Phoenix METRO – A first day experience and review – Part 2 of 2

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After dropping off my friend at our starting point, I decided to ride once again to the penultimate station to the north, board a south train and do the same; go to the next to the last stop on the line, and then head back north (and west) to my starting point at Encanto and Central.  Great idea, but reality has a way of messing with your plans.

Got on a very crowded train (yes, free rides I understand), to head northwest.  I heard a lot of comments that were not favorable.  You don’t get that second chance to make that first impression.

Got to the 19th Ave & Camelback station, and got off and stood back in line for the southeast train.  And stood.  And stood.  They were saying the trains came every 10 minutes, but I counted 5 trains heading northwest before the southeast train arrived.  It filled up quickly so I had to wait for another of the mythical 10 minutes.

When I did get on the train, I stood for the rest of the ride to the southeast.  I was packed in like a sardine without the benefit of the oil.  I think I became a member of several different families, just because of the intimate nature of our ride.  Actually, I’m not that intimate with any member of my immediate family.  I followed my plan, stayed intimate with many different people, and arrived back at the Encanto & Central station around 6 p.m.  We started the day around 10 a.m.

Yes, free rides, I get it.

Here’s my concern.  What does Metro wish to accomplish?  They say they want to reduce cars on the road.  Each train is made up of 3 cars that hold (comfortably) 60 people each, so each train holds 180.  That’s hardly a dent.  It sounds like a lot, but look at the stats for average folks on the road at rush hour in Phoenix.  The route of the train just doesn’t seem to take in major population centers to move a lot of people.

But here’s another thought.  There is a stop in front of U.S. Airways Arena.  It holds over 20,000 people.  Let’s say 10% of them want to ride the Metro and reduce traffic.  That’s 2,000 people to move in 180 person trains.  Let’s round up to 200 people per train, and double the trains like they did on Saturday.  400 people at a time means 5 trains.  AT 10 minutes per train, someone has to wait 50 minutes to get aboard.  In the Phoenix heat even at night?  Chase Field holds almost 50,000.  The math doesn’t seem to hold up.  The same is true for the stop in front of Sun Devil Stadium.  I was thinking of taking the Metro to the Insight Bowl game on Wednesday.  I’ve rethought that approach and will be using the parking pass I purchased with my tickets.  Sorry Metro, no reduced pollution from me.  I don’t want to try to fight my way onto a train on New Year’s Eve.

The stations themselves are minimalist.  In the Phoenix sun and heat (300 days of sunshine a year on average), they are not going to be pleasant places to be.  The sweat produced waiting for a train is going to be prodigious.  I’m wondering how those outdoor automated ticket machines are going to hold up to the sun and heat, especially trying to view their screens.  I had a difficult time on Saturday, but then again I’m tall.

Being generous, I’ll give the system a D+ rating.  First day, free rides you know.  But I don’t see this as much more than a publicity ploy to make it seem like the towns are ‘greener’ than they really are.

By the way, the newspaper and television reports were positively gushing about the new system.  However I did notice that not one of the cameramen or reporters tried to actually get on the trains with the rest of us, they got special rides without the public.

Phoenix METRO – A first day experience and review – Part 1 of 2

I wanted to use so many different titles for this post, but eventually decided to make it clear and to the point.

After four years and $1.4 Billion, yes with a “B” the METRO light rail is now up and running.  The first day it was open to the public (Saturday the 27th) a buddy and I went for a ride.  At least, that was our intention.  We wanted to start from the Encanto and Central station, ride out to Tempe and Mesa, then back to the Montebello (Christown) station and then to our starting point at Encanto.

The first five trains going to Tempe/Mesa were full when they arrived.  If the trains were really arriving 10 minutes apart (and I don’t think they were, I think it was longer), that was 50 minutes of wait time.  So finally we decided to go the other direction, to Christown, and then loop back.  Bad decision.  It took another two trains to find space to squeeze in, making around 70 minutes of wait time.  First day, free rides, you gotta figure.  But my buddy was already making comments about a bad first impression.  One thing about him, he isn’t swept up in tech and gadgets and new things like I am.  He thinks like a lot of folks think, and as the day wore on, I heard a lot more of his kind of thinking being expressed.

