A toll hike for the Golden Gate Bridge was approved that will increase the regular toll from $5 to $6. That is crazy! Only about 6 years ago, in 2002, the bridge toll was only $3. The toll will now have essentially doubled in only 6 to 7 years!  That just doesn’t seem right to me.  Could the cost of bridge operations and maintenance really have doubled during the same time period?  I doubt it, but that’s not why they are raising the toll.

The reason for the hike is to generate funds for the replacement of Doyle Drive, the raised freeway leading up to the span that extends from the Marina District through the Presidio and finally onto the bridge.  The bridge is itself is fine, it’s the infrastructure around it that is starting to deteriorate and need replacement.  I can only imagine how much it would cost to rebuild the entire bridge!

The actual cost of the bridge was only $35 million and construction was completed in 1937.  That is only $568.3 million in today’s dollars (inflation-adjusted).  But if building the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge today is a $6.2 billion proposition, then rebuilding the Golden Gate would cost about $10 billion today due to the higher level of difficulty in building across the mouth of the bay.  Let’s hope that with maintenance full replacement of the Golden Gate Bridge will never be necessary, because they may raise the tolls to about $50.

Keith Olbermann had the balls to say what the main stream media has only been slightly hinting at over the past couple of weeks. The fact that the Clinton campaign’s racial undertones are outrageous and appalling, and that Geraldine Ferraro is a vile and ignorant old hag that has a twenty-year history of spewing racism as part of political discourse.  Click on the "Olbermann Uproar on Ferraro Uproar" video after following the link. I applaud Keith Olbermann for his spot-on analysis and candor.  We need more journalists like this guy.

Last night, there was some serious weirdness going on with the Internets. Both me and a co-worker of mine couldn’t get to The Daily Nugget, any of my websites, or GoDaddy. We both have Comcast as our ISP.  I of course assumed that this was all GoDaddy’s fault, since it seemed like a DNS and/or routing issue.

In order to troubleshoot, I tunneled through my work’s Internet connection and was able to access The Daily Nugget a few times with intermittent “503 service unavailable” errors.  WTF!?  This morning I was still getting intermittent 503 errors, but was able to access the GoDaddy.com host administration.  I proceeded to refresh my DNS settings by deleting and re-adding a CNAME entry.  Sure enough — fixed within minutes.  Bastards!

A few minutes later as if almost on cue, I got an email from GoDaddy that says they have just changed the look and feel of their “My Account” area.  Apparently, this wreaked havoc with many shared hosting users, as evidenced by webmaster forum rants.  The good news is that it is all over and we can return to our regularly scheduled programming.

My apologies if you were unable to access the site and it caused you to lay down in a fetal position and cry uncontrollably while you checked the Internets every 5 minutes to see if it was back up and running.  I concede that may have been a little “inconvenient” and you may have lost some sleep last night.  Please read the site’s terms of service before considering any litigation.

I updated the blog template to have a very simplified html markup and achieve all of the graphic elements using only cascading style sheets and the default movable type style sheet classes. What does this mean in English? The blog is more easily readable using a mobile devices. I got tired of the blog looking like crap on my BlackBerry and having to scroll through all of my tags. Ultimately, the change gives better accessibility for all of the Nug readers!

Unless you have been under a rock, you have probably already seen Sarah Silverman’s “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” video and Jimmy Kimmel’s “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck” video. To put it in perspective, as of this writing these videos have been seen by a third of the audience of the Oscars. Check them out, they’re pretty funny.

The University of San Francisco’s School of Law is supporting it’s Intellectual Property Law Clinic’s attorneys-in-training in helping outside lawyers to defend their clients against the RIAA, pro bono. The two attorneys in the program are doing this under the supervision of law school professors and have already assisted by filing briefs in New York for two pending cases. Big ups to USF, my alma matter, in fighting the RIAA’s gestapo tactics and shakedown lawsuits against individuals.

Barack Obama’s charisma and influence extends beyond international boundaries. Obama wrote a letter to the residents of the Japanese town that shares his name. The residents of Obama were overjoyed and are rooting for Obama to win the democratic nomination later today.

These Japanese snow monkeys like the natural springs outside of Nagano so much that they’ll put up with Japanese and foreign tourists snapping their pictures as they chill. This has to be one of the funniest photos I’ve seen in a while, if only because the monkey in the back doesn’t look like he likes the picture-taking. What do you think the caption should read?

A slimy ex-CEO in Boca Raton stopped paying his mortgage in 2002 and forced his bank to provide evidence that they owned his bank note. They have not been able to produce the necessary paperwork in foreclosure proceedings and he’s still living in his home. Of course, he probably has had to defend himself in court which can’t be cheap. But, it’s probably less than he would have payed for his $1.5 million mortgage in a year. According to experts, about half of all mortgages in the U.S. may not have the necessary bank note paperwork. Seems like a sneaky way to get out of your personal obligations, but in the U.S. where there’s a crook there’s a way.