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DULUTH, Minn. – A Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to driving his motorized La-Z-Boy chair while drunk. A criminal complaint says 62-year-old Dennis LeRoy Anderson told police he left a bar in the northern Minnesota town of Proctor on his chair after drinking eight or nine beers.
Prosecutors say Anderson's blood alcohol content was 0.29, more than three times the legal limit, when he crashed into a parked vehicle in August 2008. He was not seriously injured.
Police said the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower and had a stereo and cup holders.
Sixth Judicial District Judge Heather Sweetland stayed 180 days of jail time Monday and ordered two years of probation for Anderson. His attorney, David Keegan, did not immediately return a call for comment.
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Information from: Duluth News Tribune, http://www.duluthsuperior.com

SAN FRANCISCO – When an earthquake collapsed two 50-foot sections of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the 1989 World Series, the nightmares of hundreds of thousands of commuters who cross the Depression-era span each day were brought to life.
On this 20-year anniversary of the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that killed 63 people, injured almost 3,800 and caused up to $10 billion damage, the bridge reconstruction has become the largest public works project in California history and is still years from completion.
Although thousands of buildings, highway bridges and landmarks such as San Francisco City Hall have been fortified, other earthquake safety problems are far from fully addressed in this region where experts say another major temblor is certain to strike.
Some schools that the state says are at risk of collapse still have not been repaired. And vulnerable apartment buildings that house hundreds of thousands of people have not been seismically retrofitted by their owners.
Millions were tuned in on television to watch Game 3 of the "Bay Bridge World Series" between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics when the shaking began. The broadcast went dark, with the vast audience riveted to their TVs, and then sportscaster Al Michaels' audio returned with reports that a strong earthquake had struck.
"The Loma Prieta earthquake is always referred to as a wakeup call and we're fortunate over the last 20 years that we've had no other major earthquakes," said Jack Boatwright, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Much work has been done but we cannot rest in these efforts."
It took only four years during the Great Depression to build the Golden Gate and Bay bridges, but the reconstruction of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge has been plagued by costly delays and political gridlock over its unconventional design. Originally the cost was put at $1.3 billion with a 2004 completion; that has ballooned to $7.2 billion with a 2013 opening.
"What this region and the state is trying to do here is unique," said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation, who is managing the project. "We're trying to build a world class structure, an architectural icon and a seismic innovation all at one time in one of the most seismically challenged areas of the world. Because of the complexity of all of that, it's taken us a long time to do it."
Some bridge experts, however, say the decision to rebuild rather than strengthen the existing bridge was a pricey mistake.
A team of 40 researchers sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Caltrans to study the Oct. 17, 1989 earthquake's effects on the bridge recommended in 1992 that the current bridge be retrofitted, not replaced, for an estimated cost of $230 million.
But a 1996 study by Caltrans' Seismic Advisory Board disagreed with these findings, saying the cost of replacing the bridge was comparable with retrofitting it.
The new span wound up costing billions of dollars and is less quake resistant than the existing bridge, said Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
"You are going to get a bridge, in my opinion, that is less safe than the existing east span. The bridge didn't need to be replaced," said Astaneh-Asl, who was the lead investigator in the NSF and Caltrans five-year study of the seismic performance of the bridge's east span, and who submitted an alternative design after officials chose to replace it. "This replacement is worse than what we have."
The signature part of the new eastern span is a single-tower, self-anchored suspension bridge larger than any other in the world. It uses leverage to support the roadway by using a cable looped over the tower and anchored into the ends of the roadway itself. On traditional suspension bridges, like the Golden Gate, the main cables are connected to huge concrete blocks embedded in the ground at each end of the span.
If one section of the new self-anchored bridge fails in an earthquake, Astaneh-Asl said, the entire structure could fail.
But Caltrans' Ney said the new bridge is the safest of the designs that were aesthetically pleasing to local leaders and others who had a say in the final choice.
"We originally pitched a concrete viaduct bridge, which we know how to build well, and the community, leaders and the media criticized it as a vanilla design," Ney said. "If the community doesn't want it, we have to listen."
While cost and delays have been troubling, Ney said there is no question the right decision was made. "The bridge is 70 years old," he said. "It's reaching the end of its life span."

Meantime, another large earthquake is destined to occur — scientists in 2008 said there is a 63 percent probability of a comparable quake in the Bay area over the next 30 years. And the Bay Bridge is not the only complicated public safety project to move slowly.

In 2003, years after a newspaper investigation exposed thousands of vulnerable public school buildings in California, a state audit determined California schools could need at least $5 billion in seismic work.

But in many districts, expensive retrofitting projects are not feasible in these challenging economic times.

In 2006, a voter-approved measure set aside $200 million to help districts with seismic projects, but only five school districts have applied. To date, only one grant has been awarded, $3.6 million to San Ramon Valley High School in Contra Costa County to retrofit its gymnasium.

State officials who compiled a list of the 25 almost quake-vulnerable school buildings are baffled about why more districts have not sought money, which can be used to determine seismic risk or do repairs.

"We can't really speak to why schools have not applied," Eric Lamoureux, spokesman for the Department of General Services, said. "We have done significant outreach to districts about the availability of the funds."

