Caesars Head lookout over South Carolina

A short drive from Greenville, SC and you may find yourself up on Caesars Head, a mountain in upstate South Carolina.  The view is amazing.

Greenville, SC

Greenville, SC is a great little city in the Northwest lobe of South Carolina with a great downtown area and revitalization.  I've been experiencing the area as best as possible with just the evenings free.  On Sunday, I checked out the downtown.  There are lots of interesting shops and restaurants.  I ended up at Blue Ridge Brewing with funny faced beer mugs and vats at the entrance.  Monday late afternoon, I visited the BMW museum at the BMW Manufacturing Plant.  Hmm, there wasn't nearly as many BMWs in the employee parking lot as I think there should have been.  That evening, I ended up at Smiley's Acoustic Cafe for open mic night.  Somewhat suprizingly, the artists were good.  Thursday evening, I spent along Reedy River and visited the Falls Park, including the Liberty Bridge.  Then, I had a great dinner at the slightly more expensive Larkins on the River (good view of the river and great ribeye!).

Here's some photos!

Combating the tax myth in the US about making slightly more money

Quick view of the Bible's anti-"pro-life" stand

In the case of abortion, the bible isn't clear at all. What is does say is that the fetus/unborn/still birth (however translated by the various attempts), is worthless and never experiences anything at all. This is not one of those "therefore" attempts to get the bible to say something that it doesn't. This is actually what the bible says. No deduction or interpretation needed. In fact, the bible considers this as such a fundamental matter of fact, the bible uses it as justification to espouse a whole other point. Then, there's the law that allows parents to request to have their children (presumably all the way into adulthood) killed just because that cannot handle them. Oh, yeah, there is that one law that treats the accidental killing of an unborn by someone other than the husband in a completely civil matter...not murder all at, but rather a small fine paid to the husband, on par with what we would pay for a traffic fine these days. The presumes that it is indeed the husband's right to end the pregnancy himself, since he is treated at the owner of it, much as he would have to right to kill his sheep for the next meal. Here's the best part of all, the bible does in fact actually mention abortion directly! And you know what? The bible not only doesn't ban abortion (nor call the act murder), but the bible actually provides rites (the procedure) for how abortions should be conducted. The bible is completely conflicted on this whole idea of "abortion", especially when someone tries to falsely argue that the bible somehow forbids them.

The Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line Improvement Project

Getting into Boston by car isn't a horrible experience on the weekend. It is just really bad, and expensive to park. So, travelling into Boston is often best by mass transit. However, when trying to casually plan a journey into Boston today, I discovered that they shut down the only commuter line in my area of the state, the Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line.

Trying to get into North Boston from the Highway 2 corridor using mass transit is impossible while the Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line is shut down for maintenance until late November 2014. ‎MBTA‬ didn't even setup replacement bus service to replace the rail line. There was already 1 to 3 hour intervals between trains. Seriously, how hard would it be to have a limited bus service on a similar schedule to those stations?

Thank you to the MBTA for thinking about your riders؟

The Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line Improvement Project

reddit, the poorly organized and nearly unsearchable appendix of The Internet...but Yeah me!

Ah, reddit, you allusive self-proclaimed front page of the Internet.  Instead, I would prolly characterize reddit as the Internet's poorly organized and nearly unsearchable appendix.  However, there is something addictive about its format and engagement.  You may have the intent to only check reddit out for 5 minutes, but that 5 minutes can easily turn to 2 hours.  I enjoy redditting from time to time.  Not often enough to really know how to game the system for karma, but often enough.

The other day, I finally was able to do something amazing.  A link that I posted actually made it to the "front page" and even the top spot of a major subreddit called /r/funny.  I also made it all the way up to page two of the reddit home page with default categories.  If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.  It's just something that is hard to do on reddit.  The Holy Grail is to actually make it to the "front page" of reddit's home page with default categories.  I missed that mark ever so slightly.  Oh well.  What does this matter?  Well, you know, Internet points!  Anyway, I'm just here chronicling this achievement in my journal.