Why is everything that disrupts parking labelled an 'emergency' around here? When it snows enough to disrupt parking it's a 'snow emergency'. When they're forbidding parking so that they can paint lines on the street it's an 'emergency'. Last night we walked into Porter Square for dinner and passed no fewer than two different 'emergencies': 'Emergency! We're painting lines on the street! Please file calmly, but quickly to the nearest exit!', 'Emergency! We've torn up the sidewalk! Please ...walk around it!'.

Seriously, people, these are not emergencies... Ok, there's a vague case for the 'snow emergency', but there is absolutely no excuse for labeling an event that has been planned for weeks if not months as an emergency.

So, currently there are signs up and down both sides of Somerville Ave. saying that there's no parking on those streets due to an 'emergency'. Well, that's all you can read of the signs as you drive around looking for parking due to the fact that everyone who usually parks on Somerville Ave. is now parked elsewhere, anyway. If, however, you take a closer look at those signs, they say that there's no parking there on 4/30 and 5/1 from 7:30 pm until 6:00 am or so because they're painting bike lanes.

Painting bike lanes? Bike lanes are great and all, and I wish there were more of them in general. But this is just an absolutely moronic way to go about it. The most obvious reason that it's a completely moronic thing to do is that Somerville Ave. is currently being re-paved. For the past, I don't know, 6 months or so, they've been very very very slowly working their way from Union Sq. towards Porter Sq. tearing up the roads and repaving them. Now this is definitely an essential thing for them to be doing as the state of Somerville Ave. is, in a word, abysmal. So, in general I heartily approve of both these measures.

The problem is that they're doing it in the wrong order. Unless they're planning on not fixing up all of Somerville Ave., which seems somewhat ridiculous since they're already investing time and money in the project and disrupting just about everyone's lives for it now, or they're planning on somehow, miraculously finishing the rest of Somerville Ave. tonight and tomorrow, they're just wasting a bunch of money here. They're going to spend the next two days painting bike lanes on the street only to tear it up and re-pave it in another month or so (if we're lucky).

This just strikes me as a tremendous waste of money. Also, it seems kind of odd for them to be painting bike lanes on a street that doesn't really have car lanes painted on it. I guess we're not really far enough away from Boston to escape the sphere of city planning moronicism.

Ridiculous fifth-grade name aside, I suppose this is a big day. Not for me, however. This morning I drove Jessi over to our polling place to vote in the primaries before work. I suspected it wouldn't really work, but I decided to go in and see about voting myself. My name was in the rolls, but rather than the familiar D, R, G, W, or, apparently, U next to my name there was a very cryptic and unknown symbol: L

'L, what's L?', said the woman checking people off in the book. 'Do you know what L is?' The gentleman next to her mused, 'L? Liberal? That's Democrat, right?'. My clarification that L stood for Libertarian didn't really clear things up very much, and they ended up having to make a phone call to ...someone who told them that there was no Libertarian ballot and that I wasn't eligible to vote. I figured this was probably the case as I hadn't heard anything from either the state or national party about primaries, but it was disappointing none the less, especially as we have a local, George Phillies of Worcester, in the running for the LP presidential nomination. Phillies also happens to be my favorite candidate for President being not only a Libertarian, but a science fiction author and college professor as well. With any luck he'll get the nomination and I'll actually get a candidate that I want to vote for this time around (in '04 none of the candidates I liked got their respective nominations: Dean, Nolan, McCain; I'm not longer a McCain supporter however so his likely nomination this year doesn't really help things). Oh well, at least I won't be barred from voting in November.

Which brings me to another topic I've been meaning to discuss: a particular ballot question. Come November there will be a rather important question on the ballot, the question of whether or not to end the Massachusetts state income tax. If you check out their website it sounds like they actually have a decent chance of passing this. It was on the ballot before in '02 and just barely failed with only 45.3% of the vote. That was with very little publicity and the media presenting it as a cause that couldn't possibly succeed. However with that strong a showing in '02, no one can claim this time around that it has no chance. It very clearly has a chance, and therefore media reaction to it has been a little more positive this year. They're also investing a lot more in publicity to spread awareness, so I think there's a very good chance this might pass in November.