At Oakland Technical High School the school auditorium and girls' gymnasium have been identified by the state as older building types in danger of collapse or damage during a major earthquake.

Oakland said the grant would not cover all the repair costs, leaving the cash-strapped district on the hook to complete the project.

"If you include finishing and structural work, the grant would cover only 50 percent of our costs," Troy Flint, a spokesman for Oakland Unified School District said.

Many of the structures that collapsed during Loma Prieta and Southern California's Northridge earthquake in 1994 were so-called "soft-story" buildings — those built with garage or commercial space on the first floor providing little support in a strong temblor.

While unreinforced masonry buildings have been retrofitted in San Francisco, a recent Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) study found that thousands of Bay Area residents are still living in soft-story dwellings that have not been retrofitted.

"The problem is that the economy stinks, so some of these programs people thought about making mandatory ... it's just terrible timing," said Jeanne Perkins, earthquake preparedness manager for ABAG.

Only one city in the Bay area, Fremont, has passed mandatory retrofitting for these unsafe buildings, according to the ABAG study.

Berkeley has a law mandating that owners get an evaluation and a plan to fix their buildings, but does not require that the work actually be done.

In Oakland, 26,000 of the city's 163,000 units would become uninhabitable in a 7-magnitude earthquake on the Hayward fault, ABAG's research found. Oakland has mandated an audit of its soft-story buildings.

San Francisco has the largest number of soft-story apartments, at least 12,400 multiunit buildings with tens of thousands of units, according to the ABAG study. So far, the city has been unable to find a way to mandate owners to strengthen their properties, but Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the city's Department of Building Inspection to write an ordinance making upgrades to these unsafe buildings mandatory.

"It's in process," said the mayor's spokesman Nathan Ballard. "We are convening a task force, working with building owners to ensure it's done right."

CONCORD, N.C. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit rock bottom during his last trip to Lowe's Motor Speedway. He struggled with his car, feuded with his crew chief and finished a season-low 40th in one of the most embarrassing weekends of his career.
Team owner Rick Hendrick fired crew chief Tony Eury Jr. three days after that May debacle, and things were supposed to turn around with some fresh leadership at Earnhardt's No. 88 team.
It hasn't happened.
Little has changed, at least in terms of results, in the four-plus months since. Back at LMS for Saturday night's race, Earnhardt is slogging through a 51-race winless streak dating back to 2008, his first season with Hendrick Motorsports.
He's 22nd in the standings, has five top-10s and five DNFs this season, and hasn't finished higher than 17th in the last six races.
"It's like really encouraging one day and the next day it's equally discouraging, and that gets really old," Earnhardt said Friday. "I'm about to the end of my rope on it."
Earnhardt seemed deflated as he spoke candidly about a season he has repeatedly characterized as the worst of his career. He said earlier this season that his struggles and the emotional split with Eury, his cousin, weighed heavily on his large family, and Earnhardt doesn't think he's mentally strong enough to weather another year this bad.
He could stomach it if there were light at the end of the tunnel, but Earnhardt didn't seem very encouraged about the progress of his team — particularly when teammates Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon hold three of the top five spots in the standings and are all in contention for the Sprint Cup title.
The three Hendrick cars were predictably stout in Friday's qualifying — Johnson and Martin swept the front row — but Earnhardt was 39th and said his team looked "ridiculous."
Even worse, he doesn't have any solutions.
"I've been riding it out, but there comes a point where you don't want to ride it out no more. You've just had enough," he said. "It's been so low. The highs have not been very high, and the lows have been terribly low. That's hard to want get back up and try again the next week when you take such a beating. I don't know what else to do."
It's a far cry from just two weeks ago, when Earnhardt seemed upbeat after qualifying second at Kansas. He gave interim crew chief Lance McGrew a strong endorsement for 2010 and thought his team had turned a corner.
But after leading 41 laps at Kansas, a pit road penalty took him out of contention and an engine problem later ended his race early. He was good last week at California, too, but was hit late by Ryan Newman and the contact caused a flat tire. It started a sequence of events that led to a late accident and a 25th-place finish.
"I was really upset," he said quietly. "I was really, really upset."
To the point that Earnhardt no longer even trusts his recommendation that McGrew should stay onboard next season. Hendrick said at Kansas that his plan has always been to discuss next season after this weekend at Charlotte, and Earnhardt doesn't have much confidence in his suggestions right now.
"I don't have the credentials to make the call, you know?" Earnhardt said. "If I told you I wanted to be with Lance next year, I wouldn't be telling that out of my knowledge of expertise and talent. I'd be telling you, because it's fun hanging out with him.
"I don't think I'm the guy to leave that decision up to because I wouldn't make the right one. Or there's probably better people to make it, especially in the organization. There's a lot of smart people around there. I'm just waiting for somebody to make the call. Just tell me."
Former Cup champion Rusty Wallace said he's spoken to Earnhardt and characterized his mood as "total frustration mode."

"Right now he's in this tough position because Hendrick Motorsports is so good. You got Johnson, you got Gordon, you got Mark Martin and they're running up front, and he can't get his hot rod to run up front," Wallace said. "I almost feel like this guy needs a group of bandits to let him go out in the garage all by himself and say 'Here, do anything you ... want for a month and let's see how it turns out.'"