So why is it that in some towns people say “hi” to strangers while in other towns they don’t?

I was out jogging the other day and noticed that everyone I went by looked at me and said “hi” or “good morning”.
Couples walking together, single men, single women, people on bikes all greeted me as I ran.

I’ve been in other towns where no one — and I mean no one — looked at me let alone said anything.
I’ve been in resorts or nice neighborhoods where people look straight ahead and do their best to not acknowledge my existance.

It seems to be characteristic of the place.
Why is that?

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My birthday was a week ago and my son gave me an aquarium.
Not just any aquarium — a

USB powered mini-aquarium
from
ThinkGeek
.
Now, when my laptop is on, my little fishes are
swimming around in the blue glow of the LED aquarium
light.

Every geek should have one.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile but is morally treasonable to the American public.

I am traveling on Delta airlines.
This has the feel of a very corporately managed,
bottom-line oriented
company.
That is, it is providing just enough service to
make the maximum amount of money.

This shows up as meals to purchase on the flight
($5 to $15 and $2
snicker doodles
),
complementary drinks but you don’t get the can
and totally automated, bar-coded,
self-serve-kiosk centric customer interactions.

Someone went in for deeply computerizing the
system.
I mentioned the kiosks for self-check-in, but
the announcements in the waiting lounge are
computer generated (no unintellegable gate
attendent announcing over the speakers) and
large LCD displays put up information on stand-by
passangers and their status.
Bar code scanners follow your progress from
checkin to boarding.
The database knows all.

I do wonder if some of these automations actually
save money.
The generated announcement system, for instance:
It costs money to install, there must exist a maintance
crew to repair them, there must be people generating
the backup procedures if they fail and there
are still times that the boarding crew has to make
announcements so they can’t get rid of the old
system.
The speech is clearer and the modulated male voice
is reassuring, but did they save money over the old
way?

Technology is not the answer to every question.

From the air, the area around the airport is full of
large houses either in developments or in farms.
The developments are large with lots at least an acre.
The level of prosperity here in
Northern Kentucky
and southern Ohio is amazing.
There are always
haves
and
have-nots
,
but there are an amazing number of “haves” here
and they are doing pretty well in their 4000+
square foot homes with swimming pool in the back.

I have business meetings on the East Coast on Monday and Tuesday
so I’m traveling this Sunday.
The first leg was from Portland to Cincinnati.
— I flew from the cool green in Oregon to the hot
and humid green in Kentucky.
I’m in Kentucky because the “Cincinnati Airport” is across
the river in Kentucky.

Flying in here, I noticed something that I’ve seen around
the East — large tracts of trees.
There are clearly farms that consist of half field and
half stand of trees.
What economic or cultural or agricultural impetus
causes this to happen?
In the Northwest, most of the expanses of trees are owned
either by large logging companies or the Federal Government
(who manages them for the large logging companies).
So, trees are cut or they are clearly growing so they can
be cut.
But here, from Ohio to New York,
it looks like half of the land is in forest.
And the forest does not have that patchy look of
clear cuts that we get in our western forest.
What economics is allowing or promoting the existence
of all of this “unproductive” land?
Something is happening in the East.
I’ll have to do some research.

This evening we had family over to celebrate my birthday.
One of my presents was a new Nike running watch.
The best part was the little folded block of instructions which announced:

It’s been a while since my last post.
I haven’t had another
heart attack
or anything disasterous like that.
It’s more that work has been busy and I’ve moved my web server from the old 300MHz hand-me-down computer runner Redhat 7.3
to a newer 1.0 GHz hand-me-down computer running
Fedora Core 2.
The transition hasn’t been without hickups and that has been keeping me busy.

But, I’m back. Hi all!!!!