More More Quick Mid-December 2008 Notes

[dewline]

• tammy212 has a birthday tomorrow. Tammy, I hope it's a good one for you and Tim!
  
• Anyone with a GMail account, I've got a question for you: Are you having troubles logging in of late? "Of late" = "within the last couple of weeks", FYI.
  
• The Ottawa Project weblog has a quick and dirty - but effective - debunking of the idea of privatising OC Transpo. Good to dispose of such a notion quickly, before it takes hold in too many minds. We can't afford privatisation of that particular city service.
  
• You might also want to take a look at this other transit-blog entry on the print news services' coverage to date.
  
• elyanetoo pointed out the Jewish Zodiac with help from a friend, as she notes in her home-blog. I was amused - as inteded by its authors and designers - to find which sign I was born under per this system...and no, I ain't tellin' you which one it was here.
  

More as I think of it...or as you do.

Comments

[evilvillan-1.livejournal.com]

Re: GMail, I had one days worth of difficulty as I recall, and today my friend just signed up for GMail and had difficulty logging in as well...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Sorry to read that. Things any better today?

[mencc1701.livejournal.com]

I've had no troubles lately with GMail...

And thanks for the shout-out, btw. :)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It's a good blog, and you've got good judgement on which others to link to in the sidebar.

[mencc1701.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

No Gmail problems here.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

You're not using dial-up on a regular basis these days, right?

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[orleans.livejournal.com]

Gmail works well most of the time. Once in a while, it doesn't load and I have to retry, but I haven't seen much extended downtime since it was in early Beta.

The whole bus thing ticks me off. I'm not terribly impressed with either side. I think the whole privatization debate is an over-reaction ... trying to use a nuclear weapon to solve a problem that could be settled with a scalpel. However, I do wish that the city hadn't balked from taking a line-by-line look at the transit operating costs. Suburban transit could be handled much more efficiently with a feeder bus system as in Winnipeg.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

As to the bus situation...I fear that someone's going to force the privatization cause upon us sooner or later, regardless of the facts as you and I know them.

As for the line-by-line issue, I think I know what a good-sized number of our fellow culture-industrial players might say to that: It might have benefitted the transit system, but the arts/heritage money would have been targeted to receive the short end of the stick. Therefore, it would've backfired on other sectors of the local economy in turn.

[orleans.livejournal.com]

Agreed totally about the culture side of things. That's a relatively small amount, at only $4M total, and I think they should leave that alone. But I think they can easily save $12 with a better transit hub-and-spoke set-up.

City council has to look at value for money and can't fall into a false dilemma situation. Just because some areas should go line-by-line doesn't mean it's necessary everywhere. Also, the culture money benefits us with job creation and tourism, while spinning poorly designed routes though the suburbans on a Sunday night just wastes diesel and money. I've designed a Kanata feeder system that provides 90% of the current area coverage with just 2 routes instead of 6!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Seeing as I - for one - want to be able to get around my neighbourhood in a hurry at any time in the week I please without having to own/use a car, I'm not so sure I'd want to cut anything. If there's a way of getting more service, more often to more parts of any given neighbourhood for long stretches of any day of the week...AND still reduce the number of routes needed to serve it...I'd be interested to see the scheme.