I was following the comments in a Slashdot discussion about good and bad rack cabling which led me to a link to a particularly bad example on WayStupid.com:

WayStupid link

On the bottom of the page they have links to “random stupids.”  I clicked one which had just some police lights showing and stumbled across this:

WayStupid link

What caught my eye was that the caption said, “New Keller, TX Police Vehicles” and below the picture it said, “The Chevrolet Tahoes just weren’t holding up.”  At first I thought maybe the site was using some kind of advertising cookie or geo-IP tracking to figure out my location and customize the page, but I SSH’d into a system in California and used curl to fetch the page and it still said Keller, TX.  So the page content is definitely correct and intended to be for Keller, TX.

It just seems strange that without even trying that I’d stumble across something that referenced Keller on a site I’d never heard of until today.

(On a random tangent… check out this example of the incorrect method to use when stopping your vehicle from 178mph.)

I’m a bit curious as to why The Keller Citizen only saw fit to run one small photo of someone on a horse from the KHS homecoming parade, since the thing got washed out.  You’d think they would have some good pictures of “drowned rats” running in the rain…

Last week the PD put out a request to CERT for volunteers to help with barricades for the KHS homecoming parade. Qualms about whether 9/11 was an appropriate date for a parade aside, a number of us were available to help.

It seemed like an easy enough task:  Put up the barricade when requested, keep people from driving through, then take down the barricade when the parade was over.  What could possibly go wrong?   

Other than dealing with a couple of people who felt they should be important enough for me to move the barricade so they could barge into a PARADE ROUTE, rather than finding an alternate, things were going well. At least until about 30 minutes into the parade, when the sky suddenly became quite threatening. The floodgates let loose a few minutes after that. It was as if Mother Nature was trying to make up the entire rain deficit in one fell swoop. If you imagine having a barrel of cold water poured over your head about once per minute, you would just about approximate the rain’s intensity.

I did learn a few things, though. I learned that my FT 60-R really is waterproof, although the sound gets a bit strange when it’s wet (not that the Skywarn net I was listening to was much good, as they only declared the net in operation AFTER the rain had hit in Keller). My phone and pager seem to be fairly water resistant. They weren’t exposed directly, but they were in my pockets and survived with no ill effects. My wallet, however, is not in the least water resistant. Oh well… I was thinking of getting a new one anyway. Most things in it, like the driver’s license and credit cards are fairly easy to dry, but the mass of receipts in there became a single sodden mass. Getting them apart was akin to separating the remains of an underwater archaeological find. As to why I might still be holding a receipt from a May trip to Minnesota, I have no answer…

Better luck with the next parade, folks.

Unless you get out on the trails on a daily basis, you might not notice some of Keller’s wilder inhabitants.  For example, I’ve observed what I think is a bobcat in the vicinity of Town Hall at least twice now.  Once was about a month ago, right at dusk.  It was sitting in the brush right at the edge of the creek, looking towards the Pointe.  The second time was last evening, and it was sitting behind a rock at the edge of the brush, near the circle in the path behind Town Hall.

I’ve also seen a coyote on a couple of occasions in the vicinity of the intersection of Bear Ridge and Bear Run. 

And, of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention my sightings of this friendly creature.  I’ve seen them near the creek where the bridge crosses over to the newer section (the one that takes you by the Pointe and over to Town Hall), in the creek, and in the little pond behind El Paseo (next to the Arthouse construction site). 

I probably should start carrying a camera with me so I can catch these creatures when I see them.

A few days ago I was out walking my dog behind Town Hall when I noticed my shoe had started clicking on the sidewalk.  I looked down to see that I’d stepped on a big, rusty fishhook.  I see people fishing out there nearly every day, and mostly they don’t cause a problem.  However, the fishhook reminded me that there can be unexpected hazards from their activities if they don’t police their trash before leaving.

The fishhook, of course, is dangerous to any pets who might be walking in the area, since most of them don’t wear shoes.  I’ve also seen plastic worms/lures on the ground, and I can’t help but think they could be dangerous to the ducks, should a duck attempt to eat one.  But the worst offender, in my mind, is the person who keeps leaving big tangles of cast-off fishing line on the ground.  Last spring I saw a duck that had become entangled in the line and drowned.  I can only imagine that it was a horrible, slow, and ultimately needless death.

I went to visit some friends in Carrollton on Saturday night to help them install their entertainment system in their new house.  After visiting with them for a while I didn’t make it back home until about 1:45am.  On my way into town I noticed a lot of runoff from the sprinklers in the killer medians on 1709 over by Keller-Smithfield.  I also noticed a lot of runoff at the KISD Natatorium.  My initial thought was that it would have been nice if I had my camera to document the waste, especially as the city wants to lecture us on how to conserve water.  Of course, later (and fortunately before I had a chance to post something snarky here), I realized that the Natatorium problem is a KISD issue instead of the city’s.  Still, it’s part of Town Center and the Town Hall “complex,” so it looks kind of like the city is involved (and it wouldn’t hurt for the city to apply its policies to *all* users, not just us peons out here who are just trying to keep our houses from cracking in two and sinking into the ground like the House of Usher).

