wikispeedia.org the speed limit database. It shows the contributors name, so as the terms imply, it can be used for any purpose. All the profits go to wikispeedia. If you build electronics, you will know that building electronics less than $100 is tough (MSRP=$159-30%google fee).

Regarding wikispeedia, for the first few years I expected someone to say, "dude, that's already available here...". But it never happened. I can say with confidence that no one is doing this.

There is OSM, and Navteq, but they don't have cruise controls, nor do they pay contributors. Navteq makes $800B with 800 drivers! Some people come to wikispeedia and "get it". They see the potential and log a couple speed limits, hoping to cash in some day which is possible.

My goal is to have a job which I created and to empower others to make money and do something the Feds couldn't do in less than a "Department of Speed Limit" budget...

Please give it a go. Its a real cool gizmo. Here's the link.

Android app link

Some people comment, "Don't limit my driving", but in reality you will like it (remember the black dude in USED-CARS, "just get in the car"). Plus correcting the speed limits is fun, like geocaching.

Its an app combined with some hardware, so I am 50/50 on whether Google will give the app the boot. We will see.

After they pay the enormous sum of money for the app and Google gets 30%, they email me their address and I mail the gizmo.

It will probably ruffle the privacy feathers at Google, but its worth a try.

Is there anything good about men?

2011-07-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Is there anything good about men?

You really have to read that link above. Being a man weighs on me daily. Partly because I am a stay at home dad. My roll is cross-threaded with typically female roles. You know, driving kids around, putting Coke in a water-only cup at McDonalds, teaching my son how to look for people before he pee's outside. Stuff like that.

The article says, "Women say most CEO's are men". He points out that most homeless people are men too. Most combat deaths are men too. A majority of idiots are men too.

In fact he says, "if you want to hate on men, look at the CEO's". If you want to hate on women, look at the homeless numbers.

Contributions

2011-06-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

I thought I would show the contributions to wikiSPEEDia.org over the last five years. There have been six big estimate uptakes from these people:

Ben de Waal: USA 27,783,449 sign estimates
Yurek Hinz: UK 5,178,514
Pierre Lapouge: France 1,797,665
Bertelli Alessandro: Italy 860,177
Frank Warmerdam: UK 749,660
Vanesa F ? 216,015

You can see stats at any time by running this slow script.

Removing all those estimates leaves 30k signs logged by people using wikispeedia.org web-add feature or people using mostly Android apps like Back Seat Driver.

So next, I keep applying for grants.

If you happened upon this site and want to know more, consider joining our google group. There is a nice mix of researchers on that list.

-jim

Shut Down would have saved you money.

2011-04-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

Did you know the Feds are the ones giving you speeding tickets?

The cops are incentivized by Federal grants to give you tickets.

at $100 a pop that would be $2.7M in revenue, all from a grant

source:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/whatsup/safeteaweb/FY10/HSPs/MSFY10HSP.pdf

Shut down the government? Sure, makes cents to me.

This is how men "thaw" chicken

2011-03-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Startups, Pay it Backwards.

2011-03-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

Usually startups proceed like this.
1) Company prospers.
2) You give back to a nice non-profit like wikiSPEEDia.

Lets do that in the reverse, shall we?

I need someone to build an exciting new product. Due to conflict of interest, I can't do it. You see, I run wikispeedia.org, a database of speed limit signs. From our data you can build and market a smart-cruise-control for any car.

Here is the skinny.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-GPS-cruise-control-using-your-Android-iPh/

It will make your cruise control smarter, not big brother, just cooler.

About a year back I almost sold "a box version" to JCWhitney, them promising $70k/yr on it. They backed out when they saw that it was only a prototype.

You could Bluetooth it, or make connectors for different cars, but if it were me, I would wire it into the steering column and sell them at Best Buy (they have an installer department who could easily learn to do it).

So if you have "channels" as I know some of you do, there is money in that their idea. All we (wikispeedia) ask is that you follow some plan such as,

"10% of all profits go to fund the wikispeedia project".

You see, thats where we are different from OSM or WikiPedia, we want to exist as a Charity by arm-twisted donations. Not linked to Google, or GM, or XYZ-university.

-jim pruett, founder

wikiSPEEDia.org

Empathy

2011-03-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

My buddy, Marsha Familaro Enright put this video up. I was so moved by it that I used it to teach Sunday School yesterday... I sat down with the kids and said, anyone have a loved one die? Then of course I heard the GrandMA/PA stories which I expected.

Then I shared myself. Not to violate HIPPA or whatever, but last year I had a pain in the arse kid. Finally, I kept him alone for a minute (with the door wide open and me right next to the door) and asked him whats-up? After fidgeting, he said his dad was getting released from prison. Ouch. So what happened? For one, I think I saw him once or twice again, but I no longer see him... He would have graduated to across the hall, but I don't see him... I never confronted anyone or the parent, why would I. I just listen... My church is like a bus-stop, people come and go, so it doesn't surprise me that he isn't there anymore....

Now back to yesterday's story. After I shared the "prison" story (whitewashed of course) my new pain in the arse kid blured out, "my mom died when I was 4". Ouch again.... We talked about it and all in all I would say I didn't "scar" any kids that day....

You should watch this video or subscribe to her RSS....

Look, Zuckerberg and Pruett, back together again.

2011-02-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

I am both honored and disturbed to be on the same page as this bloke...

http://www.udemy.com/courses

Lock your wifi or all will die. -T Mobile

2011-01-30T15:49:00.000-08:00

Everyone locks their wifi. Heres the world I live in.

Unlocked Locked None

-------------- -------------------- -------------

Cordova Library Memphis City Schools Saint Francis Elementary

McDonalds Somerville Library

Belame Day Spa

Panera Bread

I am too cheap to buy a cellphone, so I take my kids chromebook and drive around, picking up kids after Forensics, after Basketball, after Tennis. My kids school doesn't have any wifi, so my son walks to the school property line and uses Belame Day Spa wifi. I love those guys. If they only knew I was the weirdo sitting in their parking lot sending a quick email... I vow to go in and hand them a $20 tip someday, then just turn around and walk out... Mysterious....