We got to Christown, and wisely, they make everyone get off the train.  The line was enormous to get back on.  It was lunch time and it was at least 2.5 hours of a wait to get back on the METRO.  So we decided to get some lunch, a $6.50 hot dog and a $6 dollar order of fries.  The vendors had a captive audience, though we could have gone into Christown, walked to McDonalds at the other end in Walmart and eaten cheaper.  But hey, we were riding for free, right?

The band they had entertaining had some good advice.  Take the free shuttle bus down to the next stop and get on the train there.  There was guaranteed room.  Well we couldn’t find the shuttle bus, so we hoofed it about half a mile down to the next stop, but when we saw the line there, my buddy realized he didn’t have all day like I did and needed to get back to where we parked, he had to leave.  So we found the free shuttle bus and rode it back to our original stop.  Time invested so far 3.5 hours.  Distance travelled, about 10 miles round trip total.  He was not impressed, and I felt a little guilty for talking him into this adventure.

He left, but I was determined to make the loop and luckily I had all day to try.  My solo adventures in part 2.

Blackberry Storm

I haz it.

I don’t yet completely hate it.

I’m hoping to stick with it for a few more firmware updates and hope that it solves the response time issues.  I am also hoping that it is me that has the problem with simply answering a call.  The phone rings, I press answer.  I press it again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  I try the real answer button (not the touchscreen one).  Again.  Again.  Again.  The caller goes to voicemail or hangs up.  One friend has now told me he always calls me twice.  Once for the call to be missed, and the second time hoping to get through.

I like hope, it gives me a nice warm feeling inside for reality to snatch away leaving me cold, empty, and alone.

What I like most about my netbook

The Acer Aspire One is a handy device.  It is lightweight, it sips power and with the 6 cell battery, I get almost 6 hours of battery life.  It doesn’t throw off much heat.  It is a great machine to have in the living room and available for a quick lookup of something or quick browsing session.

What makes this possible is the ability to not have to reboot the machine.  When I’m done I just close the lid and it goes into an incredibly efficient sleep mode that doesn’t drain away the power.  When I open it, it will be up and running again in just a couple seconds because it doesn’t have to boot or even resume from a disk based hibernation.

I plug it in and recharge it overnight, and each day I’ve got a versatile machine that is perfect for light use in the living room and taken with me when I travel.

Tidings of Configurations & Hacks

Image by Bibi via Flickr

I’m just wondering.  When we geeks receive new tech for Christmas, how long does it take us to look for other ways to change the configurations and how long does it take us before we start hacking into the hardware or software.

For me, the answer is about two hours.  I want to get the device up and running properly, kind of as a baseline for comparison.  I probably won’t start taking it apart in front of the person who gave it to me, but I will at least be scouring the web for ideas.

Merry Christmas and Happy Technolidays.

Help Relatives with Their Computer Problems

A good article from Lifehacker.  It is a nice step by step guide to bring you through the steps of helping out those family and friends who always hit you up for a little free tech support the minute you hit the door.  Complete with links to free software to help in the process.

But hey, we really do like the attention, don’t we?

Holidays: Help Clueless Relatives with Their Computer Problems

SkyDrive Upgrade to 25GB of Online Storage

Microsoft seems to be getting generous - which is a cause of concern.  But let's take advantage of it while we can.  You can get these beautiful 25 gigs of storage just by having a Windows Live account.  If you have an MSN account, Hotmail Account, Passport Account, or Xbox Live account, those are all also Windows Live accounts.  How thoughtful.

Online Storage: SkyDrive Will Upgrade to 25GB of Online Storage

Ravaging a Netbook

Image by Cambridge Cat via Flickr

I received a gift from some friends of an Acer Aspire One netbook computer. The computer is from a new breed of computers just hitting the market that are small, inexpensive (relatively) and designed mostly for internet use and light computing tasks. They are about the size of an average hardback book, have a small screen, and either a hard drive (like mine) or one of the new SSD, which is a solid state drive, a replacement for hard drives and silent. They do not come with a CD or DVD drive, so if you need to load something it has to be done either over the network or plug in an external drive.

They purchased this netbook for one of their children for school, but it turns out it just isn’t capable enough for what the child needs, so as a thank you for all the technical support I’ve given them for years and years, they gave me the netbook as a gift. Thank you very much.

So I did what any good geek does, I looked on the internet for the hacks that are out there for the netbook.

