Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Breakfast at home: half-bagel with cream cheese, pancakes. Updated an admissions web page for James. Interviews #1 and #2 for our pathway position. Linkchecking. Updated recently posted news story for Susie. Our landlord Norita called me today to ask us to move out of our apartment by January 1. I didn't say okay right away but said that we'd see if our schedules could accommodate that. We are on month-to-month, so I'll have to check our rental agreement, but I think it's legal for her to ask that we move out. In the elevator on the way to lunch, I saw one construction worker hand two new cigarettes to another construction worker. He said with a smile, "And you take care of your health!" Lunch: chicken quesadilla from the cafeteria. This quesadilla is so huge I usually have to throw half of it away. Today Joel asked me to search Google News for news about the UC Regents decisions about student fees which were taking place today. I was dubious we would find something easily, but we found a little snippet of headline that said, "BREAKING NEWS 1:45 pm UC regents raise fees again Santa Barbara News-Press (subscription)." The page at Santa Barbara News Press required registration, but I worked around that pretty easily by turning Javascript off with the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar. We learned that the regents voted 17 to 2 in favor of raising fees for the 5th year in a row. Reconfigured backups. For some reason within the past 3 days the backup tapes now fill up the entire tape instead of being only about 50% full after a complete full backup. Not sure why just yet. Burned some large filesize and unlikely to be used again documents to CD-ROM so that they wouldn't take up space on our backup tapes. Today it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get home by MUNI. I left work at 7:15 PM, walked to 9th and Judah by 7:30 PM but the 7:30 PM bus did not show up. At 7:45 PM I caught a bus 44 to Forest Hill. When I arrived, the monitor said an L train was arriving in 15 minutes. I went in to the tunnel and waited. While I waited, a K train passed. A few minutes later, another K train passed. A few minutes later, another K train passed. A few minutes later, an M train passed. Finally the L train arrived. It was only one car and it was packed. The announcements said that another L train—two cars—was only 5 minutes after this one, so I decide to wait for it. The crowded train let off a few people and took on a few more people (still packed) and left. After a few minutes, an announcement said that the next train was going out of service—do not board. The 2-car L train I was waiting for passed without taking on passengers. I waited a few minutes more and another L train showed up. This one was two cars and not packed. I got on and rode through West Portal station and down Taraval. However, at 22nd Street, the driver announced that this train was turning around and that all passengers were to deboard. I got off and walked 2 blocks. Another L train showed up, and luckily I caught it at the stop and rode from 24th to 30th. Days like this make me want to get in my car and drive to nowhere in particular just to spite the broken concept of successful mass transit in San Francisco. Google Maps says the driving distance from my work to my home is 3.3 miles and takes about 8 minutes. In contrast, my MUNI trip today took 75 minutes, or about 9 times longer. It made me realize that I need to do something drastic about this like move within walking distance to work or get a bicycle or something. MUNI doesn't deserve the $45 per month I'm giving them to provide poor service. And I still haven't heard a word from Supervisor Fiona Ma after I sent her a letter complaining about the problems with bus 66. Grrrr! GRRRRRRRR! Removed the Katrina web page from frankfarm.org—we no longer needed it. Archived documents.