There have been many times where police officers have had to use appropriate force when dealing with criminals and there are times where they go overboard. I was watching these videos on Youtube today and thought I should write up a post about situations like these. In the first video you can see the guy on the motorcycle going at a high rate of speed and pulling a wheelie while passing a bus in the slow lane on I95 in Maryland. There is no sound in the first video that actually shows everything and I am not quite sure why it was not included. In the video you will notice that at 2:40 the bike takes an exit to the right and starts to slow down for the traffic ahead. All of the sudden an unmarked car pulls ahead of him positioning itself to block the motorcycle. A man hops out, pulls out a gun and says get off the motorcycle 3 times before finally saying that he was with the State Police. I feel this is the only mistake the officer had made, his first words prior to pulling the gun out should have been Police don’t move. Everyone is scrutinizing the officer for pulling his service weapon however I kinda feel like he handled the situation properly. Not once did he actually point the gun at the individual and once the rider heard it was the police he started to cooperate and the officer holstered the weapon.
I hate to even say those words but yes it is out of service at-least temporarily. I guess when it comes to learning lessons I have no choice but to learn the hard way. I wanted to start doing routine maintenance on my bike so that I could learn more about the machine so yesterday I started with an oil change. I made sure to make sure that I was doing everything properly and I first started with removing the oil drain plug and draining the old oil while the machine was still hot from my ride home from work. Once all of the oil was out I removed the oil filter and let that drain for a moment or two as well. I put the new filter on and was ready to add the fresh clean oil to the bike. I picked up my manual and checked what the torque settings were for the oil drain bolt and it stated 16.5 ft-lbs. I picked up my torque wrench that I bought from Amazon and set it to 15 ft-lbs and got started. First I tightened the bolt with my hand and then used the torque wrench. Before I could do anything on the first turn I felt the bolt get snug and then let loose. I knew this was trouble as soon as it happened and I even knew what happened because I had read about it happening online. I just stripped my oil pan.
Ever since I bought my motorcycle I have been looking for a good shop where I could buy my gear and have my bike serviced. I started out by looking at Parkway Cycle which is located in Everett, MA. The service was great there but the location was a bit difficult to get to. You always have to deal with a ton of traffic and VERY limited parking to go to this shop. I had been talking with the staff there and they seemed really knowledgeable and helpful. However when it came time to make the purchase I did not want to have to deal with the traffic to go buy my gear. I had also found Greater Boston Motorsports (also known as GBM) located in Arlington, MA which seemed to have ample parking and a lot less traffic to deal with. I talked with the staff there on my first visit and they seemed just as helpful and nice as at Parkway Cycle.
I know that most people probably just go to the website but i have become accustomed to reading Engadget on my Palm Pre. I know that they have an iPhone app so I am hoping that an iPad version is coming down soon. Currently i have the iPhone version installed but i hate how the graphics all look when it comes to iPhone apps on the iPad.
Yesterday while at work my fiancé called me and told me that she was buying me an iPad for my birthday. I must say that I am quite impressed how fast the device is. I must also state that i love how fast you can actually type on the device without any lag or delay in the typing speed. As i am writing this i am trying to type as fast as i can and to my amazement it is almost as fast as on a regular keyboard and there have been very minimal mistakes.
My only real disappointments with the device Is the lack of a front facing camera for use with video conferencing. The other slight drawback is the fact that iBook does not support PDF documents. For that I have found GoodReader which fills the gap. It would be very nice however if iBook actually supported PDF since there are really no converters that I have found which actually work. I am not Trying to convert the typical book with only text. I am trying to convert books like “Head First Php& MySQL” which contains a lot of images. When i convert a pdf book which has 300 pages it is converted into a malformed ePub as file with about 3000 pages.
