September 9, 2006 - Saturday

Several people have questioned why Honolulu police officers didn't step in on Tuesday night to speed traffic flow through clogged intersections around the island. I wondered the same thing as we drove between Manoa and Kaaawa. At each major intersection, I wondered, "where are the police?"

If an unexpected thunderstorm dumped blinding rain, police would most likely move in to take over traffic controls at key intersections. But althought he traffic was just as bad on Tuesday as during any recent storm, somehow this particular emergency failed to generate a response. A reader out our way noted a specific example of HPD's failure to act:

A reader over

Been busy, but meant to drop you a note about all the traffic on Wed. We got trapped in it twice.. first time, returning from lunch in town, and then later that evening as we attempted to drive to Turtle Bay Resort for our anniversary dinner at Ola.

From Punaluu, the drive to TB normally takes us 20 minutes, max, but on Wed. it took 2 hours. The main culprit? The lone traffic signal in Kahuku.  We kept thinking..... ok... once we get past Laie traffic will thin out a bit. When we hit Malaekahana/Gunstock Ranch area and it was still crawling at 8:15 PM it seemed strangely wrong. As we rounded the bend into Kahuku we saw the problem. The lone traffic signal in Kahuku  (Puuluana & Kam Hwy) was allowed to 'do its thing'. Whether there was opposing traffic or not, the light went red like clockwork about every 40 seconds.

We saw two police patrol cars in the area but they did nothing! They could have disabled the light and done traffic control, but they ignored the obvious fix to the problem. Once we got past the traffic signal we were able to finally drive at a normal rate of speed. If that signal had been turned off or traffic at least allowed to flow through Kahuku without completely stopping every 45 seconds (and that red light is LONG) then it would not have been backed as bad as it was.... just unbelievable!

Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled. We called Kahuku sub-station to complain to deaf ears. We left Ola Restaurant 2 hours later ...... the traffic was still backed up all the way down Kam Hwy, well past Punaluu (as far south as we could see).  What kind of doofus is running Kahuku sub-station that something is allowed to go on for hours and hours? I am floored by the stupidity of it all. Can you imagine the mess if there is ever an evacuation of the area, with things as they currently are?

I'm not sure what is the best avenue for complaint, and I really feel the need to get my bitch-on over this one ... any ideas?

Today I read that Mayor Hannemann will be proposing a shortened rail route and a "no frills" system in order to keep costs down. I'm a fan of rail systems elsewhere, but this approach won't actually cut the cost of the system. It only shifts it to the installment plan, where long term system costs will likely exceed the "bite the bullet and build it at one time" approach.

And there's also talk about putting the terminal at the new UH West Oahu campus. Doesn't that sound like a traffic nightmare? Students will be converging on the campus for classes at the same time as thousands of Kapolei residents are driving in to catch the train. Where will they all park? Are the planned surface roads sufficient for the extra loads? That sounds like an option with many hidden problems.

Ms. Annie disappeared again after the early a.m. sighting yesterday, and didn't allow herself to be seen for another six hours or so. At that point I brought her in and locked the doors. She was pretty pooped out and so didn't fuss about the half-day of enforced rest.

When I finally opened the portals late in the afternoon, I grabbed my camera and followed the cats out onto the deck. Just click on Ms. Annie to check out the photos.

September 8, 2006 - Friday

I'm dragging this morning because of Ms. Annie, our current problem cat. She didn't check in when we came home last night, didn't come looking for food, and hadn't made an appearance by the time we went to bed. So I was up several times in the night to check, including forays into the yard hoping that she might be in or near one of her favorite spots. Just about the time that I was planning the search grid to implement at dawn, she finally came out to see what I was doing in the front yard. It was 4:25 a.m. and she didn't appear to understand that I had been worried about her. I think she's still spooked by the ceiling fans, although it's been over a week since they were installed. Or it could just be the full moon.

One reader responded to my Swiffer comment and Morford link yesterday with an interesting rant of his own:

Tell Morford to come clean my house and the litter boxes! Liberal idiot.
As for the UH Press warehouse issue, just a matter of outsourcing Hawaii jobs to the mainland. Look at Matson, they have their clerks in Arizona. So when you call them to ship a car to the mainland, the person is not here in Hawaii.
Look at all the other outsourcing actions considered by even the State Legislature. John Radcliffe represents the Big 3 International Accounting firms in trying to water down the Hawaii licensing laws to let them bring in staff from the mainland and foreign countries to do big audit jobs like the banks and utilities. No local jobs under those conditions.
The legislature changed the dental licensing laws last year and now any one passing the ADEX exam is assured a Hawaii license.
Remember the phrase,"Local jobs, for local people", well just forget it from now on. Lingle even hired a NY insurance company lawyer as securities commissioner. What no one competent in Hawaii anymore? You know how much investor protection we are going to get out of the next four years under Lingle? Nada! Even the FBI beat them to busting the scam artists on Hotel Street last week.
Last year as the elections were coming around, the Director of DCCA told the attorneys there to start litigation up against violators to make things look good for the department. What a crock!

