Concepts in the Paradox

January has been an active month, with dead time between events starting to go back to back with things to do.

At work, I’ve ended up diving head first into SAN virtualization. I didn’t want to go this route for a another few months, but we’re evaluating SAN technology, and the research needs to be done quickly. This stuff isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and in fact it is pretty straight forward. LUNs here, WWNS there, sparse volumes and mirrors over there.

I finally heard back from David Snyder at SPUR, and he’s going to put me in touch with the transportation communications intern there. The idea is for me to do “online advocacy” for transit, something that I’m already knee deep in by nature. We’ll see where things go. SPUR’s membership fee was a whopping $65, but it is for a good cause. These folks seem to know what they are doing.

The car has been up for sale for almost 2 weeks now. I put it up on cars.com for $21750, but the only contacts I’ve gotten are other sales agencies wanting to list my auto for another $50. I hate to lower the price, it is already low compared to other cars for sale in the area, but every month it sits is another possible parking ticket or accident, plus deprecation and the insurance payments I have to make.

Speaking of parking tickets, the two citations I got from DPT came back after I wrote a very polite letter to the them. Their reply? Pay the $100 or find a cop to verify that the tags are current, have him sign off on the tickets, then submit $10 per ticket ($20) for “administrative fees” to have the citations written off. I about flipped my lid when I read that. The DPT brings in $40m a year, so I have little concept of why I must pay fees to have my fine waved. Such is the law, and such is yet another complaint letter for me to write. I’m getting good at writing them these days.

Finally, I went to the MacWorld expo this week. I ended up buying a keyboard cover, 2GB of RAM for my Mac Mini, and laid out the cash for an academic version of Adobe CS2 + Acrobat 8. It’s about time really, I’ve been suffering with The GIMP and I’d like to greatly improve the designs of my various blog sites. Now I have something more to learn, but it’s graphics, so it should be fun!

I was going through my unsorted stack of receipts today, looking for the my warranty documents for my Marin urban bike. It’s time to take it in for adjustments, and while I’m at it I want to take the Timberline mountain bike in for a tune-up. In the process I came across the registration tags for my Subaru.

It looks like I failed to apply the tags. I must have forgotten in the chaos of moving, and as a result I got two “expired tabs” $50 tickets on my car the last 2 weeks.  I decided to take a bike ride up to my magical street parking permit zone in Western Addition to apply the tags. Luckily, no new citations this time around, but not so luckily me the battery was dead. I had left the map lights on the last time I used the car. Good going me!

$45 later, my automo-car was jump started by a friendly SoMA tow truck driver. Yay insurance reimbursements!

I put the car up on cars.com this time around. CL didn’t yield a single hit. I’m priced lower than all the other Subaru’s in a 250 mile area, so I should get *something* soon.

I try to recycle when it is convenient for me, fortunately my municipality makes it convenient to place paper, bottles, and cans into a single container, with general trash in another. At my previous apartment, I also had a food scraps bin, so even if I used paper plates I could drop in them in to be mushed into planting soil — even with the food on them!

If we as human kind on planet Earth are to continue on with our existence, we must recycle. It benefits us economically too: recycled goods don’t cost as much to manufacture compared to raw materials, and there is a never ending stream of reusable materials as long as more people do their part.

Did you know that cars are the most commonly recycled item? They take hundreds of barrels of oil to produce, but they are also mostly recycled into more cars that don’t take as much oil to produce, and hopefully use less oil when in use.

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The Transportation Commission pulled $5.3m out of car registration fees for 3 more spare the air days. So guess what? Transit is free tomorrow. [Linky linky].

I was wondering why my DMV fees were so high — so enjoy a ride on one of the 25 transit agencies on my dime. No really, go ahead, and don’t forget to exit using the rear doors (STEP DOWN!!!).

(ridership goes up 10%, or 155,000 people, on STA days)

The price of gas is at an all-time high today, $76.40 a barrel That’s $1.81 before being refined, shipped, and sold.

In the past year, the price of gas has gone way up, and at some stations flirts with the $4/gal price tag. So what are Americans to do? We consume 40% of the world gasoline, and we are starting to pay near what other developed countries pay. The solution?

Americans consumed 1.7% more gas now than they did last year.

Source: CNNMoney

I have theories on why Americans have failed to conserve fuel, beyond “Americans love their cars”:

1. There is no viable mass transit infrastructure in most cities
2. Municipalities are slow to build new transit
3. New transit is usually diesel consuming buses, since they are easy and rapid to deploy
4. Americans, especially those with families, aren’t sure how to use the system properly (assuming it did work)
5. Most cities aren’t used to car pool / car share programs (these save a lot of gas)
6. “Gas guzzling” cars get more advertising time on TV, Americans incorrectly think “fuel consumption == performance”

I did a dry run of my commute, taking Post down to Market then going in the Davis & Market Embarcadero entrance. I then locked up my bike, looked at the time, and from start to finish it took exactly 30 minutes. 6:07 to 6:37. This included my normal fumbling like, “where is my helmet? Gloves? Locks? Oh! I need water!”

The way back also took 30 minutes. I took Drumm up to Sutter, then Sutter all the way back home. The whole process was pretty exhausting.

Here’s what to expect taking a bike on the busy streets of San Francisco:

• If you don’t take up the whole lane, taxis will try to nudge past.

• If someone is driving an old beater, watch out! If you can smell the car, chances are they’ll try to run you over.
• This isn’t a good way to get fresh air. Most of the cars stink, especially gas powered taxis, police cars and police motor bikes.
• The hills aren’t as bad as they look. Expect to hit plenty of red lights so you can get some rest.
• Pedestrians don’t notice you. They’ll walk right into your path, even if you have right of way.
• Don’t worry about Muni. You’ll zoom past the bus and never see it again during your commute.

I need to buy a bell or horn or something so I don’t have to yell at people to get out of the way, as well as some flashing lights so I can get around at dusk.

I must say one thing is for sure, this will get me into shape way faster than the gym did!

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