DHS teacher Chris Billingsley writes in…

Attached are some pics of students using your blogs. …Students were suppose to post comments using my email address. All found interesting stories on all three blogsites. I hope to have all comments posted by Wednesday.

Many students replied to your recent comments on their trip to the Capitol.  You can read through them HERE and HERE.

Anne writes in…

Change for Haiti at Oakhurst Elementary a Huge Success!

The final total for the Change for Haiti collection is $2,320! We can purchase TEN Schools-in-a-Box to help set up temporary schools for 800 kids in Haiti. At Community Circle on Friday, March 12th, Oakhurst Elementary will present a check to a UNICEF representative. The UNICEF representative will bring a School-in-a-Box to show the kids exactly what they raised money for. Great job and tremendous thanks to all the kids and parents of Oakhurst Elementary for their generosity!

As promised, here’s the follow up from last week’s post “Daytrippin’ – City Edition“, wondering where you like to go when you need to get away from the Atlanta metro for a few hours, or perhaps a whole weekend.

Last week focused on towns and cities.  This week let’s discuss more rural destinations.  Secluded cabins, hiking trails, campsites, mountain biking trails, fishing spots.

Where do you go when you need a break from civilization?

This morning’s AJC reports on Atlantic Station’s new pay-by-phone parking meter called “Parkmobile” and predicts that such an effort might “herald wider adoption in Atlanta”, though does elaborate on why.

Decatur uses a rival company with a more excited name, MobileNOW!.  In the article Assistant City Manager Linda Harris states that Decatur is “is happy with the rival system it has tested and is working on making it permanent.”

I don’t park all that much in downtown Decatur, so I recognize I’m probably not the right person truly evaluate this technology.  And I certainly think there’s a future in parking meter technology that automatically deducts funds via a cellphone, but I don’t feel like we’re quite there yet.  At least for the casual user.  The current technology demands a lot more time and energy to register and use the cell phone system, than to just use a quarter or go on looking for non-metered parking. But maybe it’s worth the effort for those hardcore Decatur street-parkers, once up to their ears in quarters.

I’d be interested in hearing more points of view on this, especially now that we’ve had a bit more time for people to try out the new meters.