Well-Intentioned

This morning I got on the T and stood in front of a young woman, roughly college age, who asked me if I wanted to sit down. I didn't think I was looking particularly old today, but I didn't want to shoot down her intended good deed, so I thanked her, said it wasn't necessary, and that I was only going two stops to Sullivan. But it didn't exactly make me feel young...

Retro Tech

I have car things to share, but I haven't had the time to prep them. Meanwhile, I saw this person on a bus last week, sporting a vintage Walkman radio headset:

That thing has to be at least 20 years old, right? My recollection is that the yellow-and-gray "sports" style Walkman stuff was popular in the mid-'90s. It's kind of impressive that it still works. And props to her for keeping it solidly retro.

(Note: I didn't obscure her face because she was already turned away from me and is not, in my opinion, readily identifiable.)

Ice Cream Monday

As a public transit rider, I see pretty much the entire spectrum of human behavior. After more than three decades I'm not often surprised by something I see, but it still happens.

This past Monday I was coming home from work via Davis Square. It's not my usual route, but I'd chosen not to wait around for my usual bus, which was running behind. As I was standing outside the station, I noticed a sound like that of a spoon clinking on glass.

I looked around, trying not to be too obvious, and eventually discerned a woman sitting on a bench, eating ice cream from a glass bowl. As I watched, she finished, wrapped the dish and spoon in a cloth, and put them into her backpack.

I considered the possibilities and came up with: either she's an extremely zealous environmentalist who can't abide the waste of a cup for her ice cream (in that case, why not just get a cone?), or she had swiped the dish from the nearby JP Licks. I kind of prefer the second option.

Angles

Now that I've ridden on the T's newest buses for a while, I have one small complaint: the seats are not as comfortable as the ones on the older buses. It might seem a bit silly so declare a slab of hard plastic less comfortable than a different slab of hard plastic, but there is a bit more nuance to my argument. They've messed with the geometry.

The angle of the seatback is tilted slightly further back. I didn't check them with a protractor, but I can feel the difference. But worse, the seat bottom is angled slightly downward from back to front, which was not how the older bus seats were shaped. Combined with the back angle, this causes a feeling that you are going to slide down and off the seat altogether.

I don't need the bus seat to encourage my body to slouch; I can handle that by myself if I feel like it.

Going Underground

Every day when I leave work, I walk past the entrance to the tunnel in Harvard Square that the MBTA buses use, and every day I have to resist the urge to walk down it instead of going around the corner and walking one more short block to the proper entrance that pedestrians use.

I did walk in the tunnel once, a long time ago, but I walked out of it after getting off a bus, when I knew there were no other buses coming up behind me. Obviously pedestrians are not supposed to do this; there are signs posted saying not to. What can I say, I have moments where I get bored easily and think of doing something spontaneously. I didn't do it to defy the sign, I did it just because I was curious. It doesn't happen as much as it used to, which is probably better for my longevity.

When I get to the bus boarding area in the tunnel, I watch the buses come through and stack up, waiting for the first bus to finish boarding, and I wonder how the tunnel never got widened enough so that buses might be able to get around each other. Am I the only one who thinks about such things?

Car Stuff: Random Sighting #39

We were going to have a car this week, weren't we? Right, I have something for that, once again courtesy of A Proper Bostonian.

PB spotted this 1970 Buick Riviera several weeks ago on Beacon Hill. It definitely has some rough edges (the bumper is supposed to follow the pointed contour of the trunk lid), but it's possible this is someone's daily driver. I have always preferred this generation of Riviera without a vinyl top, but I have to admit this blue and white combination looks really good.

1970 was the final year of the second-generation Riviera design, which stretched back to 1966. That original car is one of my favorite General Motors cars, and one of my favorite car designs from the 1960s, and I have reserved a spot for one in my Fantasy Garage. As the end of the decade neared, GM tried to adapt the Riviera from more of a gentleman's sporty car to the growing trend of 'personal-luxury" cars, gradually adding more visual bulk to its styling.

I think this profile shot offers some clues as to the direction Buick would take the Riviera's styling with the 1971 redesign (the controversial "boattail" that we will discuss at some point). This is still a nice-looking car, but I prefer any of the earlier years of this design, even the 1968-69 models with their more awkward front end.

Retro Video Unit (7/17/15)

I completely forgot that this was supposed to run last week, and since no one bothered to point that out to me, you got nothing...

