NYC Transit Mania

While I fully appreciate a good struggle for workers' rights (I'm sure I am about to partake in my own individual one for the year), the transit workers' union is going too far. First of all, your average bus driver makes more than I do, and they get around an 8% raise every year, so my hope of catching up is pretty slim.

My teacher friend actually makes less than everyone in the MTA except the cleaners, who, in my obviously unqualified opinion, don't do a very good job for it either. When I came out of the subway at 51st & Lex this morning, the entire platform smelled like some unimaginable combination of rotten meat and poo.

There's so much construction it's impossible to get anywhere on the weekends, there are often ridiculous waits for trains during rush hour, during which time the platform fills up and it's all about throwing elbows to get yourself on the train, where one of the following is guaranteed to occur:

• your pocket is picked
• you are squished into Smelly Homeless Guy, who insists he is being pushed from behind as he grabs your butt
• you are squished into Loud Preacher Guy, who insists on shouting (in your ear) about how you are a sinner if, in short, you're a liberal
• you miss your stop because of schmucks who won't get out of the way
• ...

The main sticking point in the arguments is the MTA's proposed new pension plan, in which MTA employees will have to put in a few extra years before retirement. Not to discredit anyone at the MTA who actually does a lot of productive work, a few more years of hanging out on the platform, doing seemingly nothing useful, yet still making a paycheck doesn't seem so bad.

Maybe if NYC transit was perfect - clean, safe, on time, few service disruptions - I would change my opinion. It just seems to me that now that the MTA has announced a surplus, the workers want to get their hands on it, when it really should go towards improving transit. Maybe they could actually start on the 2nd avenue line they've been promising for years. Maybe the daily commute wouldn't smell like doody. Maybe leaving the house on time to get somewhere would be a good indicator of when you will actually arrive. The possibilities are endless.

You know it's been a late night of studying when...

Oh, to be an Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier:

An EDFA involves taking a weak arriving optical signal and combining it with a locally generated higher power optical signal in a length of fiber that has been doped with the erbium. The erbium atoms are excited by this action and they generate photons at the same phase and direction as the arriving signal.

Is that hot or what??

Shopping!

People who know me also know I despise shopping. I have but one weakness, and they don't have a store in all of Manhattan. Until this winter.

That's right, ladies & gentlemen. New York & Company is opening a brand new store across the street from my office.

Man, is my wallet in trouble.

High Strung Computer Science Folk

Is it me, or are people growing progressively arrogant, lazy/illiterate, and high-strung?

I'm taking an online class working towards my MS-IS. It's the third online class I will have taken at the school. The interface can seem daunting at first, but if you read the online help section, you'll figure it out by the second week of class. The course isn't a beginner course (the course ID# is 666), so you assume you have some intelligent computer/math nerds in the mix.

Within the first week of class, two people have already posted these raving, panicked posts about how they can't understand the problems, don't understand the wording (but haven't read anything yet), don't get how the interface works, don't understand posts by classmates that were intended to assist, and generally seem rude both to the professor and classmates.

Could some people be indulging in way too much caffeine for way too early in a semester?

I understand being nervous at the beginning of a semester, and that computer geeks are unnecessarily arrogant as a general rule, but if you don't understand something that's going on, you have a better chance of finding out an acceptable answer if you ask nicely rather than blowing up like an impatient little kid. It drives me nuts when people can't take accountability for their own lack of comprehension.

On a more positive note, in response to a friendly student clarification question, the professor put up a "fun" formula involving e. I like this guy already.

Talk about getting started at an early age...

"The accusers, who were 5 and 6 at the time of the trial, recanted their earlier
testimony and said their grandmother told them to say Smith was responsible for
the abuse rather than their 9-year-old cousin. The cousin, who can't be
prosecuted because of his age at the time of the crime, is serving a life prison
sentence for murder. The grandmother has died."

Something tells me sheltering the 9 year old cousin backfired...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/18/refused.pardon.ap/index.html

If I've been speaking English all my life...

Why do I find it impossible to talk? I just had a conference call with 4 people, none of whom I am particularly intimidated by, and all I had to say was 5 words to sum up my thought. Could I do that? Noooo. I had to stammer and sputter through about 90 seconds of drivel before I spat out something coherent.

Maybe it has something to do with translating empirical bubbles of thought to words, I don't know. I knew exactly what I was trying to say in pictures in my head. Unfortunately, the monitor displaying "pictures in Emma's head" hasn't been invented yet.

What the heck is wrong with me, and do I really want to know the answer to that?

If only we could all be so lucky

"We have performed autopsies on six people. Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death," Koutsaftis said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/15/greece.crash.1437/index.html

Am I the only one who finds humor in that statement?