There are a few, but I decided to take a 2.5” 160GB SATA hard drive I already had, and replace the hard drive in the netbook with it, so I could install and run Windows Vista. I did this for three reasons. First, I’m a geek, this is what we do for fun. Second, I wanted to see if Vista would install and run OK (the netbook came with Windows XP Home), and third, I actually prefer Vista over XP.

I know that the netbook is not ideal for Vista. It has a relatively slow 1.6 GHz processor (although it is hyperthreaded), and only 1 GB of RAM (Vista really prefers 2 GB, but will run on 1).

So I went over to tnkgrl’s website where she has a video up of disassembling the Aspire One and saw how it goes. (Mind you, I started about 9 p.m. one night)

By midnight, I had swapped the drive and had Vista booting and looking for driver updates on the net. It ran fine except I didn't have sound.

I figured it was a driver issue, so I spent the next few days or so using the netbook but also looking for new drivers, getting frustrated, installing some stuff that didn't work, etc.

It turns out that in reassembling my ravaged netbook, I forgot to reconnect the speaker wires.

Goog-World vs. Micro-Side

OK, so I've had a few days of living with and checking out the offerings of Google vs. Microsoft around my blog-life.  Here's what I've found.

Google, through Blogger (www.blogger.com) is much more of a pure blogging site.  It puts up a place for you to blog away, but not much else.  They have powerful tools available where you can modify your site to a large degree and make it look like either a standard blog, or you can add in things from Google and from all over the web to make it almost anything you want - within the limits of their tools.  You can drill right down to the html code and modify to your heart's content.

Microsoft, through Live Spaces (http://spaces.live.com) is more of a social site with blogging abilities and it ties in pretty well with a Microsoft based computer (which is what got me so excited to start with).  I don't have a My Space page (gasp!), and I don't have a Facebook page, nor a Twitter account, nor any of the myriad of other social site opportunities that are out there.  So I don't really know the social site phenomena, so I can't judge Microsoft on how well they've pulled this off.  I do know they offer some great ways to share your personal or professional life with folks.  With a few clicks, the photos you've stored in your Windows Pictures folder can be zoomed up to the web.  You can make blog entries, have your photos, and a LOT of other stuff all appear on your Spaces page.  But for customizing the blog in the ways that Google can, you're out of luck.  You can get to some of the html editing, but I've had nothing but problems doing things with Spaces that I've done with Google's Blogger - but they are aimed (I think) at two different markets.  (By the way, I am writing this post with Windows Live Writer, which I LOVE for being able to write posts and such without signing into Google.)

Google's different products, like Blogger, Analytics, Reader, Gmail and Adsense do integrate together (which is what started my journey to see what Microsoft offered), but on a pretty lean, technical level.  Google's interfaces are pretty simple and sparse, which I'm lead to believe is a purposeful thing.  All these products share a single login name and password, which is nice, but they seem to have trouble remembering that you are signed in to other products, making you sign in again, and again, yet other times, not have to do so.  I'm probably not using them right, but I'm using them as I use them.  You have to understand how the blog works internally, and use the customize feature to add/integrate features from their other products.  I know from experience, that one of my sisters who also blogs would never, ever be able to navigate and understand what she needs to do to add things to her blog.  She might not want to do the things that I do, but when she does, I'll have to do it for her.  For example, I've added the Google gadget to my blog where I can add with a single click, a link to an article I like that I've found in Google Reader.  However, to do so meant I needed to add the gadget to my blog layout, and that would be beyond my sister's abilities.  I don't mean to pick on her, but she represents the vast majority of computer users out there.  She is to computers what I am to automobiles - I turn the key and it does or doesn't work - but don't ask me why.

So for my needs, I'm going to stick with the Google world.  I'll keep the Microsoft side of things for exploring capabilities as they are added.  But since I like technical things, and pushing the technical limits of the blog - Google is where I'll stay.  But maybe I'll talk to my sister about how I see the Microsoft stuff being able to help her in her work (but after I finish my vacation).

One major thing - controlling the advertising.  On Google, the only ads that appear are the ads that I place there and can share in the revenue from Google.  With Microsoft, the ads belong to them and I haven't found a way to make sure that things I don't want (mature subjects, etc.) appear.  I don't share in the revenue.  They did ask for my Amazon affiliate name, but I've been scouring Microsoft and the web to find out how to possibly earn from that relationship - and I can't find anything that seems to make sense to me.  I'll never get rich from my blogging, but Google does offer the chance to make a few coins.