March 12, 2008 - I was planning on going out on a service call today at work, and dressed for it, but it got postponed until tomorrow. I went home around lunch time, changed into more appropriate clothes, and hit the street like I did on Monday, dropping off flyers. Today I went out by myself, though, so there was more pressure on me to do all the talking, since I didn't have another person to rely on. The response I got was overall worse than it was on Monday, except one location, where I actually got to speak to the director of the facility and found out about a service they are going to need from us. That was good news, and a relief to finally have something positive to report from my marketing and sales trials. After work Ellie and I went to the gym, where I reached 460 pounds on the leg press. When we got back home I showered, then we had salad and french bread pizzas for dinner. I found a video online of the world record 2300 pound leg press. It makes my 460 pounds seem pretty weak. Of course, the guy that did it had leg muscles bigger than my chest, so I shouldn't feel too bad about my accomplishment. I had band practice tonight after that, and amazingly we started on time and got done around 10 PM, getting me home before 11 PM. I think I'll show my liberal tendencies again today on my daily dose of Presidential Issues. Todays topic is Americas infrastructure. As much as I don't like paying taxes, the biggest benefit I really reap from them at this point in my life is use of roads and parks. And specifically, roads are part of infrastructure. I am against the idea of toll roads. Either all roads are free, or all roads are pay. We can't have just some of them be toll roads. The government needs to go all in or privatize this. And actually, I think privatization of roads would be preferable. Take a look at the roads we drive on every day, and then look at the roads in Walt Disney World. Disney has the best roads in the world, because they actually have an incentive to keep them maintained. But I disagree with what many propose as the solution to our overcrowded roads. The standard idea is to add more lanes to roads and highways to accommodate greater amounts of traffic. But I don't like that idea. Instead of more lanes and more traffic lights, let's install roundabouts, and extend on-ramps. Keep traffic moving, and give people more time to merge, and we can eliminate bottlenecks. Roundabouts are largely dismissed in the United States because whenever one goes in, everyone gets confused and doesn't know what to do. Well guess what? If intersections were all roundabouts, and there were only a handful of lights, people would get confused at the traffic lights instead. It is just about familiarization. I also see a need for addressing the issue of public transportation. We need better city planning that creates zones where people don't have to rely on their cars to get from home to work. Adding more lanes for more traffic just allows the problem to continue spiraling out of control. Instead of catering to suburbanites who enjoy their lower cost housing further away from the city, but have to drive 60 or more minutes to work each way, we need incentives for people to live close to where they work, reducing traffic, pollution, and causing the obesity epidemic plaguing the US today. Until we get real master planning that is able to tear apart all the poorly planned communities and rebuild zones that promote walking and riding the bus, we are going to keep adding lanes and sitting in traffic longer and longer.