Whew. Well, it's Friday, and Larry Geller ( of www.disappearednews.com and www.freerangegourmet.com) contributed his own tale of male cat parenting:

When we lived in a small apartment in New York we had two black and white cats, Terry and Cindy. Of course they were spoiled rotten and super intelligent.

Cindy got pregnant. On the day she gave birth, Terry jumped on her, probably smelling something. But this time, out popped a kitten. Kind of plop, it sprung out. A single, big fat white kitten. So Terry probably knew he had something to do with it.

Anyway, we set Cindy up with a bureau drawer lined with towels we could change frequently. She spent her time with her kitten and seldom left the drawer. Terry came over to check frequently. Cindy would stand up in the drawer, stretch mightily, and step out to head for the litter box or the food, and Terry would step in. He would lie down and draw the kitten to him. The kitten suckled but I don't think got any nourishment. Terry would lick the kitten and lick up its kitten bleep.

Cindy must have figured out that it was ok to leave the kitten alone with Terry, and she began spending more and more time outside the drawer. She would walk around, or run occasionally to get some exercise, and spent some time with us. When she went back to the drawer, Terry got up. She settled in, and he licked her head a couple of times.

I need to close by saying that the vet told us very strongly to keep the father cat away from the kittens. He said father cats sometimes killed the kittens. I'm glad we didn't listen to his advice. Terry loved Nikko, and was totally heartbroken months later when we had to give him away.

September 7, 2006 - Thursday

A friend in Punaluu counted about 50 cars a minute passing her home in Punaluu on Tuesday night as a result of the freeway shutdown in Aiea. If anywhere near accurate, that would be 3,000 cars an hour, and she said traffic remained heavy for at least six hours. That's almost unheard of in our part of the island.

Speaking of the freeway shutdown, I got up yesterday wondering whether the work was done and the freeway opened again, and like many people also concerned about whether it would stay open. So doesn't a check of the Department of Transportation web site seem like an appropriate response? I thought so. I was wrong.

The DOT site looked just as it does today. Nothing on the main page about the freeway closure. No advisory, no update, nothing. Click on "News and Information". That got me information on the airport's valet parking service and the street sweeping schedule, among other attention grabbers, but nothing about the gridlock that impacted virtually all drivers on the island just hours earlier. Finally I tried "Lane Closures", and finally there was something--but it turned out to be the original DOT press release from Tuesday afternoon. Nothing more timely. No update, no follow-up, no "all clear", nothing to inform morning commuters.

Add DOT's web site to the list of things demonstrated to be broken and in need of fixing.

Oops. Apparently Swiffers are not items that qualify for free shipping from Amazon, even with your $50 orders, a reader notes.

No free shipping for over $50.00 purchase for Swiffer refills. All merchants selling are not part of Amazon free shipping policy. Purchases qualifying for free shipping must be purchased from Amazon and not a third party vendor.

After looking at options like Amazon and Ebay, Costco comes up the winner with an offer no one can refuse. $12.49 for 20 dusters and a handle. Coupon gets $2.50 off from Sept 8 to 14. What a deal! Got to stock up a lot of these.

The whole Swiffer issue brings to mind Mark Morford's wonderful column of a couple of years ago. It's a must read, in my mind at least.

Burl Burlingame gets the last word on shipping costs.

Here's my take on shipping rates some years ago.

Every time a politician comes in I bend their ear on this issue. They giggle vaguely and move away. But there's no excuse for letting FedEx/UPS get away with this. Congress not only controls the air routes, they manage interstate commerce. All Hawaii businesses want, particularly in a fulfillment economy, is a level playing field. If USPS can do it, so can FedEx/UPS.

Here's a clue. University of Hawaii Press, a semi-business supported with Hawaii taxpayer dollars, maintains their warehouse and shipping facilities on the mainland, precisely because of excessive Hawaii shipping costs. This means Hawaii money is spent out-of-state on facilties and jobs that could be spent here.

Alex recommends GetHuman.com, a web site he describes as "an invaluable database of how to break through the phone hell of the awful automated answering information systems."

And here's another cat question from a reader:

Remember the cat we took to the Humane Society to be adopted because there were too many cats using the bathroom outside our windows? After they renamed him Jake and neutered him, we retrieved him because we missed him so much.

Well, guess what! Our three 6-month-old kittens have been sucking on Jake's nipples! Have you heard of such a thing? I picked him up to see if his nipples were engorged with milk, but couldn't see them because of his fur.

What's up with that? 

Any other cat people have ideas on this one?