I enjoy posting videos by obscure bands because I've always been attracted to what's below the radar and out of the mainstream. To some degree the music video era blew up my spot, so to speak, because any kid who happened to be sitting at home watching MTV (or, heavens help us, VH1) on a Friday night might have seen clips like this one dozens of times, and even might have liked a song enough to go buy an album by a semi-obscure band like The House of Love. Still, that probably didn't happen much.

I liked the band enough to buy a couple of their albums (and I still have them). The video's all right, but what I really like about this song, what I've always liked about it, is the production. That may be approaching a High Fidelity level of music-nerdiness, but that's how my brain works, and I'm way past the age where I might have apologized for it. So, please enjoy "I Don't Know Why I Love You" by The House of Love...



Hey, how about a bonus clip to make up for not posting this last week? Here's another good song by these guys, "Shine On."

Adventures in Mass Transit: Detours and Poor Decisions

This week I've had some rough commutes to work. Things haven't been too bad since I started commuting again, but at the beginning of this week Webster Avenue, the primary route between Union Square and Central Square, was closed for repair work, and traffic was being detoured along Washington Street in Somerville to Beacon Street near the Cambridge line (and then through Inman Square). The 86 bus run is already pretty slow in the morning, and all the additional traffic made it much worse.

I had no idea how long the detour was going to be in place, so on Tuesday I went the same way and had another abysmal ride. On Wednesday morning I checked Google Maps for traffic conditions before leaving the house and ended up taking a different route, catching a bus to Medford Square where I switched to the 96, which runs through Davis and Porter and all the way into Harvard Square. But I had to wait at least 15 minutes for that bus, so my overall time didn't improve.

Yesterday I went back to the 86. The driver warned us before leaving Sullivan that the traffic was terrible, and gave people the chance to get off and go catch an Orange Line train; I opted to stay where I was, in a seat on an air-conditioned vehicle (a more pleasant prospect than a jammed train). About halfway between Sullivan and Union Square, a group of about two dozen children boarded the bus (with adult supervision). I'd estimate they were around eight years old, going on some sort of outing. They were reasonably well behaved, but the bus was still pretty noisy; I had to put away my book because I couldn't concentrate.

Also, a man behind me was on his phone, describing loudly to someone in great, specific detail how to get from somewhere in the middle of Somerville to Summit Avenue, which is near the top of Prospect Hill. He went through the directions three times and then asked, "Are you sure you want Summit Avenue and not Summit Street? Because that's at the other end of town, near Davis." He then went on to describe loudly and in great, specific detail how to get to Summit Street, also three times.

By that point I found myself feeling somewhat disappointed that I wouldn't get to find out how the Summit situation would be resolved, but a couple of minutes later he took another call and proceeded to reiterate the directions to Summit Avenue one more time, loudly and in great, specific detail. (Trivia/conicidence: a long, long time ago I lived on Summit Avenue.) Then he got off the bus.

I did eventually arrive at work, but late enough that I could take only a 15-minute "lunch" break. Today I thought I would make a smarter choice. I considered the option of taking the subway into downtown and switching to the Red Line, but it just seems silly to me to cover so much extra distance, and I'm always a bit wary of a breakdown underground, and taking this route would double the chance of something happening.

As it happened, I ended up making a different but equally unfavorable choice. I went to Sullivan and caught a CT2, which makes limited stops but stops at Kendall (where I could connect to the Red Line) on its way across the river. Unfortunately I didn't think too carefully about it, and after we were underway I remembered that the CT2 normally takes Webster Avenue. I tried to figure out what sort of detour the driver would take, thinking perhaps we might run down Medford Street behind Twin City Plaza and connect with Cardinal Medeiros Avenue to get into Kendall Square.

Nope, it went straight up Washington Street. There wasn't as much traffic today, but we still slowed to a crawl before reaching Beacon Street. I thought I could hop out at Beacon and either catch an 86 or just walk the rest of the way, but the driver would not make any stops or let anyone off the bus, since (presumably) it was not running on its usual route and there are almost certainly rules about these things. So I sat there while the bus crawled its way through Inman and continued along Cambridge Street, to the point where it was able to rejoin the bus's regular route into Kendall. All that took an extra 30 minutes.

Allegedly the road closure is supposed to last only through next week, but that means I still need to find a better, faster route to work for another five weekdays.

