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It was eerily quiet this morning. Many folks weren't going to work, and the roads were nearly empty. I took these pictures around 9 AM:

Lots of people weren't at the office today, either. I'm still not sure if we'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Back in late December, I purchased a brand new D3000 camera from Ritz Camera here in Ardmore. It was my first SLR camera, and I enjoyed taking pictures with it, both at Christmas with the family, and New Years at Wuffmeet.

Unfortunately, shortly after New Years, my camera experienced a case of "infant mortality", as we call it in the tech industry. Upon turning it on, it displayed the dreaded "lens not attached" error, which seems to be the Nikon equivalent of the Blue Screen Of Death. I tried Googling for solutions (are the contacts clean? They looked clean to me!) but came up empty handed.

My first step was to call the store, but that didn't help. They suggested I send the camera into Nikon, which struck both myself and other folks on Facebook as a bit odd since it was within 30 days. So the next thing I did was to send a note to their customer service (customerservice@ritzcamera.com) and ask for help. That resulted in my email being forwarded to Adam, store manager at Ardmore's store, who gave me a call the next day to discuss the issue. We both agreed that the camera was defective, and he kindly offered to swap that one out for a second camera.

I stopped by the following Saturday morning, and we spent about 20 minutes going through our respective boxes (ALWAYS save boxes when you buy electronic items) and only swapping the camera and lens, and exterior box. (it had the serial number on it) Other than the initial communication issues, the whole exchange process went pretty well, and I was rather pleased with how Ritz Camera handled the situation. Yeah, I think I'll keep buying camera-related items from them. :-)

Yes, I know. I used to be such a big fanboy of PhillyCarShare. But, things changed over the last few months in a very negative way. Rates went up. And now with the sudden and unannounced closing of the Ardmore pod, there are no longer any pods within walking distance of my home.

Rather than reproduce the entire post here, I'll just point folks to where it lives on the Save Ardmore Coalition website:

http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/2756

It's also been pointed out to me that local real estate developers in Ardmore were selling the town as being "walkable", and how car ownership was not required. Apparently the PhillyCarShare pod was cited as an example of such. Said developers might not be too happy at hearing of PCS's quiet departure. Whoops.

So, on Friday night we at the Save Ardmore Coalition were officially presented with our $20,000 Grant from the State of Pennsylvania:

From left to right: Ken Haskin is in the white shirt, I'm in the green shirt (with the shaved head), Scott Mahan is in the black shirt, Si Simons is in the peach colored shirt, and Sharon Eckstein is immediately to his right. It was nice of everyone to wear different colored shirts!

I have no idea why the check is dated last December. Ah, Bureaucracy.

Also, some local folks swung by:

Yes, that's a Dolph plushie I'm holding. It's a long story. (But thanks for the hookup, Wolfspawn3!)

Oh, the Philly Phanatic stopped by too:

Yes, he's standing in traffic on Lancaster Ave. Fursuiters, please do not do this at the next con. :-P

If anyone would like to see the full set of my pictures, they're at: http://flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157607164585627/

The user Mainline Clicks also took a bunch of photos of the event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mainlineclicks/sets/72157607160295075/

The Ardmore VFW was also selling "social memberships", which I took advantage of and purchased one. So if of you vets out there decide to visit me, I can take you to meet other vets and drink with them. :-P

And by "we", I mean The Save Ardmore Coalition. The state of Pennsylvania will be giving us a $20,000 grant in just over a week. I could talk about this more, but pasting in our press release is easier. :-)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 25, 2008
ARDMORE, PA
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/

SAVE ARDMORE COALIITION TO RECEIVE GRANT SEPTEMBER 5TH, 2008 IN ARDMORE, PA

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The Save Ardmore Coalition is pleased to announce that we are to receive a grant in the amount of $20,000 from The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. in front of the Ardmore VFW in Ardmore, PA during our First Friday Main Line event with the American Troop Support Team (ATST).

This grant has been awarded to the Save Ardmore Coalition by State Representative Daylin Leach (149th PA), and is via the Department of Community and Economic Development’s Community Revitalization Program. $10,000 of this grant will be used towards a Community Mural and other streetscape beautification efforts.

State Representative Leach has be very supportive of the efforts of Save Ardmore Coalition in the community, and through this grant the Save Ardmore Coalition will be able to further its efforts as a group.

So please join State Representative Daylin Leach and members of the Save Ardmore Coalition in the shadow of the buildings in Historic Ardmore that we fought successfully to save from Eminent Domain for Private Gain. Join us as we take yet another definitive step forward into the future.

For more information on First Friday Main Line, please visit their website at http://www.firstfridaymainline.com/
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Save Ardmore Coalition P.O. Box 453 Ardmore, PA 19003 www.saveardmorecoalition.org

I've had an interesting week.

It started off last Friday, when I received hate mail from Tim Mahoney, the president of Mahoney Realty Group in Ardmore, PA. It seems that he was the individual who had logged on to the Save Ardmore Coalition website under a non-obvious username of "browning1010" and left some nasty comments to our blog entries, which I had promptly unpublished. He seemed to feel that this somehow trampled on his free speech rights, and sent me a very nasty email, CCed to several local politicians. I had to write back and explain that no, the First Amendment only lets you say what you want, it doesn't give you a venue in which to say it. I CCed my email to the same local politicians too. :-)

Well, I still haven't heard from Timmeh's "legal counsel" yet, so maybe I actually did know what I was talking about when I gave him that brief course in First Amendment law. It also made for an interesting story to tell folks at the next scheduled SAC meeting. (much LOLs ensued)

(In y'all are wondering why I even mentioned this, it's because I take exception to people like Tim who try to bully webmasters into letting them post on their website. And I want to make sure that Google picks this up.)

In other news, a video store in town is having a closeout sale, so I've made a few trips there to buy some cheap movies. Here's what I've picked up so far:

• Star Trek: Generations
• The Postman
• Robocop
• Analyze That
• Freddy vs. Jason

I also I worked on Neighbor S's computer today. When I had last looked at it, the hard drive had died, so I recommended a new one. When I stopped by to install it, the installation went fine, but no Windows CDs could be found. Since I had a copy of Ubuntu Linux with me, I installed that and showed them how to use it. S and her husband were thrilled that they could use this 3-year old machine with 256 Megs of RAM again, and that they could still use AOL's web based email and type up word documents in Star Office. I think we've got another Linux convert. :-)

http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/557

It's interesting that the vote was unanimous, due in part to two commissioners abstaining from the vote. What's the matter, boys? Did you maybe... promise something to someone behind closed doors that ain't gonna happen now?

The news video can be found at: http://cbs3.com/video/?id=24113@kyw.dayport.com