A co-worker walked into the office a full three hours late this morning.
There’s a fast passenger ferry that goes directly from Vashon Island to the downtown ferry dock. Unfortunately, the boats are much smaller than the normal car/passenger ferries and can’t run on stormy days. Today was a stormy day.
Turns out that when the passenger ferry shuts down, nothing is done to replace it. He has to take the car ferry, which travels to a terminal in West Seattle, one of the more remote neighborhoods from downtown. Then he has to take the bus that runs from that ferry dock to downtown.
Since the bus service is designed under the assumption that a passenger ferry will divert most non-driving commuters away from that route, it is minimal. Smaller buses are used, service is not frequent, and there is no express service.
Bottom line is you wait most of an hour for a bus (the first one fills up and has no room for all the passengers) that then proceeds to stop every two blocks, all the way into downtown. Since the buses are crush-loaded, unloading takes longer than normal. The bus falls behind schedule, which increases passenger loading more, as passengers that would have caught the next bus catch the late one.
The excuse is that the ferries and buses are run by different agencies. While the excuse cites a truth, it’s no valid excuse. There’s ways for agencies to cooperate, if it’s important. The local political system has simply decided that it’s not important enough.
The sad thing is that so many local people cling to the myth of Seattle being a uniquely livable city. It’s sad because it’s escapism, and as such portends more decline in the local quality of life. Problems don’t vanish because you ignore them.
I remember visiting San Francisco in the late 1990’s and being shocked by the shabby quality of the parks and mass transit there. The locals shrugged off my observations as those of a bumpkin from the provinces (everyone knows that all big cities have the same sort of problems).
Well, no, they don’t. I countered that I saw nothing so shabby in either Boston or New York as I saw in SF. The response was to be taken aback. What had apparently happened is that San Francisco was coasting on its past reputation for decades and living in denial about an ongoing decline. Eventually the ugly reality hit home and San Franciscans began insisting on better.
But it took time, and things got pretty damn awful before it happened. And I see the same process happening here.
The cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which are inciting so much rage amongst Muslims can be found, among other places, on Michelle Malkin’s blog.
I normally don’t have much use for her rabid brand of neo-fascism, but this particular issue is one of those twice-daily moments when the proverbial stopped clock is correct. If only she’d get a clue that maybe that’s how us queers feel about living under a discriminatory system based on Christian superstitions….
I plan on mirroring the cartoons here when I can get together the time to code the HTML (I want to have clickable thumbnails in a nice 3x4 table).
As always, click the thumbnails to enlarge.
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Some random comments (for sake of identification, cartoons are numbered left to right, top to bottom, from No. 1 in the upper left to No. 12 in the lower right):
Update: Apparently, No. 9 is a highly-stylized depiction of veiled women. I found a translation for the caption: “Prophet! Daft and dumb, keeping women under thumb.”
… About those cartoons: are those who burn embassies in indignation aware of the aphorism about there being no such thing as bad publicity? If a big stink hadn’t been raised about those cartoons, they would have run precisely once, in a Danish newspaper most people in the world hadn’t even heard about.
I don’t know just what search parameters they were using in their address harvester, but the following spammers sure sent this message to just about the last person on earth who’d be interested in it. “Pin-point accuracy,” indeed!
From: noreply@thedtn.com Subject: Unix Administrator Positions available Date: February 7, 2006 18:24:06 PST To: n5jrn (at) mac (dot) com Dear Colleague, Unix Administrator positions that might be of interest to you have been posted on the Defense Talent Network. If you would like additional information on these career opportunities (at no cost or obligation), please click on the link below. Application Administrator (UNIX) Systems Administrator Please feel free to review similar opportunities posted, which can be found at www.defensetalent.com/TM_JobBoard_Ext.asp We hope you find this information useful. Click here to e-mail a friend about this opportunity Best Regards, David Germond, CEO Defense Talent Network Inc. 11217 Saint Andrews Court Riverview Florida 11217 dgermond@defensetalent.com 941 721 1775 www.defensetalent.com Dedicated to the defense contracting, aerospace and homeland security industries, the Defense Talent Network uses next generation technology to match employers and candidates with pin-point accuracy while providing candidates with Ultimate Candidate Confidentiality, the highest level of privacy available.
