Stupid MBTA

A few days ago I misplaced my CharlieCard. When it didn't show up in the usual places or the laundry, I sighed and went to the MBTA web site to figure out my options.

When the CharlieCard was introduced, one of the much touted features was the ability to register a card so that in the event of loss or theft it could be replaced. That feature has never actually been implemented.

I counted up days on the calendar. With 12 commuting days left in the month, itwas cheaper to buy a new LinkPass than to pay individual fares. When I got to Alewife this morning, I discovered that January LinkPasses are no
longer being sold, only February. These are electronic machines encoding numbers on a (dumb) smart card. Why can't they sell me a pass for the current month? Bozos.

So I put cash on my spare CharlieCard (and how do I get another one, anyway? Mine was handed out at a T stop.) More cash than I originally paid for this month's pass, I might add. And if I did not have a spare CharlieCard, I would need to put even more money on a CharlieTicket.

It used to be that monthly passes were plastic-coated paper cards with magstrips at the bottom. You could punch a hole in one and hang it off a convenient keyring or lanyard. With the CharlieCard, one is specifically enjoined from doing so, lest the RFID antenna be disrupted. Nor does the MBTA helpfully provide a hole.

As long as I'm complaining about the MBTA, let me add that the 70A bus service is usually good (although it could stand to be run more frequently in the evenings; the bus is generally full to bursting from 4:40 through 6:10 PM weekdays). However, some small subset of drivers believes that the run inbound from northern Waltham does not involve a loop which adds 10 minutes to the trip time. Theoretically the bus stops on Lexington Street near Totten Pond Road at 8:16; in practice this is anywhere from 8:10 to 8:30, with a strong tendency to be 8:12-8:15. When the loop is skipped, the bus passes Totten Pond Road at 8:02 or earlier. This is highly aggravating, especially when it happens on a day with a wind chill of -10F.

Stupid MBTA

A few days ago I misplaced my CharlieCard. When it didn't show up in the usual places or the laundry, I sighed and went to the MBTA web site to figure out my options.

When the CharlieCard was introduced, one of the much touted features was the ability to register a card so that in the event of loss or theft it could be replaced. That feature has never actually been implemented.

I counted up days on the calendar. With 12 commuting days left in the month, itwas cheaper to buy a new LinkPass than to pay individual fares. When I got to Alewife this morning, I discovered that January LinkPasses are no
longer being sold, only February. These are electronic machines encoding numbers on a (dumb) smart card. Why can't they sell me a pass for the current month? Bozos.

So I put cash on my spare CharlieCard (and how do I get another one, anyway? Mine was handed out at a T stop.) More cash than I originally paid for this month's pass, I might add. And if I did not have a spare CharlieCard, I would need to put even more money on a CharlieTicket.

It used to be that monthly passes were plastic-coated paper cards with magstrips at the bottom. You could punch a hole in one and hang it off a convenient keyring or lanyard. With the CharlieCard, one is specifically enjoined from doing so, lest the RFID antenna be disrupted. Nor does the MBTA helpfully provide a hole.

As long as I'm complaining about the MBTA, let me add that the 70A bus service is usually good (although it could stand to be run more frequently in the evenings; the bus is generally full to bursting from 4:40 through 6:10 PM weekdays). However, some small subset of drivers believes that the run inbound from northern Waltham does not involve a loop which adds 10 minutes to the trip time. Theoretically the bus stops on Lexington Street near Totten Pond Road at 8:16; in practice this is anywhere from 8:10 to 8:30, with a strong tendency to be 8:12-8:15. When the loop is skipped, the bus passes Totten Pond Road at 8:02 or earlier. This is highly aggravating, especially when it happens on a day with a wind chill of -10F.

The universe is out to get me (proof)

I and my minion just deinstalled a router. It had been serving as the entry point for a T1 line that had been decommissioned some weeks ago, and now it was time to stop sucking down watts.

On my way out of the closet, I stop at a user's desk. "Hey, did I just kill the Internet?" I joke.

tappity-tap-tap... "Yes."

Sure enough, Google wouldn't come up and he couldn't ping the outside world. How could this be? We just removed a router that by definition couldn't be used to get anywhere. Any problems should have shown up weeks ago when we brought down the T1. The universe hates me!

Then it turned out he couldn't ping anything, even the default router. Well, that didn't change. We located his outlet number, went to the wall panel, traced it down to the switch... which was right under where we pulled the router. And his ethernet cable was wobbly in the socket. After we replaced that cable, all was better. All the other cables were good.

What were the odds that I made the joke to the one person who was actually affected? The universe, it is perverse.

The universe is out to get me (proof)

I and my minion just deinstalled a router. It had been serving as the entry point for a T1 line that had been decommissioned some weeks ago, and now it was time to stop sucking down watts.

On my way out of the closet, I stop at a user's desk. "Hey, did I just kill the Internet?" I joke.

tappity-tap-tap... "Yes."

Sure enough, Google wouldn't come up and he couldn't ping the outside world. How could this be? We just removed a router that by definition couldn't be used to get anywhere. Any problems should have shown up weeks ago when we brought down the T1. The universe hates me!

Then it turned out he couldn't ping anything, even the default router. Well, that didn't change. We located his outlet number, went to the wall panel, traced it down to the switch... which was right under where we pulled the router. And his ethernet cable was wobbly in the socket. After we replaced that cable, all was better. All the other cables were good.

What were the odds that I made the joke to the one person who was actually affected? The universe, it is perverse.