Vertical Ride

I'm working on the top floor of a building with six floors. For whatever reason, there is no exit access from the stairways to any floor except the ground floor and the garage sublevel. You can enter a stairway from any floor, but you can't go between floors, nor can you walk up if you happen to work on the second floor. So the elevators get a healthy workout each day.

As a result, a lot of people have to ride up to the second and third floors, and I think some of them feel at least a little guilty that they are slowing down the rides of those who work on higher floors. People are very eager to push my floor button for me when I'm boarding an elevator, and when they get off on a lower floor, they say, "Have a good day" as they are leaving. I've never seen anything like it.

There are three elevators, and one of them is frequently in use by maintenance and HVAC people. It's draped with heavy blankets to protect the walls inside. Unfortunately, the blankets are quite smelly. I don't like riding in this elevator, which I have dubbed the Smellevator. But when I push the call button, I don't know which elevator is coming (only the lobby shows the floor locations of the elevator cars), and it seems silly to wait for a different one.

Adventures in Consumer Electronics, Part 3: Untangling the Cords

When my TiVo failed, I lived a non-DVR existence by default for three weeks or so, like we all did back before these things existed. (Well, of course there was the VCR, but I doubt anyone is longing to go back to the days of that medium, recording shows on tape and trying to make sure you didn't accidentally record over something you hadn't watched yet.)

At that point I considered the idea of giving up cable TV and having only internet service. The phrase "cord-cutter" has been popularized by the media, but it's inaccurate because even if you choose to watch TV programming solely via a computer, you still need internet access, and that is usually supplied by the same provider as your TV service.

You can get an Apple TV and use it in conjunction with your iTunes account, buying season passes to only the shows you want to watch. You can also use an iPad or iPhone with AirPlay and an Apple TV to send content from a web browser (like current TV shows on Hulu or one of the networks' own sites) to a larger screen, like your TV.

But the availability of that type of content online is still frustratingly inconsistent, and access to a lot of it still requires logging in to verify that you have a cable subscription. It's complicated, even to watch a show on your computer that you missed or want to catch up on. And I'm not even the sort of person who puts on the TV and flips around to see what's on. Eventually I realized that I'm just much too accustomed to and entrenched in the habit of using a DVR to record, store, and keep track of what I want to watch.

The key piece that's missing is having web access built into the TV itself. It's surprising that Apple has not yet offered an Apple TV with a built-in browser. (I know it's possible to hack an Apple TV to add a browser, but that's not a mainstream solution.) Why hasn't this happened? It's right there, just out of reach. As I said to a friend, it seems very hard to believe that we're 20 years into the internet era and there is still no genuine, legitimate convergence between the web and TV, something that was being promised almost from the birth of the web. That feels like a huge missed opportunity.

I've also been hoping that the advent of solid state hard drives would enable companies like TiVo to be able to build and offer a next generation of DVRs that don't need traditional spinning hard drives, which would likely enable such devices to last much, much longer. In the absence of a converged TV (or attachment like Apple TV) with a web browser built in, a DVR with an SSD seems like a decent consolation prize.

Something Slipped My Mind

Seems I forgot to finish something... I had forgotten how important weekends are when you work all week. We were busy most of yesterday getting ready for and then attending an event, and today I just turned off my brain. I will get to part 3 soon (tomorrow I hope), and there will also be a new Car Stuff soon, probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

Adventures in Consumer Electronics, Part 2: We Can Rebuild It

The TiVo model I have came out in 2009, so there was a reasonable argument for upgrading to the newest model, which has four tuners (I can't imagine needing to record that many shows at the same time, but you might be recording two shows and still want to watch something else) and much more standard storage capacity. At the moment TiVo is selling that model starting at $200 for the device, plus you then have to purchase service for the device from TiVo (pretty clever business model), which costs $15 a month if you choose to pay for it monthly, $150 annually, or $500 for "product lifetime service" which covers the life of the device. There are also some current deals on refurbished products; you can get the basic model DVR (which is perfectly well feature-filled for most people) with the same one-year warranty as a new model for $50, and product lifetime service for $350.

$400 is still a chunk of money, and since I've only just gone back to work, I didn't want to have to spend that much if I didn't have to, so I decided to look into getting a new drive. A google search led me to Fix my TiVo, which has lots of troubleshooting information (sometimes the units can be revived) and links to companies that sell replacement hard drives. One of these sites has its hard drive replacement instructions online, and a look at those convinced me I could handle the swap. (For those who are not comfortable undertaking such projects, that company also offers replacement service: you box up your unit and ship it to them, and for an additional $50 they install the new drive for you and ship the unit back.)