The other day I was at Belevue Middle School. They have 2 wifi's, called Memphis City School Student and Memphis City School Administration, both locked. We asked a kid there and they said the password is really long and she didn't know it. Different parents were using iPad's and I asked them if the wifi was free? They always say, "dunno, I use 3G".

So here is poor Jim trying to send an email over any-wifi. I still save money over a $50/mo T-Mobile Android plan, so I will continue my war-driving.

So what is to learn from this: Its simple.

"Locking your wifi cripples poor people"

The wealthy people use 3G. Every kids phone has 3G and they are texting away. If you want to stop kids from cheating on tests by texting-the-answers, then have a policy saying so! Don't just put a lock on the wifi, it only hurts people not having 3G (poor people).

So if you are an administrator, I know you won't unlock your wifi, because you are a chicken shit. Just look in the mirror and smell the liability (none). Our only hope is that wifi-routers in the future default to open-wifi, not locked. Then the next-gen chicken-shit admins will default to open wifi.

Its like the telephone in hotel rooms. We avoid them like the plague. Fees, charges. You name it. Then what happened? In 1981 Motorola invented a thing called cellular, forever killing the hotel-phone. So now hotel-phones are free. Ironic.

So 3G, I salute you. I hope you prosper and all follow. Only then will the wifi be open, because by then we will be so hooked on 4G speeds (200kbps min) that I will have your wifi all to myself....

Do your retired neighbor a favor, open your wifi and let them use it. Charity begins at home.

-cellurl

I can fix that.

2011-01-27T09:47:00.000-08:00

I'm a main, I can fix that...

Don't have a spoon?

I can fix that!

Seatbelt Broken?

I can fix that! (Is that a neck brace?)

New TV too big for old cabinet?

I can fix that!

No bottle opener?

I can fix that!

Room too dark using compact fluorescents?

I can fix that!

Electrical problem?

I can fix that!

Car stereo stolen?

I can fix that!

Bookshelf cracking under the weight?

I can fix that!

No ice chest?

I can fix that!

Can't read the ATM screen?

I can fix that!

Car imported from the wrong country?

I can fix that!

Satellite go out in the rain?

I can fix that!

Electric stove broken & can't heat coffee?

I fixed that.

Wiper motor burned out?

I can fix that!

WHAT?

Display rack falling over?

I can fix that!

Desk overloaded?

I can fix that!

Car can't be ordered with the "Woody" option?

I can fix that!

Exhaust pipe dragging?

I can fix that!

Gotta feed the baby AND do the laundry?

I can fix that!

Cables falling behind the desk?
I can fix that!

No skate park in town?

I can fix that!

The Speed limit switch.

2011-01-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

What if you had the power to change the speed limit instantly? Would you raise it during your commute? Would you put it at 40mph the hour before your commute to insure no-wrecks ahead? Would you make it 80 mph after 8pm so the truckers would drive off-hours?

Four states now have Variable Speed Limits, Delaware, Missouri, Minnesota and Washington. I spoke with the traffic manager in Missouri and he spoke at length about the system. First they query hundreds of road sensors which give traffic flow. Then they filter out outliers and average and arrive at a speed limit. They only change the limit every 5 minutes and never more than 5 mph per adjustment.

There are two interfaces to their Variable Speed Limits shown here.

We at wikiSPEEDia studied the speed changes from the feeds they provided, looking for inspiration. Scott Chamberlain an expert in the "R" statistical package lent a hand in graphing. Here is the graph of St Louis Jan 11,11 at 4pm. Notice the slowing at the feeder roads coming in from the west. What I found interesting is that they raised the SL during initial-rush-hour. I guess they think "innocent until proven guilty", or let em speed until it looks like there is pulsing in the flow or precursors to accidents.

What would you do with this switch?

-jim

Ahh no more Gay topics...

2010-12-22T14:46:00.000-08:00

I have read about 100 DADT (gay) news stories in the past week. I am not a homo or phobe or pheliac that I know of, I just get sick of redudant stories. Lets face it, the only reason The-Left wants repeal of DADT is that they want to cover news stories about it. Let me speculate on some.

"Its a beautiful night in Afghanistan", love is in the air, birds chirping among the faint sound of "whos your daddy, whos your daddy" coming from a US tank nearby...

or

"Today is valentines day in Kabul", where even the Marines took a minute to create cards and call mom. There was a Sadie Hawkins dance for all...

-------------
Ok, back to my reason for writing, "no more gay". I found this cool program for google-reader.
It lets you filter news stories. I just put in "Exclude DADT". and voile, no more Gay..... hmmm no gay.

http://devign.me/google-reader-filter/

and if you don't yet use a reader,
http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page
you really need to get it!

bye for now

Should I use wood to heat my house?

2010-12-14T18:23:00.000-08:00

Being an engineer, I thought I would share my finding.
The question I had was,
Question: What is a piece of wood worth (heat wise)?"
Answer: A piece of wood gives out $25 worth of heat.

So tomorrow I will try to see if this is true. My bet is the fireplace kills 90% of it...
Stay tuned....

Here are the facts.

-----------raw materials------------------

1 kwh = 3000 BTU's
oak 16M BTU's per chord.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/W/AE_wood_heat_value_BTU.html
Full chord is 4ft x 8ft x 1ft
Electricity costs around $0.15 per kwh

-------------result-------------

dollars 0.15 dollar 16,000,000 BTU
_______ = ___________ * _______________
pc 3000 BTU 32pcs

$ 0.15 16,000,000
_ = _____ * __________
pc 3000 32

$25/pc

The Pruett/Nixon enemy list

2010-12-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

I am a very loyal customer. For example, I buy all my pool chlorine from Memphis-Pools. Its 45 minute drive from my house, but I love those guys. My swimming pool is of the lovely "Liner" variety, requiring a new liner ever 7 years or so. In 2000, I hired a liner-replacement guy from the phonebook. He had an alcoholic working who "did good work when sober". Long story short, the liner ripped, we sued, and won! I learned my lesson and had Memphis Pools install from then on....

