outskirts: life and times in charlottesville

Looks like the 96 degree day was a bit much for the village mule. The power has been fluctuating a bit during the evening since I have a feeling every AC in the village is running. I thought people lived down here because they like this oppressive heat…right? Why do they turn their air conditioners on? Maybe everyone is just trapped here for one reason or another, yet they all want to leave. Which is reality?

Will all those that like this climate PLEASE shut your AC off. All those trapped here in the village turn your AC on. We’ll see what happens.

This morning on the mall a group of kids showed up with chairs and instruments and began playing a classical song. As they sat there playing a number of people began listening, and a small crowd developed.

NBC29 showed up and started setting up a camera to grab a bit of film since it was an interesting story. Why were the kids there? Why were kids forced to sit in unbearable heat to play music? Was this event announced? Why wasn’t I invited?

Anyhoo (as they love to say down here), as the camera was getting set up the leader of the band came over and had something to say to the reporter. It didn’t seem particularly friendly, and the band left immediately after this “discussion.”

It was so hot outside (we broke the record and hit 96 today) that it felt just like that classic fight from years gone by. [Click on the images for larger view]

I got a tip that C-Ville made it to the national news on Friday night. NBC news did a story about people filling their gas tanks and then driving away. They filmed here in the village since we now have a national reputation as being the “Best gas stealing city in America.” I seem to recall WCAV (I believe) ran a news story about that several months ago.

When police make the arrest people seem shocked, but perhaps the key is to notice the signs everywhere that say you are being recorded on surveillance cameras.

Maybe if we start a yellow bike program people won’t need to buy the gas. Oh wait…never mind.

One might think the title involves fun or more…but alas, it is just a night here in this hell hole of technology where it is hot, humid, and saved. I’m not sure why, but churches seem to have a lot going on tonight. People drove up, parked their car, and lit up a cig. Do churches promote smoking? Why did no one bother to tell the smokers to put out the cigs? I guess God doesn’t care that you are killing children as you smoke next to them since God forgives everyone…or some such story.

I’ll bet you can’t wait to see what another summer of heat does to me.

I want out. Calgon, take me away…to some place that is humane.

Summer arrived in time for this three day weekend. It is hot. Yesterday they said it would be 83 and it was 87. Today they are saying 90. I’m going with 92. The humidity is oppressive. I was outside for about 30 minutes this morning at 10am. I don’t plan to go out again. The forecast for tomorrow is the same.

Why do people like this?

It won’t make it over 70 in SanFran or Seattle. That sounds nice to say the least.

While having fun exploring the charlottesville city page (they should really call it a village page) I noticed that if you use Opera to check the status of your utility bill you get this error:

@ C:\Program Files\SAP\ITS\6.20\PRD\templates\system\dm\d_generator.html : fatal error 0×2101: errors occured during include @ C:\Program Files\SAP\ITS\6.20\PRD\templates\system\dm\d_generator.html : fatal error 0×2101: errors occured during include

Does that mean I paid my bill this month?

Charlottesville might be the most technologically backward place imaginable. I hate this village. I truly hate it.

Based on the loud sounds coming from the hippest place in town, I would say Sax (new blues/jazz eatery/pub) is enjoying their grand opening party…or La Taza is jamming.

I wonder if Sax is a smoke free establishment? I loved being out in California and Colorado where I could actually see such music without inhaling carcinogens. Will C-Ville ever have a smoke-free restaurant (indoors and out)? I’d be willing to bet no way in hell. If Sax is smoke free I’ll visit it one day. If not, it is yet another place that doesn’t want my money.

The music sure is loud. I’ll bet Crapshaw is involved in some way. I wonder if he is there along with the DBM band.

The first part of the investigation provided a wealth of hilarity, so after having not viewed the site for a day I hit it again this evening (is this the new sitcom in C-Ville?).

I decided to check out the Privacy Policy and Disclaimer and noticed a few good snippets of information. First off let me just say I’ll paraphrase, since in the spirit of freedom of this village the page says all the text is copyrighted by C-Ville and I can’t use any of the text without obtaining a permit. Feel free to go read it yourself.

Supported browsers: Internet Explorer 4 or greater.
Site was tested with: Windows 98 and Windows XP.
To use site: Windows 95 or greater.
Usage: The village can ban you from viewing or using the site at any time, and will use ANY MEANS NECESSARY UNDER THE LAW to prevent you from using it.

OK…so that was fun. They have never before viewed their own site on a Mac, and if you do they might decide that is a bad thing so they might send a lawyer after you. Ouch. Luckily I can contact the Office of Communication to discuss this issue.

I’ll be honest, the site has a bit of Newspeak written in to it, and I wonder if Office of Communication was meant to say Ministry of Truth. Perhaps that was a typo.

As others have pointed out, the funniest part about this sitcom is that in this supposedly best city in America, which has a lot of web-based companies, the city hired a company in California to do all the work. I guess local residents don’t know how to set up a web site…or maybe they don’t have time to do such things with all the breeder results they have to deal with.

Running a site through a web validator is often a fun thing to do. For the company that got hired (and took lots of money away from this village) they have 38 errors on the front page of their site. The city site has 36 errors on their front page. This site only has 29..and I don’t even care about having a valid site.

Enough for tonight. I have to stop watching this show since all this laughing is making my ribs hurt.

This week the city (aka village) of Charlottesville unveiled its new web site. The NBC 29 news story said, “About 100 folks involved in the project came together at city hall Tuesday morning to celebrate the culmination of three years of hard work and research.”

OK…three years to get a new website up seems a bit long, but I bet the final product will be amazing, so being a sophisticated user of the web for the past 16 years I popped right on over to charlottesville.org.

On the front page (click on all images for full view) the first thing I notice is that it states that Charlottesville is “The best place to live in America.” One publication used that line many years ago, but others publications don’t agree. In a recent publication two cities in Virginia were ranked higher than this village (Richmond and Virginia Beach). I guess I can live with the statement. Even if the village becomes a true dump in the future, I’m sure the locals will stick with the statement. Such is life.

I then think about doing a little searching on the site. Notice the search box. What does “So” mean? I take a peek with another browser and see that it says “go” when using Firefox (I’m using Safari). I guess the web designers never looked at the site with browsers other than IE (that bug/virus ridden behemoth).

Since I was concerned about my utility bill I followed the “I Want To… > Check Status Of > Utility Bills” link. Things now get rather interesting. I’m told that I should be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or higher. OK…Microsoft stopped making browsers for the Mac, and most people with a brain (was that the tin man or the scare crow?) don’t use that browser anyway. This appears to be yet another web site that doesn’t use web standards so that the web page works on all browsers.

One other thing you’ll notice on that page is that I’ve now been sent to a hard coded IP address of http://166.61.234.142:95/visiontemp/index.html which clearly is an error.

If I visit the site using Firefox I get a page that says, “Object moved to here.” When I follow the link on the page I get a message saying, “This address is restricted. This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection.” I guess Firefox doesn’t like running on 95 due to getting hit by cars or something.

If I now choose to become a vendor in the village I get sent to yet another hard coded IP address.

With my investigation to this point it seems as if 1) the new site has many errors, and 2) if you don’t use a poor browser you can’t even view the site.

Luckily their is a way to “Request a Service” on the front page, so I guess I’ll request that the site work on more than one web browser. And maybe I’ll request that the statement claiming this is the best place to live gets removed.

This investigation will continue where other issues will be addressed.