Hayward

I spent $375 at a restaurant over the course of 1 year. It's a Mediterranean fast-casual type of place with locations in two food courts near my office. If I eat there once every week for lunch and spend about $8.50-$9.00 per meal, subtract weeks I don't eat out, it's about $375. Amazing when you think in those terms. Calculating in Michigan Avenue's minimum wage of $9/hour, that's enough to keep one person employed at that restaurant for a week. I lose track with the other restaurants since I don't make it to them every week, or items on the menu vary quite a bit in price.

But you won't be able to resist purchasing the knic-knacks inside!! Don't forget to buy the chunks of copper

Anything google lately seems to bring havoc to IE 8. Even firefox seems a bit picky. I've heard tons of people complain so it's not just me. Google chrome their features work great....of course.

Since there isn't an economy in these parts, it's pretty much people supporting themselves. Either people leave for jobs downstate or move to Marquette and the Houghton-Hancock-Calumet area where's lots of good jobs. Besides the casino you can see the biggest business in town seems to be a museum which relies on passing tourists. If some major industry employing tens of thousands of people moved up to the UP between the two metros I listed, it would probably be news of the century for Michigan. The scenery is incredibly beautiful and IMO, some of the architecture is best in the state. Only problem is distance, these places are remote. My friends and I debated making a trip from Ann Arbor to Calumet, MI. Just traveling across the state right? Well, traveling to New York City was actually way faster.

I just realized the last time I was in Toronto I had an awful sinus infection.

Haven't been up here in awhile. Actually the last time was for this 1 week summer camp thing I did about 10 years ago at the National Guard base. Really it's the biggest thing they got up in that part of the state which is why you'll see flights there. It's weird cause when I watch the news here in Chicago and they put up a weather map, Alpena is always on there.

For 14 straight months I've been biking to and from work. At least once or twice a month I might have to take the bus if the weather is bad, but usually it's not an issue. The cost savings have been tremendous. I also use it to get to other places so I don't have to take the train. I've averaged out my cost savings (calculating how much I paid for car ownership for one month in Chicago) and have dedicated all of those savings to pay off my student loan. Instead of 10 years, the loan will be wiped out in just a couple. If you are close enough to work, but still drive, you might find it worth it. I know plenty of people who even live in auto-intensive cities like Detroit but are getting by a couple years without are car to elminate student debt or save up for a condo. My company makes it pretty convenient. We have a special wide elevator in our building for bikes, and every floor has bike storage. But it's gotten so popular at my workplace we are running out of room for bikes! Many other can participate but some are discouraged by safety during commute hours. Interestingly, traffic moves alot slower downtown during rush hour, so a dangerous collision with another vehicle is unlikely. However, pedestrian densities increase and jaywalking as well as other cyclists who are reckless have been the only problems for me. So any other success stories here?

Look for an awesome guy in an ohio state t-shirt walking slow so that the other runners would think they were fast Problem is there were maybe hundreds of people wearing OSU attire. That's just a few out of forty something thousand runners lol.

Indeed, it was a hot day for the marathon. I rode my bike to various points along the route and snapped photos. Expect a photo thread soon.

Here's the specs for my work computer Dell 64 bit, 20 GB of RAM Duo Quad Core (8 processors) each 3.2 Ghz. Running Windows XP At home: iMac 2.93 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB of ram running Mac OS X Version 10.5.8 (I'm upgrading the OS soon) At both locations I run all Adobe Products, Google Sketchup, 3DS Max, Autocad, and Revit. I've noticed these programs have performed better at home on my Mac. I can't recall a time I've ever had any of them crash on my Mac since I've been using this machine for about a year and a half. I can think of plenty of times, my PC at work has crashed and it's supposed to be about 10 times better, if not thousands of dollars more than my Mac. While my work machine runs fast, and I've never had viruses, and typically don't surf the internet at work, I still have to put up with regular crashes when such incidents do not occur on my home computer. I also don't shut down my Mac. It's just something I've never had a reason to do. I think the last time I did was April. I'm not trying to debate anything here. I'm just putting forward my own personal observations. I really have no preference over the other. I look the look of my mac and the fact that I have very few wires and a clean desk...yet still have the power I need. I'm fine with PC's and maybe even a bit more comfortable with them from a user standpoint, but I don't intend to switch back to them.

Nice aerials. What's all that collapsing action at city hall. Wait let me reword this. Why is sh!t always falling down around city hall.

mmmm apple pie. That's one food thing I actually know how to make. I followed some directions off the internet. My favorite part was where they said "If you never made one before, please double the amount of everything. You'll probably screw it up." .....thanks....