September 6, 2006 - Wednesday

Here's a note of caution from a reader in response to my enthusiastic endorsement of the grass enfusion therapy for indoor cats:

You may want to caution the folks about Maka's grass tray. They use a lot of fertilizer and bug juice to make it look good like that. The cat gets the chemicals on its fur and licks it off, naturally.

Point well taken. Giving your grass a good rinse would be a good first step, with additional care along the way. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Yesterday started with a rescue. When had only been walking on the beach for a short distance when we found a young sea bird tangled in fishing line. The bird was maybe a foot tall with a beak that looks like an albatross. It could bite, and walk a bit, but had line wrapped around its wings, leg, and tail. I was able to get a hold where it couldn't bite, and a man who had been fishing came running back with a pair of scissors, accompanied by a woman who works as a vet tech. Together we were able to cut the bird loose, although it took three of us working for a while to do it. They decided to keep the bird under observation and see if, after a bit of rest, it was able to fly. If not, she planned to consult with her office on what to do. My problem: I didn't get any photos of the rescue, so I've got no visual admonishment about the daners of marine debris. But I can say that the little bird seemed very happy to be cut loose.

And the day ended, as it did for everyone else on the island who wasn't working at home, with a very long, stop and go commute home. Who would have thought that a freeway closure in Aiea would stop traffic on Pali Highway and create traffic jams all the way through Kaneohe and along Kamehameha Highway towards the North Shore?

We haven't seen traffic like this since the pseudonami of the mid-1980s, when a tidal wave evacuation warning created instant gridlock throughout Honolulu. Traffic hasn't gotten any better in the intervening two decades.

It took us two hours, perhaps a few minutes longer, to get from the university to Kaneohe, more typically a 25 minute drive. With traffic snarled at the intersection by the Windward City Shopping Center, we decided to pull off and eat at one of our favorite thai restaurants, Chao Phya. That turned out to be a good call. In another hour, traffic had thinned out just a bit, although we still crawled all the way to the Hygenic Store and beyond the last traffic light before it started flowing smoothly.

It must have been a four or five hour drive for those poor wretches heading for Wahiawa or beyond via this long route. What happens during this afternoon's commute is now the worry.

Here are a few more views taken in 1964 when we stayed in a 19th floor room at the Ilikai. I think this was because our house being tented for termites. You can see Magic Island under construction in this photo, lot of other buildings and landmarks not yet present in other photos.

click for larger photo

September 5, 2006 - Tuesday

Was it silly to expect that Labor Day might be the occasion for at least one of our daily newspapers to at least pay lip service to issues facing the labor movement and American workers? Apparently so. I combed the front section of the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin on Sunday and Monday in a futile search for even a mention of labor issues. Nada. I'm certainly a bit jaded, but this still surprised me.

A report by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers (APPA) has offered up some important but critical insights into problems at the University of Hawaii that seem relevant to the general malaise found in different parts of state government.

APPA is an international organization dedicated to developing professional leadership and management skills in the planning, design, construction, maintenance, and operation of university facilities. An inspection team was invited to the UH Manoa campus to review the situation and make recommendations for improvements.

The executive summary of their report is low key but scathing. "First impressions are lasting impressions," the report notes, and then proceeds to describe three strong initial impressions. First, the study team arrived to find that the UH facilities staff had failed to prepare a self-study and evaluation, normally the starting point for an APPA team's review. The team expressed surprise at the absence of preparation on the ground, and commented that, as a result, it had to spend a lot of time gathering information normally provided in advance.

Then the team commented on its first impression of the campus. "The setting of the campus, while marvelous and in a treasured location, was generally clouded by litter, debris, pealing paint, broken and heaved concrete, tripping hazards, graffiti in restrooms, burnout-out light fixtures, and an observed general state of disrepair."

The next observation is even more telling:

"Buildings and campus spaces ranged from those carfully planned to the more eclectic appearance that occurs without careful planning. The review teams search for design standards for the physical plant came up empty. Simple campus standards for repetitive facility components are inherently missing."

The report notes the impact of "neglect, deferral, fatigue, budgetary restrictions, a lack of responsiveness, and closely held information in a time of desired organizational transparency."

The team found no "unified strategic vision or sense of purpose among the staff," confusion over roles and responsibilities, and policies that were either not written or unavailable at any central place. Technology is not used to share information and manage data, and "(t)he organization is not known for its innovation." Perhaps an understatement.

The team commented on an outdated and simplistic work order system, lack of monitoring of needed preventive maintenance, and lack of a detailed inventory of physical conditions. Decision making within the facilities staff was centralized, training and professional development opportunities "are not an area of focus", and improvements are needed in both "horizontal and vertical communications".

