Category: Uncategorized

Today I got off of work at about the normal time (6:00) and walked to the MARTA station. Just outside the Georgia State Station a guy asked me which way Five Points was. I pointed and asked him why he was going there. He said that the MARTA system was shut down because someone jumped on the tracks (usually people do this as a suicide but sometimes they fall or are pushed; between the high voltage ‘third rail’ and a rapidly moving train, they usually die if they don’t get out quickly). I asked where they jumped and he said Candler Park.

But just then a train pulled into the station above going Eastbound. The guy ran back to the station. I entered the station and went to the top of the steps. There was a MARTA guy up there who said the train that had pulled in would be going back towards Five Points (to the West) and that the only way to go East was to catch some buses at street level that would go to East Lake Station. MARTA calls this a ‘bus bridge’ since they are bridging a gap in the rail system with buses. It sounds great, but the trains carry so many people that it takes a lot of buses to carry that many people and those buses take a while to mobilize, plus it’s not like they have a bunch of unused buses and drivers that need something to do during rush hour. As Samantha Baker said in Sixteen Candles ‘I loathe the bus.’

Continue reading “Bus Bridge”

My yellow headphones for my iPod have started sounding scratchy sometimes. I don’t know if the ipod’s audio jack is getting worn, if the remote is causing the problem, the cell phone in the same pocket is interfering, or some combination. But I thought it might be time to get some new headphones. The best small headphones I ever had were the ones that came with my Sony CD Player that I bought in 1990 or 91 at the same time as Jeb. They kind of go in your ear, but just barely and they had three hinges so they would fold up. I found out later they are called vertical in-ear headphones. When I bought the yellow ones I was looking for something similar but they weren’t quite the same (didn’t fold). Then I found a review on the Macintosh newsletter, Tidbits, that mentioned Sony MDR-A44L’s as being pretty good. So I found those at Amazon for $19. Then I checked buy.com where they were only $16 plus they were giving 10% off that day. Shipping was $6, but on orders over $25 you could get free shipping. I had been thinking about getting one of Elton John’s older albums, so I started looking for those to put me over the minimum.

Continue reading “New Headphones”

Sometimes when people tailgate me I will slow down just so they stop, but in general I’m a pretty courteous driver. In this case I made a guy really mad even though I wasn’t trying to and he took the most aggressive retaliation of anyone I’ve ever come across. Once he was in front of me I wished I had gotten his license plate so I could report him and I sped up to catch up with him before realizing I was being pretty stupid. But as traffic got more congested closer to Atlanta, I actually caught up with him and passed him anyway and got his license. But then what do you do with it? I found a website called www.roadragers.com and reported him, but that doesn’t really do any good. So I sent a description of his car and his license plate to both the Georgia State Patrol and the Florida Highway Patrol. I doubt they will do anything, but I suggested they send a letter to the guy just to say he had been reported.

I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to have some kind of traffic posse where the police deputize private citizens to report bad driving. As I envision it you would have to attend a day-long class about rules of the road and rules of the program and then you could report one person a month (maybe more). While no one would receive tickets when they were reported, they would receive a letter describing the infraction and a note would be made to that person’s file so that if the police ever pulled the guy over they could see a list of citizen complaints about him and realize he deserves to have the book thrown at him.

Anyway, here’s the letter I wrote:

Continue reading “Road Rage”

Since I only use 1 bedroom of my house and live very close to MARTA, it seems like my house would be perfect for any hurricane evacugees. At first I thought I would be able to just drive by a shelter and pick up a family, but to qualify for assistance people have to work through the system. So, today, after procrastinating a while, I posted an offer to keep people at my house on the website that the AJC has set up for this. The AJC says they will share the list with relief agencies. We’ll see what happens. While I want to help people, I don’t want to have just anybody in my house. Here’s what I wrote:

“Single male homeowner with 2 indoor dogs has 1 or 2 bedrooms of house to share with a small family, married couple, or two individuals for up to 3 months. On bus line; one mile to MARTA rail. One-story house, but there are a few stairs at every entrance. No smoking, drugs, profanity, or weapons. Would prefer someone placed through a relief agency.”

Yesterday the governor said “Don’t panic” about gasoline. Today I needed to fill up the office car. Though there is a credit card that can be used at most gas stations, I always go to the state gas station near the twin towers downtown. They had a sign on the pumps that said that by order of the governor the gas was only for state emergency vehicles. Yeah, don’t panic.