That said, I don't want it to, I think we should keep the income tax. Well, that's not entirely true either, I don't want the income tax, but I think that repealing it right now is the wrong thing to do. This is Massachusetts, after all, and with a democratic legislature and Deval Patrick in the Governor's office I find it unlikely that, even given an $11b drop in tax revenue, the state is going to put the brakes on any spending. Instead they'll just look for different ways to bring in money like increasing the sales tax, increasing fees, and just generally taxing more things. One area where spending is probably likely to fall, however, is local aid. A lot of the cities and towns of Massachusetts are already suffering from anemic income and getting very little help from the state. This clearly isn't going to improve if we stop giving the state part of our paychecks. So how are those municipalities going to keep making ends meet? Easy, they'll keep doing what they always do and raise property taxes. I pay enough in property taxes as it is (about three times more each quarter than Jessi's mom in Illinois pays in a year), and I find property taxes to be by far the more egregious kind of tax.

Think about what it means to have to pay property tax. Essentially, it means that you can never actually own property. In all but name, the State owns your property and you merely rent it from them. Don't believe me? Try not paying your property taxes and see what happens: the same thing that happens if you stop paying your rent. You have to pay for the privilege of living on your own land! I say that rather than repealing the income tax, by far the better thing to do would be to repeal property taxes. This would a) strengthen the right of people to own property, b) reduce the cost of living significantly by lowering rent as well, and therefore c) reduce the prices of goods and services by lowering the costs for the providers and sellers.

Now, maybe repealing the income tax would actually be successful. Maybe next year we'd get a budget that was $11b lighter (wasn't that one of Patrick's campaign promises anyway?). Maybe Massachusetts will implement something like the FairTax on a state level, and prove one and for all that either it can work or it can't. Probably not, but one can hope. Regardless, I think our first priority should be repealing property taxes. I would much rather see that happen, and I think it's a revenue loss that could be more easily and quickly accommodated (rent assistance payouts, for example, would suddenly become much lower which would free up more money for local aid to compensate). But we'll see what happens in November. I may even vote in favor of repealing the income tax just on principle; if it passes and our legislature and governor surprise me by taking it in stride there could still be some good that comes of it.

The power is out in much of Somerville and has been for about three hours now (since most of the way through the top of the 8th inning of the Sox/Indians game). The Porter Square area has power fortunately, but I recently returned from eminent local blogger Jesse Legg's house where we had been watching the game until the power went out (afterwards I contented myself with cleaning everyone else out at poker), and from my bike ride back (not very fun in the pitch dark, even with a headlight) it appeared that pretty much everything on the other side of Elm St. is dark. The Ball Square area certainly is at any rate.

Power outages in and of themselves don't really bother me, but several hours of nothing but candle light can start to get annoying. I can only imagine that for the power to be out for this long it must be a downed line or something similar that can't just be routed around. Of course the wiring in this part of the country is probably so old that it could be just about anything. Hopefully I'll know more soon. In the meantime, I just hope it isn't another days-on-end without power scenario like we had in the Bay Area when I was a kid...

Edit: I just took a look at the City of Somerville website and apparently this is a 'scheduled emergency power outage', whatever that means. It appears that the power will be out until 8am for the 100 through 400 blocks of Highland Ave. Of course it also said that it wouldn't start until 12am, so who knows what's really going on. Also, my Verizon DSL went out about 30 minutes ago. I wonder if that's related.

Edit 2: Thanks to Boris for pointing out that the notice I found on the Somerville website was from 2002. Oh well, guess it was an unscheduled emergency after all.

Edit 3: Cool, if you do a google search for 'Somerville power outage' this post is the number two result.

Next Monday (October 15th) at the Somerville Theater in Davis Square Mayor Joe Curtatone of Somerville will be holding a State of the City address targeted specifically at the 21-35 year old demographic. Topics will include: the Green Line Expansion, redevelopment of the city's website (sadly I have nothing to do with that), the Somerville school system, and many other things. There will also be a question and answer session with the mayor and city department heads following the address. Food will be provided, it'll be a great chance to meet other young people from around the city, and apparently the Somerville PD will be there so you can register your personal electronics. I'd post the flyer they sent out to those of us on the Young Somerville Advisory Group, but ...let's just say it would clash with the design of my site.

If you're in Somerville you can call 311 for more information.

Vital info:
Monday, October 15th
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Somerville Theater
Davis Square

According to The Somerville News, Somerville is being considered as a site for a new soccer stadium. This stadium would become home turf for the New England Revolution. At the moment, I have mixed feelings about this.

