The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
Posted in Uncategorized
I lifted this entry’s title from the Home.Spice.Life blog. Her (or his) recent post about books read in 2011 was recognized in WordPress’s Freshly Pressed section, meaning it was judged to be among the best posts of the day. Congratulations! My list of books is different.
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Posted in Books & Movies
Times have changed. With automated tolling beginning today on the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, drivers now have to pay to cross Lake Washington on SR 520 unless they ignore the bill for the trip when it arrives in the mail (a bad long-term strategy) or make a late-night crossing. They can also go out of their way to cross the lake on the still untolled I-90 bridge or take an alternate route around it. None of these options would have been acceptable to a guy I knew years ago—the Toll Road Bandito.
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Posted in Economy
Cat patrol at high tide
To avoid any hint of plagiarism, I revised my original photo caption, which quite accurately said “It was a dark and stormy morning.” That’s the Mud Cat in the photo. Normally he likes to patrol on the top of the bulkhead but not this morning. For the record it was a dark and stormy morning.
King Tides are higher-than-normal tides that occur once or twice a year in the winter when the moon is at its closest point to the earth and the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon are acting together.
Posted in Mud Bay & Rocky Point
A time-honored adage says that the worst day of fishing is better than the best day at work. But judging from an email message I received recently, I’m wondering if its authors should have spent more time in the office polishing their lure before heading out to cast their phishing line.
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Posted in Business Beat
I doubt whether anyone is going to guess the significance of the number 2555 to me even if I provide a hint. For those inclined to try, rather than spilling the answer right off I have included it after the jump. The number isn’t my PIN or the balance in my savings account. It is the approximate distance between Bremerton and Youngstown, Ohio, but that would only be important if I were going there. However, “distance” or more specifically “miles” is a good hint.
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Posted in Biking
Because of a clever marketing ploy called the Triple Play (phone, cable TV, and high-speed Internet), Comcast and I have been going steady for years. Our relationship is based more on need than love. Comcast needs money from me each month and I’m hooked on the services she provides. While we didn’t get married this week, I committed to making us an item for at least a couple more years.
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Posted in Business Beat, Economy
A new Washington state law makes it riskier for criminals to travel in collector cars. I own a collector car with a “lifetime” collector car license plate, meaning there are no annual renewal fees. As far as I know there aren’t any “wants and warrants” out against the car or me. However, until the state legislature acted earlier this year, there was no way for a police officer to tell that or even if I’m the car’s legal owner if the car was pulled over for a traffic stop.
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Posted in Cars
I'll have one coffee to stay.
Wi-Fi in Allyn makes it harder to justify paying $130 extra for an iPad with 3G. (As an aside, the buzz created by Amazon’s Kindle Fire prompted a look at tablet computers in general; my conclusion is that I wouldn’t be comfortable with the Fire’s 7-inch screen despite its attractive price.) Now I’m back to thinking the Wi-Fi-only iPad might solve my connectivity issues when I’m away from home. Our vacation place at Treasure Island (3 miles from Allyn) is not connected to the Internet, and previously the closest Wi-Fi connection was 9 miles away in Belfair. Now Wi-Fi is just a short drive (or easy bike ride) away over back roads. And Sail On In has a comfortable indoor seating area for when the weather is bad. Perhaps I can do a blog post from there.
News for late nighters
My survey of local restaurant closing times wasn’t done in the wee hours. Instead I started it on an afternoon bike ride and checked it on the Internet for establishments that don’t post their hours at the entrance. Since I’m invariably asleep at 3:00 AM, it was news to me that there are enough insomniacs, night people, and workers on the graveyard shift to support three places being open on Kitsap Way in the middle of the night. Apparently there are.
Posted in Business Beat
Mud Bay Blog 