Hugh's Worthless Blog

Okay, I was checking on the radar before I left today and it looks like practically all of the Metro area was pretty much clear of rain. But when I looked out my window it was raining! How could this be? Sure enough, when I zoomed in on the KSDK radar the only rain in sight is centered directly on top of Wash U and Richmond Heights. I guess I will be needing my umbrella after all. What wonderful luck!

Today I found a better, sunnier picture of myself as I was walking to the Metrolink station this week. It was warm, but still a much nicer day to be walking to the Skinker station than in the pouring rain (which seems to occur much to often these days)! And speaking of the Metrolink , I noticed that they have finally posted the updated train schedule that begins on June 28 (in just 17 short days.) The morning eastbound trains during rush hour that now depart at :04, :19, :34 and :49 from Brentwood will then be leaving at :09, :21, :33, :45 and :57 and the evening westbound trains from Skinker will change from :11, :26, :41 and :56 to :07, :19, :31, :43 and :55. Since in the morning I rarely could catch the 7:34 anyway and usually took the 7:49, I should make the 7:45 no problem and get here to work 4 minutes earlier! And in the evenings I usually take either the 4:26 or 4:41 so now I will have three choices at 4:19, 4:31 or 4:43 (and even 4:55 or 5:07 when I'm running really late!...

After mentioning the Clayco webcam for Green Hall , I believe I spotted it yesterday mounted high above the building housing Kayak's Coffee on the corner of Skinker and Forest Park Parkway. Since today was so rainy and yucky (yet again) and my daughter wanted to know how the Metrolink parking worked, we drove and parked at the Richmond Heights station and rode the Metrolink in at an earlier time. As I was turning the corner this morning I was thinking, maybe, just maybe it was timed perfectly.... and it was! If you look at the picture above you will see three people holding umbrellas walking towards campus. The person with the large multi-colored umbrella is ME ! My daughter (who refused to share my giant umbrella with me) is slightly in front with her smaller umbrella, and a lady who works in the engineering school is behind us (I see her many times when I am on the Metrolink, and I should really be nice and say "hi!") But sure enough I was able to find that picture o...

Yesterday we were driving through our neighborhood when I noticed a nearby house that just went on the market a few weeks ago is already under contract. In addition last year there was another house on our street that went on the market and was also sold in less than a month. So a great location and a reasonable price can still definitely move a house in this slow housing market. Unfortunately, the house across the street from us is still for sale, even after a lot of people were visiting it in the first few weeks it was on the market. They originally priced it at a strange price point ($514,990) although they have now lowered it to $499,990. I believe they bought it near the market peak in 2006 so they are trying to get as much out of it as they can, but I bet if it had started at under the $500K point it may have sold by now. They had priced is substantially higher than what the house next to it sold for last year ($475K) even though the other house is actually larger. They are ...

Today I was trying to apt-get a package onto my linux desktop when I realized it was taking forever to connect to the Ubuntu APT repository. But that made me think, "Is today the day?" And sure enough with a quick Google search, I realized today was indeed the day of the final release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS , the Lucid Lynx! Since it was such an exciting event I thought I should join in the fun and download a copy to play with tonight. I grabbed the torrent and started up  bittorrent to get my own copy of the desktop i386 ISO image. It is nice to be using bittorrent to download open source software -- which is what it is legally supposed to be used for (not for movies, pirated software, music, etc.) I booted my old iMac on the freshly burned CD and it fired right up to a very purple desktop. There are a bunch of new features to play with that should keep me quite busy tonight. I used to maintain the repository of Ubuntu ISO images here at Wash U, but the infamous WUARCHIVE se...

Two recent crimes have made big news here on campus and also apparently for the St. Louis metro area as a whole. First early Monday morning a female undergraduate student was sexually assaulted and robbed in the DeMun neighborhood just south of campus, and then just yesterday morning two undergraduates were mugged on the north end of the overpass to the Greenway walkway. I wonder if the publicity about these crimes is helping matters or hurting matters. Associate Vice Chancellor Steve Givens can be seen in numerous TV clips telling how the two mugged students did "everything right" in not fighting and in giving their assailant what he wanted. I am grateful our students were not hurt, but he is giving the message to criminals "come on over, we are ready to give you whatever you want and we will not fight back". That is the correct attitude for our students to have upon being accosted, but it sickens me that it may actually motivate criminals to target the univers...

Yesterday, Metro announced their preliminary restoration plan for Metrolink and bus services that will be occurring for 2010. Starting on June 28, several bus routes will be increased in frequency (#70 Grand, and #95 Kingshighway, for example) and the rush hour Metrolink schedule will be increased from every 15 minutes to every 12 minutes (i.e. 5 trains per hour instead of 4 trains.) More details can be found on the Citizens for Modern Transit website . The September and November bus restorations will be more extensive but will require more people and equipment. They will actually be hiring more people which is a good thing! That sure beats them firing over 600 employees. I will be curious to see how they tweak the current four Metrolink times during rush hour to become five. Before April 2009 they were running every 10 minutes (6 trains per hour) but because of single tracking across the Eads Bridge during its renovation they cannot increase the frequency quite that much. So movin...