Kelowna, BC

Due to a quirk in my planning, I found myself in Kelowna, BC for a couple of days.  Kelowna is in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia on the shores of the Okanagan Lake.  When planning my trip, I had no idea that this is the place from where the stories of the Ogopogo lake monster originate.

A great place to watch the lake for signs of the beast is at Summerhill Pyramid Winery, dinning outside on the deck of the Sunset Organic Bistro.  I wasn't able to spot any lake monsters, but my waitress said with a sly grin that she did indeed have some recently recorded video of something in the water.

View from the deck of the restaurant

It's called the Summerhill Pyramid Winery for a reason.  The wine is made is under this pyramid.

I only discovered that wineries are thing in this region after I arrived.  Had I known ahead of time, I might have planned accordingly.  Another winery I briefly visited was Volcanic Hills Estate Winery.  For tasting, they only offered a few whites and unimpressive blended reds this early in the season.  Had I planned on coming to Volcanic Hills ahead of time for the purpose of wine tasting, I would've been disappointed.

Kelowna has a relatively active downtown area with several restaurants and bars for the diners and revelers alike.  It was here that I finally spotted the lake monster.

This guy was posing for photos all day.

 Wandering around downtown, I ran into this Futurama-esque robot looking machine, who appeared to be a silent sentry guarding a bygone time.

"Halt!  You may go here, but no farther!"

There is a rather nice resort here too.

To commemorate the trip, I got this T-shirt that is all kinds of awesome!

Here's the town and lake from the nearby Knox Mountain.

When did the Fastlane on Highways start to be called the Passing Lane?

When did the fastlane on highways start to be called a passing lane? From what I seen, a few years ago there was was a big nationwide push to change the concept of our highways and freeways; from fastlane/slowlane to the idea of a weaving-between-lanes-to-keep-a-constant-speed. Constant weaving between lanes not only is more dangerous, it actually slows down traffic. Every time there is a lane change, there is potential to slow down traffic behind the change. Also, forcing more traffic into fewer lanes inherently increases traffic back-up and congestion. What is this passing lane concept trying to solve? It's not solving the problem of traffic congestion. It appears to be making things worse.

 The problem is that highways in US weren't designed with passing lane concept in mind. Passing lane concept makes little sense in the context of driving on a highway or freeway within most larger cities with current infrastructure. If law enforcement and lawmakers want to create new driving rules that change our driving habits this drastically, they need to fund changes to road system to support those new rules. This would in line with HOV lanes, where current lanes are not converted HOV, but rather the highway is expanded to add a new lane for HOV.

 The US actually does have some designed to be passing lanes. These are usually found when going up long or particularly steep hills. It usually involves a lane being added to the right side, rather than the left side of the road. This makes the most sense in the US. Slower traffic is supposed to move over to the right! That is how our road system was designed.

 A slower driver who refuses to move over to the right is the problem, not everyone else trying to drive safely at a constant speed! How about instead of trying to magically change US driving habits in a way that just isn't supported by our infrastructure, let's enforce the rule that slower traffic move to the right!

Want to keep the Internet neutral? We can take meaningful action

Here is how: Want to keep the internet neutral? Feel like you can do nothing to help? JustAnotherGraySuit gives meaningful advice with links to stop the FCC proposed regulation that us regular folks can follow.

Over-notification

To the driver that turns on their turn blinker 1/2mi before their turn, with multiple possible turns: way to over-notify everyone!

Epic mashup - Civilization will never be the same again

Sensless Sunday: Mammoth Star

1. The last pyramids in Egypt where finished before the last of the Woolly Mammoths died out.^{1 2}
2. The World as we know it was designated to end by a Viking myth on 2/22/2014³ and by a modern economist on 3/4/2014.⁴ The quote from War Games rings through my head right now about "We're still here! We're STILL HERE!".
3. Our Solar System is traveling at an average speed of 514,000 mph relative to the Milky Way galactic center.⁵