Technology & MSG

I was cleaning out the starred items in Google Reader and found one of Snay’s posts wherein he calculated the cost of his daily commute. He commutes via the Washington Metro system — a combination of bus and rail — at a cost of $5.40 per day.
A year later, I decided to figure it out [...]

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On Wednesday afternoon I sold my emerald green Saturn SL2 to a coworker. After a quick stop at the bank, we went to the MVA together. I signed the title over to him on the trunk lid. As soon as he got his new tags, I turned mine in. My last ride in Tai was [...]

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I was driving and saw two kids riding in the opposite direction on bicycles. One of them was talking. The other had no hands on the wheel, busy texting and not looking at the road at all. In the 20 seconds or so that he was in my immediate view, he didn’t look at the [...]

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I owe a coworker a Diet Coke for his suggestion to follow up with the landscaping company. I owe a lunch to Sharon at Safelite for her reinforcement of that suggestion. Either I’m too cynical or I’ve had bad experiences in the past.
The landscaping company that maintains the property around the office paid for my [...]

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My car — still unnamed — sustained her first injury today. I came out of the office and found a completely shattered window. Short of a hole smaller than a pencil eraser the glass was intact, just crystallized as safety glass is supposed to be. I was parked on the end of a row and [...]

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I’m a regular but infrequent E-ZPass user. I probably only use it once or twice a year, but when I do I rack up $30 or $40 worth of tolls across the East coast.
Back on January 5th, 2009 the Maryland Transportation Authority proposed raising toll rates for large vehicles. That doesn’t affect me so much, [...]

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I really don’t like car salesmen. My experience with them has led me to believe that they’re a bunch of crooks for whom exaggeration, document substitution, and lying are all tools of the trade. There are some salesmen who would gladly tell you anything to make the sale. You can’t trust people like that, yet [...]

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Over the past week or two I read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).
Why the other lane always seems faster, why we suck as drivers, how our eyes and minds betray us on the road, issues of congestion, why dangerous roads are safer, among other topics. The [...]

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I haven’t been driving as much these days which is better for my wallet. I noodled with the idea of taking the bus to work, so I did some quick calculations. It’s sad, but I determined that it is more cost effective for me to drive to work than to take mass transportation.
Bummer.
In other news, [...]

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People are going out to the movies less due to gas prices. That fact has been all over the media. I haven’t seen any stories and photos about the gas lines at the wholesale clubs, but they’re there. With gas prices hovering at $4 per gallon, people have also begun to realize the cost of [...]

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Out at Home Depot the other night I saw this dualie double parked diagonally across two spaces about 20 feet from the door. This sort of thing pisses me off and inspires me to dream about calling a flatbed tow truck (which is what you’d need to tow the beast away). If your vehicle doesn’t [...]

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While waiting at a stop light, I took a photo of a large brick building at the corner of W. Pratt and Greene Street the other morning. The color of brick is in stark contrast to the white building behind it, so much so that the entire photo looks like I ran it through a [...]

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I must have been really out of it this morning because I chose the first available space when parking in a federal lot. Despite being in unfamiliar territory, it didn’t even occur to me to look along the fence for any restriction signs. I recall seeing a lot of similar looking vehicles in the row, [...]

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“It’s like putting on a pair of pants,” commented the rather portly large-framed driver rather matter-of-factly to his passenger after stowing his briefcase and jacket in the back seat and climbing into his Mazda MX-5.
I had a hard time not laughing about that as I walked past them on the way to my car.
I’ve seen [...]

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I got a parking ticket in Federal Hill this weekend. The usual complaints about oddly worded parking signs aside, there’s no contesting that I was parked in the wrong place. I did, unknowingly, and I’m not worried. I have good karma when it comes to parking. I usually find it without too many problems and [...]

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