This week I’ve been in Poland – for the first half of the week I spoke at SQLDay in Wrocław, and now I’m doing some tooling around the country. This was some fantastic isolated rain we saw on the drive from Warsaw to Wrocław:
Category Archives: General
Recovering old photos
So these jerks over at “New Ventures Corp” scooped up my domain (aaronbertrand.com), are squatting on it, and won’t entertain offers < $500 USD. So, they can keep it.
I thought that all of my content was gone, but then I realized that all they did was take over the domain name and DNS; my content still exists. I recovered a ton of great pictures (over 800 I think) and am posting this here for now. I'll revisit and make this post feature a less intensive slide show, the way it worked on my old site.
1999
Manitoulin
Protected: A March 2015 Update
CanAm Cup 2015
This weekend we had our first full-family road trip since Nora was born. The occasion? Our annual curling pilgrimage. What a blast! While I finished second for at least the 5th year in a row (and I still don’t have my name on our coveted trophy), I had a fantastic time with a bunch of great friends and family, and I feel like the overall quality of the curling has skyrocketed too. The curling club loves having us take over their joint for the day, and has already asked us for next year’s date so they can book us in before anyone else.
Anyway, here are a few shots from the event:
(That says “Second Place Trophy” – nice Dan!)
Thank you North Bay, by the way, for the balmy weather to send us off (that’s °F, not °C):
Protected: Madeline at Disney on Ice
Nora Autumn Grace Bertrand
Nora was born at 4:12 PM, September 15th, 2014, weighing in at 9 lbs, 6 oz.
Protected: Yard fun, a recital, and Davis Farmland
Can Am Cup 2014
Last weekend, we headed up to Canada for the 7th annual Can Am Cup. The trip didn’t start off great – Nicole got a ticket in New York State, not far from her debacle a few years ago. I was kind of surprised we even got pulled over; she was going 78 in a 65. Usually they don’t even blink until you’re well over 80.
Other than that, the trip up was largely uneventful. Splitting the driving up between three drivers makes it go pretty quickly, and having a good little traveler who tolerates brief stops helps too.
Curling day was cold.
We had a lot of fun – four teams in a round robin, everyone finished 2-1.
Italy, September 2013
Sorry it took such a long time to get to these, but here are our pictures from Rome / Vatican City, Pompeii, Positano / Capri, Capo Rizzuto, Alberobello, and Venice. This is a small selection of the pictures we took (close to 600).
Rome / Vatican City
Deer Michigan, I liked SQL Saturday, but…
(Yes, the typo in the title was intentional.)
I had a fantastic time at SQL Saturday #256 this weekend in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Great event, hilarious after-party, and some of the best hospitality you’ll ever find.
Driving back to Detroit on Sunday morning, however, was extremely depressing for me. I recalled someone at the event making a joke about the number of deer carcasses I’d see on I-94, but I really wasn’t prepared for what I saw in daylight (my drive to the event was at night). In the 65-mile stretch between Marshall and Ann Arbor, I counted SEVEN dead deer in the median, and there were probably several that I missed on the right shoulder, never mind on the westbound side.
Now, I’ve resisted the urge to post a picture of a carcass, and instead chose a live deer:
I’m not trying to be a PETA or a PITA, but I just can’t fathom how nothing is being done about this, and why there is no fence preventing animals from entering the roadway. The other is to reduce the population – and I don’t think allowing them to get hit by cars is the right way to do that. I-94 has a cable-based fence (or other barrier) in the median for most or all of this stretch. This is great for vehicles that go into the median, preventing them from crossing into oncoming traffic; however, it is an unfortunate trap for a disoriented deer, more likely to continue wandering along the fast lane than to retreat back to the side of the road they came from (and in either case, in real danger of being hit).
This Cornell study from 2005, while dated, suggests that fencing with one-way gates is not perfect, but by far the most effective method of preventing deer from ever entering the roadway in the first place. The objection is always going to be the cost of doing so. The politicians, departments of transportation, and other authorities in Michigan (and every other state and province) will question the value of such fencing, when it is a balance between that and other programs and services that they fund.
I get that.
But what about insurance companies? Why can’t they participate in helping to fund such projects? Like an electric toothbrush or deck stain, surely the up-front investment in preventative work will pay off in the long run. The amount of money used to settle vehicle damages, combined with the amount of life insurance claims, must be staggering.
I would love to hear comments from the insurance companies and/or relevant DOTs about whether there is an opportunity here to make the world a better place. Seems like a win-win-win to me. Please feel free to forward this article along to your state’s DOT and/or your insurance company. I’ve included a few official twitter accounts to help you get started:
@MichiganDOT | @MDOT_West | @GEICO | @Progressive | @StateFarm
