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A lot of people have asked about my Tweet earlier that I had to call the police on an on-duty Metro employee, so I figure it’s just easier to post here.

About two years ago, I found a phone on the Metro, a $400 Treo Pro. I called the number marked “Home” on it, told the very grateful person that I had found it and that I was leaving it with the station manager.

When I tried to turn it in, I made the mistake of mentioning that I had called the person, at which point of time, she told me it was my problem, since I had broken Metro protocol by telling the person I had found the phone. I assume, given my experience before and since with Metro, that makes it harder for some Metro employee to “keep” the phone. Mind you, this was in the first two weeks of the “‘Scuse me, is thaaat your baaag?” announcements.

So I asked her what would be the protocol if I hadn’t mentioned that I had called the person. She accused of us of lying, etc. I had had enough of this BS, so I started to leave the phone on her desk. She picked it up and HURLED at me, striking me on chest. I had had enough. I called the Fairfax County Police, who told me to call Metro Police, the latter being useless scumbags.

Long story short, the woman ran off before the police came – at 6pm for “lunch” – and then when she got back, basically lied through her teeth with the help of her subordinate, making up a bullshit story about my lying to her about calling the person and then claiming that I hadn’t. (Remember, I said, “What would you’ve done had I not said I had called the owner?” – a hypothetical question). Eventually John Catoe showed up along with the line manager for the Orange Line, took the phone, and Metro Police essentially forced me to leave mid-conversation by shoving me out of the station. I took the station manager’s name, filed a complaint in writing, nothing ever came of it, of course. I’ve seen her since at “work” so I assume fully that she was either commended for her “honesty” or she got a free phone out of my efforts.

And of course, they continue to announce that if I see someone leave something behind, I should tell a Metro employee. I don’t any longer. If one day one of those phones is hooked up to a bomb, I hope that they name it after the station manager that taught me never to help Metro make itself safer. Also, that weekend, I got my US driver’s licence. So that I never again have to go on the Metro if I don’t want to.

I’ve not done too many “grab-bag” type posts here, since usually I have lots to say about any given topic (some say I can out-Dvorak Dvorak). I’ve now collected a few things that aren’t worth their own posts, so you get a bunch of odds and ends that don’t necessarily go together.

Windows Vista, yet again
It’s now been something like a year that I’ve been using Vista (or attempting to do so). However, for my new netbook, I decided to get a Bluetooth transceiver, so that I could use Skype, mice and other gadgets without needing cables. Suffice to say, the major discovery that I’ve made is that in 2008, Vista’s Bluetooth stack is worse than the one that my 2003-era Nokia dumbphone sported. Basic telephony requires third-party drivers (which of course, I do not have, seeing as Bluetooth has a few standard profiles and basic telephony is one of them). A Microsoft-made mouse is only partially supported. The third party software that comes with the transceiver – called Bluesoliel – seems to have been written by someone that: (a) never had to use it; and, (b) never read any UI guidelines for any OS ever. I wish you good luck to force it to search for something, since apparently, you’re expected to memorize the Bluetooth ID of every device you have in order to make it find new devices. If this is the very best that Microsoft – and its “valued OEM partners” – can come up with after a half-decade of programming Vista, the future is very bleak for end-users.

Resume
I decided to take the advice of several people both via comments and via email, and decided that I will redo my resume in Open Office; it’s only fair that I give it as much time and effort as I gave my resume in Microsoft Office. So thank you to those of you who suggested so. Now those of you so kind as to email me  get the pleasure of looking over and comparing the versions…

Fring for the iPhone
I love Fring. It’s the only application other than Skype that talks to Skype’s network natively (that I’m aware of). While I’m share the concerns that many people have with Skype – not least the fact that the Chinese are overhearing all the chit-chat about my work, school applications and other such important things – it’s a simple program that does one thing reasonably well. I like it, and my folks use it, so it’s become a standard around the family. After I ran into Bluetooth-ical difficulties while talking on Skype (see above), I switched to using my Fring for the iPhone for the rest of the conversation and it flowed much better. There is a slightly delay, but overall voice quality sounded good to me. Certainly, it makes clear that the iPhone is a good platform for Fring-like VoIP apps. I’m sure like almost all other iPhone OS 2.x first and third applications there are instabilities and I’ll discover them as I go on, but if you were on the fence about spending your $0.00, well… it’s worth it.

Windows monoculture = computer illiteracy
One of the best, most enlightening comments about the problem with the Windows monoculture is here. While there is a good argument to be made that computers are much more complicated beasts than washing machines, DVD players or any other tool, I would respond with the car analogy. A car is a tremendously complicated item, with thousands of parts that have to work flawlessly and hundreds of settings that need to be set perfectly in order to move efficiently and effectively. However, put someone who has only ever driven sedans into a van, and they will be able to operate it – and reasonably well. One becomes car-literate, not “Ford Taurus-literate”. Sadly, it seems more and more, people are becoming “Windows + Office literate” not “computer-literate”. (By the way – the same principle applies to food stocks and crops.)

