Seems like parkingidiots.blogspot seems to have stopped their updates… here’s a little of mine.
Juz some picts of some drivers I met this morning…
Does he even know that bikes need space to move out of their lots??
Does he know that it’s a bike lot??
Nothing much about this car but I just don’t understand why he / she needed so much space on the passenger’s side.
Nope it’s not in SG… But the USA.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2622194620070327?feedType=RSS
By Jon Hurdle
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey drivers who insist on sending
text messages on their cell phones or personal digital assistants may
find themselves on the wrong side of the law if legislators approve a
new bill.
The plan is in response to a recent Nationwide Insurance survey
finding that one in five drivers are texting while driving, a figure
that rises to about one in three among people aged 18 to 34, said
Democratic Assemblyman Paul Moriarty.
"It’s extremely dangerous," said Moriarty, one of three sponsors of
the bill. "It requires you to completely take your eyes off the road. I
see people driving down the street using both their thumbs to send a
text message, and I can only imagine they are steering with their
knees."
Drivers caught texting would be fined between $100 and $250. Similar
measures are being considered by three other states, Moriarty said.
The measure would allow police to pull over any driver found texting
while driving, a tougher approach than currently allowed under the
state’s ban on drivers using a mobile phone on the highway. Under that
law police are only allowed to stop drivers if they are also committing
another offense.
Critics have asked why the bill does not also seek to outlaw other
sources of driver-distraction such as coffee or food, but Moriarty said
such a bill would never pass the state legislature.
The bill, introduced last week, has 20 co-sponsors — both Democrats
and Republicans. It is expected to be debated in a committee during May
or June and then pass to the full Assembly and the Senate whose leaders
have indicated they are in favor, the assemblyman said.
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Even though the use of the mobile is completely banned in SG many a times, I have personally "witnessed" many people still wanna try their luck.
Sometimes, I do wonder if the authorities need help "nabbing" these people?
I wonder if the formation of the S.B.A. can help?
In the morning on my way to work, from CTE, turning into PIE, near Wampoh. I was turning into the PIE minding my own business (still on the extreme left lane) when this Lorry (Usually carrying sand) started to make a lane switch towards mine (While I was still next to him). I had to "blast" my horns to try to make him notice that there is a vehicle on his left. But he juz kept coming, I cannot remember when I made my bike pick up like that to avoid such a situation.
Then on my way to a friend’s home in dover from Jurong East, was when I met the first…
Best of all, he wasn’t driving a car… or a lorry… but a TIBS bus.
@ about 7:05pm while traveling alongside the MRT tracks somewhere near Clementi MRT. I saw this bus driver using his phone while he is driving. My goodness… I was riding along side next to him and honked till he saw me. Then he hung up and gave me the… what did I do look…
I am juz wondering… why didn’t the passengers tell him to stop?
Anyway, along my way back… somewhere near Upper Serangoon Road…
The next incident. This time, it was a cab driver.
My side of the road was 3 lanes, well usually, I would be traveling on the extreme left but there was a car there so I had to ride on the middle lane.
Anyway I noticed a car from the opposite direction was trying to make a U turn into my side of the road and normally I would flash the high beam a couple of times to tell / show the driver that "I am approaching"…
But many a Singapore car driver seems to have this "Herd" mentality even in driving and well… you guessed it… A cab driver (SHB 54XX) casually decided to "follow the herd" and join the crowd. I had to hit the breaks and honk! luckily he heard the honk and made a quick tight turn and managed to "get" into the extreme right lane on my side of the road (Quite amazing actually, but reckless none the less).
@ the next junction, I made a rough calculation and stopped where I guess he would be stopping. (Even though it meant leaving a huge gap between me and the car in the front, the cars behind me did not "say" anything cos they prob saw what happened) He was supposed to come into directly to my left… but I guess he knew he was @ fault and stopped quite a distance where he was supposed to be stopping.
Funny how car drivers doesn’t feel that "Big" after an incident like this.
I turned my head around and looked @ him and signaled him to come forward.
(I wasn’t about to start a fight but I wanted to make sure that he knows what he did wrong.) He looked sheepishly @ me, winded down the window & the first thing he said was "Sorry"…. in Hokkien
So I replied in Hokkien "Please be more careful in the future"
Pretended to look @ his number plate & my watch and rode off.
(Juz wanted to give him a little scare, dun think I will report this case anyway)
So…. like in one of my previous post, dun be afraid to use your horns to avoid danger. But also remember not to be "trigger happy" la.
Not too long ago, there was this charity show again where almost all / most of the stars shed tears when they did not get the required phone calls of 600,000.
*The amount they were targeted was $5,000,000.
When the final number of calls were announced, (Everyone was still in tears saying that the patients will suffer if the money was not raised etc etc…) there were only 450,000 calls (There were in fact about 445,000++ calls).
And the final sum they announced was…. more than $6,000,000 (It was actually more 6 mill).
hhmmmm…
I could not help but to remember the great NKF saga again.
