Hayward

I saw those cars too last weekend! Nice

I like the London Exchange Building (old one center) The whole lobby is made of gold.....sot of.

Well the experience will definitely be awful for some people. I had posted what I said just after listening to a news conference with the mayor regarding the incident and people's shock, and how it would affect the summer Olympics goal. It happens time to time, yet people still continue to attend.

Without trying to sound ridiculous. I don't think the shootings were a big deal and should be taken with a grain salt. There's always going to be incidents when you cram hundreds of thousands into one place. You know gangs will be in attendance, but there is nothing anyone can do about that. Is being downtown for these events worth risking your life? Of course it is, as if setting off homemade fireworks in your backyard is any safer.

I visited an abandoned mall located in a far southern Chicago Suburb. The mall was closed in 1978 and was made famous in the 1980's Blues Brothers movie where they drive through it. There have been start-stop renovations to this place. Most of it has been gutted in recent years for asbestos abatements and renovation prep. But much of that is all on hold again. It will probably be entirely demoed. I'll upload more pics a bit later. Center Court. Recently cleaned up a bit This looks like it was a newer wing added a couple years after the mall was built. It has different construction...although cheaper since the roof has way more holes. Central Concourse Escalator from hell! I think I'll take the stairs instead Second floor of the department store

Went to the taste of Chicago/4th of July Celebration as well as Milwaukee Summerfest to see the Roots this weekend. I'll post the Chi pictures now and maybe the MKE ones later. The food was great, but it got very very crowded lol. Lots of people No people here because it's fenced Then it got really crowded...... Elevated stroller in the distance

Lol, where do you pay that rent in 2001? The tip of Alaska? Add another 0 to that number and TRIPLE it you get the cost of what we pay for a house per month. And even that's still within reason. I need to find these places where monthly rent is the same as living in a homeless shelter (technically a transitional facility) for a month. The shelter a block from where I work charges $80/month for a bed and shower lol

This is really crazy and strange but, A bug seriously walked on my screen right as I passed your photo of the statue "in the trash." I didn't think about it until after I killed the bug. I thought it was part of the images or some online advertisement.

Wow, look at those wonderful red ceilings and stylin' wood paneling!!! Damn dude, glad you had patience and didn't go hayward-style and take a sledge hammer to it all.

Raised in a city (Saginaw, MI) or technically a " large town" since there are only about 120,000 residents ---> moved to the suburbs with my family mostly during high school. -----> off to college in Ann Arbor ----> hope to be in Chicago for most of my life, although I do love Grand Rapids, MI. I really don't mind the suburbs as long as they are walkable....yes, denser suburbs with very traditional downtowns do exist!!....or perhaps a small town outside a big city. The problem is small towns within large metros become hot spots to move and pretty soon they've doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size.

I hate it when some radio stations really pump the bass. I like to raise my car's bass when I plug in my ipod, but when I change to the radio, it's all scratchy sounding. It's probably because my truck was built in 1995.....still though. Don't know about other music, but I hate a lot of the beats heavy industry artists and producers are using. Some of them just don't have the right sounds, regardless of what media you hear them on. Synths are "buzzy" and some of the strikes are way to "tinny" The new Madonna and JT song that's been playing on the radio is a great example. They have this sample of brass instruments playing a few measures over and over. Low brass instruments in general can sound scratchy, especially when they are shooting for the marching band type of sounds. If that's what producers were shooting for, it's really unfortunate because it's just not the right type of sound to be looping. It's irritating. BTW, has hip hop enthusiasts ever compared a song with lyrics to just the instrumental. It's amazing all the nuances the instrumentals contain to the point of being a composition. You never hear that in tracks with the voice recordings. My best guess is that those additional instruments might compete with the vocals?

Here's my cat (or now my parents cat) big Tigger 19 years old.

The casino in Michigan City definitely came out way better than the renderings showed.

Very nice! I really want to try riding the South Shore line sometime.

There's a couple Marriotts in the Saginaw, MI area that were forced to build up to the street. One has it's parking hidden behind it (with buildings on each side of the hotel) and the other has parking underground, although it's set back from the street a bit for the turnaround. Both are in areas that are partially suburban, definitely more urban than your typical highway commercial district. It's not surprising when they tried to force a Wal-Mart to put 80% of its parking underground. Wal-Mart dropped their development plans (and the city celebrated)

Very nice! Erie is a place I've been wanting to check out

Nice vid. Btw, the "almost lost detroit" sample refers to the partial Meltdown at DTE's Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station. The plant was a total loss and later replaced.

