Design vs. Develop

As the Post reports, the Virginia House is still unwilling to fund road improvements to relieve traffic or give local governments more control over denying development. Of course, road design is totally absent from this debate. If the state would give counties more flexibility in the design of these roads, they would be able to avoid some of these traffic issues. By eliminating wasteful frontage roads and creating short blocks, drivers will have more potential routes to choose from and others will be able to walk places.

Evidently, the money necessary to move people into Katrina Cottages is slow in coming, but people elsewhere are more than willing to buy them. The construction is sturdy enough that they pass most local building codes; the only hurdle may be local zoning regulations. I’m still wondering if homeowners will be persuaded to sell of pieces of their land to avoid mortgage foreclosures. Although current laws may not permit this, if the housing bubble breaks too suddenly, the political pressure to allow it might just be there.

This weekend, we had a mini-reunion here in Washington DC for all of the ORU alums in the area. Simultaneously, I’ve been involved in an interview process that requires documenting almost a decade of my career (such as that is). When I started listing out every job I’d ever worked, I got to my gig as a statistics tutor at the (now defunct) Cooperative Learning Center. For all of the jobs, you’re required to provide the name of your supervisor. I paused for a second, then realized I would be writing down the name of Don Roberson, who suddenly died earlier this fall.

For those of you who never met Mr. Roberson, he was the head of the CAC and the staff sponsor of our Academic Peer Adviser Program. He truly understood the oddities we encountered in going to a school as unique as ORU. While he held us accountable for the way we ran the program, he didn’t expect us to be perfect. He didn’t candy-coat things, always said what was on his mind, and did everything in his power to make the school a better place.

Over the past few years, ORU has also lost several professors; many working straight through retirement. This weekend, many of my friends flew down to say goodbye to Dr. Allen. Mr. Chapman and Lon Lusby have both gone to be with the Lord since I was in their classes such a short time ago.

I pray that we all work with the diligence and dedication shown by these fine men.

This sounded like a good idea, until I read the summary just beneath the headline (bold and italics mine):

Under Proposal, Musicians, Mimes, Dancers Would Get Paid for Gigs Outside Metro Stations

Petition Metro to reconsider this program immediately!

I’ve added a new site to demonstrate the open source components I’ve built: http://demo.jlleblanc.com/. The first component up for demonstration is the iWebCal component. I think I’ll add a sample podcast and a (legal) MP3 file as well soon.