weekend bits

[cellio]

Seen while walking home Saturday: a car with blinkers on, being followed by two police cars with flashing lights but not sirens, all going about 30mph, and all running a red light at a busy intersection. If the police were escorting the car I would have expected one in front and one behind; if they were chasing the car, they weren't doing a very good job of it. There were plenty of places to pull over, so it wasn't a traffic stop in search of handy road-side. The whole procession turned a corner and I lost sight of them. How odd.

This weekend I read about a new (expensive) geek-appeal gadget, a robotic vacuum cleaner. It wanders around your house and automatically goes to the docking station to recharge or empty itself when needed. The review I saw said that it's slow -- its navigation isn't the greatest, so it might do a stretch several times before getting to parts it hasn't done yet -- but since it's the robot's time, the reviewer doesn't care. He was out running errands. :-) This sounds handy (though I do wonder how pets would view it). Now if they could just build the laundry robot, the shopping robot, and the kitchen-cleaning robot, life would be grand. (At $1500, I should clarify that this is wishful thinking, not a planned purchase.)

Shabbat morning we had another new torah reader (and new service leader, the mother of the torah reader). They both did good jobs and I think the mother, at least, will sign up to do this again (and even read torah). I am pleased by the progress our minyan is making, building participation one person at a time. We need to think about workshops or tutorials or something for people who lack self-confidence. (There are several people who I think would do just fine, but they don't think so yet.)

Today was the local SCA group's 12th-night event. It was a fun, low-key event, like many I remember from 20 years ago. This was the second year we've done it; I hope this establishes the tradition. :-) Free site (university), pot-luck feast, good mix of planned activities and schmooze time -- very pleasant and comfortable.

Mapquest says Pittsburgh to Cincinnati is a 4.5-hour drive (slightly under). Is that really right? I thought Pittsburgh to Columbus was close to four hours, and Cincinnati is a good deal beyond that. I thought Cincinnati would be 6 or 7 hours just from looking at a map.

Comments

[goljerp]

There are busses from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati; Greyhound seems to have around 5/6 a day on Sundays, and the estimated travel time is between 5.5 and 9 hours.

Amtrak doesn't seem to have trains which go between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. You'd have to go to Philadelphia, down to DC, and then over to Cincinnati.