LOL, the only time I've ever had a good relationship with windows was at work where you have a team of highly skilled IT people to back that up. Unfortunately at home, you don't. So it's all downhill from the first day you boot up windows. I ran windows on a Mac for a year. I eventually uninstalled it when it kept asking me to change my password, and at about the 10th time. I completely forgot it. I'll probably put it back on eventually to run 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD, and Revit, which perform quite well on a Mac machine. I was even able to remotely access my company's rendering farm from home without any problems (which didn't work on my PC)

I just can't imagine living in a place like that.

I don't think it's bad if it's moving a historic housing into a historic neighborhood where it will fit. It's better than the empty lot filling up with something that clashes. And, the downtown area (where many of these exist) gets to fill it with higher density development. I was thinking about this the other day actually. Every city wants their downtown to grow, and when it happens, typically some of the best of the city's older housing stock is lost. As the city's core becomes larger more of these buildings become displaced until you lose an entire era of architecture. There's a gap. I think moving these homes elsewhere preserves part of the city's architectural timeline. There's alot of fine brownstones here in downtown Chicago, but their number significantly dwindled when Near North boomed, now with highrises standing in their place. Keep in mind, it's always the BEST historic architecture that gets replaced. As for the hundreds of thousands of wood framed homes scattered throughout Chicago, they won't be replaced by skyscrapers and will stick around for probably another 100 years.

Damn, I can't wait to take a hot shower. My building shut off the hot water Tuesday night at 8 pm to do maintenance down in the boiler room. They promised to have it back up and running around 5:00 pm today. Well I got back from an intense workout around 8:30 pm today and saw the back hatch open for the boiler room. I looked down and their were pipes disconnected everywhere, and a few of the workers were arguing. Now we have no water....and my toilet just did it's last full flush and of course I need to clean up after the workout.. It's amazing how important water is. I might just be taking a shower at the office tomorrow.

Just a couple shot from the crib. I've updated and enlarged since flickr doesn't give many size options. I hope to start taking a few more before it gets cold

Warren, mich has a nice new shiny city centre complex. Guessing the job would be there

I hate it when people drum their fingers on tables or tap their feet. One person at work does this alot. I also don't like it in an office environment where people crank their phone volume way up. Sometimes, people forget to turn their phones off, but other times people just always leave it up loud. I've heard that people who like to keep their phone volume loud in places they shouldn't have deeper problems. Apparently it's a sign they've felt ignored in their past life or just a way to try and bring attention to their self. Here's a new one. When new tenants move into my building they hammer for hours trying to hang pictures. But you can't. It's clay block behind the plaster. You need to drill first and then screw into the wall. It's mentioned in the lease, but not surprisingly people skip over that part.

I randomly discovered critical mass one day on my bike. Saw hundreds of cyclists going by. I joined in and it was great. It went through alot of great neighborhoods and it seemed well organized. The Chicago police set up pinch points near sets of railroad tracks so that cyclists would not cross side by side on the tracks but it in single file instead. I guess one cyclist falling on the tracks could cause an accident for hundreds.

In newer buildings, code highly recommends (thought not required) two stairs that are not too distant from one office suite. In many cases, both stairs are at complete opposite ends which may encourage people to take elevators instead. My office building has a central stair that is signed "Re-Entry at Every floor" near the elevators and another buried within our office that says "No access to any floor." Once you are in that stair, you can only exit into the alley at ground level or the rooftop.

Well what surprises me is people will step in because it opens right away at the lobby usually, yet the ride takes twice as long. The regular passenger elevators will travel 1 floor every second where the freight takes a little more than two seconds per floor. Speed is supposed to be the luxury, but since I have a bike covered in grime, I must take freight and endure a longer ride. I do enjoy the elevator trip to the 95th floor in the JHB. I like how it goes 1...3....6....10..........20...................................EZ..............................93...94...95. I think it moves about 25 mph

^ Yeah they should make an infrared sensor in the car seat so that doesn't happen. Today's pet peeve. and (last months).....People who get on a freight elevator when they have no freight. Okay I have a bike and you don't. Are you riding this large utilitarian thing for thrills?

I can't believe it's already the end of September, WTF? I look forward to 5-6 months of cold Chicago weather ahead...bah. The worst feeling is stepping out of my office at 5:00 and it's already dark. I also need a television series that's been running to keep me entertained during Jan-Feb. Watched all of The Wire last year. I also tried taking some winter pics last year, all of which none ended up on my flickr, so photography is a no-go, unless I focus on depressing stuff and photograph abandoned buildings maybe. I'm considering rolling over vacation time to next year and taking two weeks off and going to Cali or something. Don't know what it is, but Chicago's winters always seem more harsh than Michigan's.

I hope the Gallery project will pan out one day. The proposal was great. Nicely scaled for the neighborhood,