The 10,000 Post thread V3

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4351

 

My wife was a GIS major.  She went to UT and earned her MS in GIS, too, used ARC GIS to help one of her professors map out tilling practices in NW Ohio.  She once went to San Diego as an intern for a big conference put on by ESRI.  She even has a book out (that I helped edit and smooth out and is just her MS dissertation)!  I actually kick myself for not majoring in GIS (or at least minoring in it).  I wonder if there's time to go back and rectify this lack of foresight...  This conversation hits close to home for me.  I spent four years of my life in close quarters with GIS software.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

4352: So yeah.. My car got stolen last night. Sure I found it dumped in the middle of the road and no damage was done to it, but I'm just so mad and I'm beginning to think my car is cursed. Grrr...

[Larks2242 251]

4353.

 

Guys I went a week without visiting this thread and you still only made it a few posts, come on we are slacking in here

[Duke87 1,070]

(4354)

But it had comfy chairs!

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4355

 

DUKE!

[Larks2242 251]

4356

 

4352: So yeah.. My car got stolen last night. Sure I found it dumped in the middle of the road and no damage was done to it, but I'm just so mad and I'm beginning to think my car is cursed. Grrr...

 

Woah, I just seen your post, hope all is well! Glad to see it was recovered.

[Muck308 55]

4357

 

Last week a woman robbed a bank in my neighborhood... across the street from the police station. She made it a block on foot before getting nabbed. I'm glad you got the car back though, yoshi.

[Duke87 1,070]

(4358)

 

I blame my previous transgression on the mobile version of the site doing a really poor job at indicating whether there is a page after the one you are on.

 

 

As for car theft, that I am surprised at. Around here at least, outright theft of a whole car really isn't a thing anymore since with the cops having license plate readers it's near impossible to get away with. If a car is reported stolen it will be found. Not only that, but newer cars are very difficult to hotwire.

 

What is still a thing is that people will steal pieces of a car (rims, stereo, airbag, what have you), since that is pretty easy to get away with and those items can easily be sold for cash. Car jackings are also still a thing, since taking a car from someone at gunpoint is easier than stealing it while it's parked (since you don't have to hotwire it).

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

(4358)

 

I blame my previous transgression on the mobile version of the site doing a really poor job at indicating whether there is a page after the one you are on.

 

 

As for car theft, that I am surprised at. Around here at least, outright theft of a whole car really isn't a thing anymore since with the cops having license plate readers it's near impossible to get away with. If a car is reported stolen it will be found. Not only that, but newer cars are very difficult to hotwire.

 

What is still a thing is that people will steal pieces of a car (rims, stereo, airbag, what have you), since that is pretty easy to get away with and those items can easily be sold for cash. Car jackings are also still a thing, since taking a car from someone at gunpoint is easier than stealing it while it's parked (since you don't have to hotwire it).

4359: This was a Nissan Pulsar, of which have been going left right and centre here. They opened the lock and started it with a pair of scissors, for crying out loud! When we went down to the police station in regards to examining the car, my girlfriend had a seizure and fell, smashing her face open needing six stitches. Poor girl.

On the plus side, I have a job trial and I was successful in getting a table at the Fat Duck next year!

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4360

 

Holy crap, Yoshi, that's nuts!  Well, congrats on the table, I suppose.

 

Car theft is not a major problem here in relatively safe Japan.  There are more perverts here than violent thugs.

[Larks2242 251]

4361.

 

Taking cars is getting harder and harder to do, I suggest rigging the car with razor blades, you will then know who tried to take it, the guy with the missing hand.

[Duke87 1,070]

(4362)

 

What is the Fat Duck?

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4363

 

In South Africa they deal with carjackers by fitting flame throwers under the door.  Dude tries to jack you and FWOOSH, aggravated theft en flambe.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

4364:

4361.

 

Taking cars is getting harder and harder to do, I suggest rigging the car with razor blades, you will then know who tried to take it, the guy with the missing hand.

Knowing me, I'd kill myself accidentally!

 

(4362)

 

What is the Fat Duck?

