Some thoughts on transportation

Last weekend I was able to take a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. Here are a few of my thoughts from the trip regarding transportation.

1. SFO - San Francisco International Airport.
My only other experience with this airport was when I flew here from Salt Lake City, Utah, to connect to a flight to Munich, Germany last December. I remember being appalled at how disorganized the airport seemed and how far I had to walk to get to my connecting flight. It turns out there is an electric train in the sky that circles the entire airport and makes it relatively easy to get around. So what was a "wag of my finger" has turned into a "tip of my hat" to SFO, with the caveat that they need to advertise the train a little more clearly to hurried passengers trying to make it to the international terminal in less than 15 minutes.

2. BART and mass transit
Outside the U.S., public transportation is very much a way of life. Growing up in the U.S. though, I very rarely had any encounter with any form of public transportation. The question of public transportation has been a tricky one in Seattle. I would be pleased if we arrived at something similar to BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This electric train system made traveling around the bay area quite simple and cost-effective, especially as gas prices continue to rise.

3. Airports
I've loved airports since I was a kid. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my dad took me flying when I was a kid. Maybe it was because there were escalators and huge indoor spaces to run around and play in. Maybe it was because of my fascination with airplanes. Whatever the reasons, I loved it.

Things have changed in the past 20 years. Security restrictions have closed off most of airports to only those who hold a boarding pass. Gone are the days where you could meet your loved ones as they walked off the jet bridge, or see them off at the gate. The security aspect of airports has made them more and more a genuinely unpleasant experience. This is really unfortunate, as I feel it would be impossible for a kid growing up today to have the same experience in an airport that I had as a kid.

No other place has the same appeal of reuniting loved ones and connecting people all over the globe. Even when you see someone off at an airport, it reassures you that they are really only a flight or two away. They really have made the world smaller. And for me personally, they bring back those exciting memories from my childhood.

Seatac's central terminal is a great place to sit back and watch the planes takeoff and land. This was originally supposed to be open to the public without a boarding pass. Security said otherwise, which is a most unfortunate blow to aviation and the public's opportunity to enjoy it. I still love airports, but it makes me sad that we're forced to give up something special in the name of security. The awe-inspiring world of aviation has been limited, and I can only hope that after another 20 years, we won't be continuing down this same path.

Google, please fix Gmail

Dear Google,

You've made good products in the past. In general, your products have a very polished feel.

Why, then, must I tolerate a change in design and functionality in this latest "version" of Gmail? Now when I click in the empty box below a conversation thread, the default behavior is to reply to all instead of reply. This has caused me to accidentally reply to dozens of people. This has the unfortunate side effect of automatically adding dozens of people I don't know to my contact list.

Google lists this as a "known issue" but I'm not sure how this could be a known issue and not simply be fixed. The workarounds are "click reply" or "use the older version of Gmail". It seems like it would be an easy fix. But then again, it's not happening to everyone that uses Gmail.

It certainly happens to me though. Maybe this is what we get for using a "beta product"...?

Hungry? Open that bag of charcoal

This is sad stuff of course, but what's with the picture? The article is about food stamp recipients starving because of rising food costs, but the most prominent item in the picture is a bag of charcoal? I think there may be more wise investments for food stamps if you're worried about starvation...

Read the article here.

German efficiency on the freeway

In the states we're #1 in a lot of things. Some good, some bad. One area where we're close to the top but need to improve is our freeways.

There are two things that the German autobahn system has figured out, which I would love to see in the U.S.

1. We already have the signs, but no one seems to get the picture. SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT. The left lanes are for passing. It's amazing how much more smoothly traffic flows in Germany, because people abide by this concept. The right lane may be going 100 km/h and someone in the left lane may be going 180 km/h, and it just works. Nothing is worse than being on a 4 lane divided highway and two cars are driving the same speed, right next to each other, making it impossible to pass. OK, OK, two trucks would be worse.


2. Areas with no speed limit. You're not near a city. You're not near a major exit. You're not ascending or descending a mountain or navigating a tricky pass. It's a straight road. You could go faster, but you see some sign telling you otherwise. It's the same sign that you saw during the dangerous areas. At least while traveling in the dangerous areas, you could understand the purpose, but now it's simply mocking you.


