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RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 20 (2025)

WSU MUP Student said:
We just got back from a few days in the Cleveland-Akron area and when we drove up 75 into Michigan from Toledo, the first 28 billboards we saw (my daughter counted) were for dispensaries. :r:

I really do not care if folks want to use pot or THC-goods but does every single billboard in the area have to be an advertisement for it? I've noticed the same prevalence along 696 through Macomb County and 94 from downtown to Detroit all the way to Port Huron. I think pot is legal now in Ohio(?) so maybe some of the billboards along 75 will go away but I'd love to see the state put a clamp on the advertising in general.
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I would guess that 50% of the billboards in our state are this guy. He's supposed to be a fairly decent guy.
sunnarah.jpg


The most famous billboard in the state is this one. It's been in the same place for 30 plus years and has become somewhat iconic because so many pass it going to the beach.

devil.jpg
 
mendelman said:
ugh. Were they trying to convince you you're wrong...or some bull?
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Of course. The community had a libertarian think tank so they had a fairly large group at one time. The conversation was fairly friendly. I even got some of them to admit that they wouldn't want certain uses right next to their home. The didn't like the concept of zoning or especially historic preservation, but liked some of the practical applications of it.

At the time the schools were pushing a 5-mil increase on property tax. They spent most of my time talking about it. Ultimately, they were able to defeat it at the ballot box but were mad that the Council adopted an increase in sales tax to compensate.
 
Maister said:
Getting a 22 year old refrigerator repaired is proving to be quite a challenge. The reason I'm not getting a new appliance is because of the dimensions of the space in which the fridge is located.
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We had the same issue replacing our refrigerator and our oven.
Sourced Lowes and found a couple that would work, but higher $. Went to an appliance store who sourced what would fit. The prices were lower than Lowes & included delivery/install. Still a little more than the standard sizes now.
 
zman said:
Two weeks back into the working world and back into the CommDev world. After a foray into City Management, Consulting, and a tour of duty at the local MPO, it feels good to be back to my roots.
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Welcome back to the crazy!

As part of our city hall makeover, we have the deli counter system for clerk/treasury and it's now a digital voice announcement for what number is up and the number window you go to - it's preceded by a doorbell noise - so in the back of the building where I sit it's a muffled Charlie Brown voice preceded by the bell - I feel like I'm in an airport
 
luckless pedestrian said:
Welcome back to the crazy!

As part of our city hall makeover, we have the deli counter system for clerk/treasury and it's now a digital voice announcement for what number is up and the number window you go to - it's preceded by a doorbell noise - so in the back of the building where I sit it's a muffled Charlie Brown voice preceded by the bell - I feel like I'm in an airport
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So it's sort of like this?
 
As much as I hate spending money in Ohio, we took our girls on a short vacation to the Cleveland-Akron area to check out some trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. One morning we drove up into Cleveland to take them to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They enjoyed the HOF as much as a 9 and 15-year-old can (they really liked the hands-on exhibits) but the best part of the journey was them being very impressed by my pinball skills on some of the machines they had set up to play. My 15-year-old was particularly awed and amazed by her dad and anybody with a sullen teen knows how noteworthy that is!

And then I went and ruined it all by singing Pinball Wizard in its entirety as we were walking to lunch.
 
Mom has had really bad internet service at the independent living facility where she lives. Hooked up a Wi-Fi extender today at lunch. It made a world of difference.

Then ran by TacoHell for lunch.
 
luckless pedestrian said:
Welcome back to the crazy!

As part of our city hall makeover, we have the deli counter system for clerk/treasury and it's now a digital voice announcement for what number is up and the number window you go to - it's preceded by a doorbell noise - so in the back of the building where I sit it's a muffled Charlie Brown voice preceded by the bell - I feel like I'm in an airport
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The white zone is for the loading and unloading of commercial permits only.
 
You will continue to suffer if you
have an emotional reaction to
everything that is said to you.
True power is sitting back and
observing things with logic. True
power is restraint. If words
control you that means everyone
else can control you. Breathe
and allow things to pass.