Click to enlarge.
European countries do have such laws and anti-Jewish cartoons won’t ever come close to be running in a mainstream newspaper any time soon.
Though, interestingly, they get run all the time in many of the Arab countries that are so pissed off about the Muhammad cartoons. And the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is also easy to find in the Arab world. The self-professed moral high ground of the Islamic world simply doesn’t exist.
And the anti-Semitic parallel is quite apt. The Jyllands-Posten cartoons certainly have their fans in the American neo-fascist (not conservative please, they have very little in common with traditional conservatism) crowd, as even a cursory glance at the comments in any right-wing blog mirroring the cartoons will show. Some of the “co-existence is impossible, kill/subjugate ’em all” rhetoric you see in such places is downright chilling.
This time in my own place, in my second (or should I call it my first, since I’m going to claim it as such for tax purposes) home. In so many ways, it feels right.
It didn’t seem right to telecommute for more than a few days, which pretty much means I need a place up here.
It doesn’t seem right to pack up all my stuff and move to Seattle as an only home. On my recent ten days in Portland, I kept running into things — big and little — that are simply better there.
The converse also holds. There’s just too much about Seattle I find irritating. Much of it is things I was simply resigned to during my previous stint here. Now I realize there’s no reason to put up with it.
It’s more than just one or two things: the whole culture and ethos pervading Portland is a much closer match for who I am. The only way to square lots of telecommuting being wrong with permanently moving to Seattle being wrong is to live a bi-city life for a while.
Well, I could quit the job. But it would feel profoundly wrong to do so: at long last, I’m escaping the sysadmin trap. Plus, it’ll allow me to explore my interest in photography. There’s too much about the job that is right to leave it.
While packing, it seemed very right (and a tremendous convenience) to not be packing everything, and to know that if I overlooked something, it was no big deal — I could just collect it on a later weekend trip.
The building my studio apartment is in also feels right. It was definitely worth hunting for. It was definitely worth rejecting all the unsuitable one-bedroom apartments I had the displeasure of seeing.
Today at the office, one individual, who shall remain nameless, was doing his level best to create the aural environment of a tuberculosis ward.
Have I mentioned yet that the weather recently has been cold and dry outside? Add the drying effect of heating the air to room temperature, my immune system being depressed due to the lingering paint fumes in the new apartment, and you have the perfect recipe for me spending the coming weekend sick in bed.
Times like this make me wish I lived in Japan, where it’s considered rude to expose others to your germs. If you have a cold and leave the house, you’re expected to wear a gauze mask to minimize others’ exposure.
Today was my first day of work in the new office, which is conveniently located in downtown Seattle.
Gone is the choice of having to spend time packing a lunch or putting up with whatever dismal little greasy spoon happens to be in the office park; there’s dozens of good restaurants nearby. As there are banks, shops, and any other service you can think of. What would normally be errands requiring one to excuse oneself from work become quick jaunts accomplished during lunch hour or a coffee break.
It was the thing I most enjoyed about working in the Mission District of San Francisco, and I get to enjoy the convenience once more.
It’s especially true because I don’t have a car, but it would be true even if I did: there’s more stuff within a quick walk (or bus ride) of a downtown office than there is within a quick drive of the typical suburban one. Plus, the in-city services tend to be of a superior quality; in the suburbs one is faced with many more chain businesses and fewer specialty ones.
Take the Alliance of Belltown Condominiums and their griping about nightclubs, for example.
News flash — there is this concept called due diligence on the part of the buyer. Belltown has been a nightclub district for years. If you want to maximize your peace and quiet, you shouldn’t be buying a home there.
Yes, yes, I know. The real estate agent whispered sweet nothings in your ear about the “hip” and “trendy” urban neighborhood you bought into. Part of that hipness is the nightlife. Part of the nightlife is, well, noise at night. Get a clue, idiots.
I was only looking for rentals, but I never seriously considered living in Belltown for precisely this reason. A bonus reason was that the neighborhood is significantly more expensive than other close-in areas, but I wouldn’t have considered it even if Belltown was a budget neighborhood. I want quiet, and that’s not part of the Belltown package.
Local government is at fault here, too. The rabid opposition Seattle has to any multifamily housing being built in single-family detached neighborhoods forces all new multifamily housing construction into noisier areas like Belltown.
