Austin Traffic updated

My company Kerlmax just updated its Austin Traffic iPhone web app. You can read about the changes on the Kerlmax Blog.

Austin Traffic optimized for iPhones

My company Kerlmax has a just released its first product! It is a free iPhone web application titled Austin Traffic.

The app lists known traffic incidents on Austin's roadways and groups them by some of the major thoroughfares (well, the ones that I often use). It's a work in progress. I plan to update the generic icons, show the time of the incidents, and format them a little better.

If you travel through Austin a lot I hope that you find this web app helpful. Even though it's designed for the iPhone, it still works with desktop browsers (although it might not look as nice in Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Coming soon…

I've been working on a side project for a while and it's almost ready to be revealed.

I have started up a small business named Kerlmax to sell Mac software. I wanted to finish this a long time ago but got distracted by several things (a big one being the wedding). Running a one man shop has required a lot of work and that's just to get it started!

I'll post more details later.

The Jetta has retired

About a month ago (can you tell I'm catching up on my posts?) I decided it was time for a new car. My Volkswagen Jetta's track never was never great and after nine years, I was ready to part with it before I needed to pump even more money into it for repairs. Enumerating all of its issues could be the subject for several posts and I'd rather not think about them anymore. My family has had a lot of Toyotas and they have all been very reliable. The Toyota Camry was at the top of my list for the Jetta's replacement and that's what I ended up getting.

I purchased the Camry from a dealership in South Austin which is close to my office. They gave me a insultingly low trade-in offer for the Jetta so I decided that I would sell it myself through craigslist. On the day that my new car was ready, I had driven into work and left my Jetta in the office building's parking garage overnight as I got a ride from a friend to the dealership. The next day as I was walking through the garage, I looked over at my old car from a distance and noticed the window looked like it was down. I almost kept walking in to work but it was just too odd that I would have forgotten to roll up the windows and I started walking over to the car. After getting a little closer I saw broken glass on the ground. Someone had broken the passenger side window and stolen the radio! I was glad that I had already taken everything out of the car to sell it but pissed off that this had happened. All I could think of was how difficult it would be to sell in its current condition. It turns out it didn't really matter that much. I put an ad on craigslist late at night and by the next day I had about 30 inquiries or offers for the car. So by that weekend I had sold the Jetta without needing to fix the window or replace the window. What a relief.

So far the Camry has been wonderful. There is one issue where the leather on the door panel is bubbling out as if they didn't apply enough glue to the backside but I plan on getting that fixed soon. Other than that, I'm really happy with the purchase but I do sometimes miss the standard transmission of the Jetta.

The Bats of Round Rock

It's fairly well known that Austin has a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that live under the Congress Avenue bridge. What you may not know, and I didn't either until about a year ago, is that there is a bridge in Round Rock with its own bat colony. At Interstate 35 and McNeil Road, just south of the Highway 620 exit, you can watch the bats emerge just before dusk.

On June 11th, Carrie, our nephew Ronnie, and I spent about forty-five minutes waiting for the bats to emerge from the bridge. I thought they were going to come out sooner but luckily we had a football to throw around and pass the time. It was truly an amazing site seeing so many bats flying through the sky. You can view more pictures of the bats here.