little things, part 4

They turned up the water pressure on the water fountains at work. It was never so bad as to make you actually suck metal to get a sip to drink, but it wasn't that good either. Now there is a nice strong stream that delivers enough water so that you don't feel like you're working to quench your thirst. Good water fountains often go unappreciated, but bad water fountains really suck ass.

The Washington D.C. commute

If you want to read a blog about the horrible commutes that we have had here in D.C., just google "some old lame blog written by a hill staff intern who covets reading The Express and wearing his or her i.d. badge in a visible place as long into happy hour as possible before someone makes fun of them." Or you could read this or this [I don't actually know these blogs, they are just what came up in my search].

If you want to read a blog by someone who makes fun of those people behind teir back on his own anonomyous blog, read on reader. . .

In the last two days I saw a man offer his seat to a woman . . . after he had been sitting in it for 45 mins (which ended up being less than half the ride). That's better than nothing I guess.

Taking the advice of the last person to post a comment here, I tapped some guy sitting in one of the reserve seats and pointed out to him that a blind guy was standing there with no where to sit. He got up and the blind guy sat down, fell asleep, and started snoring so that the whole train could hear him. Hey - I don't know why being blind makes it hard for you to stand on the train, but I imagine that if you were blind, you would be tired too.

Hell - when I'm on the home stretch of a train ride to work that is lasting 4 times longer than teh normal 30 mins, and I've been standing for 2 hours and the clock is nearing 10:00 and I haven't had my Starbucks, I'm pretty tired too.

on the iPod:
nothing because I've missplaced it just in time for extra long commutes

EDIT:
Apparently if you link to other news stories, you get more hits on your blog.
read about the Tuesday commute here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062700287.html

I'll be your boy-toy

Study Casts Doubt On the 'Boy Crisis'Improving Test Scores Cut Into Girls' Lead
By Jay MathewsWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, June 26, 2006; A01

A study to be released today looking at long-term trends in test scores and academic success argues that widespread reports of U.S. boys being in crisis are greatly overstated and that young males in school are in many ways doing better than ever.

Using data compiled from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally funded accounting of student achievement since 1971, the Washington-based think tank Education Sector found that, over the past three decades, boys' test scores are mostly up, more boys are going to college and more are getting bachelor's degrees.

Although low-income boys, like low-income girls, are lagging behind middle-class students, boys are scoring significant gains in elementary and middle school and are much better prepared for college, the report says. It concludes that much of the pessimism about young males seems to derive from inadequate research, sloppy analysis and discomfort with the fact that although the average boy is doing better, the average girl has gotten ahead of him.


. . . Which pretty much just means that a boy must have conducted the study.

Full article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/AR2006062501047.html

Freedom isn't free, and neither is unfreeness

Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

The administration was straight up with us about the WMD, Saddam & Al Queda, Abu Graib, Santa Claus, Cheney's role in the Valeria Plame affair, and completely forthcoming when they decided to monitor all our phone calls and bypass FISA Court, so we should probably take them at their word that collection of bank data was very limited.

Full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?hp&ex=1151121600&en=18f9ed2cf37511d5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

fill 'er up with a half-caf double skim soy chai machiatto extra whip

I saw Ben Stein speak yesterday. He pondered why americans wake up every day and pay $1.50 for a bottle of water, and support Starbuck's massive profit margin, buying $3.00 12 oz lattes, but when an entire gallon of gasoline, which has to be pumped out of the ground from under the ocean, shipped on a boat, reprocessed and refined, and then shipped again costs more that $3.00 a gallon, people have a hissy because Exxon made an 8% profit margin.

As he pointed out, there are very few liquids that cost less per unit that gasoline, which is amazing when you consider everything that has to happen in order for you to drive down the road.

There should be a rule that if you spend more per day on Starbucks than you do on gas, you are forbidden from complaining about gas prices. If you spend more per day on gas that you do on Starbucks, and you go to Starbucks every day, your car should be confiscated.

**disclaimer: I get a large coffee at Starbucks almost every day. I would rather go to an independent local coffee shop, but there isn't one. During school, I get non-starbucks.

good idea / bad idea

I saw the trailer for Clerks II - it looks funny enough, but man that is really laying it on the line to actually use the sequel name rather than just another title with some (or all) of the same characters. Clerks is a classic - although I am probably the only person between 18 and 35 who hasn't seen it all the way through.

Why risk such a big rep? Well, obviously the first reason is dollars. The second reason could be that it really is worthy - see also Back to the Future II.

word of the day

portexecution: the ailment of being unable to write or type well after consuming several glasses on wine.

on the iPod:
Noises Ten; It All Belongs

this is the difference . . .