- Warren Buffett
 
Saaaaaaaaaay! Slap that dame! Give her the ol' business! Tell her who's boss! C'mon, time's awastin'! Strike 'er while the coals are hot! Give 'er the ol' one-two! Hop to it! Hup hup! Show 'er the ol' patriarchy, Sam!

The_Buffalo_News_1935_02_01_38.jpg
 
WSU MUP Student said:
We just got back from a few days in the Cleveland-Akron area and when we drove up 75 into Michigan from Toledo, the first 28 billboards we saw (my daughter counted) were for dispensaries. :r:
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There's very few billboards along the New York State Thruway, except for a nearly solid cluster of janky wooden 32-sheet jobs through the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation. About a third of those display ads for rez dispensaries.


There's also billboards for cigarettes on the rez, just like the not-so-great part of your town in the 1970s.


I'm surprised at how few billboards remain in the Buffalo area, relatively speaking. West Seneca is the one suburb with as close to an "anything goes" sign code as you'll see around here. There's a bunch in the city along the 190 between the 90 and downtown Buffalo, and alsio along the 33, but the density is low compared to similar expressways through industrial and working class areas in St. Louis, Detroit, or northern New Jersey. "Litter on a stick"is still kinda' common in Niagara Falls, the Town of Niagara, and the Town of Lockport, unfortunately.

Marijuana is legal in NYS. Licensed dispensaries are rather low key. The one within walking distance of my upper flat in "Buffalo's First Suburb" looks like the branch of a credit union. The mostly Arab-owned smoke shops, though, where one can often find Delta-8 "Farm Bill" products (which are illegal in New York), are gaudy as all hell. 10K lumen string lights are the norm, often set up as (also illegal) multi-colored flashing and chasing displays around signs and windows.
 
Standing On My Head Again

By James D. Umbach, AICP

Copyright (C) 2025 James D. Umbach, AICP. Not for distribution outside Cyburbia.

August 17, 2025

IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! NO, IT’S A PHONE!

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

“What kind of a bird is that?

Your Columnist was out in the forest lately, when another person nearby starting hearing a bird. I am somewhat familiar with bird calls (but far from being an ornithologist), and I didn’t recognize it either.

“Oh! It’s my phone text tone!”

It turns out that the person had recently gotten a new phone with new defaults. One of the changes was that the text tone went from whatever it was to a nondescript bird call. Well, that solves that problem. I personally have been using a “quack quack” myself, but my phone is on silent 90% of the time so it seldom comes up. Years ago, though, I was in a store when my phone starting quacking, and someone in the next aisle asked if there was a duck in here. I don’t know to this day if she was being funny, or really inquiring.

The idea of ducks in a store is not as odd as it seems, though: Back in the early 00’s, I was at a mall, when I turned around and saw a family of ducks—Mom, Dad, and babies—all lined up behind me to go shopping inside the mall. I surmised they had escaped from a nearby pond, or perhaps they were just on their lunch hour and wanted to get some new feathers. I don’t really know why they were there, but they were quite docile ducks, used to people, all of whom around were snapping photos. It’s not every day you see ducks shopping.

= = =

Speaking of birds in malls, when I was a wee tot in my single-digit years in suburban Sacramento, we lived near an outdoor mall that actually had tropical birds in cages as the centerpiece of the shopping experience. Appropriately enough, the name of the mall was “Birdcage Walk,” and the very young me used to love to see the tropical birds. My mother worked at the bowling alley in that same center, so we were frequent visitors to the feathered friends. I spent most of my toddler years in the child care center within the bowling alley there, I think. For some reason, the TV in the center played “Love Boat,” which is a quite odd choice of show for children, but we all learned the song and sang along. Just me and a chorus of 15 or so other barely-out-of-diapers tykes, singing about things being exciting and new.

The birds flew out of that center sometime in the early 80’s, and then a decade or so later the entire center was remodeled into a nondescript “power center” with all the big box stores like Michael’s, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Barnes & Noble, and the like. That’s all well and good since it likely sells whatever you need, but it doesn’t have the charm of its original 70’s design and vibe, complete with not only a bunch of mom-and-pop stores and restaurants, but also the aforementioned bowling alley, along with a movie theater, arcade, and ice rink.