My mom was afraid to even drive in Germany. Now she won't hardly ever go less than 160 km/h (100 mph) when the conditions allow it. It just works here in Germany. I wish it worked in the U.S. as well. All we need are some of these signs on those nice straight stretches of highway (it tells you the speed limit has been removed):


I'd also settle for one of these babies:


Here's an actual shot of my mom driving on the autobahn:


Not bad for an 8 passenger van.

Hat tip to Google Images for making my work easier.

Buying America's Future on Credit

My 10-year-old sister doesn't get mail that often. So imagine our surprise when she was pre-approved for a credit card! I tried to convince my parents to let her get it and start building up her credit, but I don't think they bought into the idea. I suppose the "preapproval" may have disappeared when she put a monthly household income of 5 euros.

Seriously though, from whence is my sister's name appearing on the list of financial institutions? It blows my mind. Maybe we can get 10-year-olds to default on their payments and ruin their credit score before they get into middle school...

Check out some credit/debt trivia here from 2004. Personally, I've never understood how people can become slaves to their own debt, particularly when the reasons behind the debt are TVs, new cars, and just living outside one's means. Start setting aside money now for the future! Better to have interest working for you than against you.

Ring of Light of Death Revisited

I mentioned my Xbox woes in a previous blog post. After 2 years of faithful service, my roommate's Xbox 360 has encountered the same blinking red lights as mine did. Somehow we went from a situation where we were supposed to have 2 Xbox 360s to a situation where we have none.

The odds of two failing within a couple weeks of each other seem slim, right? It seems like there must be something wrong with what we are doing... But his lasted for 2 years... But wait! Then I remember that everyone at UPS knows the box and Microsoft has lost over $1 billion in repairing the consoles.

Anyway, we'll be Xboxless for 2 weeks or so. Guess it's time to be social... with someone who has an Xbox.

The UPS Store

I forgot to mention in my last post that when I went to the UPS store to ship off my brand-new-broken Xbox, someone walked in right behind me who was also shipping one. The store employee said something to the effect of "yeah we've had a lot of these go out in the last couple of weeks." When I shipped some things back from Washington back in August, someone was there shipping one off as well and the store employee said the same thing. Is it just me or should a store that specializes in shipping all shapes and sizes of boxes not be able to recognize that there is a particularly high concentration of a certain type of box? To say nothing of being able to identify it as an Xboxbox...

Ring of Light of Death

I succumbed to the temptation of those around me. I bought an Xbox 360. Some would consider it an impulse buy. There was some buyer's remorse. But when I plugged it in and turned it on and saw the welcome splash screen, that all went away. I navigated around the menus of my newfound toy.

I went to the system tab. It's the first tab to check out when you're a nerd. First option, set system time. Set the month, set the day, set the year, set the hour. Set the minute and the Xbox froze. Turn off the Xbox, turn it back on. Three flashing red lights.
After talking to India, they told me what I could expect on the repair process. It would take 3-4 weeks. This is what is annoying to me. With most other defective things that you buy, you can return them to the store to get a new one. Not with video game consoles (at least with most stores). And they won't just send me a new one. The console is treated as any other console under warranty. They first attempt to repair it before giving you a new one.

In the meantime, my buyer's remorse is back, and I have nothing to soothe my open wound. I've spent $xxx just so I could wait a month to use the product. Something needs to change with their policies so that a person doesn't have to buy a console and wait a month to use it.

And what recompense do I get for my inconvenience? A month's subscription to Xbox LIVE. Approximate retail value? $5. They have a funny way of measuring my inconvenience.

Facebook API

This year Facebook opened up their APIs to the world and challenged everyone to build custom applications. In this way, users could add what they felt was missing functionality. This leads to some really cool possibilities in rapid application development (RAD), many of which we see in mashup-creating sites such as Microsoft Popfly.

However, the problem I have with this system is best shown in a graphical format (to the right). It seems every time I login to Facebook, I have to decline requests to add applications.

Facebook has introduced a technological "advancement" and now it's up to us to deal with it, like it or not. I really do like the idea but I hope that Facebook will innovate a better management solution than this.