There would certainly be advantages to having a sport stadium in Somerville. For one, having it would bring a lot of attention and money to the city. Just the fact that we're being considered for the stadium I'm sure will help raise people's awareness of Somerville which, in turn, will probably bring some increased investment in the city. Not to mention the tax revenues on everything that's sold at a stadium, parking, and incidentals bought by fans while they're here. And certainly Somerville has a large soccer fan base. There's even a grocery store called 'Gol!!!' on Somerville Ave., not too far from our condo. Obviously a sports stadium can be a big money maker for the city.

But there are also negatives to this. First and foremost, we're basically in Boston here, and Boston sports fans are ...an interesting bunch. I don't know how much overlap there is between Revolution fans and Sox fans, but just ask anyone who lives in Kenmore Sq. how they like their neighborhood on game nights. I sure wouldn't want to see the same thing happen to whatever neighborhood in Somerville gets the stadium when the Revolution has a home game (and I'm sure the people who live there have even stronger feelings about it). There's also the question of where the funding is going to come from. A whole lot of professional sports stadiums are subsidized by the cities they're in, and I really don't have any desire to pay more taxes just so that we can have a soccer stadium. Then there's the issue of space. Somerville isn't that large of a city, and unless they're going to pave over some park land, building this thing will require demolishing some existing houses and/or businesses. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but what if the people in the proposed spot don't want to leave? Will the stadium simply go away, or will eminent domain be exercised to force them out? And what about traffic? I don't think there's a single city in Massachusetts with well designed roads. Can we handle the influx of traffic that a stadium will bring? Or is Somerville going to have to basically shut down the roads to everyone but fans on game nights like certain areas of Boston?

So, like I said, I have mixed feelings on this. My general inclination is that that bad would outweigh the good, but I don't really know enough about the issues to make any sort of real determination. Seems like it would be a good topic for a municipal referendum, if such a thing is possible.

About 30 minutes ago I was sitting in the Porter Square Breugger's working (I've since gotten tired of being there and am now working at home on our back porch) when something interesting happened. At first, all I could hear was squealing tires. There was a collective gasp from most of the people in there (who, I assume, had a better view than I). Then, about 30 seconds later, further tire squealing and further collective gasping. Mere seconds later there was further tire squealing and a loud clunk as a small, light blue, early 90s Japanese car slammed into the back of a taxi right outside the window. More tire squealing ensued as the little blue import pushed the relatively huge (about twice it's size) Crown Victoria the remaining 10-15 feet to the end of the block, at which point the cabbie wisely decided to pull around the corner and get out of the way. The import, undeterred, sped across the busy intersection (through a red light as cross-traffic sped along) and turned left attempting, presumably, to merge illegally with the cross traffic. At this point I lost sight of the car as just about everyone in Breugger's had jumped up and run to the window to see what was going on. At about this time another car pulled up by the window I was sitting next to and stopped. Everyone in the car—three or four people—jumped out and after a cursory examination of their own vehicle joined the people who were basically running down the street to see what had happened in the aftermath.

Long story short, the little blue import was driven by an older woman. While driving down Lancaster St. towards Mass Ave. had apparently lost control of her car. We (the customer of Breugger's) assume that she must have, in the ensuing chaos, hit the gas instead of the brakes. She hit one car up beyond where I could see, then continued down to the corner of Mass Ave. where she hit the cab. Unable to stop (from her point of view, anyway) she plowed through the cab and into cross-traffic. Eventually she was able to stop the car at the corner of Mass Ave. and Somerville Ave. Last I saw, as I was walking back home, she was still sitting in the car while the occupants of the cab and the other car that was hit were parked behind her, walking around on the phone (the cabbie presumably with his employer and the other with their insurance company).

All in all, I'd say this was an extremely happy ending to what could have been one of those 'old-person-who-really-shouldn't-be-driving-meets-farmers-market' scenarios. Usually I'm not lucky enough to be present for such exciting goings-on. I'm glad that, having been present, I didn't have to witness anything more gruesome.

Last night I went to the second meeting of the Young Somerville Advisory Council. The meeting last night had two main foci: the City of Somerville's website, and the mayors upcoming 'State of the City' address to the younger residents of Somerville. Two rather interesting topics really. The website is soon to be overhauled (with the new version coming online sometime this Fall) in the hopes of increasing its effectiveness, its traffic, and the sense of community it can build within the city. Personally, however, I think the best improvement that's being made is one that's already gone into effect: changing the URL from www.ci.somerville.ma.us to www.somervillema.gov. I imagine the reasons I think this was a good move are probably fairly self-evident.

