Tag: Asides

I decided that in this new year I would take care of some things that I didn’t do last year. One of these things was getting my eyes checked.

I had this feeling that my vision at night was getting worse than it used to be. So, I decided to get my vision checked. After getting my eyes checked this morning, my vision is still as it has been, 20/20. I guess my mind is playing tricks on me. But, when they did my eye health check, they put these drops in my eyes and it made them feel really heavy. Kind of like I got punched in both of my eyes. It feels great, really.
Next Appointment: Dentist

Well, I’m an official Washingtonian now. I got my license today and that is the final piece of “Ryan’s Washington Jigsaw Puzzle”. Now, I currently live, vote, work, and drive in the sate of Washington. Gone are the days of my conversation piece, my Minnesota license. It was a good ride Minnesota, but Washington won’t let me go… yet.

Question for the masses: What is relevance?

What I’m trying to get at is, what provides relevance to you? Is it your friends, Page Rank, a recommendation, or something else? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in relation to the blogosphere/news. Why do you read what you read? What if there was something that could recommend things to you that you might enjoy based off of what you define as your relevance? Would that help or hinder you in your online information endeavours?

If you live in the Seattle metro area and are curious about the crime stats in your area of the city, I urge you to do the following:

1. Go to this site and find what tract you live in.
2. After you find your tract number, go to Seattle Police Dept Crime Stats Page and select a search.

For the search that I did, I selected the current month that they had data for (e.g. September) and then did YTD for the “Part I Index Crimes by Census Tract”.

Also, the difference between Part I and Part II Crimes is defined as the following: “Part I crimes are comprised of serious felonies and Part II crimes are comprised of non serious felonies and misdemeanors. Together these two types of classifications make up the crimes reported in the Uniform Crime Reports.” In addition, make sure to read the SPD guide on things to consider when reading/interpreting the data.

Needless to say, the numbers that I saw for my tract were mind boggling. If you have the time, check it out, and let me know what you find out. Was what you saw higher/lower/on par with what you expected? I know for me it was above what I thought. Guess it puts it all into perspective.

It was a week ago that I read about a bike being taken, so I moved mine to my locker and locked it in there. I’m glad I did. But, it obviously wasn’t enough. Today, my roommate discovered that two snowboards and two pairs of boots were taken from our storage locker. There was no forced entry and the locker was still locked, but there are hand prints on the ceiling and a foot print on my old TV in there. I shouldn’t be upset, nothing of mine was taken, but I feel bad that stuff was taken in the first place. Now that the officer has just left, I’m ready to discuss the security of our garage with our board at our meeting on the 1st. It just sucks that it has taken all of these little crimes to get their complete attention.

Yesterday I had a problem with the machine that dispenses the tickets for parking at a lot near my work. I ended up spending $10 instead of $5 because the machine wasn’t recognizing my credit card correctly. I was a little upset, but I took it all in stride.

However, today the same problem persisted. But, this time I just put cash into the machine and it worked… sorta. But, this time I decided to call the owners of the lot, Pike Place Market, and voice my concern with the automatic ticket dispenser. When I called I couldn’t get through to the parking supervisor, but I left a message.

When my call was returned he was really nice and understanding to my problem. I explained it to him and what I had done to cause the problem and in return for my double paying yesterday they are going to credit me $5 on Thursday. So, that’s pretty cool of them.

Overall, I was really happy with how the situation was handled. I wasn’t looking to get my money back, but they offered it and wanted to hear me out about what I did to cause my problem. I was a little skeptical about parking in the lot before today, but after talking to the supervisor I feel much more confident about parking in this lot.