So you see, I am very loyal to merchants.

I am also very un-loyal to my enemies. When the Exxon Valdez wrecked, dumping oil on the west coast (we lived there), I boycotted Exxon for probably 10 years. I still only go there if I absolutely have to.

So now I have a new list. See if you can guess it.

Amazon, Paypal (ebay), Mastercard, Visa.

Those cowards. Anything Lieberman yells, they do. I guess thats why I like Wikileaks. They are corporate squealers of sort. They should have posted as squealers, not as anarchists.

My prediction is that The Washington Post is doing a deal with WikiLeaks, showing they how to do it right.

BTW: Not on my list is: Moneybrokers, AmericanExpress, Google, wikipedia

Rant-out.

Today I will get on a "List"

2010-11-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

There are only a couple of times when you should do something as stupid as I am about to do.

1) When you are single.
2) When you have cancer.
3) When you are rich and famous.
4) You are stupid.

Regarding #4, I have some input into the TSA groping with the Backscatter scanners. The scanners have to be removed! Its like more dumping of tea, it must be done. It will solidify the country.

I read an article yesterday from Harvard. He said, the odds of being on a plane with a bomb is 1 in 30 million. He also said, the chance of dying of cancer from a TSA X-Ray is 1 in 30 million. His conclusion was that the TSA screeners should not be deployed.

Back to my point. All of the terrorists were engineers. I am an engineer. Therefore I often think like a terrorist. Ok FBI, here I go. "I know how to get a bomb on a plane". I could do it alone and it would work. I am not going to tell you how, but leave you with this thought.

Lets look to the experts, "non-DARPA govt". I say non-DARPA, because most of the government is brain dead. To me, only DARPA, the FED, FDA, and IRS are effective. We all know that TSA is security theater, just there so your idiot wife feels good about traveling. Don't worry, my wife never reads what I write, so it doesn't matter. It is reactional security from whatever "already happened". No prediction for the future. I should jam a bomb in my ass, then I will jam a bomb in my newborns ass, then jam a bomb in a pacemaker and so on so we can take this issue to the limit.

Let me explain a better way by example. Google is the best company around. We all know that they say, "Do no evil". Ten years from now, they will suck, but today they are a God to me.

So lets look at Google. Google knows that their code has security holes. They know they can't fix all of them, so they offer a $10k prize to anyone why finds and reports to them security holes.

Our beloved TSA should do the same. Offer me $10k to get a bomb on a plane. Only then will I feel safer.

Chao
Jim (I ride Megabus)

Android might be accidentally chasing chicks away.

2010-11-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

I watch grants on things like safe-texting, seniors and driving, and the like. Recently the AAAfoundation offered a grant to find anti-texting measures.

http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/RFP_MobileTechEval.pdf
http://www.aegismobility.com/home/documents/DriveAssist_Datasheet_v3.pdf

One company is called is called Aegis Mobility:
They have a product called DriveAssist which is Big-Brother for your daughters-phone. It will limit texting if you are moving. It even reports back to dad...

It is available mainly on the Android. We all know why, because Android is modifyable. Unlike the iPhone, Android phones can be modded into any kind of big brother product. The only way to twart it is to have your boyfriend hack the big-brother out of it and have it tell daddy that you are at church instead of on a date.

I have to admit, before I saw this proposal, the same idea came to me. E.g. making money via anti-texting software, and my first thought was, "Android".

So daughters, go beg for an iPhone before dad mysteriously gives you an Android! You have been warned.

Best Android apps of Nov 15, 2010

2010-11-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

I write apps, so its my job to see the competition. Some are so funny I decided to put them out. I will try to do this weekly.

1) Homer Simpson soundboard: Has all your favorite Homer doh's.

2) Annoying Noises [V1.1]

Warning this app is annoying. It may cause you to loose friends and alienate family. ...

3) I can't find the name right now, but last week an app told this:
"App lets you write down everytime your kid does a poop or a pee. Also you enter in which boob you breastfed with last time".

4)

MIT Mobile

Probably useless app that tells whats going on at "school xyz".

5) We all like these:

Easy Car Finder Free [V1.0]

An easy to use car locator utility. Connect your phone to the battery charger in your car when you l...

Crowdsourcing eventually bloats (or does it)

2010-10-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Five years ago I created a wikiSPEEDia where people could log speed limits. You can use a web interface and move around a blue dot to where you know a speed limit exists or you can use a smartphone app.

Its been five years, and each day I monitor the progress, looking for mischief. You see, I expect mischief, but don't get near as much as expected. Aside from mischief cleanup, my security protocol is at best knee jerk. If I see something, I fix it. No IP logging, no registration. And to my surprise, very little larceny. Definitely no wide scale hate. I suspect wikipedia started the same way. Lots of enthusiasm and additions. Only recently has wikipedia started locking down pages. We will follow the same method, keeping things easy breezy and then adding security as needed. Mostly just backup, backup, backup.

As far as fundraising, all we have is google-ads and a $1 Android app called "Back Seat Driver" which has netted a whopping $40, and has since tanked. Recently I tried to get our data into Google as an overlay like Traffic and Satellite. They asked, "how do you verify the data"? I said, well we have mischief, but it falls into two categories which I will describe below:

Case 1) People log speed limits using our Android app, but they aren't moving. (near google bldg 1945).

Solution: Our app measures your travel speed. If you are not moving, we only allow a "test" post, eg 25mph. So each day I look at the 25mph's. You can tell that all of them are bogus and all 25mph will be deleted occasionally. But it gives people joy to see a bogus post so we leave it up a couple days...

