Least Significant Bits

Tri-Met is an entertaining way to get to work, most of the time.

Tri-Met is considerably less expensive than driving. Suppose your car consumes just under one gallon of gas completing a long, almost 20 mile one-way commute. These days, people feel lucky to find gas for $2.39/gallon. A Tri-Met all-zone fare is a mere $1.70. That's entertaining!

Tri-Met requires no mental energy, other than boarding and getting off, and is much more relaxing. Why worry about dodging out-of-control motorists on the highway when you can catch up on reading?

Tri-Met is infinitely more social than a single-passenger car. It probably beats most biking situations as well. Uh, most of the time. People seem a lot more competitive and cutthroat during rush hour, and sardines only look cozy. Nonetheless, there are some very colorful personalities to be found riding the bus. Simple openness can attract conversation from the strangest of the strange, some who discuss their psychiatric medications. There is also no shortage of attractive women. :-)

Tri-Met encourages physical activity. Rather than walking a total of 50 feet from your front door, to your car, to your work, Tri-Met can require jaunts of several city blocks to get between stops and destinations. Particularly in suburbia, stops tend to be fewer and farther between, and one can end up walking much greater distances.

Tri-Met is extremely slow. This is to be expected given how frequently the bus and MAX stop. What takes 30 minutes by car takes 90-120 minutes, including walking and waiting.

If there are clear-cut routes to your work destination, and the extra transit time isn't a problem, Tri-Met is highly recommendable, if only one day a week.

I am so bored!

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I spent the weekend in Seattle, sort of a special event for Paul's birthday. Paul, Andi, myself, and both of Paul and Andi's cats traveled Friday night to Lindsay Brown's apartment in Lynnwood.

Read the whole story, and check out the photos.

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Despite the fact that blogs are rarely more than a personal diary, names like "The personal diary of John Doe" just don't work. Your blog is individual, unique, and worthy of attention, so damnit, pick a name that shows it! Most wind up sounding very pretentious, but maybe I just haven't figured out how to selectively interpret blog titles vs. the rest of the internet.

So what are blogs really useful for?

• Socializing, something I'm terrible at. Although here it's important to know people who keep blogs, and there's nobody who I know keeps a blog who I desire to socialize with, at least not right now.
• The Lazy Man's Personal Home Page, when you want things to appear recent and well-maintained, but don't want to spend very much time doing it. This is more my goal. :-)
• Introspection, as a substitute for a more traditional diary. These blogs aren't often meant to be read by anyone other than the author, and serve as an articulation buffer for the author's conscious loop. But beware information leaks: anything that was written was meant to be read.

The ALA president misses the point in his rant too, but someone like that has got to be more perceptive than what he expresses in the article, and is just trying to be provocative.

I haven't given up yet!

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