The Org needed 5 mil, which they have calculated as 600,000 calls.
But with 450,000 calls, they raised 6 mil.
Was the benchmark wrong?
Was the calculation wrong?
What was wrong?
600,000 was based on $5 donations?
600,000 X 5 = 3 mil (How did they cal this??)
On the other side
6,000,000 / 450,000 X 600,000 = 8 mil?
What was their real target??
Some questions:
What happened to flashing the total amount raised rather than the number of calls?
Why did the number of calls disappear mins before the total amount as announced?
Is there a difference from then & now?
Have the public forgotten NKF?
Dun misunderstand, I have no issues helping the poor, but what guarantees me that the money is
1. Spend wisely? Not spent of unseens softwares.
2. Does not make another rich man… richer.
Are finances of these orgs announced… yet??
In many a movie that I have seen, a man is most defensive when their loved ones are threatened.
I can relate to that…
Last week, Jed & I took a short walk to the nearby supermarket. Jed insisted on riding his bicycle. Time 6.30pm on the 18th March 2007.
Anyway, on our way back… juz before the cross junction was a zebra crossing. When we reached the zebra crossing, like what we were taught even in schools to check for on coming traffic.
What I saw was this car… about 20-30m away… most would have started walking / crossing the road thinking that this car driver would have seen the pedestrians on the curbs. But something tingled and in my experience in riding and driving told me that this……… XYZ…. was not about to stop.
So I tried to stop Jed from crossing as well…
Guess what… The driver of the car SDV 5102 looked @ me when he was approaching the junction and zoomed passed me inches away from me @ about 20-30km/h. If I had not stopped Jed @ his tracks, we / he could have been seriously injured.
A Car is no different from a weapon. And like all weapons, they are double edged swords.
IMHO, if found guilty, all reckless driving should be charged with Murder if death is occurred.
If a gun is placed on a person’s head… He’ll most prob be charged with Attempted Murder…
What is the difference when a car driver uses his car to "push" / drive really close to a biker… and sometimes juz for the fun of it?
Should that be considered attempted murder as well?
Is there a difference??
IMHO, no.
Sometime people as me why does biker react so…. aggressively when there they encounter a problem on the road.
I will tell them by asking them to pillion on my bike during peak hours from Jurong to Punggol.
It’ll be self explanatory.
As for the car driver of SDV 5102, I hope you’ll wake up before you kill someone.
When it comes to road tax, the previous road tax increase for bikes…
The comparison with / to a car by the authorities was 3/4, another way of putting it was that… a bike takes up about 3/4 of car’s space.
But when it come to space, somehow this does not really apply to parking does it?
If there were a group of big bikers, we are gonna have a problem squeezing in or out for sure..
Do hope that the size of 1 lot can be standardized, rather than trying to squeezing in as many as possible by cramping everyone up.
My daughter has something to do with Kawasaki…
Nope, it’s not the bike…
It’s the disease.
http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=kawasaki+disease&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/medical/heart/kawasaki.html
More details
http://jedojeja.blogspot.com/
Imagine this, a 4 month old girl with these symptoms
Painful… For the parents too.
Not too long ago, I posted something about the "super" speed of my ISP…
http://bikers_b.blogs.friendster.com/a_bikers_life/2006/07/never_too_fast_.html
Well… Not too long ago they also claimed to have "upgraded" all of their 6.5mbps users to 12mbps for free.
Comparing speed of the screenshot of the previous post… a blazing 700++kbps… Wow!!!
Currently, the speed is supposed to be 12MBPS…
look @ the speed.
*The file that is being downloaded is from the same link given from Apple’s iTunes…
Point to remember… With the free upgrade it’s supposed to be almost 2 times faster…
But the speed was… 20kbps.
Note, IE somehow also have integrated Bittorrent as their "default" download agent or that bittorrent somehow linked itself as the default download agent.
And the bit rate for bit torrent was…
even worse… 8kbps!!!
*These 2 screen captures were done in less than 10 min interval…
Well… to be fair… there are some possibilities…
1. This is a new software and millions of people are downloading this @ the same time causing the bandwidth to be this little.
2. Apple is on a budget cut & and lowered their bandwidth.
3. 1 + 2 & also that the whole block in my place has their ISP & SCV turned on.
Extracts from Wiki
———–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping
———–
Traffic shaping is an attempt to control computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, low latency, and/or bandwidth.
Traffic shaping deals with concepts of classification, queue
disciplines, enforcing policies, congestion management, quality of
service (QoS), and fairness.
Traffic shaping is of interest especially to Internet Service Providers
(ISPs). Their high-cost, high-traffic networks are their major assets,
and as such, are the focus of all their attentions. They often use
traffic shaping as a method to optimize the use of their network
(sometimes by intelligently shaping traffic according to importance,
other times by discouraging uses of applications by harsh means).
———–
Please read the link above for more details.
Whatever the reason may be…
1 thing that is for sure… I am not getting the speed that I used to be getting.