Case 2) People are sitting on their couch, posting a bogus sign. Heres a guy in NY no doubt sitting on his couch...

Solution: Ignore 25mph signs.

Case 3) Should we leave the bogus signs in?

Solution: When someone posts a bogus sign while sitting on their couch, it doesn't hurt anyone but themself. Think about it. If you built a cruise control around a GPS sign database, who cares if the speed limit on your couch is 25 mph? It only hurts that person. So, speed limits are a unique crowd sourcing effort in that unless you spoof the GPS system, you are only polluting the data at your house. For this reason, there is little mischief. People like adding their neighborhood to a noble effort I suspect.

Plus, people like getting back at the police, e.g. taking a bite out of crime (fighters...)

So heres the skinny:

Our site costs about $15 a year to run. Thats our only cost. In five years we have netted 50k signs with 300 unique contributors. Here are the top contributors. Espen in Norway found us somehow and so did the guys at Lincoln in the Lego contest..

Carter Pruett	1629
your name	1352
Mr. Android	569
Lincoln Red Gear Ticks	545
Espen	496
shellshock	256
your X here	222
6-cndns	206
Thomas Jackson	124
James Newton	103

I used to contact each contributor and thank them since sometimes they enter their email, but I found that after I contacted them that they never contributed again... So now, I just leave everyone to their logging. Its like taking a shower, people want to be left alone.

Last year my buddy Ben de Waal from Germany suggested that we put in "suggested" speed limits based on road-type. So I went off to census.gov, and harvested 26 Million "suggested" speed limits. Turns out this data is available for other countries, so if people help me understand the language, we do other countries as well. This is free data, but as you see below, the census system has lousy precision, only 4 digits of lat, lon, and even that last digit has round off errors... It mainly gives people something to bitch about. They write me and say this Ben guy has it all wrong. I write and tell them that I will give Ben a warning...

As I mentioned, my buddy Espen in Norway has been climbing his way to being top contributors. After we become a 501(c)3 non-profit, we will create a board of directors based on contribution-amount so people like Espen get the rewards they have earned. Seems reasonable I think, since there is no money involved.

So there you have it. A lame crowsource effort on $15 a year. So go post a sign, won't you?

-jim

Speeders: Don't slow down, set your cruise.

2010-10-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

Fuzz Buster, Trapster and now WikiSPEEDia

How to better the Google Car

The Missouri DOT today granted Wikispeedia real time access into their variable speed limit (VSL) feed for the beltway around St Louis.

This is a big milestone in our charter of "gathering the GPS location of every speed limit sign on earth". This was a three month effort between MODOT who owns the information, Asti, Inc which builds the sign network and WikiSPEEDIa which will aggregate the VSL's for anyone to use. This is not an exclusive deal, just a first.

Just last week the Google car arrived. We have offered wikiSPEEDia to Google as a source of speed limits. One can dream. There is also a project for you to build your own GPS cruise control over at Make Magazine. My wife has one. She actually uses it.

Four states now have VSL's including Minnesota, Washington, Missouri and Delaware. Missouri was the first to grant us access. We went at them several ways, one of which was through a "Sunshine Request" which is a State version of the freedom of information act. We are not sure what got us access, but this is good for everyone involved.

Pruett said, "With cheap Monitors, Variable Speed limits seem a likely future, perhaps someday permitting cars to go faster at night. This gives a night-incentive to speed instead of a day-penalty for speeding. This would free up needed bandwidth for commuters. I could say we are saving lives, but in reality, we are saving wallets. People don't need to get all the tickets they are getting. Its barbaric.

With texting laws, its nice to know that cars today automatically slow down in speed zones. "Theres an app for that". This isn't big brother, just a smarter cruise control that you turn on or off.

WikiSPEEDIA, Inc., non-profit looking for cash to become a 501(c)3.

After five years, wikiSPEEDia has 27 million speed limit signs crowd-sourced by over 1000 individual donors through non-traditional apps such as "Back Seat Driver". Other commercial speed limit databases exist such as Navteq and TeleAtlas, but WikiSpeedia is the only nonprofit database dedicated specifically for eliminating accidental tickets. WikiSPEEDIa shares any profits among all contributors. Thats the difference from wikipedia. Speed Limits are easily verifiable, and we feel pay is a valuable incentive. Plus when someone donates a bogus speed limit while sitting on their couch, it only affects someone driving

through their living room... Contact: Jim Pruett, CEO, WikiSPEEDIa. speedup@wikispeedia.org

ASTI Transportation, Inc.

A leading provider of portable and permanent Smart Work Zones. We are the pioneers of the most advanced integrated software solutions for state departments of transportation. Customization, flexibility and support is the true solution for any project. Computerized Highway Information Processing System – CHIPS – is ASTI’s web application communications link to multiple hardware components. Whether it is a complete solution or integrating into an existing infrastructure, ASTI is able to meet the client’s needs and more with CHIPS. Contact: Les Spade, CEO, Asti-trans.com (302) 328-3220

Missouri Department of Transportation.
MoDOT provides basic information on the Missouri Department of Transportation and its leaders, direction, history and funding. MoDOT works with the public, transportation partners, state and federal legislators, and other state and local agencies to provide a safe and efficient transportation system to the
people of Missouri.
Contact: Gari Luttrell Gari.Luttrell@modot.mo.gov
Contact: Tyson King, Senior Traffic Studies Specialist of MoDot

# # #

If you'd like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Jim Pruett, call Jim at 901/213-7824 or e-mail Jim at speedup@wikiSPEEDia.org

Fuzzbuster, Trapster and Wikispeedia are registered trademarks.

coolest app ever

2010-10-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

http://cam.ly/pinata_buster

You have to try it. I found it from hackerNews.
Its a live pinata where everyone gets to wack at it.
Whats fun is to see your name on their screen.
My alias is cellurl.

See below where I (cellurl is my alias) broke it so some poor schlub had to reset it.

I felt so bad.

