random stuff

First 4 (of 48) D.C. Crime Cameras To Be Set Up This Week

Four neighborhood surveillance cameras will be installed this week on D.C. streets as part of the city’s crime emergency plan, which will bring as many as 48 cameras to some of Washington’s more violent areas in the coming weeks.

The first cameras will be installed in the Northeast, Southeast and Northwest quadrants, on blocks where robberies, drug dealing and assaults frequently occur, police said. All will be encased in bulletproof boxes.

Also Amtrak and Greyhound are starting to look really good for travel options right now. I’m just glad things were thwarted (‘thwart’ is a fun word to say) before anyone was hurt. People talk about when things might get back to “normal” — I think we need to realize that security alerts, travel restrictions, Rainbow Brite threat levels… this is the new normal.

pet peeve #1: Bottled juices. I was looking for cranberry juice to have with lunch yesterday and saw one from Nantucket Nectars, the “we’re juice guys” guys. Big Cranberry, the label said. So I turned it around and see 15% Juice hovering above the nutritional information. A look at a few other bottles showed between 7-20% juice unless it was orange juice which, often being from concentrate, has stuff on the bottom that ya gotta shake to swirl back into the liquid. I got turned off on that from Snapple in the mid 90s. When I buy say, Vitamin Water, I don’t expect it to have juice in it (turns out their labels says less than 1% juice), because it’s flavored WATER. But if you pick up something that says juice and comes from “juice guys” you tend to expect you’re drinking JUICE, not sugar cane and water with a hint of fruit concentrate and citric acid.

pet peeve #2: User-submitted online reviews… for items that haven’t even been released yet. This is an old peeve of mine that surfaces every now and then nearing new release day. Amazon is a prime offender of just not caring about what people write in the review section unless someone else reports it. But I saw it today on Netflix with Ultimate Avengers 2 (direct-to-dvd). Only one review was from someone that had actually seen it at a convention, the others were along the lines of “This is gonna be SO COOL, rent it!” To a lesser extent, on Amazon people do the same thing, often rabid fantypes who rate something they haven’t even viewed/read/heard yet. And I really don’t get this whole *first post* thing either, like it matters? No wonder people think studios pay for fluff reviews, all they’re doing is piggybacking on what users do for free.

And… I’m spent.