. . . between addicts and everyone else. Addicts understand what this guy is saying, and everyone else just can't:

"CHICAGO, June 14 — The police and health authorities are struggling to track down the source of a doctored, intensely powerful heroin that has killed at least 130 people in and around Chicago and Detroit and sent hundreds more to hospitals in cities from St. Louis to Philadelphia.

. . .

One heroin user, Sean H., 20, who was visiting the treatment van and spoke only on the condition that his last name not be used, said a friend died six weeks ago from a fentanyl-related overdose. The man, 24, specifically sought out fentanyl, Sean said, and had just recovered from one overdose. His body was found on a train.

Sean says he and his brother, who also uses heroin, are more careful now and always have naloxone on hand when they take drugs, though he thinks that none of the heroin they have taken has contained the additive. But the talk about the intensity of the fentanyl experience has intrigued him, he said.

"From an addict's point of view," he said, "that intensity is what you want."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/us/15heroin.html?hp&ex=1150430400&en=d9e6953bbd84395b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

word of the day

midriffresentation - the feeling you get when you see a sweaty & sunburned overweight tourist wearing a belly shirt on the metro.

On the iPod:
War's Greatest Hits

so do something about it

I got the following comment to my post earlier this week about people not giving up their seat on the metro:

Isn't it kind of hypocritical to complain via a blog about the ineptitude of others who may not know any better rather than attempting to change someone's outlook on life by asking them to give up their seat? Don't you think your day might be a bit more peaceful knowing you at least tried?

My short answer is: no, it is not hypocritical.

Hipocracy, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "[t]he practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess"

I don't think my bitching and moaning about people not exhibiting common courtesy is hypocritical because I don’t tell them to get up. I don't think me telling someone to get up is an example of courtesy. If there was a pregnant woman or elderly man or anyone who needed to sit down, and no one was getting up, then yes - I would ask someone to get up so that person could sit. But that is different than trying to teach the world manners.

My place in the world is not to go out and evangelize in people's face about what values they should have, or to try to directly change their behavior. That statement, is anything, could be considered hypocritical since I bitch about these things on a blog, but my purpose here is not (necessarily) to change anyone's behavior - I don't really have a central purpose. Hopefully people have laughed at my posts, but honestly only about 7 people in the whole world have ever visited my page more than once so who cares about that either?

At any rate, it simply is not plausible for me to spend every morning on the train asking all the 40 something men to stand up so a 20 or 30 something woman can sit down. Literally, I could spend my entire 40 minute commute doing it, and if I did, maybe after a year I would get sick of it - but I am pretty confident that I would not have changed anyone's behavior. Maybe I would, but maybe one of those people is among the 7 that revisit my blog and they will change anyway.

Maybe if I gave a ten spot to every homeless person I saw begging for money outside Union Station one of them would do some good with it, but that also is not a practicable approach. Call me jaded - call me a dick. The fact is that the world doesn't work right, and I do what I can to make it work better, and micromanaging people's commute is not one of those things.

Regardless, thanks for dropping by and leaving your thoughts. In case you are one of the 7 return customers, feel free to tell me I am full of it.

Routine maintenance

As I get older, I increasingly become a creature of habit. Not just that I do things by habit, but that I like to do things habitually - I find simplicity & peace in having a routine. This whole moving / couch surfing / house sitting thing, factored in with the end of school start of my job for the summer really threw things out of wack for a while.

Added on top of all of this is the fact that I am not at all a morning person. I am not a grouch, and I’m not the kind of person who must have coffee before getting out of bed (although I do enjoy a mild caffeine addiction). I’m just plain out of it in the morning - really, I don’t function well when I am tired in general, and I am tired in the morning without fail. That means that my routines & habits are even more important in the morning because they help me do everything I am supposed to do. Mess with the routine, and that means I have to think about everything, and when I am tired and not functioning properly thinking about everything can be a dangerous affair.

Having to think about everything in the morning means forgetting something - like putting on deodorant. I guess there are worse things to forget, but there are also better things to forget.

I wanna ROCK!!

Dress shoes are horrible. Rockports are awesome. Spend the money and it will change your life.

GET UP,

STAND UP!!!

It still amazes me how many fully able-bodied men sit in their seat when women or elderly get on the train. What also amazes me is that every time it happens, I am suprised. I must have an amazingly resilient optimism or positive outlook toward the obviously undeserving selfish unaware commuters who sit there tapping away at their blackberries and talking way too loud on their cell phones all the way to work while the rest of us just try to zone out and enjoy what otherwise would have been one of the more peaceful parts of our day.

I am almost positive that I have written on this topic before, but I will probably write about it again unless people change.

And why are there so many rudely oblivious people out there in the world? Because they have rude and oblivious parents who don't teach them any better. I hate everyone.