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Jason's Blog

Today was my first encounter with what is supposed to revolutionize the left turn arrow. Apparently there has been some frustration with sitting at a red arrow when the road is obviously clear. UDOT hopes to tackle this problem with the new 4 light option in the left turn lane. At the top you have a regular red arrow. Next a yellow arrow, and then another yellow arrow beneath that flashes. Of course the bottom is still the solid green arrow.

Whats confusing is that when the yellow arrow is flashing, does that mean that it is about to turn red or that you should hurry and go since you aren’t going to be protected. Absolutely wrong. The yellow arrow flashes during the entire set that the green or red arrows aren’t on. When the light is about to turn red, it switches to a red arrow. If that doesn’t confuse you to death, here is a flash example of how it all works. Hopefully this educates some of you driving around 8th south and 8th west in Orem. I really don’t want to get slammed into cause someone thought they needed to hurry through the flashing arrow.

Summary:

Solid Red Arrow = Stop. No left turns allowed.

Solid Yellow Arrow = Prepare to stop.

Flashing Yellow Arrow = Left turns allowed, but first yield to oncoming traffic and pedestrians.

Solid Green Arrow = Left turns allowed. Proceed with caution.

If you really want to learn more about this “solution” and see more videos on how it works better, visit http://projects.kittelson.com/pplt/LearnAbout/Learn1.htm

http://orem.org/pdf/news/flashingYellow.pdf

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If you pay at the pump like my wife and I do, you know you end up with a glovebox full of those little reciepts. These slips we only grab so that the next person to come along can’t see how much money we just wasted to fill up our tank.

We try to be good and write down how far we go between fillups on the slip with hopes that some day we will sit down and enter all the information in a database or something. I intend to develop a website where I can connect on my cell phone and input data right after I fillup. Until then, I have found something pretty neat that you might want to try out. Its called FuelFrog. You create an account and then just login and input miles traveled and gallons used. You can even keep track of the price you paid per gallon and view all the information on a graph. Its simple, easy and free.

As soon as I develop my own version, i’ll let you know.

Check out my average MPGs for my 2006 Mazda 3.

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Yesterday Mandy and I went to Salem Days in Salem, Utah. Each year we go as sort of a family reunion of sorts and eat food, play games and watch the fireworks display put on by the city. We brought our papillion Taffy with us since she is our child. I felt so bad for her by the end of the night. She had been dragged and pulled and hit and even had Root Beer poured on her. When we were driving home at 11pm, Mandy looked in the back seat and she was totally out. I imagine her legs and neck hurt from each little kid wanting to take turns dragging out dog by the leash around their huge backyard.

Phyllis and Bruce made homemade root beer and some excellent chocolate chip cookies laced with acetone. It wasn’t their fault though. They are remodeling their basement and just had a cool new colored and stamped concrete floor put in. The piercing odor has been in the house for days and after you are there for a while, you just get used to it. I guess that includes the cookies they baked. Tasting them at the party we noticed the sharp, potent and concentrated taste that reminded us of home. Yum! Tastes like acetone! I felt bad for the work put into them, but they were really nasty. Well, how many times do you really remodel your basement. Next years cookies will be fine I”m sure.

The fireworks are always very cool. For a small town, they put on quite the show. This year we expected more of the same as we layed on our blankets near the Salem Pond. A storm approached in the distance and while we waited for 10pm to come, we were entertained by the lightening show to the west of us. Ten oclock came and went and still no fireworks. Then it started to rain. The lightening and thunder began to get closer together, signaling that the storm was only about 4 miles away. Nathan looked up the current radar on his iphone and discovered that the storm wasn’t very big bug was pretty powerful and looked to pass right over us.

We gathered under a blanket on the wet grass as it started to pour. Around this time they decided to start the fireworks; the first time I ever remember them not going off at 10pm exactly. We huddled under our blanket and peeked up at the sky to catch the begining of the contest between mother nature and Salem City. None of us lasted very long. With Taffy huddled in the back of the blanket and the rest of us trying to keep dry, we decided it was time to go. We gathered our stuff and ran back to our car. Taffy was so pleased to be in the safety of her bed in the backseat.

The drive home was nothing special. When we got home, we all pretty much passed out and fell asleep. I had to work in the morning, so really I only got about 5 hours of sleep.

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I know it seems early, but to get the best deals on the best gifts, you have to start well before it starts to get cold outside. I just got Mandy a laptop at Circuit City for $330 AR (after rebates). If you need some ideas for gifts for your kids, here is a great link with some hard to find toys. http://www.realityparenting.com/joke-hard-to-find-toys.html

So, in the wonderful world of windows vista, I found something called Windows Live Writer. It is the program that launches when you tell windows live mail to create a new blog entry. I thought, how cool! I can send email and post to my blog all from one place. I don’t even really have to go online to myjason.com, I can just use this software to post. So here it is. My first post with Windows Live Writer. Lets see how long this lasts.