An apartment (or condo) building is a much better neighbor to a detached single-family house than a bar or club is to a condo. The idiots who are responsible for the local land-use laws also need to get a clue.
Well, lookee here.
A local panel, composed primarily of members of the ruling elite (“citizens panel,” my keister) concludes that it’s in everybody’s best interest for the local political system to continue its time-honored tradition of gross servility to wealth and power by shoveling yet more taxpayer dollars at yet another professional sports franchise.
Cue Jim Nabors as Pvt. First Class Gomer Pyle: “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
It’s abundantly clear that this clueless fundamentalist hasn’t even seen the cartoons he’s willing to incite murder over. As the article points out:
Qureshi did not name any cartoonist in his announcement. He did not appear aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures.
I’ll add that moreover he’s unaware that at least two of the cartoons, far from being calculated to offend Muslims, are actually critical of the paper that ran the images. In effect, Mr. Shit-for-Brains issued a death threat against, amongst others, a cartoonist who called Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten “reactionary provocateurs.”
Immediately upon “upgrading” (I use the term very loosely), I began noticing a serious problem with the operation of the delete key on my laptop’s built-in keyboard.
It only works properly about 80% of the time now. The remaining 20% of key presses either do nothing or delete twice. No other key is so affected.
That was Thursday. So far, no fixes have been released. I’m beginning to suspect none will ever be.
It wasn’t too long after MacOS 10.3.0 was released that Software Update popped up with the notice that another 10.2.x update was available. Foolishly, I agreed to install it. What had been a rock-solid reliable system suddenly became erratic and unstable.
At the time I suspected this was Apple’s way of not-so-subtly encouraging me to upgrade to 10.3.0. Given the latest escapade happening not long after the new Intel systems started shipping, I’m beginning to see a pattern here: release a turkey upgrade to cripple your customers’ systems and compel them to send you money and buy back the functionality you just stole from them.
Thoughtfully, Apple provides no way to back out an upgrade. (And there’s no excuse for this; Sun’s package manager has long provided such an option.) So now I’m faced with the Hobson’s choice of either wiping my hard disk clean and doing a complete reinstall (and upgrade to 10.4.4 if I can find the appropriate packages), or just living with the problem.
Fuck you very much, Apple.
I’m sitting in my Seattle apartment waiting for Comcast to show up and install broadband Internet. Based on my past experience with such industries, I have approximately a fifty-fifty chance of anyone showing up.
If nobody shows up, Murphy’s Law states I have approximately a 100% chance they will want to reschedule for late Friday afternoon (when I’m going to be catching the train to Portland for the weekend).
Update: They just showed.
Consider this for openers. It’s hardly an anomaly. Public and private-sector scientists who discover truths that are uncomfortable to the ruling elite are often ordered to either shut up or lose their jobs. It’s a trend that has only accelerated in recent years.
The treatment the whiny conservatives claim to get in academia (ridicule, protests, disrupted lectures, social distancing, and so on) is positively petty in comparison. That’s not to say it’s right, only that being ridiculed or having one’s lectures interrupted by hecklers pales in comparison to losing your job.
It affects the media, too. A movie I recently had the pleasure of seeing, “Good Night and Good Luck,” underscores this. It tells the story of Edward R. Murrow, who is probably the best Establishment journalist the American broadcast media has ever produced. It shows the difficulty Murrow had in telling truths which inconvenienced the corporate sponsors of his program.
Far from showing how the Establishment media works, the example of Murrow shows how it doesn’t work. Journalists of his caliber are a rare thing indeed; if Murrow had to perpetually do battle with the system in order to be able to tell the truth (and ended up having his show canceled anyhow), what of the vast majority of journalists of a lesser caliber?
A media focused on telling the truth would be designed for facilitating honest journalism instead of frustrating it. Instead of being a path of most resistance that only the best can forge, it would be a path of least resistance that even the mediocre would be drawn into. (And there would be an intrinsic process to weed out those who don’t follow it.)
To whine about the antics of a few leftist academic authoritarians as if it constituted the sum total of “political correctness” is to spout incoherent nonsense.