The name of the street that runs behind the center is “Birdcage Street,” even though the birds and the cages are long gone, in yet another example of a street being named for something that no longer exists on said street. Maybe there is at least one bird in a cage in the adjacent apartments, though. Who knows? For that matter, an intersecting street is “Macy Plaza Drive,” even though the Macy’s gave way to a Target in the late 1990’s. I remember watching them literally destroying the building with a wrecking ball from an adjacent parking lot for a while one day. Not as impressive as Vegas-style implosions, but satisfying nonetheless.



If you think this week’s column has gone to the birds, or if you have a way to help me soar to new heights, I can be reached at umbachjd@yahoo.com. I love fan mail!
 
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WSU MUP Student said:
As much as I hate spending money in Ohio, we took our girls on a short vacation to the Cleveland-Akron area to check out some trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. One morning we drove up into Cleveland to take them to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They enjoyed the HOF as much as a 9 and 15-year-old can (they really liked the hands-on exhibits) but the best part of the journey was them being very impressed by my pinball skills on some of the machines they had set up to play. My 15-year-old was particularly awed and amazed by her dad and anybody with a sullen teen knows how noteworthy that is!

And then I went and ruined it all by singing Pinball Wizard in its entirety as we were walking to lunch.
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Surprisingly, one of the things we enjoyed most in Cleveland was the Christmas Story House. It's definitely a tourist trap, but if you like the movie it makes a great Christmas card.
 
Has anyone ever tried sous vide cooking? I cooked a tri-tip sous vide this weekend, which in layman terms mean I bought a tr-tip, seasoned it, vacuum sealed it in a plastic bag, slowly cooked it warm water until it was the perfect temperature, and finished it with a quick sear on a screaming hot pan. It's similar to the Banquet Boil-in-bag frozen meals from the 70 & 80's.
 
One of my tasks as an unpaid intern was to map out billboards in town in GIS. A new ordinance was put into place to not allow new ones, but the planning staff needed an inventory of where the current ones were.

They let me drive the office car (old Ford Taurus if In remember correctly) and then found out that interns werent allowed to drive cars.

This was where one of the planners told me of his trick. Everytime he drove the office car, he would set it up for the next person. Turn on the spanish radio station at full blast, have the wipers set to high, and the blinker on. A tradition I have carried forward to other cities.
 
zman said:
One of my tasks as an unpaid intern was to map out billboards in town in GIS. A new ordinance was put into place to not allow new ones, but the planning staff needed an inventory of where the current ones were.

They let me drive the office car (old Ford Taurus if In remember correctly) and then found out that interns werent allowed to drive cars.

This was where one of the planners told me of his trick. Everytime he drove the office car, he would set it up for the next person. Turn on the spanish radio station at full blast, have the wipers set to high, and the blinker on. A tradition I have carried forward to other cities.
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Don't forget to put the seat all the way back/forward and tilted uncomfortably abnormally
 
Big Owl said:
Has anyone ever tried sous vide cooking? I cooked a tri-tip sous vide this weekend, which in layman terms mean I bought a tr-tip, seasoned it, vacuum sealed it in a plastic bag, slowly cooked it warm water until it was the perfect temperature, and finished it with a quick sear on a screaming hot pan. It's similar to the Banquet Boil-in-bag frozen meals from the 70 & 80's.
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I have a couple friends who swear by sous vide for various steaks and roasts but I've never tried it. I always figure that it's a pretty good way to get a nice tender, evenly cooked cut of meat right to the level of doneness that you'd like. Maybe I'll have to give it a shot this fall?

I don't know if it's true, but I've read in a few places that sous vide is how a lot of higher end restaurants cook a lot of things because they can have it prepped and ready to go and once it's brought to the desired temperature, the cooking pot can sort of hold it at that temperature for quite a while without it overcooking. Then they just pull whatever bag of food out that gets ordered and can quickly finish it off on the range or in the oven as needed.
 
Just got excused from jury duty appeartly the lawyers didn't like what I wrote on the questionaire or how I answered some of their questions.
 
