RIP Brian Bedford

Freshman year in college, my residential adviser organized birthday study breaks for everyone on the hall, replete with a movie viewing.  I requested the Disney Robin Hood, providing my own VHS copy (because of course you bring this movie to freshman year in college), because Brian Bedford is bar none the best Robin Hood.

(note: published here 1/14/2026, backdated to 2016 when I originally shared with friends)

Crazy stat of the day: suspended licenses

VTDigger reports that 59,000 Vermonters have suspended licenses.  For a state with just over 600,000 people, that sounds insanely high.  If there only about 460,000 people of driving age (and not all of them have licenses), then likely somewhere between 1 in 7 and 1 in 8 drivers have a suspended license** in Vermont. 

Poking around, this article suggests 1 in 10 for drivers nationwide (and 1 in 7 in Florida), so Vermont is hardly out of the norm for the U.S.  Just wow.


** I'd like to guess less about the number of licensed drivers in VT, but this site suggests there are 549,000 licensed drivers in VT, which clearly isn't right.

'Tis the season

...for pine trees to litter the roadways like used condoms, their purpose fulfilled, having shielded us from the oppressive dark of winter with twinkly decorations and the promise of spring.

Of course, the de-decorated pine trees can extend their useful life if you have neighbors with goats; for example, the goats at Pine Island Farm like nothing better than a tasty pine tree treat.

A month (or two) with Fi

There are lots of reviews of Google's Project Fi out there.  This is from the perspective of someone who:

• Is switching from a dumb phone
• Makes extremely few calls away from a WiFi hotspot

... so, naturally, it's a great deal for me compared to Verizon (which AFAIK is the only real alternative in the Green Mountains).  I haven't had a chance to test Fi in the Northeast Kingdom, but it's done well in the Champlain Valley.

Things I've learned so far:

• On long car trips, if I'm going to use it to provide directions, I need a car charger.
• Incoming calls appear to continue be routed through Google Hangouts.  Thus, my laptop rings, my tablet rings, and finally my phone rings.  This isn't really a bad thing, but I could wish that it rang my phone before it rang my tablet. 
• I can send texts with the Messenger app, and they are received by the other party, but return texts are routed through Google Hangouts; that is, they never appear in Messenger.  This is actually a Good Thing (tm) IMO, because I like Hangouts and want all of my SMS history there along with my hangout history, but it's a little weird.

Vermont college graduates staying in Vermont, sort of

This is an old report from VTDigger on Shumlin asking college graduates to stay in Vermont for jobs, but it's been rattling around in my head.  

Typically, the concern in Vermont is that our young folks raised in the state are leaving the state.  The study being done at St. Michael's doesn't really help with that question, because only 20% of their undergraduates are Vermonters (see last paragraph in the article).  The fact that 40% of the 2015 graduating class stayed in Vermont means that we have a net gain to the state population.

The key here is that this is among graduates of St. Michael's.  Does UVM collect this kind of data, and does it show a different story?