The Fat Duck is a 3 Star Michelin restaurant in England, which is temporarily moving to Melbourne for 6 months next year. About 90,000 people applied for a table (including 265,000 people total), but there were only 14,000 seats available. I got one. However it is $525 a head though and I have to pay up $2100 Australian (about $2000USD) in the next few weeks.

[Vahr 341]

4365

 

That's pretty pricy, but I'd assume it's well worth it given the demand. Congrats on landing a table though!

 

Also: Hi Larks!

[Larks2242 251]

4366.

 

Vincy! Long time man, how you doing?

[Duke87 1,070]

(4367)

I find it amazing that anyone would willingly pay that kind of money for food. But then I'm the sort of person who would take McDonald's over gourmet steak any day, so perhaps it's just a pearls before swine thing.

[iLoveMusic 66]

4368

 

I drove by what appeared to be a make-shift homeless encampment next to the 15 freeway in Victorville a few months ago. I couldn't believe it, I mean it was Mumbai-style slums/tents in a dirt field next to the freeway. Even a couple of old beater cars parked outside of some of the slum tents, and some people walking around. Lots of trash scattered about as well. It's just interesting to me that America, of all places, would have this too and everybody pretends that it isn't there.

[Skimbo 304]

GIS: NMUSpidey: So you're nearly a professional, then? Also with illustrator? (Sooo much afterwork.... :/).

Cartheft-Flamethrowers: LOL That's Dragon Style!

Money 4 food: If it's good I'm willing to pay. But not as much as that!

Slums in USA: I always remember my ride on the Hudson line crossing through what you americans call Bronx. I've never seen such a run down part of a city before.... (Judging by european standards, also eastern european...)

 

 

 

Oh.... 4369.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4370

 

Heh, maybe if I was almost a professional I could fake my way into a job, heh heh.

 

EDIT: My wife worked extensively with ERDAS IMAGINE and ENVI in addition to ArcMap.  She wants to know if you guys know if anyone's hiring someone who can do GIS and remote sensing stuff.

[RipRap 4,400]

4371

GIS: What I hate about the course with GIS in this university is that the professor would inject so much theory that the actual application of it (I already know how to use most of the tools within Arc) was relegated to secondary, optional learning; so I dropped the course this week.

Also, QGIS needs a powerful computer to run, and knowledge of GRASS is required to run the software, as you still need to put some coding into it.

Car theft: I'm glad you got the yoshimobile back, yoshi.

Money for food: That's quite expensive. I'm not willing to pay 500 dollars for food (maximum budget is 100 per head), since I've been to various restaurants and the best ones that I've ever eaten actually came from the street (Street Food).

Slums: Slums can be set up everywhere and can appear in the most unexpected of places (used to live in one once). The problem with it actually begins on how people actually manage to set up the slum. My family always hears from other relatives that they (slum people) would 'temporarily' stay in that area (under contract) until the area is demolished to make way for a development, the problem is that once they really settled in, they won't leave it and even breach the contract, citing that they own the land. .-.

[Larks2242 251]

4372.

 

 It's just interesting to me that America, of all places, would have this too and everybody pretends that it isn't there.

 

It isn't very visible, hardly anyone who doesn't live there would go out of their way to visit what usually is a high crime area.

 

Places like south Chicago and Gary Indiana and the eastern part of Cleveland on Rt. 20 for example, every city has some area that is best not to enter though.

 

A lot of it too is that the cities are old and part of them fall into disrepair, I've never been to Detroit but I get the impression you might see the worst there, when business packs up and moves the property value crumbles and cites fall.

[iLoveMusic 66]

4372.

 

 It's just interesting to me that America, of all places, would have this too and everybody pretends that it isn't there.

 

It isn't very visible, hardly anyone who doesn't live there would go out of their way to visit what usually is a high crime area.

 

Places like south Chicago and Gary Indiana and the eastern part of Cleveland on Rt. 20 for example, every city has some area that is best not to enter though.

 

A lot of it too is that the cities are old and part of them fall into disrepair, I've never been to Detroit but I get the impression you might see the worst there, when business packs up and moves the property value crumbles and cites fall.