Washington DC transport
WMATA’s continuing quest to screw up commutes reached a nadir last Friday for me. My train caught fire and had to travel back to the previous station. On that positive note, the Washington Post notes that you can expect your commute to get worse, since somehow in DC traffic planners’ heads, it makes sense that to make commutes easier, one should increase congestion. Yeah, not sure how that works… This is doubly aggravating when one realizes that for a relative pittance, one can travel the length of NYC at any time of the day or night, whilst no amount of money can do the same in DC. (Fun fact: were I to live in NYC roughly the same distance from Manhattan as I do from my house to my work place now, I’d pay a third of my DC commute costs – and I’d get there more reliably around the clock.)

Yesterday, I wrote about getting my licence in Virginia, and previously I’ve written about American vehicles. Today a few stories about driving in northern Virginia, southern Maryland and Washington, DC.

1. About two weeks ago, while driving to Whole Foods to get groceries, about a ten minute drive, I was behind a car driven by a gentleman on a phone. There are precisely four stop signs, each marked very clearly by both ground lettering and giant signs. The gentleman zoomed along at 35 mph on the 25mph road until he got to the first sign. He stopped for a good five seconds on the first. He drifted at 15 mph next. He ran through the second stop sign without stopping, upon when he slowed to a near stall. He halted until I caught up and honked him on the third. And on the fourth, he did an abrupt U-turn, startling all three drivers who were at their respective stop lines. Getting to Whole Foods, a person who was apparently driving behind me came up to me and said, “Did you get that guy’s plate? Call the cops on him.” Insane.
2. Some months ago, I was driving to my aunt’s place in southern MD from my place in northern VA, I was overtaken by two vehicles speeding along I-495 – a black SUV and an equally black limo. Since I was driving pretty near the speed limit and they shot past within a few seconds, they were driving at least 20-25 miles above the speed limit. I giggled as they zoomed around a corner which almost always has a police car hidden within and closed in to spot the chase. Sure enough a police car raced out of its hiding spot, lights flashing, siren blaring, chasing the cars. Now, typically, one of two things happen: 99% of the time, the car slows down and pulls over; 1% of the time, a chase ensues. This time, neither happened. Both speeding cars switched on their own lights and continued speeding, causing the police car to turn off its own lights a few seconds later, slow down and get off at the next exit.
3. Driving to Baltimore to see Opera Vivente’s Alcina was interesting. After the usual loonies departed when I got off the Beltway, I was cut off at 75mph by a jerk with less than five feet of clearance. I honked him, to which he proceeded to flick me off and then slowed to drive behind me with his lights on high beam. I proceeded to slow to 45 mph. He eventually gave up and drove around me.

What I’m trying to get at is how inconsistent drivers are in this area. Manila and Delhi are no better – probably worse, in fact – but the difference is in speed and vehicle size. In those megacities, speeds rarely exceed 60kmph and vehicles are generally relatively small. By contrast, here not only are the vehicles huge and lumbering – particularly this American fetish for SUV – but speeds are twice those typical of Manila or Delhi. Moreover, while everyone in those cities drives in the “if your car costs more, you drive more carefully” fashion, a large portion of the drivers here drive as they please, leaving road safety to those of us who do want to live to see a new year. Finally, there is the issue of older drivers – in those countries, the solution is to either to ask family or to get a driver. Over here, older drivers with much slower reflexes continue to drive, increasing the potential for accidents immensely. The one near run in I’ve had has been because an old lady swung out of an exit only lane less than three feet from the front of my car, because she didn’t see me. For this last issue, I don’t see a ready answer – given the near complete lack of public transportation in this part of America, and the cost of engaging others to drive you, there’s likely no solution.

Then again – wherever you live, that’s where the worst drivers are, right?

I started making a list of things that I wanted to do in 2008. I suppose some people would call them “resolutions”, but for me, this is just another list of thigns to do, albeit a little more long-term and ambitious in scope than most of my to-do lists. In the interests of forcing myself to do everything on it, I decided to share it, and have people watch and check off things with me.

Education/work:

• Get into a master’s program either part-time or full-time.
• Find a full-time position.
• Redo my GRE and nail that 800 that I so narrowly missed last time.

Things to learn:

• Learn either Spanish or German.
• Learn to sight read music.
• Learn to play the piano.
• Learn one new programming language – Python, perhaps?

Cyclic things:

• One blog post a day, excepting a break a quarter.
• Read at least one book a week.
• Learn to cook one new dish a month.
• Build one new Lego robot a quarter.
• Teach the kitten one “trick” a quarter.

Travel:

• Go to Manila once.
• Go to Delhi once.
• Go to Chicago once.
• Go to San Francisco once.
• Go to New York at least twice.
• Plan a late-December 2008, early-January 2009 Eastern Europe tour.