Yesterday the worse, today the best day of my life.

2010-09-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

I live in rural Tennessee. It looks rural with windy roads, old oaks, the smell of skunks, but its reasonably cosmopolitan if you look closer. Take my friend-girl named Kathryn for example. She has a BS in ME and MS in English. Her dad who recently passed worked at Oak Ridge Nuke plant as a draftsman. The physicists would dream up experiments and he would draw test fixtures for whatever was going through the physicists head. So this isn't like east Tennessee where seemingly everyone is on welfare. People here are rich, land-rich, FedEx-rich, builder-rich.

Kathryn home school's her prodigy kid Ben. Hes a smart one, I am betting like Grandpa. He has no video games, but instead builds streams in the yard or helps shoot beavers in the lake. Kathryn isn't a religious nut, just looking for the best education. Today Kathryn has invited me to the Bartlett Rec Center for $3 home school swim. Cheap, I am in... We go to this beautiful center, smelling of new flooring. They have a ADA ramp that actually goes into the pool. No insulting fork lift to get handicapped into the water, just a nice tile ramp right into the deep end. The pool is 25 yards long. Surprisingly not metric. Very long, considering my house is smaller at only 20 yards long. This pool is longer and wider than my house.

I took my 4 year old Emerson with me. We were all going to swim. When you do something new like a new Rec Center or a new Park, there is always a gotcha that spoils the fun. It might be age, height, holiday, reserved. There is always a gotcha. The life guard says, an adult must be with the kids. Neither Kathryn or I really want to swim. Today we just want to watch the kids and talk. You see Kathryn and I are new-friends so we have tons to talk about. She is amazing, not like most wives, definitely not like most moms, she responds with intelligence. So now you think I am in love, but I am not. I am married to a beautiful woman of 25 years. This isn't an affair, its a friendship everyone should experience.

The lifeguard says either an adult or a swim test. Hmm. Do you remember the swim-test. Where I grew up the guard looked at whimpy kids like me in line at the diving board and gave them the "can you swim", "yes", "I am sorry, you have to take a swim test".

What I did next was stupid but brilliant. On a lark I told the guard that my 4 year old would like a swim test. I told Emerson to do whatever the guard said. Stupidly he trusted me. The pool had lanes. The shallow was 4 ft (above Emersons head) and the deep end was 10 feet, quite deep. The first lane was only half length at 12 yards. It had a rope across it halfway for some reason.

So my "warrior" son Emerson (thats what I call him) is instructed to jump in and swim to the end. Emerson can swim, but only 10 feet max in our pool at home. He loves the water. I walk beside the guard, not sure of my decision. Emerson jumps in and swims along doing a sort of swim-underwater, then come up for a breath thing. Its like a frog stroke, but he struggles to get much energy out of his tiny limbs. He doesn't stay on the top, its all down then breath, down then breath. Then the unexpected. The guard walks to the midway rope and holds it up. Now Emerson who had just done 35 feet has to repeat another 35 feet, a total of 7 times longer than he has ever done. He powers along, catching a glance of me on the side. His expression is changing. His face is a little red. I think, what did he have for lunch, will it get him through this?

No parent should experience what happened next. He started crying while swimming. He started to veer to the side. The guard who was walking with me said, "don't stop, you are almost there". Still crying he veered back in line to finish. By this time, I was at the edge at the finish line so he could see my face, tears on his. What a horrible parent I am. Keep in mind, that this is the best day of my life part remember.

A few more strokes and he does the impossible. We all remember what swim tests are like. I remember having to retrieve a big rock thrown off the dock of a lake at Boy Scout Camp. To earn a badge I had to swim to the bottom of a lake and pull a yellow bolder up to the surface. You don't forget things like that.

I pulled Emerson from the water, he still crying and I told him I am so proud of him. What he did was terribly hard, but he did it, he finished it, he didn't quit. He looked in my eyes sort of hysterically and said, "I am never doing that again".

"Never again" I said. Once you pass the swimming test you never have to take it again. A little white lie. This shook him as Kathryn who sat with him afterwards noticed. I love this boy. He is my warrior.

My warriors

Picture I took so I could memorize their names

I didn't sleep last night. You know the night when your parent dies. You don't sleep for days. That was my last night. Perhaps thats why Emersons swim adventure was so exciting, because I didn't sleep last night.

You see, I coach 4 year old soccer, at least I used to. After 2 practices my team had a secret meeting and threatened the YMCA to leave the league with their 3 kids if I didn't step down. The spineless YMCA did the money, 3 leave or Emerson leaves. I can't believe they followed the smell of money. The issue was that I demanded a mom be the team mom and she didn't like my tone. Nonsense, but bullying is in the eyes of the beholder.

What would you do? I decided to sleep (not sleep) on it. Two parents sided with me, but they aren't interested in a mutiny. I understand that. What would you do? I have breakfast with some great guys every morning at a dump gas station. On guy named Meridith flirts with the waitress and belts out songs by the cash register. Two of them were in Viet Nam, and one of them is a deputy sheriff.

I don't care for cops at all. You see I have devoted the last 5 years of my life to getting back at speeding ticket cops. If you know me, you will understand. But, today I had a long conversation with "the sheriff". I told him I was planning to apologize for bullying the team-mom, Andrea. He said I bet if you give a sincere apology, this thing might have an amazing ending. He made me realize that Deputies are peace makers, not like city cops.

So I apologized. The high road you say? Not really, I had to leave a message on their machine. I wanted to talk to the husband but I knew that might never happen so I left-a-message.

What is going to happen tomorrow?