 

The ones I keep seeing certainly aren't "out of the way". They're right next to the freeway, and often rather colorful due to the bright colors of the tents, shingles and tarps used as building material. I saw another one in the Santa Ana River (which is mostly a wide concrete channel) next to the 91 freeway in Anaheim, Orange County (one of the wealthiest counties in America), only about 3 1/2 miles from Disneyland. That camp was HUGE.

 

4373

[timmie 988]

4374

 

However it is $525 a head though and I have to pay up $2100 Australian (about $2000USD) in the next few weeks.

 

My god! So much money! But it's true, that's what restaurants with 3 stars charge. I'll just stick to the restaurants in the Michelin Bib Gourmand for now, I think

[Muck308 55]

4375

 

I wouldn't want to shell out 2 grand for a meal but I would like to eat a $2000 meal. Or a $525 meal. Either will do. I'm not picky.

[Duke87 1,070]

(4376)

 

Skimbo: if you think The Bronx looks bad, go check out West Baltimore sometime. Or any number of other places in the US. There is a lot of urban decay out there, and yes it is worse than anything you will typically see in Europe (or Canada). 

 

The US went through a period in the 1970s and 1980s where crime in cities got out of control and anyone who had the means to fled to the suburbs. In this era a lot of cities fell into disrepair while suburban sprawl developed and thrived around them.

 

A number of factors contributed to this.

We had a postwar baby boom that came of age about when the postwar industrial boom started to go bust, and this left a lot of people who couldn't afford to go to college unable to find a good job. Many of them turned to crime instead.

We had and still have, relative to Europe, very cheap and plentiful land and very cheap energy. So people could afford to spread out and travel greater distances to compensate for spreading out, unlike in Europe where American-style sprawl just wouldn't be economically feasible, no one could afford it. The fact that this sprawl could happen and was allowed to happen greatly contributed to the decay of cities. If it hadn't been so easy to leave, more people would have stayed and things would not have fallen apart as much.

 

Since then, crime overall in the US is down significantly and a lot of cities have recovered... but some moreso than others. The cities that are in the best shape are the cities that have found alternative economic engines to industry. Cities which have failed to redefine themselves in the post-industrial era (like Detroit) aren't doing so well.

[iLoveMusic 66]

(4376)

 

Skimbo: if you think The Bronx looks bad, go check out West Baltimore sometime. Or any number of other places in the US. There is a lot of urban decay out there, and yes it is worse than anything you will typically see in Europe (or Canada). 

 

The US went through a period in the 1970s and 1980s where crime in cities got out of control and anyone who had the means to fled to the suburbs. In this era a lot of cities fell into disrepair while suburban sprawl developed and thrived around them.

 

A number of factors contributed to this.

We had a postwar baby boom that came of age about when the postwar industrial boom started to go bust, and this left a lot of people who couldn't afford to go to college unable to find a good job. Many of them turned to crime instead.

We had and still have, relative to Europe, very cheap and plentiful land and very cheap energy. So people could afford to spread out and travel greater distances to compensate for spreading out, unlike in Europe where American-style sprawl just wouldn't be economically feasible, no one could afford it. The fact that this sprawl could happen and was allowed to happen greatly contributed to the decay of cities. If it hadn't been so easy to leave, more people would have stayed and things would not have fallen apart as much.

 

Since then, crime overall in the US is down significantly and a lot of cities have recovered... but some moreso than others. The cities that are in the best shape are the cities that have found alternative economic engines to industry. Cities which have failed to redefine themselves in the post-industrial era (like Detroit) aren't doing so well.

