It's snowing! We only get snow a few days a year, so this is sort of a big deal.

I wish my family weren't too poor for either proper heating or decent insulation.

I wish it weren't snowing right now, or alternatively that I weren't on a flight at 10am tomorrow.

It'd be funny if JetBlue cancelled on me. (Sort of.) That'd be my third attempted, and third cancelled, flight on that airline. I swear it's like they don't want me flying with them.

I wish that we had really high-speed rail instead of airplanes. Trains are awesome.

Mood: cold

We spoke about many things, mostly centered around bicycling (and why I haven't cycled in ages). Nasty accidents, and the best routes around hills. She's a gardener by trade, with one partner and a truck that runs on expensive gasoline.

Then we both went our separate ways, without trading names. It was wonderfully liberating.

Someone on my bus today was discussing her career with another person. Apparently, she's worked in UW Publications Services for the past 39 years. That's intense. It takes a certain kind of person to operate copy machines for nearly four decades. I don't have any fear that I'll turn out like that.

Mood: gloomy

This morning I had a dream in which I got a Facebook email that said, "Marie Vaughn has tagged you in a note!" It turned out to be a note containing a picture of a party, which happened to include me. Why can't I just forget her? It would make me saner. (And I write this on the 48, sitting in front of a woman who looks suspiciously like her. It never ends, does it?)

The bus driver today is Mr. Absent-Minded. At least it's not Ms. Hardass, the afternoon driver who is ... a hardass. That's all I can really say. She is the most uptight bus driver ever. For example, at the (southbound) stop over the 520 bridge, where the passengers have to disembark onto a traffic island, she always says "Front door service only". About ten people always get off there, and the bus is often standing-room-only, so it's pretty unreasonable. (In her defense, however, that island is short enough that the back door of a double-length bus lets out into the onramp there. But these are adults!)

I'm going to the all-church retreat at Camp Indianola next week! Expect me to be offline 20-Apr-2007 until 22-Apr-2007.

As I sit here in the library, listening to the subtle music of the floor being abraded, I write. I have nothing better to do while waiting for 300MiB of data to copy to my bulla (rfriel knows what I'm talking about, so ask him).

Some people, most notably tsukiyomijapan, are always whining about how the Metro system should have stored-value cards so that users don't have to carry about change. I agree, but there are several technical problems with that sort of thing.

In order for a stored-value card to work, the value must be stored. (duh) Early stored-value systems (ATMs in the 1960s) kept the balance on the card and phoned in updates all at once, at night, because phone charges were expensive. Of course, this allows a user to just use a magcard thingy to change the number encoded on his card and take all the fare he wants.

Modern subway systems work well with stored-value systems because each ticket booth can be in constant (or at least frequent) contact with the central database, stopping this sort of fraud.

It is possible to have a copy of the master DB on each bus, in a computer under the driver's seat, but that would be a nightmare. Somebody would have to maintain around six thousand databases. Frightening indeed.

So somehow the buses must be in constant contact with the central database, and the cards can only know what their account numbers are. But how are they going to stay in contact? Packet radio sounds like the only option. You have six thousand buses, all competing for airspace. Sounds like more fun, but it would be doable and all that. (And what about reception problems? Metro goes all over the county, so they would need a very powerful transmitter on each bus, or else a massive repeater network.)

It would be very expensive, though. All the buses would have to be upgraded and a new system would have to be put in place. Worst of all, it would be very confusing for some buses to have the SV system and others not to, so it would have to be done all at once.