You are getting offered free rent, food, laundry etc dude. Stick it out the rest of the month, even though you do deserve to travel. My situation isn't all that great. I'm currently paying rent on two EMPTY apartments in Ann Arbor, MI That's combined $1500/month for the ants to walk around. I work in Saginaw which is about 90 miles north which means I get to live at home with my parents for a couple months to save money!. It's awful being 24, dating a girl while I'm still at home and some of my friends already getting married. Although I'm grateful for what my parents have provided so far this summer. Only one more year of grad school though. Fortunately for me, my parents don't seem to care when and where I go to travel. It's all my own money. Thank God grants covered my tuition or I'd be screwed.

architect is on there. I'm still stuck between whether to become an architect or planner. I have only another year of grad school to make this decision.

This is the stuff I drink every morning. I have my parents ship it to me when I'm away, although my sister was able to find it in LA. http://www.frankenmuthcoffeeroasters.com/ This stuff can turn coffee haters in lovers, and it actually leaves a good after-taste in your mouth.

\ Hahaha very true So we've decided to go with a script that will detect your browser size and give you the best sized content for you screen. For example, our "slideshow" for our projects will scale itself larger so you get your money's worth in image size on your screen. Text will probably stay the same, but we figured it was unfair for people with larger resolutions to have to view postage stamp sized images just so we could please our 800 x 600 users. I'll probably set a cap though. After 2000+ pixel wide (on Apple's cinematic displays) I'll probably just center the content. Although it's highly unusual for people to max their browsers on these types of screens, especially since they are only made larger for movies or multi-tasking, not surfing the web.

shoot i thought it was a maze at first.

I was reading up some articles on google streetview, especially ones from blogs. I guess the cars are labeled with google's name on it, so you definitely know what it's for. The camera mounting system is fairly crude though. They also hire out 3rd party drivers (from what I read) so I guess they aren't directly tied to google. There's occasional flukes where you actually see the drivers exiting the vehicles while the camera is still on. BTW, It appears they get these up fast. Ann Arbor was also added, and my old rental house still shows our recently removed Christmas lights on the chair. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Toledo,+OH&ie=UTF8&ll=42.286683,-83.740357&spn=0.002988,0.006845&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=42.286185,-83.741648&panoid=z1wd1KsseD7PcRg4P97QaA&cbp=1,249.74976986780953,,0,-2.047959917126313 EDIT: I'm aware it says Toledo, not AA, but I was looking at Toledo first.

I'm helping my firm redo their currently awful website that was built in 1998. There are 4 people making decisions on what and how it will look. 2 of them want something new and fresh, the other wants a middle ground. Some flash here, some html here, but nothing too over the top that's hard to update. And the other person is still stuck in 1998. I display the web samples to my coworkers on a monitor thats 1680 x 1050 pixels. All of our office monitors are 19" flat panel 1280 x 800 and above except for the few people who never requested computer upgrades have ancient yellowed plastic CRT screens. I think 1280 where most people are at all, although 1024 x 768 is definitely not uncommon. It's very hard explaining resolution to people who don't have a grasp on the idea. They see a 17" monitor from 2006 and think it will display the same as a 17" monitor from the last decade. Wrong. Anyway this last person is upset that she's getting scrollbars on a few samples I've done. The browser tools take up like half the screen lol! I'm currently trying to make the website upsize to fill the whole screen no matter what resolution, but that bastard 800x600 is still making things a bit difficult without squashing photos to postage stamp size. Just curious, but what do you all use, and what is your opinion on it. W3org which controls internet standards says less than 8% of web users are at 800 x 600. Typically the elderly or residents of third world countries (I'm serious!) are at this resolution. These people are all out of our market area and I'm positive most our clients use newer computers. For a design firm, it's my opinion to drop these 800x600 users. Give them scrollbars as punishment for not buying a new computer for the past 8 years or still leaving their resolution on the default settings after they took it out of the box.

I walked into a Chevy dealership today after my old truck was getting serviced for an alternador and la dee da, all the cars on the showroom floor were crossovers and compacts with 30+ mpg. Looks like all the dealerships are starting to make adjustments. Rather quickly too. I've been seeing a hell of a lot more hummers lately though. Pretty crazy. I haven't had to adjust much. I have only a 14 mile commute to work downtown and my S-10 pickup gets about 26 mpg highway. Simple fix, eat out one less day each week to save money, and to also stay healthier. I'm not sure high gas prices will be a big problem to me until they reach $6 or $7/gallon.