I purchased a 1-terabyte drive (much more capacity than I had previously) and it arrived in two days via Priority Mail. A printed instruction sheet was included, along with the two Torx (hex-shape) wrenches needed to open the unit and remove the hard drive bracket. The whole process took me about half an hour total, and I was moving slowly to make sure I got it right and didn't damage anything in the process. There's no soldering required, because the wires attach to the drive via a small connector that snaps into the back.

The whole procedure was very easy, and required only the ability to follow directions, a modicum of dexterity (one of the screws is a bit tricky to get back into its hole), and enough common sense to avoid touching things that shouldn't be touched (the power supply). Total cost to me was less than $150. A smaller drive is available (500 gigabytes) though it's only $20 less, but if you're really trying to do the swap as cheaply as possible, that would be the way to go. Drives are also available for other TiVo models, and some of those cost slightly less.

The key thing to know about doing a TiVo hard drive swap is that it does not affect a device's product lifetime service status. When you reconnect the unit after replacing the drive, you have to go through the setup process as if you had a new device, but as far as TiVo is concerned it's the same unit you've had. So my revived TiVo is not their latest and greatest model, but it suits my needs, and if it lasts me another four or five years I will consider that a pretty good value. By then I'm hoping we won't need DVRs anymore; tomorrow I'll have a few more things to say about other TV-accessing devices and the state of TV services.

A Generous Fellow Passenger

This week I had what I consider a very unusual T experience. I was on my way home, making my connection to the Orange Line at Sullivan for the short ride to Wellington. There was a train coming into the station that would get me there in plenty of time to catch my final bus leg, which runs only every 20 minutes. There was another train seven minutes behind, which would get me to Wellington too late.

There were a few other people waiting near the front, and I suspected the train would be full, as it often is. I wondered if I'd be able to squeeze on. I try to board at the front of the train, because at Wellington there is only one exit and it's at the front. Sometimes, the seconds saved not having to walk half the length of the platform from a few cars back can make the difference between making the bus and missing the bus.

The train rolled in and a couple of people onboard moved out so a couple of people further inside could make their way out. As I waited, one of the other people waiting moved up next to me and closer to the doors. When the riders rearranged themselves, there was only enough room for one more person, and the person waiting moved into that space. I looked down the side of the train to see if maybe there was still a space at one of the other doors in the first car, resigned to missing my bus.

Then the person who had gotten on stepped back out and looked at me, gesturing to take his space. I was genuinely surprised; in more than 30 years of living here and riding the T, I honestly can't recall that ever happening before. I thanked him and got on the train. And I made my bus home. So thank you, sir, for your gesture of unselfishness.

Adventures in Consumer Electronics, Part 1: It's Dead. Again.

I recently endured another TiVo failure, though this time it was much more of a drawn-out process rather than a single catastrophic event. The most common problem with DVRs is hard drive failure, since the drive is working pretty much all the time, even if you are watching live TV and not recording anything else, and even, to an extent, when the DVR is "turned off."

So the drive failed, but in this instance I knew it was coming for months, because we were having random problems with recordings. The image would freeze, and then sometimes pixelate as the DVR tried to move past the problem spot. At first these were minor issues, and in some cases we could escape from them by fast-forwarding a little.

But as the weeks went by the instances got more frequent and more serious, to the point where the TiVo would have to restart itself, a process which takes at least five minutes. Also, if a show we were watching got "stuck" while we were recording another show, the recording in progress would also be ruined. Eventually we could not even watch live TV for more than 10 minutes or so before the bad hard drive caused shows to stutter and then freeze, leading to an eventual reboot. We even had to unplug it in order to keep it from continuously trying to reboot itself. Needless to say, the unwatched recordings on the drive were lost to us.

When the hard drive fails, there are two options: get a new unit, or replace the drive in the existing unit. Tomorrow I will explore those in more detail.

Car Stuff: A Flash of Red

Didn't get to do this last week, but I'm trying to get back to some sort of rhythm regarding posts. Some interesting vehicles have appeared lately, and I have been able to get pictures of most of them. However, the quality varies.

This shot was taken while we were driving, which explains why it's somewhat blurry. There's a part of McGrath Highway in Somerville that is sort of like Comm. Ave. in Allston, with a parallel strip of roadway for parking, and that's where I spotted this red Chevy.