But this doesn't seem to be an isolated UH problem. I was struck by the similarity to the audit of DLNR's conservation and resources enforcement division by state auditor Marion Higa, which became a focus of this year's legislative session. The same lack of communication, lack of planning, absence of modern management systems, lack of a strategic plan or vision, low morale, a litany of problems remarkably similar to the findings at UH.

The APPA team found that lack of resources was one of the problems, but overall not the most important factor in the problems facing UH. I suspect the same is true for the state as a whole.

In any case, a less-than-perfect version of the full APPA report is also available as a large (7 MB) file if you want to know more.

Listen up, cat people! Here's a great idea courtesy of Mr. Duke's sister, Maka. You may have already noted the strong family resemblance, right down to the tabby bullseye on her side.

In any case, Maka's adopted family moved from a house to a condominium and she's been recast as an inside cat. Short story--she missed her time outside in the grass. She wanted grass, but not those little tiny cups sold in pet stores. So she had her people make a trip to Home Depot and bring a large tray of grass home. Bliss is the only word to describe the result.

September 4, 2006 - Monday

Star-Bulletin writer Erika Engle added a few links to the discussion of online shopping:

The ShiptoHawaii.com service I've written about is not as convenient as having one's Amazon groceries delivered to the front door (for free!) ... but online shoppers who encounter astronomical Hawaii- or Alaska-shipping rates may find some relief in the freight-consolidation it offers.

(This is my most recent column about the co. -- in which I have no stake.)

June W. also helped a reader inquiring about the service they'd read about and was kind enough to include a link to what I believe was my initial column about the co.

Just a bit of info for you and your online shopping/shipping friends.

This email from Jake on the Big Island made my Sunday:

Aloha Brah,
I just stumbled upon your website and wow mahalo's so very much!!!!! Awesome I haven't been able to see it all yet but from I have seen so far ....................... what can I say. I was born in Honolulu 11/50 so what a flood of memories due to your generousities, mahalo so much!!!! I live on the Big Island now and my dad was originally from Curtis Town and then they moved to Honauanu, Kona. I am living down south now in the district of Kau, Ocean View. Like every place else the shoreline is no more for this local boy, just to expensive. Still out here with a good 4x4 you can lay back and throw net or nite dive still yet. Anyways you are the best and pls keep the site going I am just starting to inform all my ohana over here, you are one amazing person and I hope to learn more of you and from you. I was in VN when the Duke passed away so awesome for me to go back in time. Again "Mahalo Big Time" and if you're ever down this side give me a call anytime.

The newly revived Citizens Against Noise, inspired by the group of the same name that accomplished so much in the 70s and 80s, is inviting anyone concerned about noise issues to attend their next meeting on Wednesday afternoon, " 5:30 PM at the picnic benches across from the Elks and Outrigger Canoe clubs closest to the water fountain in Kapiolani Park."

Issues raised so far include loud mufflers, mopeds and motorcycles, low flying tour helicopters, leaf blowers, and unnecessary late night sirens. The Citizens Against Noise blog invites readers to submit information on noise problems, including the decriptions of offending vehicles.

A similar group on the Big Island, NoiseFreeHawaii.org, is targeting a slightly different set of immediate noise issues, including off highway vehicles, dirt bikes, and ATVs.

This was the scene down at Swanzy Beach Park at dawn yesterday. Lots of campers moved in for the long Labor Day weekend. As usual, just click for a larger version of the photo.

September 3, 2006 - Sunday

By the time I checked the Amazon.com grocery store yesterday, those organic canned tomatoes were nowhere to be found. Apparently their product lineup changes, as does the selection at the local big box stores. Lots of other interesting things, if you don't mind those large quantities.

And the issue of shipping brought a couple of comnents. One reader noted:

Wow, gotta love finding out about places the ship free to Hawaii!

I order a lot of music equipment, and found that zzounds.com ships for free. To Hawaii! A total trip cinsidering how heavy stuff can be. I recently ordered a guitar from them, and paid a measly $16 for 2nd day air. Usually it's 3 or four times that amount. If you go by regular delivery (U.S. Post), it's free.

Another wrote:

Swiffer refills on Amazon cost as little as $7.83 per box of ten, but the kicker is that it costs $26+ to ship to Hawaii. The same costs $9.99 at Longs at regular price, cheaper on sale. Go figure.

Ah, but buy those swiffers as part of a $50 order and shipping for the whole thing drops to zero. I don't know how Amazon makes money that way, but they seem to think they will.

A gallon is bigger in Hawaii than on the mainland. Really. But I had to read about it in a story from the Kansas City Star and distributed by McClatchy News Service.

Sometimes the best photos are found where and when you least expect them. That was the case when I was making curry last week. I looked down as I was cleaning up and was able to "see" a great photo waiting. Luckily a camera was at hand. This is the result, which I chose as my "picture a week" selection. Just click to get a good look.

Spare onion