As some of you may know we rented one of those big moon walk / bounce houses that you see at carnivals for Dylan’s Birthday party. We had about 12 kids over yesterday for the party and they were loving the bounce house. There were some Spanish kids next door as they were having a party as well and as expected they had been caught many time peering over the fence at the bounce house. I had told them 3 times that if they asked their parents that they could come bounce with the kids. About an hour later a little Spanish girl walked into the back yard near our trash barrels that were about 10 feet away from where we were sitting. I instantly asked her “Would you like to go bounce sweetie?” She responded with a quick no and I said “It’s ok you can bounce as long as your parents say it’s ok. What she did next made me feel so sad. You see I thought she was one of the kids from the neighbors house but as it turns out her mother was waiting on the sidewalk. She quickly grabbed a soda can out of the trash and ran back to her mother. I could not believe that a parent would have their kids do something like that. I mean I understand there are families out there that have to do what they have to do in order to make it through life. I just do not understand why they would bring their kids with them and have them be the ones to go into someones back yard which is being used for a party to collect cans. I half expect to go downstairs this morning to find all the cans removed from the barrels.
I just could not believe what had just happened.
I will get some pictures up of the bounce house soon!
Over the last week I have been trying to get rid of a rat that has made a home in our back yard. The landlords had this wood platform that they had built with 2×4 and plywood for the garbage barrels in the back yard. Last week Dylan came in and told me that he thought he saw one peering out from under the wood. I went down and lifted the wood to find a big fat rat was sleeping under there during the day. While I like animals I find these rats to be very nasty and who knows what diseases they carry. The landlord said he was going to put broken glass under the platform to get rid of the rat. I will not go into details on how I got it but take a look how big it was. It’s measuring up next to a 10.5 US shoe. In Lynn MA there is surely no shortage on these things. When I sit on the porch at night you will see them scurry across the street and on trash night you will see them jumping from barrel to barrel savaging for food.
Take a look at this picture:
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If you have ready anything on my site regarding the Palm Pre you will find that every review is good in nature. However I feel those reviews have more to do with the functionality of the phone and not the actual hardware. While this post will not go into details about the hardware specifications it will deal with hardware quality. So without wasting any time let’s get started.
I have had 2 Palm Pre‘s on my Sprint account for the last 10 months. My fiance and I both have the phones and have been happy with them for the most part. However what really makes me angry is the quality of the phone. Now you see I can understand having to replace a defective phone from time to time but this is getting ridiculous. I have replaced my phone 3 or 4 times and my fiances phone is being replaced for a 3rd time now. Surely 2 phones should not have to be replaced 7-8 times over the course of a year. Shouldn’t phones that are “this expensive” actually be quality devices? I have no qualms with the way the phone operates. I rather like the WebOS operating system but without a phone that will function the OS is rendered useless as well.
I have contacted Sprint to see about getting different phones but I feel they are going to tell me that I am out of luck. This is the point where I will just end the contract with Sprint and find service elsewhere. I will update this post once I hear back from Sprint with their response.
Do you have a Pre? How many times have you had to have yours repaired/replaced? Please leave a comment and let me know.
Over the last few days I have been trying to use the Zend_Rest_Controller along with the Zend_Rest_Route to make a RESTful application for an API that I am working on. It is very easy to get things setup with these components and I will cover that now. You might be asking yourself why do I have to use both components, why is it not rolled into one nice component. The answer is really basic and if you look at the source code for the Zend_Rest_Controller you will see that it is solely an abstract class that defines the methods required for use with the Zend_Rest_Route. When your controller extends from the Zend_Rest_Controller it just forces you to implement the indexAction(), getAction(), postAction(), putAction() and deleteAction() methods. Technically you do not have to extend from Zend_Rest_Controller so long as you implement these methods in all of your RESTful controllers. It is good design to extend the class though as it will throw exceptions for developers who forget to add one of these methods. Without the methods the Zend_Rest_Route cannot route the request to the matching RESTful methods.
In order to get started you have to add a method to your Bootstrap file. This method can be named anything you like however it has to start with _init.
If you have read anything on my site you know that I have the Palm Pre. I have had it for quite a while now and did an extensive review of the device. Through the short time that I have owned this device I have had quite a few problems. At first it was the Oreo Effect and the Volume Key sticking. These may seem like small problems to you but once you experience them they are not. When the volume key is stuck you cannot get the device to do anything because it constantly interrupts you to show that the volume is increasing or decreasing.