On Wednesday, I attempted to make reservations for the train trip to Portland this weekend. I failed; there was no space available on the Sunday evening return leg. That was a surprise; it’s not as if it’s a busy holiday travel weekend or anything (and I’ve never had difficulty with such reservations before).
I almost gave up, but Thursday morning I decided to try again just in case there were any cancellations and some seats had opened up. They had. Which is why I’m now typing this on that very train.
Coming to the train, I had to transfer to a Union Station bound bus at the downtown transit mall. I waited and waited, but none came. A #17 bus (which goes within about four blocks of the station) approached. I decided that if it stopped at the next shelter, I should probably take it. It did, so I ran down and I did. No Union Station bus ever passed the #17, or passed me while I was walking the remaining four blocks to the station.
I have no idea as to what’s up with all that. Maybe Tri-Met had discontinued signing buses that way. Whatever was up, my decision that such a bus wasn’t going to come is probably another part of the reason why I’m here.
Believe it or not, I managed to score a table seat for the trip back up. There’s only two of them per car, and usually they are reserved for families. They’re also by far the best seats if you want to type at a laptop. I wasn’t assigned one for the trip down, but managed to snag one in an empty car reserved for Tacoma passengers. Since there weren’t enough of them to fill the car, I got to keep the seat all the way down.
That set of four seats I had entirely to myself. Not surprisingly given my adventure in making reservations, such luxury is denied to me this time: the train is sold out.
As for the trip itself, nothing new. Yet another demonstration of how Seattle is both counterculture and nature deprived compared to Portland. Increasingly, however, I think it unlikely I’ll move back to Portland because of the yearly grass pollen allergy hell. It’s a pity that a place otherwise so ideal has such a glaring problem, but such is life.
That doesn’t mean I have any plans to sell the Portland condo and buy in Seattle. I want to stay invested in real estate, and I’m pretty much convinced that the Northwest city I want to live in is neither Seattle nor Portland. Since whatever I’d buy in Seattle would probably be doomed to become a rental in a few years anyhow, what’s the point of paying two extra sets of closing costs and ending up in essentially the same boat?
That’s especially the case given how I’m still less than 100% certain about the Seattle job, A number of employees have left for greener pastures since I’ve started. It could just be folks cashing in on lucrative job offers now that the high-tech economy is starting to heat up, but then again it might also be folks reading the handwriting on the wall about the future of my current employer. The easier it is to bail out of Seattle should things go flooey, the better.
My office is about a half-mile from the train station. Instead of worrying about catching a bus or a cab, I simply walk there.
On Thursday, the thought crossed my mind that I shouldn’t ride my bike to work tomorrow. Then it hit me: one of my perks is, in effect, free secure bicycle parking near King St, Station. Why not just leave the bike locked in the basement over the weekend? Then when I arrive in Seattle, just walk to the office, retrieve my bike, and ride home. No need to wait in line for a taxi or deal with Seattle’s substandard (especially late nights on weekends) mass transit.
I’ve mentioned my feelings about the place and the job there. There’s a third, more sinister reason: global politics.
The US ruling class has done so much to piss off the rest of the world since 9/11 that a significant motivator exists for further terrorist attacks. It’s reasonable to believe that those undertaking the attacks will attempt to upstage previous ones, including the attacks on 9/11.
There is probably going to be a new attack somewhere in the US, If completely successful, it will make 9/11 look like the good old days when folks were naïve enough to think that an attack which killed “mere” thousands and destroyed “only” three major buildings was a huge deal.
It’s already been established — by virtue of being the target of a planned attack (a foiled one on the Space Needle) — that Seattle is seen as a target in the minds of some. Given that, I’d just as soon live a little more out of harm’s way.
For the time being, I can take some solace in the fact that, whatever the visibility of Seattle, it’s probably a lower-priority target then Washington, DC, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Chicago.
When I first heard murmurs about militarizing the US/Mexico border, my first thought was about what this might do to all the non-human species in the area. Turns out my suspicions were correct; a number of animals are going to have their mobility impaired. Not only that, constructing the thing is going to place at least one ecosystem (the salt marsh on the border between San Ysidro and Tijuana) in jeopardy.
Yet all one usually hears about it are how it will control people. Humans aren’t the only species of animal on Planet Earth, but we sure act like it.
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