Unlike the majority of today's residents of Montgomery Township, I remember when this area truly was unspoiled ... a great place to live ... when there wasn't a traffic light all the way from the Route 518/206 intersection to Amwell Road in Hillsborough.
I shudder when I read things like:
"Birge and Petraske also will do their utmost to stop the planned Hillsborough Bypass. Construction of this new four-lane highway would dump thousands of extra cars into Montgomery each day, putting our already stressed roads under unimaginable new strain. Mayor Louise Wilson is leading a coalition of municipalities in actively opposing construction of the highway."
(from http://www.formontgomery.org/traffic.htm)
Lets be realistic. This is NIMBY hogwash at its worst.
Where, exactly, will those thousands of extra cars come from each day and where will they be heading? What's unimaginable is that the Democrats would actually 1) take the time to write that nonsense, and 2) approve its publication.
Mayor Wilson is taking the same NIMBY route that got Montgomery Township into this mess in the first place. Pike Run's developers pushed construction ahead of the bypass. Whether they adequately warned their home buyers of the impending road is a question for the courts. Money for the road has already been allocated, and properties such as the Hillsborough Driving Range/Batting Cages/Miniature Golf Course have already been paid for with our tax dollars.
Hillsborough has been planning on that bypass for years. It will be built. To borrow the jingle, it seems "like a bad neighbor, Mayor Wilson doesn't care."
All Mayor Wilson can do with her actions is cost us more tax dollars, and cause bad blood with Hillsborough. Lord knows that this township has spent its share on legal fees over the years.
We can't just close our eyes. The bypass is not a bad thing. The folks in Pike Run might not like it, but tough luck (they didn't have to buy those houses and force the school district into a huge, expensive game of catch up).
This township has a history of stopping roads, while allowing developers the reign to rape, pillage, and plunder. If you look at the places where big road projects have been derailed in Montgomery, you'll see expensive houses and huge developer profits: where Route 95 was to pierce the southern border, there's Planters Row; where a dualized 206 was to rerouted, across from the municipal building, an outcropping of Toll Brothers McMansions.
Now our mayor has plans for some roads of her own. Some make sense. But one in particular, does not. A new road, extending from Orchard Road to Route 518 will cost a great deal of money, while destroying wetlands and unspoiled countryside. This road may serve the interests of the developer that seeks to add hundreds of housing units, but it certainly doesn't serve the needs of the current residents of Montgomery Township.
It's a bad idea.
In our last installment, I left things dangling while in pursuit of a 12-volt power supply. It took a bit of time, but I finally found the mega-battery of my dreams... a sweet 12-volt rechargeable doodad with a automotive cigarette lighter hookup.
The power supply was purchased from the kind and helpful folks at Creative Energy Technologies. I used a cigarette lighter adapter from Radio Shack to get the juice from the power supply to the Yamaha speakers.
The power supply came in handy when I created my wickedly cool green neon glowing Alien extreme pumpkin ...
I lucked into an inexpensive MP3 player, not so long ago ... a 5GB Archos Jukebox. I was glancing through my email when it caught my eye: outpost.com was dumping 5GB Jukeboxes at roughly eighty bucks a pop.
I've held back on an MP3 player purchase, as I didn't want to fork over a C note for a wimpy 128MB player. And I just couldn't justify spending three hundred for an Apple iPod (even though I really really really want one). So when I saw the Archos going for just eighty smackaroons, I had to go for it.
The Archos arrives and no sooner do I become bored with the idea of merely using it with headphones. I wanted to use it in the car (a problem easily solved with a SoundFeeder 100) and I wanted to use it as the basis for boom box (a problem which was not so easily solved).
Two seperate trips to two separate Best Buy stores yielded a pair of Sony portable powered speakers and the SoundFeeder. The (under $20)SoundFeeder worked well--sending the Jukebox's output through the FM band to the car's receiver. The little $20 Sony speakers, however, were feeble-sounding battery hogs.
A friend of mine suggested that I look for a pair of powered Yamaha speakers.
Lucky for me, I had a set of Yamaha speakers sitting around the studio, collecting dust. I plugged the Archos into the dusty old Yamaha speakers and was rewarded with fabulous sound.
But I wasn't content with a solution that only plugged into the wall socket. I wanted something to take to soccer practice ... and that's where the challenge came in ... I needed a portable power source ...
It took me a while, but I've finally gone feet first into the MP3 thang. I've never been a fan of the P2P networks, tho I admit to checking out both Napster (back in the day) and Kazaa (an evil empire with scumware ties), just for yucks.
I've been ripping my own CDs into MP3s, I've tried out buymusic.com (bleh) on my PC, and I've been on the prowl for boots. I'm looking forward to a new Mac, so I can set up to the latest version of iTunes. Yum.
My goal is to build a mega home MP3 jukebox. A REAL jukebox.
I dig the jukebox designs of the 50s--the Seeburgs, the Rockolas, and yeah, even the Wurlitzers. If Jesse James wants something rocking cool to build on Monster Garage, maybe he should try turning a vehicle (any vehicle) into a rolling MP3 jukebox ... something that would make George Barris and the late great Big Daddy Ed Roth proud.
From the beginning of the MP3/net firestorm, I've dreamed of that megajukebox. Think of the song and its there. It's getting closer and closer to being a reality, and a legal one, at that. Napster was a grand experiment. It was sharing--and fairly innocent--when compared to the evils of Kazaa.
Kazaa, unfortunately is about ripping people off.
I walked into my studio one day, to find out that my little angel had loaded Kazaa onto my PC. Not just Kazaa, of course, but all the crap that comes with it. Needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper that day. It took me a while, but I soon removed Kazaa and the evil scumware it comes bundled with.
Now they say that Napster is on its way back.
Well, maybe not Napster exactly, but something with the Napster name and logo ...