East of Cherry St live.

Cherry St at I-40 live.
Traffic Cameras provided by TDOT SmartWay (per linking policy)

These are the cameras that you see around town. These are not red light cameras. The red cameras have not been installed yet.

A tractor trailor crash has shut down part of I-40

The following content reposted from June 22, 2005.

I'm an observant person. I watched the traffic cams get installed by TDOT. For a long I have intended to call TDOT and ask, "are those cameras available to the public?" Ironically, being a web guy, I never bothered looking online until one of the local news stations mentioned the 75 cameras are online (though by my count I only see 66). Have a look at a picture of a TDOT SmartWay camera.

Additional information about the TDOT $20 million SmaryWay system is available including cameras statewide and information about Tennessee 511 a service that provides traffic information from any phone. TDOT is also in Alabama.

From the Smartway FAQ:

Other benefits include:

• Providing live video to local television stations that is used during their rush hour traffic reports
• Website access to current construction and incident information.
• Shorter crash response time by emergency response agencies including TDOT HELP trucks
• Using the system to assist in AMBER ALERTS
• Radio reports of current construction and incident information available on the highway advisory radio (HAR) system.
• Use of the system to complement Homeland Security evacuation plans

Now when you want to leave the house you can check to see if I-40 is jammed or not!

Snopes has updated the status of the Christmas Light Show to "true"!

Hmm

Kids, vibrating pajamas, and chickens. Add the word "choke" in there and someone's naive good intention is going land people in jail.

But I can prove I never touched ____

All joking aside, this is really cool and puts us so much closer to true virtual reality experiences!

Singapore scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the Internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children's pyjamas for cyberspace hugs.

Ok. I took one of those tests. It was the T&A and Cuteness test. See results. Like horoscopes, I think the results of this test could have said most anything and you would nod your head and agree.

Cute & Small Boobs Raw score: 44% Big Breasts, 45% Big Ass, and 68% Cute!

Thanks for taking the T and A and C test! Based on your selections, the results are clear: you show an attraction to smaller breasts, larger asses, and sexier composure than others who've taken the test. Note that because you scored small on breasts but large on ass size, it might appear you like girls bottom heavy. That's probably not the case. What's more likely is that you notice curvy, voluptuous butts, and you don't like big, fake boobs. Big real boobs are even worse because of the sag. Anyway, my third variable, "cuteness" is a mostly objective measure of how innocent a given model looked. It's determined by a combination of a lot of factors: lack of dark eye makeup, facial expression, posture, etc. If you scored high on that variable, you are either really nice OR you're into deflowering teens. If you scored low, you are attracted to raunchier, sexier, women. In your case, your higher than average score suggests you appreciate a cuter, nicer look. Kudos! Recommended Celebrity: Hilary Duff, because she is the ultimate in cute! Especially since she lost that baby fat!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 37% on tit-size You scored higher than 39% on ass-size You scored higher than 79% on cuteness

Link: The Tits, Ass, and Cuteness Test written by chicken_pot_pie on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

This interesting article labels Walmart as "progressive" and good for the poor citing that Walmart's $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers rivals federal programs such as food stamps ($33 billion) and earned-income tax credit ($40 billion).

If critics prevent the firm from opening new branches, they will prevent ordinary families from sharing in those gains. Poor Americans will be chief among the casualties.

Another interesting tidbit is that the "average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco."

Oh the things I wouldn't know if not for blogs! I was looking in on Drawn! this morning and discovered some interesting tidbits.

Flickr is for photos

[Flickr] want[s] to assert themselves as a site for sharing photographs, and any accounts that are extensively non-photographic in nature (ie illustrations) will be rendered NIPSA, or Not In Public Site Areas. ...your images will not show up in searches or tag results, and this includes any legitimate photographs in your account as well.

Stan Berenstain dead

While there are no official press releases yet...

Richard Scarry Gets PC

I'm sure everyone has this book in their house. Now check out the changes from 1980 to 1990.

Anyone else notice the irony in the manufacturer's choice of colors, politically speaking?

Interesting pictorial from someone that shot several locks to see if they could do what we see in the movies.

More acceptance that animals reduce stress.

WALKING the dog, stroking the cat or even swimming with dolphins could be the best medicine for coping with stressed-out modern life, doctors said yesterday.

They went there

Guess what sarah wants

Simple pleasures

Webmasters who didn't think (or did they!) when registering their domains!

My favorites are http://www.penisland.net/ (worksafe) and http://www.therapistfinder.com/.

Oobi the scratch master!

I ask the 3 year old to put the infants dirty diaper in the diaper pail while I finish putting on the new diaper. She walks half way down the hall, turns toward me, holds the diaper on the fingertips of one hand, and exclaims, "It's a miracle!"

Amanda Congdon of RocketBoom fame introduced us to a house lit with Christmas tree lights syncrhonized to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter" (from The Lost Christmas Eve album) in her Monday show then again on Tuesday which also revealed the house to be in Mason, OH. Apparently Carson Williams used 88 light-o-rama channels to control his 16,000 christmas lights.

Amanda has the full video of the house's show.

On Tuesday Amanda told us that the light show had made it into Snopes with an "undetermined" status. I guess I need to send my folks on the hunt for the house. Should be easy since Amanda's Tuesday show also revealed the home owner's name with credits to Alek. Now I think Amanda pronounced Snopes incorrectly. I pronounce it with a long O same as you would "nope" but Amanda pronounced it with an ew sound like in Snoopy which would make sense because the definition of snoop is " To pry into the private affairs of others, especially by prowling about." however I think that it wouldn't be Snopes then it would be Snoops.

One of the beautiful things about marriage is you can do something wrong and go to your grave having never figured out what it was.