Regardless of that, though, there is still a lot of wastage from the sprinklers in those stupid, dangerous medians.

As I mentioned earlier this week, someone had smashed the mirror on the Bear Creek walking trail at Rufe Snow.  Yesterday evening as I was walking through the area I noticed that the mirror had been replaced. 

I was glad to see it replaced, but that mood was to be short-lived.  Going through there today I saw that the mirror had been smashed again, apparently with a brick (which was on the ground directly below the mirror). 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a group of teenagers hanging out under that bridge, so maybe the crap will stop when school starts next week.  I wonder how much those mirrors are costing us, though.  I’m guessing that two foot diameter convex mirrors aren’t exactly cheap.

The more I think about it the more pissed off I get.  I hate vandals of all stripes.  I see no art in tagging and absolutely no excuse for throwing bricks at anything.

I’d suggest snipers, but some people would accuse me of being insufficiently sensitive to the social plight of the poor youths and their lack of appropriate social outlets… 

I’m starting to get a little concerned about some things I’ve been seeing on the walking trails over the past month or so.  It started with the mirror where the trail goes under Rufe Snow at Bear Creek.  The trail curves there making it impossible to see who’s coming around the bend.  When you combine a narrow trail, the blind curve, and a mix of runners, walkers, bicyclists, and rollerbladers, it’s a recipe for disaster.  The mirror was great for seeing if someone was barrelling towards you on the curve (and for alerting the barreller that people were ahead).  Unfortunately, it appears that some jerk smashed the mirror with a rock.  It started with just the center section, making the mirror difficult, but still somewhat usable.  Yesterday I noticed that the whole thing was gone.

Last week I also noticed that someone has smashed a beer bottle on the concrete retaining wall of the overpass.  This was moderately dangerous, since if you suddenly had to throw yourself out of the way of a speeding cyclist the only place to go was up on the wall (it’s one of those sloping retaining walls you typically see with overpasses).  My dog likes to jump up there and walk around the corner, so I’ve had to be careful to keep her off of it as well.

Also yesterday I had someone yell to me from the edge of the Town Hall parking lot to watch for the glass on the trail.  Someone had smashed what appeared to be a beer bottle on the trail behind Town Hall.  I’m glad of the warning, because the glass was in small pieces.  It wouldn’t have been a problem for me, but I’m sure my dog wouldn’t have fared as well. 

In the 2 1/2 years I’ve been walking the trails, I haven’t seen broken glass or this kind of blatant vandalism until now.  I hope this isn’t the start of a trend.  Maybe when the kids go back to school next week things will return to normal.

It would appear that the Liberty Elementary yearbook kerfuffle has gotten the attention of one of the big name bloggers.

A quick check of Google News shows that the story has broken out of the D/FW area and has gone statewide with 14 hits from Houston to San Antonio to Tyler.  I can’t help but wonder if this LGF entry will bring any more widespread coverage.  If so, KISD is going to have a crapstorm on its hands tomorrow.  Heck, they already have a PR nightmare on their hands, and I just don’t see them making it any better with any of their stock PC answers.

My take on it is that if they wanted to use the new nickle with the Liberty design, then they needed to remain as faithful to the original as possible, IGWT and all.  What they could have done was to “fade” the rest of the coin a little and add some glinting highlights to the “Liberty.”  They would also need to move the 2005 on the original down and to the left around the perimeter of the coin, then copy it and change the 5 to a 6 in the copy.  This would get them the “2005-2006” in the original style.  Finally, I’d probably have pulled back on the coin a bit so that it wasn’t so damn big.  But I would not have removed IGWT.

Now there are some in the LGF comments who go on about how the U.S. is a Christian country or how the kids “these days” need God.  I don’t buy into any of that, and frankly, you won’t find anyone more adamant than me that God has no place in a public school other than perhaps in a comparative religion class.  Even with my antipathy towards religion, though, I think anyone who’s offended by this phrase on our money has too much time on his hands. 

Thanks to “Grinder” for the heads-up about the LGF entry.

Update (5/22):  The blogosphere is starting to pick up the story…
Toebee’s Fumes
Lab Kat
Going to the Mat
PSoTD
Dvorak Uncensored
Commonplace
Right Wing News
element115
Clear and Present
Capitalist Infidel
Betsy’s Page
The Mill Street Swamp
The WV Rebel’s Blog
Narcissistic views on News/Politics
Cutting Edge Of Ecstasy
Your World, Our World, My World, Yore World
The Pine Blogger
The Texas Songbird

Note to KISD flacks…  Google News and Technorati need to become part of your daily routine…

I’ve noticed that developers seems to be building strip centers on every available piece of land in Keller these days.  I’m guessing that they’re building on spec, since most of them are fairly empty right now.  But I did notice that the first tenant in most of them seems to be a new nail salon.

I suppose we’ll soon discover the actual market demand for nail salons in Keller.  In the meantime, I guess Keller will be well buffed and polished.