 

4377

 

White flight to the suburbs actually began in the 1950s. By the 1980s, most people who had the means to go to the suburbs were already there. Crime gradually rose from the mid or late 50's (lack of reliable crime stats prior to 1960), accelerated through the 1960s, hit a few peaks in the 1970s, but on a national level, crime topped out around 1980 and again in 1990/91 (the latter is largely attributed to the crack epidemic present at the time). Current crime rates are approximately the same as that of the 1960s, with a few exceptions being about the same as they were in the 1970s (such as larceny, auto theft and forcible rape). Depending on who you ask - some say New York began to emerge from urban decay in late 1980s, while others say mid to late 1990s, as yuppies moved in and replaced poor black occupants (also known as Gentrification). Something new is happening now (at least I hadn't heard of it before until recently, witnessing it myself): suburban decay. You see this even in currently wealthy cities. Those inner suburbs built in the 1950s through the 1980s are either beginning the process of decay or are well into it already. This was reinforced by the Great Recession.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

4378

 

I'm originally from the Toledo, OH area, and the entire metropolitan area has been losing population since the 80s.  The city of Toledo itself once had nearly 350,000 people within its city limits, but people like my parents retreated to the suburbs where there weren't city taxes to pay and cheaper utilities, more space, etc etc.  There are areas of the city that are pretty run down, and vast industrial tracts that were abandoned in the lagging economy that sat neglect for many, many years.  In the surrounding suburbs, some of the shopping areas are far less popular than they once were.  Part of the problem of the Toledo Metropolitan area is that all the surrounding suburbs compete with Toledo for what business and money is still there.  There is no direction everyone is traveling, no unified goal everyone in the region is working towards.  So Toledo built a new stadium for an ice hockey team, but Rossford was busy at work trying to steal the team.  Toledo had to fight to get the Mud Hens to move back into the city from the old stadium in Maumee.  Owens-Illinois is another example of regional in-fighting: they had their headquarters in One Seagate, Toledo's modern, glass 'skyscraper,' but they moved to Perrysburg because blah blah blah tax blah blah regional in-fighting.

 

Oh well, this sort of bickering over property taxes and stadiums is probably better to endure than sectarian or tribal violence and terrorism, so at least we have that going for us.

[Skimbo 304]

NMUSpidey: I can't tell you someone.

GIS: My GIS classes where quite fun. Our professor held them like "Try out this, try out that" (+ a little theory)
QGIS misses this cind of stability I need, A application that crashes randomly makes me go frustrated quite fast. GRASS: I never tried to code in that.

Duke: I haven't been to many american places yet, I just had a few days of time to visit some of the NYC-Newark outskirts. If I come back I will try to visit some more places, just because that's interresting. It's so different to things over here. I did that visits by train (MTA+NJ Transit) and had a look at and a walk around the areas nearby the following stations:

 

Perth-Amboy (I also went way down 2nd street to snap a picture of the raritan railway bridge)

Roselle Park
Union station (the one northwest of Elizabeth)
Metropark station near Iselin
Lyndhurst (Lol thing for me: The local gunstore with a tank displayed at the parking lot, and people walk in like it was a grocery xD)
Ho-Ho-kus
Newark-Penn
Hoboken (Whre I found out how paranoid specific transport police agencies still are...)
Manitou (that was a walk in a countryside as I imagined xD, I went for bear mountain state park)

Within NYC:
Grasmere (I didn't like that place)
Woodside 61st
Queensboro plaza

 

I think I saw several examples of suburban american lifestyle althrough I tried to avoid a few places with high crime rate.

 

If I manage to revisit US I'd like to take a drive through Detroid or Chichago.

 

 

Gentrification:

That's a process with -sometimes- quite interresting developments. Over here in Europ we see such processes over the last 25-30 years, reviving the city centers. Actually, many cities are supporting theese procedure by sponsoring programmes that help owners of appartment buildings to rennovate appartments without causing too high prices on the immo-market. At my city (Vienna) we had a very bad build quality by the 1980s, then city rennovation programmes got started. By the 80s we just had about 1.5m people left who lived within the city boundaries, today we're getting near 1.8m again! (2.63m people live in the whole area within and around the ciy)

 

Slums:

When thinking about it, I might say that there indeed are some european cities which got very problematic districts, espechially the outskirts of Paris and London got a few areas.....

 

 

4379

[Duke87 1,070]

(4380)

 

New laptop. Right out of the box the screen has a bad pixel. Welp.