Greg's Horrible Waste of Internet Bandwidth

So I was gettin' my hair cut with some friends the other day...* ...and small talk turned to visiting family in Louisiana over Christmas, and the long drive, and how long I've been in CT, and...suddenly I realized that I was approaching 30 years of having lived in Connecticut. Thirty. Years. That means I've lived in Connecticut more than I haven't. When I got home I researched some old Quicken files and found a charge on my Discover card (remember them?) to a Days Inn in Roanoke VA on February 7, 1992, with the category "moving expenses". I remember that trip, I was driving up in my Rabbit convertible with a few bags stuffed in the back.** That means on February 7th 1992 I left everything behind in Wichita Falls Texas and began a brandy-new life...in Connecticut. Connecticut! To suggest that my life totally changed on that date is an incredible understatement. So why move? Well, auto racing, of course. From the mid-80s onward racing had been the tunnel-vision...

Hoo, boy. What a season-ender! And what a controversy! I suspect your position on that one is likely tilted toward whomever you wanted to win the championship. There's certainly no limit to the opinions on the matter. So what were the Race Director's option? And remember, we're looking at this in hindsight. During that whole last lap my loudest thought was, “Well, Netflix is certainly happy.” I'll give you this: both drivers drove championship races. Both teams masterfully played the hands that were given to them. Your feelings - and they are feelings - on how the regs were managed throughout that race are very likely biased - colored - by your champion preference. We can reasonably debate the decisions made at the last F1 race. But we have the luxury of hindsight, and most importantly a lot of time - nearly forever time - to think about options and their potential outcomes. The Race Director did not have that luxury. Therefore, any criticisms should be done in context....

You remember 2020. World shuts down in March and a very large chunk of society goes into hidey holes. I'm an office worker (and all that that implies) in Info Tech. Once my company told us to stay home and start working remote, it was an easy transition for me. Couple screens, some cables, a laptop, done. But boooooring. Wake up, grab coffee, sit in front of a screen all day. Pretty much same as before but no commute and no interruptions about "last night's game" (I actually kinda miss those now, even though I didn't watch last night's game). My buddy Ed is a hands-on guy. Blue collar, hard worker, madz fabrication skillz. So even though he was still working at the shop, they pretty much kept to themselves. Both of us (as well as most of the world) were getting cabin fever come the summer of 2020. Sure, we ventured out on occasion for take-out -- gotta keep those fav restaurants and breweries in biz! -- but we all just wanted a reason to GTF out of the house. ...

Inflation, supply chain issues, bare shelves...who coulda predicted this? Well, just about any rational informed person, actually... I don't consider myself prescient just pragmatic, realistic. Cynical, even. In April 2020, when all this was spooling up, I noted on social media that, paraphrased, "We better be real careful how we shut down this economic engine, because none of us has the starter battery and know-how to do it." Sadly, I was right. It's not that we are not smart; in aggregate, as a whole economy, we're remarkably intelligent. The things we're able to do as a collective macro-economy is incredibly immense : how is it that, prior to March 2020, anything that we could ever want was available to us on the grocery store shelf or even available as soon as same-day or (at worst) two-day delivery? How was that possible? Who designed that? "Who designed that?"  Well, no one. An economy is not a "who" but a "what".  And...

Spoiler: The "Family Tower" in Louisiana has partially collapsed. Below are links to some 2018 UAV videos when it was still standing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejGSR2GLaks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8jbxfcGEDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZl453YveQ 2023 UAV video of the remnants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ir_nqAUtCE The Story Post-COVID 2020 Christmas week, we hitched up the "Cajun Edition" RV to head to Louisiana to visit family. We arrived at mom's house after dark, parked the RV, and mom invited us in, handed me a beer (love that woman). She sat down with me with a serious face, and said "honey, I've got some news". OK, I'm thinking...did someone die? "The tower fell down." I'm shocked. " What?? " I stepped outside to see for myself...of course, it's pitch-dark in her area at night and with no moon I couldn't see a damned thing. And it probably wasn't a good idea to be wandering aro...

Every once in a while someone picks the scab that is "Why did Road Atlanta get rid of The Dip?" and more hilarity ensues. Built in 1969 with its first race in 1970, Road Atlanta is a racetrack just northeast of its eponymous city. It's a rockin' great race track, filled with excellent elevation changes, fast sweeping corners, and is a challenge both technically and emotionally. It's truly one of this country's jewels and is one of my "most favoritest" tracks in the USA (others being similarly-challenging tracks such as VIR, Watkins Glen, and Road America). Its signature bit Back When was "The Dip" or "The Gravity Cavity", a deep drop downhill run into a valley/cavity that suddenly changed to a steep rise, shooting the driver into an off-camber turn under an infield-access bridge at its peak then immediately down the hill's backside to another sweeping turn that shot you down the front straight. It was as breathtaking as that s...

July 2020 was the month that a lot of Connecticut residents noticed a significant increase in their electricity bills. The reason turns out to be that CT's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) approved (and the governor signed) in September 2019 a requirement that Eversource and United Illuminating - CT's two major power providers - purchase electricity from the financially-torn Millstone Nuclear Power Plant. Governor Lamont Applauds PURA Approval of Millstone Contract Between Dominion, Eversource, and United Illuminating https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2019/09-2019/Governor-Lamont-Applauds-PURA-Approval-of-Millstone-Contract Of course, as soon as everyone saw their monthly bills increase - about 7c/kWh or almost 50% - the screaming started and "investigations" were called for and as of this post it is rumored to get rolled back, at least temporarily: PURA to investigate Eversource Energy rate hikes https://www.wtnh.com...