The camera appears to be working again. Unfortunately I think Cathy is wearing pants.

I knew they were coming but this is the first pods i have seen. What a great idea!

How to horrify Dad.

While walking through Walmart, Amy (3) says, "He's black."
We continue walking as Dad processes Amy continues, "I want him to be like us."
Dad thinking he misheard the conversation asks, "what?"
Amy declares, "I want him to be white."

A thousand thoughts rush through my head most questioning how I could possibly be teaching bigotry to my children. Let's see. No racial jokes. Hmm. We don't have many friends from other races and cultures right now but for the most part our schedules and economics have alienated ourselves from everyone so we don't really see many people outside of the family. I do like the theme song to All In The Family but I don't think that would do it. Finally I land on the conclusion that it is simply the naivety of a child's world.

Dad, the Meathead that he is, flubs with "that's not nice. We like people just the way they are."
Mom upon hearing the story soars in on angelic wings and artfully delivers this wonderful metaphor of crayons to people and how boring our pictures would be if the only color in our box was white.

Both ladies left Dad's chin on the ground today!

Heard this on NPR this morning and was appauled appalled! Appalachistan sums it up.

My child owns 2 of these. Work safe but some dirty words and could potentially deflower innocent minds.

Oh look! Wikipedia might explain some of Amy's 3 year old behaviors:

Amy is a given name, a variant of Aimée, which means beloved' in French which in turn is a derivative of Latin's amicus or amica which means friend.
AND
In demonology Amy is a demon, a Great President of Hell.

Strangely enough, I must give Tim credit for pointing this out.

Woohoo!

Goodbye woods. Goodbye calming walks. Goodbye thoughts of grooming a walking trail. Blasted developers.

The nine year old stares intently into the microwave containing the stash of glazed doughnuts scavenged from Krispy Kreme last night. Krispy Kreme gives one free glazed doughtnut for every A on a report card (limit 6) K through 8. They used to give any free doughtnut of choice but some nimrod, whiney parents brought an end to that but I'll save the rant for another time. Noah scored a full half dozen. Sarah got 2 but received 4. Tommy aged out. The hot doughtnut sign was on and to keep peace in the house I bought another dozen which if divided evenly between Mom, Amy, Dad and Tommy would give each of the non-qualified eaters 3 doughtnuts.

Let's return to the nine year old staring into the microwave as if he'd discovered the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything (amz). Upon inquiry he reveals that he is trying to decide between eating out of the large box or his box. "That way once all those doughnuts are gone I still have these." I am taken back by the selfishness but amused at the ingenuity of the thought process. A quick math discussion, along with a definition of "staleness," and Noah makes the right decision.

Big class today.

If you have been caught up in the blue ball craze (a Rube Goldberg animation) and tradegic accident then you will really appreciate Amanda Congdon from Friday, Nov 18.

Read about the origins of the blue ball machine as a collaborative project.

Oh yes! Colored bubbles!

8 foot of speaker wire for $11,700.

Wahoo! Another billable done! Now for some chores.

Anyone know why Interstate 65 between mile marker 117 and 112 is at a stand still?

Answer:A dead dear and a car accident and construction at exit 92

James is enjoying posting jokes at Puerilis so here's one for him:

A man and a woman were sitting beside each other in the first class section of the plane.

The woman sneezed, took out a tissue, gently wiped her nose and then shuddered for 10 or 15 seconds. The man went back to his reading.

A few minutes later, the woman sneezed again, took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered again. The man was becoming more and more curious about the shuddering.

A few more minutes passed and the woman sneezed one more time. Again she took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered violently. The man couldn't restrain his curiosity. He turned to the woman and said, "Are you all right?"

"I'm sorry if I disturbed you," the woman replied, "I have a rare condition; when I sneeze, I have an orgasm."

The man was a little embarrassed but even more curious and said, "I've never heard of that before. What are you taking for it?"

The woman looked at him and said, "Pepper."

Tired of spam? Quit using email!

Darren Lennard became something of a creative-class everyman a month ago when, after a long and onerous day at the office, he plucked his hyperactive BlackBerry from his silk-lined pocket and proceeded to smash it on the gleaming granite countertop of his London home. What makes Lennard's e-mail outburst unique is that it was embraced by his superiors.

I have not failed, I have "deferred success"

Ever consider the glamourous life of an overpaid independent consultant? Being a free agent and setting your own hours while raking in the dough sounds fun right? Let's see...one client over due on an $800 bill, another client over due on $1600, others, I'm behind on a project that I underbid and overworked so I can't bill it yet and my network just died, the mortgage is due Sunday, cable, phone and electric are due, the kids are making Christmas lists and funny thing is they want to eat.

Working for yourself...the stress-free way to retire early! Oh, and I almost forgot the best part: everyone you know wonders what you do and assumes that you are goofing off all the time.

Apparently my connectivity issues have been to a failing network hub. Its uplink port will not maintain a connection with the router. Deterred? No. I'll just make a crossover cable and use an available port.

Tim turned me onto this article by Mike Bellah that actually says mess is ok (sloppiness and laziness is not).

Whether it's fruitful fields or fruitful people, success doesn't come without a degree of messiness.

The mess we have is our lifes. It is how we live and although I would like to see the mess reduced, we have a messy manger for a reason.

...lives that are always clean and tidy may have the appearance of success, but, in reality, they are empty, lonely places.

Mike Bellah's article has its roots in Proverbs 14:4

Where no oxen are, the manger is clean. But much increase comes by the strength of the ox.

If you heard liquid splashing on concrete then something probably spilled.

Now that's funny! I posted the church sign and the Amazon ad in the left column changed to a book called "God's Blogs"!