Other things:

• Sell or otherwise halve the number of gadgets in my possession.
• Sort out all the clothes in my closet and give away what I don’t need.
• Finish reading every currently unread book in my library.
• Save at least 30% of my earnings each month; 50% preferable.
• Develop and use some way to manage parts of my life better.
• Develop a new backup system that requires less conscious thought.
• Start using at least two new FOSS applications on a daily basis.

Potential things:

• Investigate and possibly buy a car for not more than $5000 by July.
• Not owe any money on the car by December, if I do buy a car.
• Investigate a flying club.

That’s it for 2008. It seems like a lot, actually, now that I think about it, but one way or another – it shall be done!

Allow me a simple premise: four wheels and an engine do not a car make.

A car, by definition, should embody several simple principles (aka “The Three Laws of Car-otics”, if you please):

1. It should keep its own occupants safe.
2. With a minimum of fuss, it should get its occupants from one place to another.
3. It should be a good neighbour on the road, even if its driver is a maniac.

Ideally, there might be other criteria too, such as fuel efficiency, and so on; but given the disparate legal and technical criteria used, I’m going to skip over it, with a note that by 2020, American vehicles will meet the same standards that Chinese vehicles are required to meet now. Most cars are successful at the first, not least because there, even in the US, fairly strict road safety criteria before a car is permitted to be sold. By all means, you can build non-street legal vehicles and skip the safety criteria, but these are by and large one-off vehicles that rarely see the light of day.

The second criteria is paradoxically more and less prevalent today. While it was common earlier to have to know the detailed workings of a car and its engine, transmission and other components, today a car is interacted with using chiefly a key, a turnable wheel, a gear lever and a set of pedals. So in that regard, there is much less “fuss” than there was earlier. However, there is a lot more “fuss” in regards to warnings and indicators and such. There are car stereo systems, DVD players for the backseat, GPS navigators, computerized safety indicators and nearly an infinite stream of beeps and boops that a car makes to catch your attention. Then there are cell phones, which are so distracting that they ought to be banned altogether while someone is operating a vehicle. So, fuss is up and fuss is down: the gadgets are here, the technical problems have come down, so let’s call this a net wash and say that generally, the principle of “minimum fuss” is obeyed.

Then there is the good neighbour concept, which most American vehicle manufacturers fail to grasp. Some problems I have observed with American vehicles that I have yet to see with Japanese or German cars:

• Lights – American vehicles tend to be disproportionately massive, and because they are so large, their lights are much higher up, meaning those of us operating sedans find ourselves routinely blinded by their “low-beam” lights as badly if they were “high-beam” on our own. Also for reasons I have not understood, American vehicle manufacturers do not use a three colour light system for their back lights, and instead of using white for reverse, red for braking and yellow for turning, they use red for both braking and turning. The consequence of this is that more often than not, I can’t tell if they are trying to get into my lane or whether they are simply braking in their own. Compare this scenario to most Japanese and German cars, where the three-light system is intact, and quickly, the clarity in communication becomes apparent.
• Spray – American vehicles do not seem to come equipped with spray deflectors for reasons I have not understood. Thus, while driving behind an American vehicle I find myself using wipers even when its not raining. Today, in particular, I was first behind a Corvette (an American sports vehicle) and subsequently behind a BMW 650 (a German sports car). At 40 kmph, the spray from the back of the American vehicle was heavier than the spray from the back of the German car doing 120 kmph in the same weather. Given the spray from American vehicles, and the American habit of languidly switching lanes a bare two meters in front of one another at 100 plus kmph, it can quite often mean the difference between life and death when you can’t see through the spray. Couple this with the odd problem above of sharing red to mean braking and switching lanes and you have a recipe for disaster, if one can’t tell that the vehicle that just swung in front of you is braking instead of switching lanes.
• Size – I have never understood the need for large cars in cities. Ostensibly, I hear that America is a big country and it’s “rough” out there, but I find it ridiculous to be stuck behind a – or worse, between two – large American vehicles on the highly developed and comprehensive road system that surround cities. Unless one is driving the same size – or larger – vehicle, it becomes impossible to see traffic conditions ahead and adjust speed accordingly, see that traffic lights have changed and so on. Largely in response to the American market, Japanese and German car manufacturers have jumped upon the “me too” train and designed ever larger cars, including trucks, SUVs and mini-vans. It’s a disappointing end-run that will hopefully one day be stopped by the imposition of taxes based on vehicle and engine gross size and weight. Put a 100% tax on a vehicle with an engine larger than, say, three liters and very soon people will switch to a smaller-engined car; with a smaller engine, the huge chassis of a truck or SUV can’t be moved with sufficient power and the chassis size will come down. That will be huge progress.

I think the list by and large goes on and on. The fact is, American vehicles do not make for good neighbours on the road. Given that my basic design principle for cars requires that a car be a good neighbour while using public goods, such as roads, I conclude that American vehicles are not “cars” and fall into that superset of four wheels and an engine I started off this post with. Next time you buy a car, think about the principles I enumerated and remember that the $50 add-on spray deflectors will likely have a huge positive effect on how you and your car will be perceived by others. Ditto three-lights systems at your rear.