Perri Nelson's Website 

Site overhaul continues

If you've followed my posts lately, you've noticed that I haven't been posting much on my regular topics, because I've been overhauling the back end for the site.

The overhaul wasn't meant to be visible (yet). As I've gone through the process I've screwed up a few things (that is, I've written a few bugs). So if you've been paying attention, you've probably seen a few test posts come and go.

The biggest change to the back-end code is that I've hooked up MSHTML to do HTML parsing, and I've moved the post content out of the database and into the file system. That's been fun, for the most part.

What hasn't been fun is dealing with the bugs I've introduced, and there were quite a few of them. Probably the biggest bug had to do with editing posts online. Creating posts wasn't a problem. Editing them after they existed turned out to be totally messed up. The content of the posts would be duplicated.

That turned out to be because the "clear" method on the "document" object isn't supported in the current release of MSHTML. Fortunately, "InnerHTML" is settable, and that fixed that bug.

So I'm back to posting regularly now, or at least I should be. On that note, this is your open trackbacks post for Tuesday, January 30, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

Getting a vote on the viaduct is a challenge

For the longest time now the Alaskan Way Viaduct has needed repair or replacement. After suffering earthquake damage you'd think that there was a high-priority need to fix it. Instead it's been an opportunity for the Seattle City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels to push their own agenda, while accomplishing nothing.

After deciding that they wanted a tunnel, and then realizing that the cost would be outrageous, they quickly moved to make sure that the people wouldn't have a say in things. After all, the people can't be trusted to make the right decisions.

After much criticism, they left the decision up to Governor Gregoire. She decided that the people should vote. Unfortunately she decided that only the people of Seattle should vote, and not the rest of the state, despite the fact that the highway in question is a state highway and that the funds are coming from the State and the Federal Government, and not just from Seattle.

So the Seattle City Council waited until almost the last minute to get the ballot measure put together. They substituted a new, un-vetted plan for the original tunnel proposal, and put it on the ballot. Now that ballot is being challenged. From the Seattle Times:

Longtime monorail backer Peter Sherwin has filed a court challenge to the wording of the two Alaskan Way Viaduct ballot measures on the March 13 ballot.

...

Sherwin said he's not trying to stop the election, which will be conducted entirely by mail, but wants the ballot title rewritten.

...

In his challenge Sherwin argues that the ballot title does not make clear that:

• The state has not agreed to a four-lane tunnel.
• No significant funding has been secured for the tunnel option.
  (The city says the funding is secure.)
• Seattle residents may have to pay certain taxes and tolls.
• All cost overruns would be the sole responsibility of the city of Seattle.

...

The ballot language was not the only challenge aired today against the tunnel.

The city of Seattle has said it would save $100 million in the proposed four-lane tunnel by forgoing improvements to the Battery Street Tunnel north of the viaduct on Highway 99.

However the state Department of Transportation has questioned that move, and Gregoire made it clear on Monday she, and legislative leaders, oppose shifting the money.

"The Battery Street Tunnel has safety issues. We put in $100 million to address them. And we have every intent that is going to happen. We owe that to the citizens," Gregoire said. "I will not abandon essential safety investments."

It just never seems to end. It's not enough that so much time has been wasted with no work actually being done to fix the viaduct. Now they want to risk public safety by moving funds from one repair job to another.

What's the next delay going to be? Sure, this challenge may not actually delay the vote. But after the vote, if the Seattle City Council doesn't get their way, some members have promised to use all sorts of procedural blocks and even lawsuits to slow down the repair or replacement, and to drive up the costs.

If the Seattle City Council does get their way, will they mis-use the funding the same way the monorail funding was mis-used? Will the first thing that gets funded be lots of expensive television commercials telling us how good it will be when it's finally here?

That's what happened with the monorail. Lots of money spent on television commercials about how good it was going to be. And then the project was shut down. I hope that sort of thing doesn't happen here, but who knows. History isn't on the side of responsible transportation management here.

Previous Posts:

• Tunnel not buried yet
• Tunnel almost buried
• Seattle City Council Balks at Vote?
• Governor: Give Voters the Choice
• King County Council conflicted over morality
• Mayor Nickels ready to act like spoiled child
• Seattle City Council among reasons viaduct cost could rise
• Do we need another big government agency for transit?
• More drivers, more time in gridlock

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, Big Dog's Weblog, basil's blog, DragonLady's World, Shadowscope, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Wake Up America, The HILL Chronicles, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, Pirate's Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Web site updates

For the most part I'm done with the back-end overhaul. There's still a bit of work to go yet, but I've separated the post content from the database entry and added an "IsDraft" flag so I can post drafts to the site without publishing them. One of the big reasons for this change is that I have far more space available on the file system for content than I do in the database, and the database was approaching full.

Part of the overhaul appears to have fixed some minor problems with the Moveable Type API set that I use for remote posting, so I can post from my main PC again. That's a minor benefit though. There's still a bit of work to go there so that it's complete.

The trackback module has been upgraded a bit too. The old version just looked for the permalink of the post you were pinging in your post, and if it found it, it accepted it. Now your post is parsed and you must have an actual link to the post's permalink. Putting it into comments on the page won't work anymore. This doesn't appear to have broken anything, since I've gotten a few pings since the change was made.

One thing that's broken in the trackback module though is email notification of your trackbacks. The code there should work, but I'm not getting the emails. I don't know why that is yet.

Anyway, like I said, for the most part I'm done with the back-end overhaul. I will resume posting regularly later today, after I get some work done at my real job. I still have some work to do on the back-end overhaul though. There are a few places where the re-factored code hasn't been integrated in yet. I'll gradually be cleaning those up.

Once that's complete, I'll start adding additional features to the blog. Here's a list of a few I have in mind...

• Post summaries on the main page, and more front page entries.
• A summary feed as well as the current full-content feeds.
• Automated trackbacks via trackback discovery based on links in posts.
• Multiple blogs.
• An uber-blogroll on the main page, and a blogrolls page for the individual blogrolls.

That last one will probably be the most fun. I cache all of the blogrolls now. Now that I've hooked up an HTML parser into the back end, I can parse the blogrolls and "merge" them into a single blogroll without duplicates for the front page.

The point is there are more features to come. Hopefully I can be more disciplined about how I implement them in the future so I won't have to go through as big a re-factoring exercise in the future.

Does anybody know of a good spell-check engine that's compatible with .NET?

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Mark My Words, Big Dog's Weblog, basil's blog, DragonLady's World, Shadowscope, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Wake Up America, The HILL Chronicles, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, Pirate's Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.