It's a 1969 Impala Custom Coupe, which means it's an Impala with the top-trim Caprice's more formal roofline. (There was also an Impala Sport Coupe.) This model had arrived the previous year and proved quite popular. As I've written about before, by the late 1960s sportiness had largely migrated from full-size cars to midsize and "pony car" offerings, and it was being replaced by a more commodified version of luxury.

If this car wasn't red I probably would not have noticed it in time to get a photo. It looks pretty good, with the available rally wheels and white top (which I think was painted, and not vinyl), and what appear to be dual exhausts. We passed through the same area a few days later and I had my phone ready to get more pictures, but the car wasn't there. I'm still hoping to see it again.

Adjustments

I've been back in a full-time work situation for two weeks (not counting the day off for the holiday), and I am still getting used to many things.

First I had to figure out my commute. Getting almost anywhere from where we live requires taking a bus into Wellington on the Orange Line. That bus is pretty predictable most of the time, and the Orange Line runs pretty frequently in the morning. In this instance I'm going to Harvard Square, so I decided my best option was taking the subway two stops to Sullivan and catching the 86 bus. That has worked fairly well, though the 86 is a crawl in the mornings due to the volume of ridership, traffic congestion, the large number of traffic lights, narrow streets, road construction, etc. On average it took 35 to 40 minutes to go the 2.5 miles from Sullivan to Harvard Square.

By accident I left the house a bit later one day last week, and I found that the trip was somewhat less painful overall; the 86 was slightly less crowded, there was a little less traffic, and the trip took about 25 minutes. I did my trips that way this past week and it was basically the same each morning, so I will probably keep doing it that way regularly. Evening trips on the 86 from Harvard to Sullivan are also somewhat easier.

Getting up early enough to make it out of the house on time has been probably the biggest challenge. I've never had a problem getting up when I need to, but I have a hard time adjusting at the other end of the day, to get to bed early enough to get a decent amount of sleep. I'm used to staying up until 1 am or so, so trying to warp up and get into bed by 11:30 or thereabouts, and to fall asleep, is not easy. Eventually I will get tired enough that the routine will take.

My work environment is perfectly pleasant, with a lot of natural light and infrequent need for the dreaded overhead fluorescent lights. My one real issue is that the kitchen/lounge area does not have comfortable seating for eating. There is a counter, but it's on the low side, and there are no stools or chairs to use with it. There are couches and chairs, and a couple of coffee tables, but these are too low to eat on comfortably.

At my old job I was used to eating at my desk so that I could blog, read websites, and do whatever other personal pursuits I wanted during that hour. The people in my little area do not seem to eat at their desks, and as a newcomer and a temp I feel it might be overstepping for me to do so; also I try to be sensitive to the fact that food smells sometimes bother others. I would like to think that someday I might have an office of my own, but who knows if that will ever happen.

I'm scheduled to be on this assignment until some time in September. I was supposed to be starting on a work-at-home assignment, but I have essentially been "borrowed" from that until this one ends. This meant we also had to arrange for a dog walker on short notice. Our dog-caring neighbor now runs a day-care business in Somerville, so she is not available during the day, but fortunately she was able to recommend another walker who was able to step in. The dog has not been so thrilled at this change in routine, and has been somewhat less than cooperative when taken out. Due to the Mrs.' schedule, we only need a walker three weekdays, so we are all adjusting.

Retro Video Unit, Concert Edition (7/3/15)

I'm a bit behind with this one—a week behind, to be precise. Anyway, the German Rockpalast series that gave us the earlier Pretenders concert provides us with today's selection, The Police from January 1980.



While it's something of a cliche to say of any given band, "I think their early stuff was better," I would say this video makes that argument rather well.

Where Have I Been?

Oh, hi there. It's been a while. Like I said, I wasn't sure what things would be like. Almost every evening this week I have come home from work with the intention of posting something, but every night I got sidetracked, and before I knew it, it was time for bed (and that's earlier, since I need to get up earlier to get ready).

In the "old days" I was salaried, and no one really monitored my daily work activities. As long as I met my deadlines I could afford to take 20 minutes out of my workday to write a post. As a temp I'm paid by the hour, and my work area is part of an open space that I share with three other people. Whether they care what I'm doing or not, it wouldn't look good for me to be meandering from my main task, which has intermediate deadlines.

With a holiday weekend upon us, I'm not working tomorrow (Friday), and while I have some other things I'm going to try to get done, I should also be able to do a couple of make-up posts.