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Nicole just sent me a story in the Washington Times entitled “D.C. defies home-price drop.” It seems that “home prices in the District rose by 6.4 percent in the past year, while prices in other major jurisdictions dropped dramatically.” When I originally bought my house 4 years ago in the midst of the bubble, I predicted that 4-5 years later when I wanted to sell, a lot of people would be doing the same and the market would be sucky. I was just hoping that home values in DC would hold up better than those in the suburbs. And it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. But I didn’t really expect DC home values would buck the trend and not decrease at all.

Go DC! This almost makes up for all the extra taxes we pay over people living in the suburbs. Almost.

This is great news for people wanting to move from DC to the ‘burbs, but bad news for people wanting to do the opposite.

Note: starting today, I’m going to try to write more frequent posts. I’m hoping to do this by writing fewer, verbose, long winded posts and more shorter mini posts. Hopefully that will encourage me do more writing. We’ll see.

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DC is in the process of switching from its crazy zone system to a more common metered system that every other city uses. Of course, the city’s cab drivers haven’t been too happy about that or the new metered fare structure. Even though all analysis of new fares has indicated that cabbies will make about the same amount (the main purpose for the switch has been to reduce confusion and cheating), the cab drivers chose to institute a series of strikes. The first two strikes were fairly uneventful, unless you were trying to hail a cab of course. Up until now, many people were sympathetic to the position of the cab drivers in this matter. But after today’s strike, I can’t imagine anyone being on the side of the taxi drivers anymore. I’d be very surprised if even the people who like the zone system would support the cab drivers now.

If you read the comments on the DCist post on today’s unannounced strike, you’ll see that the taxi drivers have changed their strategy. Instead of just staying off the roads, which frustrated people needing cabs but delighted everyone else who got to drive on traffic-free streets, today they’ve decided to become incredibly annoying nuisances.

Here are some examples of their obnoxious behavior:

• A huge line of taxis is driving very slowing around Freedom Plaza, in front of the Wilson Building, all honking their horns.
• This morning, about 100 taxis made their way SLOWLY down 16th past U street. They were even getting out of their cars to talk to one another. People had to wait for about 20 mins for the cabs to finally pass before any cars or buses could get by.
• Many cabs just stopped in the right lane of 16th Street. People had to walk for miles in the frigid wind because no buses could get through.
• So many cabs were driving slowly around the Ronald Reagan Building and laying on the horn that it’s affecting official city business, including making it impossible to hold teleconferences.

This is ridiculous in that it’s not just affecting people who ride cabs, but also people who take buses and drive.

I can’t understand how the cab drivers think that by making themselves a nuisance they will win anyone over to their side. If anything, this stunt has just enraged people even more. The whole point of a strike is to make people see how important you are to daily life. The point is not to show how annoying you can be. That’s just bad business.

I for one hope the MPD is racking in some nice money by ticketing the hell out of these crazy cabs.

So I voted this morning at my local polling place (conveniently located right next door to me) as part of the Potomac Primary. I was in and out in 10 minutes, which was awesome, but overall I’m still a kind of worried that my vote won’t actually get counted.

My concern comes from the apparent lack of security around the digital voting process. Now, in fairness, I’m not very worried, but just a teeny bit worried. It’s kind of like when you check your luggage at the airport and realize you left your keys in your checked bag - the whole flight home you’re a teeny bit worried that the bag will be lost and you’ll be stranded at the airport. That’s kind of how I feel about my vote.

Just to explain how it worked this morning when I voted electronically:

• I was given the choice whether to use paper or electronic, and I chose electronic (so I only have myself to blame)
• I was given a little smartcard and told to go use the electronic voting machine
• At the machine, I entered my card and selected my candidate
• After confirming I had picked the right candidate, the machine spit back out the card so I could return it. I was not offered a paper receipt of my vote.
• I walked back and handed the card to the polling official
• Here’s where it got weird: she thanked me and dropped my card into a pile of 6 or so other cards

That’s it. My vote was not counted right away as far as I can tell. It looks like each card can hold a bunch of votes, so they re-use them until they’re full or until voting is closed. I assume they’re only tallied at the end of the day. As it currently works, anyone could walk out with the smartcard, taking everyone else’s votes on that smartcard with them. Or the smartcards could be misplaced or “lost”, nullifying all those votes. If I was really paranoid, I’d be afraid of a sophisticated hacker actually reading and changing the votes on the smartcard with a modified off-the-shelf smartcard reader.

