Historic

After watching the inauguration of the new President on T.V., I began to realize how historic this moment is. It is the only time in history you will ever hear Verizon literally begging people NOT to send picture messages. Apparently they can't deal with the concentrated cellular demand in one location. I wonder if the million people they show in their commericials following you around as part of "The Network" have problems calling each other because of their concentration. Seriously, if they would all take their cellphones home - your rate of dropped calls would drastically go up.

It was also historic because it finally proves my theory that Dick Cheney is in fact the evil Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life" back to bury the banks and building and loans. Especially today with his new wheelchair. Note resemblence below:

Furthermore, somehow 2 million people got the day off work. I mean seriously how many people could really pull the "uh ... I'm sick the Tuesday after MLK" trick? That has to be a record. Also I would love to have covered the traffic in D.C. today. D.C. traffic is agonizing. Today it must have been historically bad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that Obama is the new president. I just feel that celebrating the fact that somehow against all odds, a minority became president is, in fact, sad. Because it shouldn't have been that hard, taken so long nor be deemed so unlikely. That the right person will be elected blind to any affiliation is the ideal we uphold - anything less, we should by now reject. The fact that reality is far different is pathetic and I refuse to celebrate that. Historic would be if, for once, we didn't care what race, religion or background the president was and no one made a comment pro or con about any of those attributes.

I will not deem this day historic by the colour of his skin, but in retrospect, by the content of his presidency. If in 4-8 years he does lead this country to better foreign, economic and domestic policy - this inauguration will then be historic. I believe he will lead that way but based only on his character.

Grr... of the Day

I have recently realized that my caffeine dependence has become out of control. Without coke (-a-cola) , I fail to function and my entire day is shot to hell. However, I believe the fates are conspiring to deprive me of my caffeine. Today, the pop machine was sold out of all caffeinated variants of soft drinks. In my desparation, I turned to a cup of coffee (which I rarely drink). I turned it on and it exploded. Sparks flew all over the place. Being an Electrical Engineer, I began to investigate and found that a spider had somehow used it's web to tie the ground and hot contacts together and the heat generated had melted the contacts together and blown a fuse. Unfortunately, none of that heat had affected my coffee which was still cold and now possibly contains a drowning, electrocuted spider. Is it sad I still want to drink it?

No politician will read this but...Invest in Trains

I am no economist but I think the solution to our current economic crisis is to invest in trains. In the Great Depression, some of the more successful programs were those that were targeted at rebuilding the nation's infrastructure and creating new jobs. Labour and resources are probably cheaper right now and the political appetite for change is rampant. Today the Acela Trains in the North East are capable of much higher speeds if only the tracks were upgraded to handle them - that would be a great first step.



But I think the benefits go further than that. Today air traffic control is a nightmare all along the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada because the airspace is overcrowded. The result of overcrowding is overscheduling more flights than airspace allows around NYC airports like Newark resulting in a third of flights being delayed and thus this proves demand for travel is strong. Building better, faster train capacity like Japan's new highspeed version, shuttling within the overcrowded, under-served corridors could alleviate air congestion as well as interstate traffic. This could also reduce emissions by nearly ten times that of flying.

The classic argument in the US is that Americans don't like to travel by train. Well recent polls in North Carolina show support growing for at least public transportation. But bloggers like the Anti-Planner raise good points. To where do we build these trains and what do people do when they get there. Usually the train stations are in obscure places without public transport and you need a car to continue to your journey. I have this problem with the Raritan Valley line of the NJ Transit as it drops me off in Suburbia. Additionally, it is Diesel powered and not allowed to travel through the tunnel and therefore I have to switch trains to get into NYC and eventually take a cab ride in Raritan.

So then, for the long hauls, why don't we build more Auto-Trains that can carry vehicles with them. Apparently, the one that is operational is Amtrak's most profitable line. Of course we need to understand the market for the train locations, lest we suffer the fate of the Rochester - Toronto ferry that I took a few times, but which ultimately went out of business because of lack of Torontonians eager to visit the fabulous city of Rochester*. But I believe there are legitimate markets out there that could easily make the case for inter-city train travel.