-----an update a year later-----------
The bozo who fired me got fired himself. Sweet irony...
-jim

----- Original Message -----

From: Brent Clack

To: undisclosed recipients

Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2011 6:26 PM

Subject: Sports and more sports

I am sending this email to each of the Contacts
I still have. The YMCA fired me this week. The outlook
for Fall soccer through the YMCA is conflicting with
what I am hearing from those who have talked to the
Home office. We are now as a Community set free to
do more for our Children through sports and
recreation. This is a positive thing, and I want
this to be our focus. I am seekong Professional
advice on the proceedures in setting up a Non Profit
Organization where sports of all kinds will be
available to our Youth as well as Adult Sports and
Fall Soccer! Join me in this adventure. I am looking
forward to the upcoming opportunities ahead of us.
Our mission and vision remains the same in
Fayette County for Fayette County!

Talk to you soon,

Brent Clack

why do school websites suck?

2010-09-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

My kid goes to St Francis of Asissi, a Blue Ribbon School. They use an online POS called edline.net. It doesn't have RSS, just a bunch of click-click-whereDoIgo click crap. It shows thousands of assignments, news-flashes, nothing obsoletes, no search by date, no "just show me the grades", no "what happened since you last visited. Here's the email I get. The bottom link goes to the homepage instead of the grades. I used to teach, so I imagine the teachers hate to enter crap as I hated to enter crap when I taught. I hate it.

Location	Report Title	Date
New Report(s) for Carter Pruett
St. Francis of Assisi Catholi...	Term 1 Grades as of 09/10/10	09/10/10

This email was sent to Carter's Parent Pruett because this address was registered at www.edline.net
If you do not want to receive any more emails, click here to unsubscribe.

Click here to visit Edline

Last year my 7th grader went to Fayette Academy. I love the school, but for online they used http://renweb.com/
DONT EVER GIVE THEM YOUR PHONE NUMBER! They have a robo-dialer that calls at 5am to tell you that despite the snow, "there will be school". When you call them, they give you the 3rd party run around. I hate that system even worse.

Q: Why is school technology so SHITTY! And you know they are being charged top-dollar for this shit. I could write a more useful system using google-calendar. Its the same bloat-it and they will pay more... The school never gets the PTA in on the decision, as if schools know what is out in the real world... I know they would say to me, "well, we are getting better, next year we will have a twitter interface".

Bullying, Removing excess Earth water, Hurricane Girlfriend

2010-08-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

A recent public service announcement has a teen girl celeb saying, "stamp out bullying". So I finally realized where bullying comes from, the PTA. The PTA raises money for all kinds of stuff. They sell wrapping paper, candles, chocolate, whatever. Then in homeroom they say, "if we have 100% participation (yes you Johnny slacker), then we get to go to Disney World. So Johnnys parents don't have the money, but he is bullied into participating, less he incur the wrath of the PTA-kids. Its the same with "charity no uniform day". If you don't donate to the charity, then you have to wear your uniform (not jeans like all the other donors). BULLYING begins with the PTA.

Ok, on to point #2, the melting of the icebergs. We want our land mass, so we have to get rid of that water so it doesn't mess up spring break at the beach, right!? So why not use solar-hydrolysis to break the H2O into gasses and ship them into space. Get rid of water mass. Problem solved.

Point #3, when are we going to see hurricanes names, Sheniqua?

Bye all. Fri I have an interview with a group called startupchile, so lets see if they fund my zany cruise control for the smartphones.... CHAO!

Facts about wikiSPEEDia.org

2010-07-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote a wikiPEDIA page and keep getting "citation needed", so this will serve as citations since its my story.

In 200x, Matt Despain bought a GPS cruise control from Jim Pruett for $200. It ran like crap.

In 2006, Jakub Rehacek, a scuba-diver/inventor/photographer in Florida, also bought a kit from Jim Pruett for $250.After a couple of years of futzing with it, I finally gave him a refund (partial I believe). He was a good sport about it....

Throughout the design of the product now shown on http://www.gpscruise.com, the concept of Big-Brother came up. E.g, do I want to aid the capture of speed limit points if I know the person at the wheel is mistaken or worse... For example, might he log a 65mph speedlimit signs if his GPS shows that he is currently traveling at 0mph? Seems erroneous or worse, Would you agree? So we avoided "throttling" the users whimsical behavior....

The motto of wikiSPEEDia.org is, "If we get paid, you get paid.". I actively try to promote wikiSPEEDia, but I don't get any more share of revenue than a person who submits 1 sign! (At last count, I have submitted 26,000 real speed limits and 27,000,000 estimates).

To use wikiSPEEDia in a car, you either need 1) the gps coordinates of each speed limit sign, or 2) the gps coordinates of road segments with an attribute of speed limit. Since http://www.gpscruise.com is a gps cruise control using only a PIC16F877a processor which is $6 and a linear database of speed limit signs,
VS
a smartphone with a reverse-geocoder and 8G or maps with road segments which costs $200.

Thus, my argument is that they both tell you if you are speeding and one costs less...
The cheap one is definitely "laggy" in that it won't know what the speed limit is until you pass a sign (or virtual estimate sign). So in that respect the $6 product is inferrior.

So if you are GM reading this, and you typically add car-features at a 1000% markup, you could offer this GPScruise-control for US$60 (10 x $6).

^{Heres a good explanation of how to use wikispeedia.org in a smartphone app...}
youtube video of using wikispeedia in a smartphone app.

Who is Benjamin de Waal?

2010-05-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

For anyone following Android cellphone Apps, specifically mine named "Back Seat Driver", you will notice that all the speed limit signs seem to be owned by Benjamin de Waal. So who is Ben?

Let me back up. Have you tried google-wave? Its ok, not facebook-ok, but useful. About two months ago a guy named Benjamin de Waal from Germany joined it and we discussed Back-Seat-Driver. For those that don't know, BSD (acronym alert..) uses a website called http://www.wikispeedia.org for the speed limit signs. Mr Benjamin de Waal wrote to complain that most areas of the US, etc were blank. He further suggested that we (I) should find the street type and put in a "best guess" of the speed limit. That was better than blank he said...