Everyone who voted with paper was instructed to feed their paper ballot into the automated vote counting machine right after they marked their choice. At least with that machine the votes were counted and stored someplace semi-secure, not just in a pile on drafting table.

I would have preferred that my electronic vote be counted as soon as I returned it and then the card erased before the next person used it. And of course, I was very disappointed that I was not given any kind of paper trail of my e-vote.

Seeing as how it doesn’t save much time to vote electronic (in fact, you have to wade through like four confirmation screens), you can bet that I’ll be voting on paper in November.

UPDATE Feb 13:
I have to admit I might have jumped the gun on this one. One of Nicole’s friends told me that my vote is saved on the actual machine, not on the card. After reading about the equipment on the DC Board of Elections Voter Equipment page, it seems very likely that this is the case. But I still would have liked a receipt or paper trail of some kind.

I can’t decide if this Amazon press release reflects highly or poorly on the DC area. At first blush, I thought it was great that we were such a romantic area, until I realized that Amazon ranked cities based on the sale of romance, relationship and sex books. So while there have been lots of studies saying that we’re one of the best areas for singles, maybe those singles are having a hard time finding one another. Maybe we’re just the loneliest area?

From the Amazon ‘Top 20 Most Romantic Cities in America’ press release:
(emphasis and formatting added by me)

After compiling sales data of romance novels, relationship and sex books since Jan. 1, 2008, on a per capita basis in cities with over 100,000 residents, the top 20 most romantic lonely cities in the United States are:
1. Alexandria, Va.
2. Cambridge, Mass.
3. Miami, Fla.
4. Irvine, Calif.
5. Ann Arbor, Mich.
6. Orlando, Fla.
7. Berkeley, Calif.
8. Scottsdale, Ariz.
9. Arlington, Va.
10. Atlanta, Ga.
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Pasadena, Calif.
13. Bellevue, Wash.
14. Seattle, Wash
15. San Francisco, Calif.
16. Columbia, S.C.
17. Tallahassee, Fla.
18. Austin, Texas
19. Richmond, Va.
20. Knoxville, Tenn.

In taking a closer look at Amazon.com’s “romantic” data, the company also unveiled that:

• Virginia really is for lovers, with three cities (Alexandria, Arlington and Richmond) ranked amongst the top 20 Most Romantic Lonley Cities.

The Mayor and Taxicab Commission listened to the thousands of public comments they received about the proposed sky high taxi fares! The Mayor announced a new, revised plan that includes:

• Lowering the drop flag fee (aka base fare) from $4 to $3
• Eliminating rush hour surcharges
• Eliminating the non-sensical additional passenger surcharge
• Reducing snow emergency surcharges from 200% to 25% of the fare

But the battle is not yet won - A lone Council Member plans to introduce legislation for hybrid zone meters that may revive the archaic and confusing zone system (with accompanying high fares) at the expense of the public. Also, taxi drivers are planning weekly strikes even when the new fare structure brings them slightly higher fares than NYC cab drivers! Also consider their costs of operating a DC taxi are a tiny fraction of what NYC cab drivers pay!

WTOP Radio reported that some taxi drivers, led by the Taxicab Industry Group, are calling for drivers to strike once a week beginning Feb. 4 to continue protesting the switch to meters. Not only do these strikes reflect poorly on the taxi drivers, they are also dangerous and irresponsible to the thousands of DC residents that depend on the taxi system for their economic, child care and healthcare needs.

Please show the Mayor you support him in standing up to striking taxi drivers by using the pre-written letter at http://www.caleynet.com/taxi to send a message to the City Council and the Mayor.

Remember, new metered taxis arrive on April 6!