Austin Area Roads To Be Improved By Federal Stimulus Bill

The Texas Transportation Commission has decided to spend $1.s billlion to move forward on several area road projects. These projects include:

  • flyover bridges at U.S. 290 and U.S. 183
  • a new I-35 bridge in Buda
  • the widening of FM 1460 in Round Rock

So it appears there is some good news to this mess we’re in. Read the details.

Excellent Service by Data Robotics

Today I had a near crisis on my hands. We use a Drobo to hold most of our day to day files. It contains roughly a terabyte of data. We have been using for well over a year now, actually probably closer to two.  It has worked great for us thus far with no problems at all.  In fact, we just finished a server migration and the fact that most of the data was stored externally on the Drobo made the transition much easier.

One of the great features of the Drobo is that you can add or upgrade the drives easily.  Well today I finally decided to add a little extra storage to the Drobo.  So I simply took the new drive and inserted it into the empty bay of the Drobo.  It was most of the way in but wouldn’t quite seat completely.  So I just gave it a little push and as soon as I did, I heard a pop and all the lights on the Drobo went blank.  I immediately thought, “Oh Shit, I hope I just didn’t just lose all our data.”  The main idea of a Drobo is to have redundant data in case a drive fails, but I never consideered what would happen if the Drobo failed.  So I tried everything I could think of to get the Drobo to come back up.  It finally got power again but didn’t do anything else.

I finally called support and Wanda was very helpful and walked me through all the normal procedures and eventually came to the conclusion that it was dead.  She also politely reminded me that my Drobo was out of warranty.  So I thought I would just have to bite the bullet and buy a new one.  But then she told me she could sell me an extended warranty for about half the price of a new Drobo.  Then I could use that warranty to get a replacement for no cost.  Sounded great to me.  She said she would talk to her senior support engineers and get back to me.  Within minutes, Steven called me back and told me that they wanted to send me a new Drobo at no charge whatsoever.  I didn’t even have to buy the extended warranty.  All I had to pay for was the overnight shipping, and he even apologized profusely for that.

So tomorrow I should have a new Drobo that I can just pop my existing drives into and power up and be back in business.  Now that is what I call service.

My Default WordPress Plugins

I maintain several WordPress installations and always use most of the same plugins.  I can’t ever remember which ones I need to install when I setup a new one, so this is mainly a reference for myself.  I use some different ones here and there, but these are the main ones I use.

  • Akismet
  • Google Analytics for WordPress
  • Lucia’s Linky Love
  • OpenID
  • Optimal Title
  • Post-Plugin Library
  • reCAPTCHA
  • ShareThis
  • Similar Posts
  • Subscribe To Comments
  • WordPress Database Backup
  • WP Super Cache
  • wp-cache

I would provide links to all these but as of  WP 2.7 you can just search for them by title right from within your admin panel.

Austin Tops Forbes List of Best-Value Cities

Austin is #1 on the Forbes list of cities where you get the most bang for your buck.  Forbe’s used five factors to determine their list.  Here are the factors with Austin’s ranking for each:

Job Growth Projections Rank: 1

Inflation Rank: 24

Median House Price/Median Household Income Rank: 8

Median Income/Cost of Living Index Rank: 5

Gas Prices Rank: 9

Not surprisingly, San Antonio follows on the list at #2.  Read the full article to see the complete list.

Once Again, Texas is a Great Place to Buy

The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently conducted a study in the 100 most populous metro areas in the country.  They analyzed whether it makes more sense to buy or rent in each area.  Of the top ten areas where it makes more sense to buy than rent, five of them are in Texas.  Austin comes in at number ten.  So, all of you renters out there, start looking.  With the mortgage rates as good as they are, now is a great time to make that move.

Bank Qualifies Crippled Beggar for Credit Card

The BBC is running a remarkable story about a beggar from Calcutta who is crippled with Polio and who has spent the majority of her life begging. Laxmi Das, 60 years old, started begging on the streets of India when she was 16.

Unlike many beggars, Ms. Das was wise enough to save most of what she obtained. Recently she took her years worth of savings, roughly 200 pounds of coins, to the bank and opened an account. I think this a great story but what really caught my attention was the fact that the bank said she now qualifies for a credit card. Are you kidding me? Hello! She is a beggar; she has no job. I know banks have to make money too, but this is a bit ridiculous.

Having said that, however, this woman does seem smarter than most of us, having proven that she can actually save instead of spending money frivolously.

Trulia Blatantly Ignores Googles TOS – Cloaks Sites

Eric Bramlett, a local seo expert, discoverd that Trulia, a popular real estate search site, has been cloaking their partner pages.  This is clearly against Google’s TOS and there is a good chance they will get penalized by Google.  Well after eading his post, I did a little more snooping my self and found they were cloaking the of the following pages as well:

  • http://www.americantowns.com/ct/fairfield-real-estate
  • http://www.kiplinger.com/money/realestate/
  • http://www.silvar.org/

Update: Trulia has taken down their cloaks.  It’s amazing what a little peer pressure will do.