I thought that was a great idea, but had no idea how to do it. So poke around I did (Star War talk), finding sites like Navteq, bts.gov, ersi.com, and finally census.gov/tiger. They have road type info in shape files [gis talk]. It took about a month to download the XX-GB of files [they no longer publish a DVD!] and write a converter such as:

MTFCC tag
S1400: Interstate: Limited access type road. My speed suggestion 65mph.
S1100: you get the idea.

Census.gov has all the files by county, so I had to download 5000 individual files. How would you do that?? I found a program called Smartfp which allowed regex [remember them]. Without that gem, I would have downloaded TeraBytes of unused files.... And all this in under the 30 day free trial... [hey, we're sub-non-profit]...

So now, if you live anywhere in the US, we have a default speed for all roads, something navteq doesn't have! But of course, the speeds are off a bit, so its up to the Android community to delete the speed and replace it with the real one. That's half the fun.

Note: In Aug, 2010, we did the same thing for the UK. A man named Frank Warmerdam was instrumental in creating/supporting some wonderful open-source GIS software named gdal, shapelib, cs2cs, ogr2ogr and others. We honored him for that effort. He could be a great guy, he could be a dirt bad, I have no idea, but without his vision/help in open-GIS software none of this work would be possible. It is for that reason that we gave default speed limits in the UK to Frank.

-jp

How to drain your pool.

2009-12-08T13:42:00.001-08:00

When your pool gets water on the cover, you must remove it or it may freeze and damage the cover. This picture shows how to do it. For pool closings, please call, "World-pool-closing-service", $50.00 plus travel...

God I wish this health care would die

2009-11-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

I almost trust Obama. He seems willing to listen. It wouldn't surprise me if he let the US$Trillion health care bill die. Its just a line in the sand I think. The dems (not Obama) just want to say, Neener neener, we won, you pay. Seriously, it won't help, its just an ATTEMPT at something. As quazimoto said (I spelled it wrong), "You can try and you can do, but don't try to do" You will fail.

This health solution is embarrassing. (look at my other video on why even the EU thinks this bill is stupid). Seriously, just ask the insurance providers to cover more people if they want to do business in your state. When simple solutions like that aren't considered, then I tend to view this as socialism, pure government expansion. Why expand? Because they won, neener neener neener.

European view on US ObamaCare.

2009-11-04T22:06:00.001-08:00

2009-10-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

2009-10-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

2009-10-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

My boss made me cry

2009-09-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

So, wednesday, my boss made me cry. He yelled, God Damnit I have told you that many times before....

So I moved away and stared at my screen, 6 feet from that ass. After a while I teared up, but not from ass-man, but the fact that I will explain.

You see ass-man is me. I treat my son the same way ass-man treats me, volatile. One minute nice, then hot-headed. For me the next stage is appologetic, but for ass-man, its been two days and he hasn't appologized.

This has plagued me my entire life. I get beat, and I hold it in, then I yell at my family. Why don't I tell ass-man, "F**k you, I am a better engineer than you ever will be. F**k you that you are living in the shadow of your father, the first surgeon to do "I forget what" at Mayo. hmmm Perhaps thats it.

Oh god, here I go, blaming my father for everything. Perhaps I too am living in the shadow of my father. He did a lot of cool things like contacting war widows to tell them of money they had coming and were unaware of. How cool is that!

So, whats the lesson? Less coffee? Manditory Gym? Suicide?

I guess I will just settle for being that "it skips a generation", and focus on staying out of my sons way!

Any thoughts?

Vapors

2009-09-13T18:53:00.001-07:00

I flew on 9-11, 2009 that is. I got to Des Moines Airport early as usual, got thru security with my extra stinky sneakers on. Oh yea, I have this pair of sneakers that smell a 10 on a 1-10 scale. Something is growing in them that I can't figure out. I have tried hot-sunlight, clorox, powder. Nothing works, so I like to take them off at the airport.

After security, I bought a coffee and did some programming (they don't have free wifi at the airports in Iowa, only at the Rest Stops on the road) what a crock... Thats why I fly from Moline, Illinois which is better. Heres the lineup.

Moline----DesMoines
1---------4 Smoking announcements per hour
0---------2 What time is it announcements
1---------2 Suspicious bags
yes------no Free wifi.
0---------1 Vapor checks.
$7-------$4 Parking per day. (cheapest around).
no------yes Terminal under repair.

So back to vapors. I got my coffee and then we boarded. I always go on last (why hurry I say). As I got up, two cops said, "we want to test the vapors coming out of your coffee). I looked at them and said, "I have vapors?" The woman looked at me, like "please cause a fuss, I want so much for you to cause a fuss". So they put a litmus-paper over my coffee lid, put some drops on it and said, you are free to go.

God, I wanted to crack a "hey check this vapor", or "you missed some vapors", or perhaps, burp, here a premix vapor, but I didn't... Not on 911.

Moline here I come. They understand their customers...

Paying kids for chores

2009-08-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

I pay my kid nothing. Occasionally to keep up with the Jones', I give my 12year old $2 a week allowance. I usually forget. Once my boy said, "I missed a payday", referring to Monopoly gargon I suppose.

So now I need the grass cut and I am 1000 miles from home. Should I pay the poor waife for above and beyond? His mom shields him from work much as her parents did. Me, I say, make em bleed.

Being a child should be fun, but the sucessful people I have met, said their dad taught them how to work smart, not hard. The key word there is "work", not play. So I try to make it a challenge to work which brings me back to, "should I pay for above and beyond?", or is a slave a slave a slave?

Thoughts welcommed.

BTW, I am not a complete ogre. My son helped me all summer learning to program RUBY. I thoroughly enjoyed every second, but my son would rather play a game than program a game. His reward for wasting his summer helping dad write a video game was an all expense trip to LegoLand-California. It was like a trip to Sweden or whereever they make them little golden bricks....

jim

Exodus from main street

2009-07-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

Turn left for all you can eat steak for the next 10 minutes only.

