Today is an ordinary day. It is worse than yesterday but better than tomorrow [will be].

Best pizza I've had: Manhattan, NYC

Worst pizza: Warsaw, Poland. They made a pizza baked with just cheese and some meat, then gave me a bottle of ketchup to squirt on it for "sauce". The waitress did not understand my look of "You've got to be kidding. Ketchup? Do you even know what pizza is?" It made me think there might just be some truth to all those Polish jokes.

Doesn't anyone realize that spacejunk is our only hope of deflecting the killer asteroid when it comes? Think of the children!

Notice I prefixed my post with "perhaps". I did so to indicate that I cannot prove the failure was due to skimping on maintenance so money could be used elsewhere. It is quite possible this occurred, especially given what we've seen concerning New Orleans and recently, the bridge in Minnesota (or was it Wisconsin? --somehwere up there) and stating the fact (backed up by credible sources) that money was indeed diverted from transportation. This fact lends credence to my assertion which I freely admit could be false.

You are correct the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) handles maintenance of the Bay bridges:

BATA oversees the administration of toll collection and maintenance activities for the seven state-owned bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area about BATA

However, funding for this maintenance comes in part from tolls collected, part from the state of California, and part from the federal government. These funds are overseen by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC):

MTC devotes considerable energy to advocacy efforts in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to ensure an adequate flow of funding for the maintenance and expansion of the Bay Area's transportation network about MTC

On page 24 of the MTC Annual Report 2008 , I see that BATA took in about $492 million dollars in toll operations revenue. BATA also received $126 million in grants from Caltran and other agencies.

However, on the same financial statement I see $807 million was given to Caltrans and another $27 million given to the MTC. This proves my point that money flows in and out of both agencies. Caltrans, MTC, and BATA are intertwined.

What I cannot prove from the financial statement is whether maintenance was neglected so money could be diverted elsewhere. It is possible that even with 100% funding for maintenance & inspections, no amount of inspection would have prevented the bridge failure. My point in posting what I did was to show that California is diverting funds from transportation which may be the cause of bridge failure.

I live on the East Coast so my West Coast knowledge does not come from personal experience. I think from my research I've learned quite all I want to know concerning Bay Area bridges.

Perhaps if the state of California hadn't diverted transportation funds and had actually used the money to maintain its infrastructure (similar to New Orleans not using its allocated money to maintain the levee system) this probably would not have happened.

Raids of Public Transportation Funds

Ruling on a case started in 2007 by the California Transit Association, the California Appeals Court found that the gimmicks used to reroute public transit funding to other programs were not consistent with voters' intent for the funds to be spent on public transportation

nearly $2.5 billion was diverted away from transportation programs

I don't have a vendetta against advertising. It is a legitimate and effective means to inform people about a product. What I detest is advertising that in any way interferes, inconveniences, or obstructs what I am trying to do. I am one of those people who browses with images disabled, with javascript and activeX disabled most of the time.

It appears I'm not "one of the only people" who have a negative reaction to in-your-face ads: (Usability tests show pop-ups are brand suicide )

The Oxford-based consultancy's in-depth usability tests amongst a range of web users found that pop-up advertising was the single biggest turn-off amongst users, with every subject expressing irritation and frustration when pop-ups appeared.

More alarmingly, 60% of those tested said that pop-ups even led to mistrust for both the brand being advertised and the host site where the pop-up appeared.

I had nothing against Geocities. I had a dial-up connection at the time and all those ads loading slowed my browser to a crawl. I was also using Yahoo as my search engine so I did see a bunch of irrelevance. (Later I switched to Google).

The main reason I did not like Geocities is that its pages took too much time to load on a dial-up connection. There were times when I snapped my fingers saying, "aw, that looked to be interesting but...it's Geocities" when a search result appeared that I liked. There was no vendetta, just someone who wanted to pop online, get some information as quick as I could, then pop offline. All those ads made that difficult.

Failing to turn any significant profit from all of those pop-ups and banner ads (in fact, there's questions about whether GeoCities was ever cash-flow positive), the purchase -- or perhaps Yahoo's inaction once GeoCities was acquired -- turned out to be one of the company's most costly mistakes.

Yahoo is encouraging the relatively few remaining users to transition their accounts to the company's $5-per-month Web hosting service.

All of those pop-ups and banner ads is the reason why I steered clear of Geocities. I made certain to exclude Geocities from all internet searches. If you pop an ad up in my face I will make a personal note never to buy, promote, or recommend the advertised item.

Hey, thanks for that information.

I've used Fedora extensively and had few problems with it. I can attest that sshfs worked flawlessly for me which was my primary purpose at the time: remote web site administration. I found Fedora to be a solid distro.

The only negative I can really say about it is that the software updater would often crash my Belkin wireless router requiring a factory reboot and reload of configuration file.

Not everyone needs extensive social contact

I was thinking of just myself. I couldn't do it.

putting together a team that can work together for 18 months

I guess that pretty much eliminates most of the incarcerated population. They aren't known for teamwork in a positive, productive direction.

It was wishful thinking on my part to accelerate human space exploration via a population with little to offer society, such as those with a life sentence or on death row.

Okay, this might sound a little naive, but why can't they use people who have long prison sentences but are not severely criminal? The data gained concerning space travel could allow these people to contribute to society when otherwise they would just be rotting in a cell.

I say go for it. You could end up in Atlantic City, New Jersey in one of Donald Trump's hotels. You would be New York City and Washington DC about 3 hours away. The cultural experience would be quite remarkable I think. Then again, you might end up on a riverboat on the Mississippi river having to work in a cramped cubicle below the waterline.

It's just Saint Guinness starting up his brewery in heaven to make the angels tipsy and put ole St. Patty at ease. The clouds & harps must be gettin a'borin up thar.

This made me laugh.

They should also have examined the happiness receptors in the brain. There really could be something to the phrase "fat, dumb, & happy".