Of course no politician will ever read this. Nor will anyone care long enough to do something like this. It would be a huge capital project requiring so many governing bodies to agree - most of whose political ambitions will be satisfied before the first piece of tack is laid and some other politician will come in and can the idea. So alas, there will be no Train Station Nation, but I think we'd be better for it.

* Apologies to Xerox and Kodak - but did you found your businesses on taking and photocopying colour photos of the Toronto skyline?




Grr of the Day...

I have a tire that hates me. It is the rear driver-side tire and it is losing air. Or I am losing my mind and it is filling it with air. Two months ago it was leaking air and finaly burst. I bought a new tire and had it replaced. A week ago it was flat again and so I took it in cursing my luck that I must have drove over another nail. Except that the repair place can't find anything wrong with the tire or the rim or the valve-stem. I bought an air compressor just to be sure and pumped it up. Unfortunately I believe the gauge on the air compressor is broken and I seem to have over-filled the tire and it must have popped a seam and gone flat again. I have taken it in for repair to a different shop and yet again they can find nothing wrong with it. I have come to the obvious conclusion that I have pissed off a two-tonne poltergeist that sits in the back seat sometimes to annoy me and then subsequently leaves when I take the car in for repair.

Choose your own adventure

In way, I think life is one big choose your own adventure book. You gather a little bit of storyline and reach a fork in the stream. You then jump to a page based on your best guess, only to read ahead that you chose the stream where the cannibal pygmy natives* hunt their prey. You then get angry at the book because, well, otherwise you only have yourself to blame; after all it was your choice! Then, of course, you try to fumble your way back to the decision point and chose a new path, because it is pathetic to accept that as you end. You never really make it back but you reach another equally interesting fork in the road and make your best guess. Lather Rinse Repeat.

I am kind of at the stream where three forks combined and formed a raging rapid that is barreling down in one direction. I have no reason to, but my instinct says, do I have to be on this raft? I could pretty much get off now and well choose any other land adventure I want. I just don't want to meet the pygmies as I believe the last few years have fattened me up and made me tasty.

There are many cliches about how to deal with the decision making process. There is the "life is about the journey not the destination." cliche. Well that's good, since the ultimate destination is death. I also love the "oh stop strategizing about the future and live in the moment" philosophy. In order to live in the moment, you have to be somewhat stationary. I would like to those live-in-the-moment types smell a rose in a level-five turbulent rapid. Finally, there is the "take each day as it comes". Well that is like waiting for the pygmies to find you!

So how do you slow down life in order be able to sit and think about the future before it is already happening to you? I guess I just got a piece of good advice from Team:
"Do not switch around your life for constraints that do not exist." There is no real reason for me to get off the raft yet and I have time before the rapids subside. They way you slow things down is by waiting to gather information before you reactly drastically to drastic changes in your life.

* no offense to cannibal pygmy natives. Their adventure book might equally end in a village of a savage social society hungry to burn their way of life at the stake.


Grr... of the Day.

I have these incredibly noisy wipers that sound like a banshee on a bender. To make things worse - they are "rain-sensing" wipers. Every time a butterfly flaps water on its wings these demon wipers begin to wail. So, being in Toronto, I decided to buy new wipers from Canadian Tire which I boasted to everyone would have exactly what I needed. I looked up the wiper model from the catalogue for my car and even stood in line for the part representative to tell me I picked the right ones. Satisfied I went home to put them on. After deciphering from the graphics that there were 3 kinds of wiper brackets and trying for an hour, I am convinced my prissy German car has a 4th kind not covered by the 3 brackets. I subsequently proved this after the wiper bracket broke in half on my test run. I asked the part dealer why this would happen and he indicated that the part was certified for my car but that didn't mean it would fit.