Mistakes cities make

When you have too much money to spend, as do bigger cities like Seattle, you are bound to make very expensive mistakes. The latest one to make to the news here is the great "high-tech" toilets that now the city is trying to auction off through eBay, but hasn't been able to find people that are crazy enough to pay 90 thousand dollars on it. Ok, I actually should be a little bit more precise in saying that it's not the city that is using eBay, but a contractor for the city that is specialized on getting rid of surplus equipment.

They are quite expensive toilet to maintain: something like US$360 a day (according to this other article on the Seattle Times). And, well, they are a public "safe and clean" place, so they attract illicit activities, like drug dealing and use, and apparently prostitution. Think that there are only 5 installed in the whole city!

Anyway, they will be gone and the 332 people that use it every day will have to go somewhere else. Perhaps to some US$16 a day port-a-potty.

And yes, this is the level of concerns that I have lately. Actually I'll have to say that lately I've been trying to work more on interesting projects at home and I think I'm close to something quite fun that uses FreeBase. I've subscribed to their modeling mailing list and that has made me excited about paying more attention to what is going on there.