The public transportation experiment

My engine light went on a couple for days ago, so I guess this means I need to take my truck into the shop. This wasn't a problem in the past when I had a company car on top of my personal wheels, but the company car is long gone and now I really only have one choice: public transportation.

I dropped my truck off at C&T Automotive (near the Hayward Park train station) last night and took the train home. And this morning, I took the express train from Palo Alto to Mountain View. From there I hopped on the VTA light rail toward the Winchester station and disembarked at the Tasman station to catch the Alum Rock train to my stop at Cisco Way. I wouldn't make a habit of this mode of transport, but door-to-door it took one hour, borderline reasonable. However, the way home was anything but.

I headed out of the office at about 4:20 and over to the Cisco Way Light Rail stop, just missing the 4:25 train. I then waited another 15 minutes and caught the next ride and again made the transfer at Tasman to catch the light rail to the Mountain View Caltrain station. Once in Mountain View, I looked at the train schedule to figure out my logistics to Hayward park to pick up my truck. To my surprise, the newly launched train schedule not only had no direct trains from Mountain View to Haywayrd Park, I would have to layover in Redwood City for 1/2 hour before I could catch a train that would take me to my destination!

Since it was after all a Friday, I headed over to OK Maquay's for a beer as I waited in Redwood City. Luckily, the beer made the time go by faster and soon enough it was time for the final leg of my journey. But by the time I got home it was after 7:00 p.m., a brutal public transport eperience, even including the beer.

Oil prices, the media & reality

Isn't it amazing how the media loves to hype the price of crude oil and gasoline? And isn't it incredible how those costs affect the securities markets? What does it really matter? Who really cares? If you do, perhaps you haven't done the math.

Let's say you commute 25 miles round trip to work every day, or about one gallon of gas worth of driving. And for the sake of blog-scussion (e.g., discussion blog style), let's say $2 is more-or-less a tolerable price for a gallon of gas, but the price of gas is now $3 a gallon. For the one gallon-a-day driver, that's only an extra buck a day, or $5 a week, or $20 a month, or $240 a year. Big deal. If you didn't spend that cash on gas, you'd just spend a little more on booze. Or food. Admit it already.

Sadly, the media loves this "story" and won't let it go. They've been reporting daily on gas prices for years and they wouldn't know what to do with the air time and print space if they stopped. But we'd still know how much gasoline costs us. After all, we see it every time we fill up.

Eloquence, PHG style

As I sat at the bar at Birk's Grill in Santa Clara waiting for a friend, I heard the following conversation:

Bartender: "What'll it be?"

Man: "Champagne."

Man: "I just read about Peter Jennings. I can't believe he was a high school dropout."

Man's friend: "Neither can I, Peter Jennings was so eloquent. I thought he was an Ivy League grad or something."

Man: "I know. He was so strong. He was on like 24-hours a day during 9-11."

Man's friend: "Yeah, he was so eloquent through it all."

Man: "He was so good, it didn't matter if he had a degree or not. By the time he was 24, he'd climbed the ladder in Canada and been lured by U.S broadcasting companies."

Man's friend: "He was pretty eloquent, wasn't he?"

Man: "Another glass of Chanpagne, please."

Man's friend: "Champaign, huh?"

Man: "Yeah, just trying to keep a positive mood."