The Transrapid is Coming … I wish I were More Excited

Pretty interesting that I found this bit of information on BBC instead of a local source since it is happening in my neck of the woods. I mean we’ve known for years that they “Wanted” to build the Transrapid between Munich and the Airport, but something usually got in the way, like money.

For those of you who do not know what the Transrapid is I’ll try to give you a brief explanation. The Transrapid is a maglev train. Meaning it travels by floating using magnetic levitation (pretty cool huh?). With speeds exceeding 500Km/H (damn that’s fast) it will make the trip between the main train station in Munich to the Airport in about 5-10 minutes rather than the 35-45 minutes with the existing train connection. So this will give a definite boost to Munich for getting people from travel point to travel point (or in September from Airport to getting drunk at the Oktoberfest in less than an hour). It will also boost Munich’s reputation since this will be the first Maglev train in Europe.

So why am I not so excited about this? Simply because it will be built close to our home (we live really close to the airport). Ok so the train isn’t like going to fly over our roof, it is actually being built along the Autobahn. However, it is also being dangerously close (or at least in my opinion) to the lakes that our little town uses for recreation and drinking water. So I’m a little concerned about having heavy construction that close to a place where I like to walk with my family on Sunday afternoons in summer, and where I take my son sledding in the winter (they’re going to be building really really close to the sledding hill). So yeah it is neat that we are getting this thing, but on the other hand I wish they would have built it along the other route away from where we live.

Comments Not Getting Posted? … Not My Fault.

Well it looks as though WordPress has some work that they need to do and quit sitting around waiting for it to fix itself. Recently I’ve noticed that I’m getting comments building up in my comment spam. This is because WordPress insists everyone use Akismet to filter out spam and won’t allow us to turn it off.

The problem is that apparently Akismet is filtering more comments than it should. Meaning it is filtering out comments that are not spam. The problem is that WordPress either cannot or will not fix this issue but what can we expect from someone who offers space on the web for free.

So if you actually want to post a comment on my blog and just can’t get through then drop me an email at jrsofty@hotmail.com subject Blog Comment, and I’ll personally put your comment on my site (unless of course it is spam), even if you don’t agree with my comments or even if you post derogatory comments about my actual person (although expect a rebuttal immediately following your comment).

Make sure you tell me which post you are commenting on or I’ll be forced to place it in the mail bag (which will be a WordPress page that I’ll create as soon as I need it).