All this talk of being slowly "boiled in a bag until the time is right and then plucked out of the pot to be pan-seared on both sides and then devoured by people who have no idea what went into your preparation" is an apt description of presenting the draft General Plan at any City Council meeting in America.
 
Mrs. P was given several VHS tapes made at family gatherings back in the early 80s. We tried a couple VHSS machines to see if they worked using some random old tapes we found. As feared, 1 machine ate a tape ($5 at a yard sale). Machine 2 had sound but no picture (given to me from a friend). Machine 3 worked (a friend found on FBmarketplace for $15). He has since turned the first tape into a digital file and is working on the other ones.

The tapes are hilarious to watch. Mostly just random gatherings.
 
We were thinking of building a small pavilion style structure with a fire place in our back yard, but I am starting to wonder how often we would use it.

Besides we have a bunch of other things that I think I would want to prioritize first.
 
When I lived with my parents back downstate, at least three times a week I used to have dreams about being back in Montreal. I would wake up from these dreams feeling really bummed that I was waking up in my parents basement in an inner suburb of NYC.

Well, since I got to WNY I have been having similar dreams about being back in NYC. But when I wake up from these, in my apartment in [somewhere in Buffalo-Niagara], I now feel a great sense of "thank Lemmy im in Buffalo and not there, Go Bills!", even if I could be making a better salary downstate. I would have to put up with downstate.

I find myself missing NYC more than I do Montreal, which is more than I thought I would. Maybe living right next to Ontario has something to do with finally feeling "over" Canada. Overall though, my NYC regret is greatly outweighed by my Buffalove.
 
As to the first interview I had with a place today, I showed up when and where I was supposed to, email confirmation in hand, and they had forgotten all about me. After confirming I was supposed to be there at their request, I had about a two-minute interview with someone while standing in the lobby. Not a positive impression. How hard would it be to find an empty office or conference room?

Jim
 
Heh. I wonder if I should trademark "The History Troll."

(I'm back on KPGF Wednesday at 9 a.m. Pacific. I'll post the link, but I love how they plugged me.)

 
The Terminator said:
When I lived with my parents back downstate, at least three times a week I used to have dreams about being back in Montreal. I would wake up from these dreams feeling really bummed that I was waking up in my parents basement in an inner suburb of NYC.

Well, since I got to WNY I have been having similar dreams about being back in NYC. But when I wake up from these, in my apartment in [somewhere in Buffalo-Niagara], I now feel a great sense of "thank Lemmy im in Buffalo and not there, Go Bills!", even if I could be making a better salary downstate. I would have to put up with downstate.

I find myself missing NYC more than I do Montreal, which is more than I thought I would. Maybe living right next to Ontario has something to do with finally feeling "over" Canada. Overall though, my NYC regret is greatly outweighed by my Buffalove.
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My in-laws live near Albany. Apparently my sis-in-law's family has started taking the train into NYC, seeing a play, and coming back the same night. They're enjoying NYC without living in NYC.
 
Doohickie said:
My in-laws live near Albany. Apparently my sis-in-law's family has started taking the train into NYC, seeing a play, and coming back the same night. They're enjoying NYC without living in NYC.
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Enjoy the cultural amenities without having to endure living there? Sounds like a plan.
 
Maister said:
Enjoy the cultural amenities without having to endure living there? Sounds like a plan.
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When I was going to college near my in-laws, I made a trip or two to NYC; I remember going to the St Paddy's Day parade once. But my sis-is-law's family is taking it to another level.
 
Doohickie said:
My in-laws live near Albany. Apparently my sis-in-law's family has started taking the train into NYC, seeing a play, and coming back the same night. They're enjoying NYC without living in NYC.
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Nice!!! Multiple trains kind of hub through Albany, its a locomotive change on the Montreal train. Regular Empire Service runs trains about every other hour until 11pmish. Weekend/Sunday there is decent coverage too. Some people commute from Albany-Rensselaer, but that takes dedication and deep pockets.


If I were a talking Jaguar who lived in the Albany Zoo, and I had an exhibition at the Javitz center, I would suggest to my handler that we use Amtrak.
arcplans said:
Anybody use chat GPT or similar AI at work? I seriously cannot be the only one.
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Yeah to write python code and sometimes clean up data
 
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