As for the 'State of the City' address, there was a lot to discuss. First of all, the mayor wants to know what we, the young denizens of this fair burg want to hear about. Sure he could just talk about the same things that politicians always talk about in speeches, but he knows that we probably don't want to hear that. So he asked for our input (and the input of others we know in the community) on this. The biggest issue by far, I believe, is a public update on the status of the project to extend the Green Line to Union Square. Other that came up were issues of public safety, the local schools, the planned development in Union Square, and may other things. I wish I'd thought of it before we had the meeting, but I've just now created a Squidoo lens for the group with a text plexo so that we can get some sort of organized community participation for picking topics for the address:

There was one other thing of note about the meeting. When I went to the last one I realized that one of the other guys there looks very familiar. So familiar, in fact, that I was pretty sure we had gone to Carleton together. It turns out that this was the case. We actually even played rugby together very briefly. Now he's also living in Somerville, and just down the street no less. Small world.

For the past year or so I've been doing pretty much all of my work from home. Occasionally I go into a client's office and work from there, but the vast majority of my work I do here. Right now, for example, I'm sitting on my back porch.

This week, however, has been a little different. As anyone in the area knows, it's been extremely hot. Over 90° for the past three days in a row with about 50% humidity. Not pleasant. We have an air conditioner in the bedroom, but I prefer not to run it if I don't have to so I've been doing a lot of work from elsewhere. Specifically, I did a lot of work from the Breugger's Bagels in Porter Square. They have free WiFi and free air conditioning, so it's a pretty good deal. Yesterday and today I also spent a little time working at the Boloco in Davis Square. Their air conditioning isn't nearly as strong, and wasn't quite enough yesterday, though their free WiFi seems a little more reliable and faster.

Anyway, working from Bruegger's for basically an entire week was an interesting experience. I definitely wasn't the only one; every single day there were at least three or four other people there with their laptops working. Oddly though, there were very few people who did it multiple days. I definitely saw a buch of the same people every day, but they were mostly people who just came in for lunch. The people who came in to do work generally didn't seem to make a habit of it (except me, of course).

I also discovered something about myself. I found that it's much easier for me to focus on work and be productive when I'm not at home. Pretty intuitive really, but the extent to which it's true was surprising. I was definitely much more productive when I was working from Breugger's or Boloco than when I work from home; which isn't to say that I'm not productive from home, just that it's a little easier to get work done when I'm not. As a result, I plan on working from other places more often. This should help my productivity, probably my quality of work too, as well as just get me out of the house more, which will be nice. I only wish that there were more places around here with free WiFi. It's basically Breugger's in Porter, Boloco in Davis, The Druid in Inman, and Grand Prix in ...uh ...out past Porter on Mass Ave. Those places are all nice, but of them only Breugger's and Boloco are really that good for working. The Druid is a bar and doesn't have the most comfortable seating and Grand Prix just doesn't do it for me. I tried working there, but the big Plasma screen showing Sky Sports kept distracting me with rugby highlights. Maybe this is something I can help address as part of the Young Somerville Advisory Council.

In the meantime, I'd like to compile a more complete list of the places in Cambridge and Somerville with WiFi. There's any number of websites out there that claim to have a searchable list of this sort of thing, but in my experience they're usually pretty poorly done. I'm not sure why that is, it's an extremely simple concept. Maybe once I have a big enough list I'll try making one of my own. It's the perfect application for a Google Maps mash-up. Might even make a good added value service for the dy/dx tech website.

Anyone have any suggestions for good places with free WiFi in the area I might not know about?

If you read the Globe you may have noticed this article that ran on the 17th. Basically, Mayor Curtatone of Somerville is putting together a group of young Somervillians, the Young Somerville Advisory Council, to help provide the city with input from its younger citizens. What the article doesn't mention is that I am one of the 25 Somervillians on the council. So far, I don't have a whole lot of information about what, exactly, we'll be doing. But our first meeting is scheduled for next week so I'll get a chance to meet Mayor Curtatone, some of his staff, and the other 24 members.

I'm really looking forward to this. Now that I'm a homeowner, I've made a bit of a commitment to stay here in Somerville for at least a decent period of time, so it makes sense for me to be as involved as possible with the city and, if possible, the city government. Short of running to be an alderman, being able to, in at least some small capacity, advise the mayor on some matters seems like a pretty good start. It'll definitely be an interesting experience and, hopefully, a rewarding one.