Friday April 20, 2007

I'm currently about 60 feet under Market Street in downtown San Francisco, inside a BART station. But I'm connected to the wifi_rail network with 5 bars. I haven't fired up any YouTube streams yet but for IM, twitter updates and ...blogging, this is groovy; I'll take it!

I haven't seen any official announcements about BART's wifi system but as a serendipitous user, I hope it's here to stay. In fact, I hope it's extended to cover the track between stations, the transbay tube and the east bay stations as well! Maybe I'm being a little over-appreciative (greedy).

bart   wifi   wireless   commuting   twitter   blogging   san francisco   east bay  

Thursday April 12, 2007

This morning, I was chasing down a bug in some python code, fatal errors like this

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 193: ordinal not in range(128)

Working on that over breakfast made me kinda late and I needed to drive into town today 'cause tonight I'm gonna see some friends from the old school. I'm gonna be late! I probably won't be able to pick up any carpoolers.

I rolled into the carpool pick-up near the Orinda BART station, waited a few minutes and promptly got two riders. The radio was warning about an injury accident on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge... darn, I'll be late rolling into The City. Well, I get to The Bridge and alles goot. I made into San Francisco in good time and got to what I needed to do. It's great when things work!

software   bugs   python   commute   traffic   bay bridge   bart   carpool   orinda   san francisco  

Thursday March 29, 2007

I wasn't in the station long enough to use it but my laptop picked up a signal from Wifi_Rail_BART at the Embarcadero BART station. Hmmm... perhaps this is a new service that BART is rolling out. Now if they'd just install access points uplinked to EVDO connections on the trains, that'd be awesome! I'd heard that there were RFP's out last year from Amtrak to provide WiMax to the Capitol Corridor line, that's cool. But there's a much larger population of BART riders who I'd imagine would be as grateful as I would be to read feeds, mail ...and access source control.

bart   wifi   commuting   mass transit   wireless   evdo   wimax  

Thursday April 20, 2006

I suspect I'll be opting to casual carpool more often with BART eliminating free parking at the Contra Costa county stations I frequent. That could raise my already-not-inconsequential commute costs 15%. And how timely. Gas is already exceeding $3/gallon and the chatter on the radio is to expect $4/gallon! In that scenario, I wouldn't be surprised to see carpool drivers putting a cup out for the riders as their fuel prices put them in the squeeze. Meanwhile, the Big Oil Companies are ringing in record profits...

One possible ray of light for the BART ride option is the report of WiMax service coming:

WiMAX is similar to WiFi but can carry signals across greater distances. WiMax is also being considered by Silicon Valley public transportation officials (free registration) who want to let passengers browse the Internet on local train systems like BART. They want to run a test from July to December. WiMAX, they believe, might be a better technology to do hand-offs as the train rushes through various wireless coverage zones. read on

Maybe the price hikes will help them pay for a software test harness; BART's bugs have rendered the system unusable in the past.

commuting   bart   gas prices  

Wednesday May 26, 2004

The 540i interior is relatively cramped compared to some of the other rides I've had lately but the seats are still fine enough. Ya know, BART's seats aren't bad by public transit standards but the leather seats in this ride will beat that anyday. ( May 26 2004, 11:34:17 PM PDT ) Permalink

Monday May 24, 2004

And the comfy leather upholstery was certainly a big step up from other recent rides, sometimes casual carpool just rules! Check out the BMW interior. Next year for my birthday, can I get one of these? I'd like the black exterior, tan interior, please. ( May 24 2004, 09:35:57 AM PDT ) Permalink

Friday February 27, 2004

Rode in the backseat of a white late model Ford Expedition with Don Imus going on about.... nothing in particular. Driving and weather conditions were good as was my timing.

The minute I stepped into my office, umbrellas were abloom outside as the rain starting coming down. ( Feb 27 2004, 09:00:34 AM PST ) Permalink

Thursday February 26, 2004

After yesterday's biblically proportioned downpour, it was nice to wait for a pickup in sunny (albeit partly cloudy) weather. Yesterday, the freeway was locked up with solid accidents and general bad-weather chaos; seemed it was a definitely a BART day as the carpool line was empty. So I was attentive this morning to the radio reports for weather and traffic conditions, everything sounded good.

Waited in line about 10 minutes before for the 8 people ahead of me to get picked up, and then the Durango arrived. The same radio station I'd been listening to earlier was prattling on with the usual morning blabber.

The going was slow through the Caldicott and to the 580 split but after that it was smooth sailing. KGO was abuzz about a backup "from the tollbooth out to the Grand Avenue exit" but there was no such thing; the approach to the tollbooth was light, the non-carpoolers weren't buried too deep at the metering lights. The incline up the bridge was slow but nothing horrible; total drive time was about 30 minutes. Grand, indeed. ( Feb 26 2004, 10:15:47 AM PST ) Permalink

Tuesday February 24, 2004

The line at the carpool was at least twenty five persons deep when I arrived. At that point, it becomes a dilemma: do I wait it out and ride in on the 'pool or do I just say "screw it" and jump on the train? There wasn't exactly a throng of cars chipping away at the line, it could be a long wait. When the rain started to come down and I realized that I didn't have an umbrella, I sez to meself: "screw it!"

I hustled into the station. From the platform, a clear view of the carpool pickup point is evident. Here it was, just moments later, there was no rain and the line looked to be about halved in size! Was it halved because others were following my example and bailing out on the line? A steady procession of cars were apparent as the BART sign flashed "11 minutes" for the next train. It now looked like those people who'd held fast were likely to get downtown before me and with more train fare left on their tickets.

Sometimes, the dice just come up snake eyes. ( Feb 24 2004, 09:37:44 AM PST ) Permalink