Thats what is comming this fall. Feel free to ask me how, but its comming. Very shortly, our car will tell use where "deals" are located. It will provide coupons, and be timely for once. Anyone will be able to "push" ads out for a garage sale, closeout on Air Conditioners, free desert, you name it.

The kicker is these will be out of the way places. A guy running a fix it shop out of his basement. A lady who has roses available from her garden today only. Mom and pop, out of mom and pops non-store houses. Everyone will be selling handyman services by the hour, massages, drumsets, turtles, everything will be timely, available on not-on-mainstreet.

Google is bringing us $100 netbooks and cheap wifi (whitespace) in 2009. They are going to tear down microsoft and bring in cloud computing for better or worse. These netbooks will be in your car, providing GPS/Google/Shopping in real time for cheap or free.

Which brings me to my point, Exodus from main street. If you have a service, say ice-cream, you can advertise it on google-maps. It will get pushed into everyones GPS/netbook instantly. People will find you where ever you are. No more main street for visibility, it will be Craigslist on steroids. Your neighbors vacant lot behind Walmart will become valuable. People will drive down an alley to find you and give you a bad-review if they get mugged.

So go buy land near a walmart in a bad neighborhood. It will be a good investment.

Now Twittering if you happen to care.

2009-07-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

I am the guy looking to be political, but not wanting to be self-important. So I dumped facebook after seeing its CEO strut around trying to get bought. You see I am a loyal Google fan. Google removed SPAM from my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. Plus they rival the iPhone with the android.

I guess it just goes to my rule number #1. Anyone who you owe money to, Sucks.
The cable company sucks, the telephone company sucks, your church sucks (scratch that). You get the idea.

But Google is free As in Beer. How can you hate free? Plus I adore Larry Page, founder of Google. Plus he doesn't just roll in cash, he actually runs Google. I hope he never leaves. When he does, Google will fall into Rule#1 above...

So googbye (typo, but I like it) Facebook. I joined Twitter because its newer and a rival to facebook. You can follow me here.

So how is twitter you ask? Well so far, two people follow me, and I think they are shills for porn, but a fanclub indeed!

Official Google Mobile Blog: Mobile Web Calendar for iPhone and Android, now with event management

2009-05-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.gpscruise.com

What made me give?

2009-04-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

I have had beggers hit-me-up for coffee, cab-fare, doctor-visit, spare-change, plastic-surgery. Maybe not the last one.

One lady in Los Angeles showed me her "gash" on her arm. Wow I said, then "no-thanks". No-thanks is a clever way to throw them off guard so you can get away. It always works and is respectful and non-opinionated.

So on Megabus (see my other posts, I am Mr-Megabus!) the other day, we stop in Effingham for pee-pee break as usual. There on the corner is a strange but normal site, a pair of beggers.

I use a step by step approach to determine my interest to beggers.
They have to pass each step to proceed for the bonus-payout.

Step 1. Are they drunk? No
Step 2. Is it a trained monkey. No
Step 3. Is the monkey drunk? Maybe

This was different. It was a 50-ish white couple. Sign was unusual, "stranded, anything appreciated".

I took another look. They looked stranded. She was fat with a nice coat. I felt bad. I have never, never, never given money. You see I think charity opresses people.

I'm not cheap. I give wierd money, like Ronald-McDonald House, weird stuff like that. Checks-only.

I gave $10 to the bus driver (I sit in the front, beep the horn, handle the espresso machine...)
She handed it out and I was so glad when the recipient-man said, "thanks".

I hate to hear "God Bless". Especially from Car dealers.
You know its horse kaa-kaa.
Only women can say God-Bless to me where I know its real.

The begger-man went on to say, "when we raise enough, we're gonna get on a bus like yours".
I knew I did ok, no God-Bless, God-Bless for that.....

P.S. I musta impressed our driver. But thats another story.

I am in the Army now.

2009-03-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

My brother in law is loaded, aren't they all.

He made his fortune through federal bids, so with OB in the White House, and me living in a black neighborhood (Memphis), I decided to start a Hub Zone.

A Hub Zone is a disadvantaged blah blah blah pork handout..

I bid on this contract.
I said, "what is it for",
He said, "you gotta fix a circuit board."
I said, "How many".
He said, "One".
I said, "Will there be follow on work?"
He said, "no"

So I bid anyway. Now I sort of won. Yipee. No one else bid. Hmmmm.

So now the emails start pouring in. We want your financials, we want to visit. Crap, I am working out of my laundry room.

Please visit me in prison.

-jim

Muffalatta begins with muff

2009-03-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

I ride the bus 8 hours to work.
It picks me up at Illinois Terminal at midnight in Champaign Illinois.
Are you with me so far?

The bus is Megabus. There are no terminals, just wait on the corner.
It gives you the chance to talk to drunks, one on one, ad nausium.

So I am talking to this black couple. I think brother and sister, around 30ish, stoned on Meth or Crack I am guessing.

They pass, so to stave off conflict I say, "wanna buy some crack?".
Actually I think I said, hi, or something minimal but necessary.

So the lady says something stoney like, "my hoovercraft is full of eels".
Somehow this translated to, "where you from, whats up?"

I say, I am waiting for Megabus to take me to Memphis where I live.

Stoney-mamma says, "I am from Nawlans, (new orleans).

Caffeine-jim (me) says, "cool, I love them Muffalettas!"

Stoney-mamma says, "what the f**k is that?"

Jim says, "that sourdough sandwich, about two feet across".

Stoney-mama says, "no clue!!!" She starts to get fired up.

Then as is typical in Illinois when you discuss food, she fell on her back, threw her feet up in the air like it was pap-smear time, and started shaking (or possibly dancing horizontally, not sure).

Ok, now I am awake.

Stoney-mama continues, "the only muff I know about is this one right here!"

So now I get it, we are no longer discussing sandwiches.

At this point, her non-stoned brother, says get up, thinking it may be 911 time.

So off they go, into the brisk Illinois night. My new restaurant buddies.
Perhaps I will see them next week.

-jim