This afternoon I quietly realized another thing I dislike about the Compass card system–the fare gates are biased toward right-handed people, as the spot to tap your card is on the right. I can’t really argue against the logic of the placement as something like 90% of the population is right-handed. Still, it’s another little thing that irks me about the system.
But never mind that, I was tapping in at the Lougheed Town Centre station and proceeded up to the platform to wait for the next train. A shortish young man with a thick beard was conversing with three SkyTrain attendants. I didn’t catch everything said but enough to gather that a bag was laying on the track. I looked and sure enough, a green Save on Foods grocery bag lay resplendent upon the middle rail. One of the attendants noted that it would need to be removed ASAP. Immediately another young man came up asking if the system was going to be brought to a standstill for half a day because of this. I’m paraphrasing but from his tone, I’ve captured the essence of his question, even if he didn’t use those exact words. The attendant assured him there were be no delays.
One of the other attendants radioed something to SkyTrain control. Probably something like, “Don’t let the next train run me over, thanks!” as he next clambered down onto the track, grabbed the bag, handed it to the third attendant, who then handed it to the shortish young man with the thick beard, as apparently the bag–which contained undisclosed items–belonged to him. I never heard his explanation for how the bag went from his hands to the track area. Only the security cameras will know for sure. He had a weird glint in his eye, though.
The next train arrived a few minutes later, there were no delays, and the young man got on the same car as me, gently holding the bag at his feet. He said nothing and did nothing before I got off two stops later. But that glint in his eyes never went away as he stared out the window.
As I was coming out of the Waterfront SkyTrain station today I noticed a man off to my left standing near one of the fare gates and who seemed rather agitated. Apparently he was having problems getting the chosen gate to recognize his shiny new Compass card. He finally got through and angrily strode forward, holding the card out before him and shaking it angrily. “This card is taking too long to work!” he snarled to no one in particular. He then spotted a transit attendant standing nearby and marched to him, where he continued to rail against his slothful card.
This is the first instance of what I call Compass card rage I’ve witnessed, though I suspect it will not be the last.
Other Compass card hijinks I’ve seen:
people approaching the same game at the same time from opposite directions. As you may guess, only one person wins here but in reality both lose in the ensuing blockage/confusion
it is in fact possible to follow someone through a gate before it closes
people blithely following someone else through a gate, tapping their card, having it fail (because the gate needs to close before it will register the next tap) and continuing on their merry way, not realizing that they have just been charged for three zones instead of one or two
“Out of service” tape plastered over gates. Now imagine multiple gates going down in a station that only has a few and everyone at rush hour being funneled through one or two working gates. Happy times.
Also, whoever approved the astonishingly annoying tone that plays when you tap your card should be forced to listen to that sound all day every day until driven mad. This would likely take less than 24 hours.
You might say I’m not especially impressed with the Compass card system. In fact, I’ll say it: I am not especially impressed with the Compass card system.
If they could fix it to work flawlessly with my smart watch in, say, two months, I might be willing to upgrade my assessment from “not especially impressed” to “will grudgingly tolerate.” Translink has promised smart device support sometime. I’m going to speculate it will roll out in the year 3000.
Free of charge, here are three amazing tech support tips. Is your technology giving you grief? Read on!
Tech tip #1: Power cycle your device. This means turning off whatever is giving you trouble and then turning it back on. Trust me, this works way more often than you’d think, but people seldom try this before calling their favorite tech support helpline.
Tech tip #2: Don’t visit fishy websites. Your computer will end up riddled with adware, malware, trojans or other malicious software you probably don’t want on your computer. Addendum: Don’t install any programs you didn’t specifically intend to install. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you are unclear about either of these things, just set your computer on fire now.
Tech tip #3: When you fill your car up with gas, do you do so by taking the nozzle of the gas hose, shoving it through an open window of the car and spraying the interior with fuel? I bet you don’t and do you know why? Because you are smart and learned how to pump gas properly. Spend some time learning how to do the tasks you need to do on your computer. The IBM PC came out in 1981. This was over 30 years ago. Computers are not new-fangled things, they are not weird nor are they the domain of nerds or geeks. They are tools and even if they haven’t advanced as much as we might have hoped for in 2016, it doesn’t change the fact that like any tool you use, you should learn how to use it. Addendum: a search engine like Google will give you most of the answers you will need, provided you search intelligently. If you are having problems printing, don’t do a search on “raspberry pants” unless you actually use raspberry pants to print.
Bonus tip: Is it plugged in? Unless it runs on batteries it should be plugged in.
The first 23 hours of 2016 have been okay. I got a Compass card for transit since they’re now mandatory. It worked fine at the fare gates at Sapperton. Metrotown station doesn’t have gates yet due to station upgrade work. Instead they have little fare post things. They were very fussy with the card and I hate them.
I weighed in at a whale-like 169.5 pounds this morning due to holiday excess. The good news is the holidays are all done now so the shoveling of unneeded food should end. Should.
It was cold and sunny, except here in New West where great banks of fog rolling off the Fraser blotted out the sky and gave the area a spooky look.
2015 is coming to and end and for me it was a year of transition, with little progress, so I’m looking forward to things improving in 2016.
I’m not making any resolutions for the new year but there are things I want to do, plan to do and will probably cry a little inside if I don’t do them. If I did have resolutions, they would look something like this:
get my weight back down to where it was during summer, before I hurt my leg (this would be around 150 pounds)
write every day (I’ve been very good with this since mid-August, though most of the writing has been inane posts on this blog)
finish at least one major writing project, likely my novel Road Closed, written for NaNoWriMo 2014
stay sane at work
run regularly again
get my left foot looked at and/or fixed (the looking-at part could happen in a little over a week)
try to stay positive, kind and creative
win millions of dollars in the lottery
seriously, I’ll give a whole bunch of it to charity if I win
Happy New Year to the bots, other non-humans scraping this site, and people accidentally arriving here because I used the word “nude” in some post back in 2007. May 2016 be fruitful and fun for you.
There have been a few famous tablets over the years. Moses brought a few down from Mt. Sinai you may have heard of, for example. I’d like to talk about one that is a little more current–specifically the iPad, introduced by Apple in 2010.
At the time one of the most amazing things about the iPad was not its relatively svelte design, power or display but its price–$500 was seen as a veritable bargain for a piece of Apple hardware. People were impressed, the iPad sold millions, the improved iPad 2 sold millions and everyone was happy ever after.
Reasons for the declines have been attributed to various factors but the main ones people cite are:
Cheaper alternatives, mainly in the Android tablet market and in the forked version Amazon uses for their tablets
Longer upgrade cycles; people upgrade phones every two years, tablets get upgraded more like computers, so some may hang onto their iPads for 3-4 years before feeling a need to update
The rise of larger smartphones has eaten away some of the tablet market
The rise of smaller, lighter ultrabook laptops has likewise eaten into the tablet market
Hybrid devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 have lured away some people who wanted something more powerful than an iPad
The iPad hasn’t changed fundamentally since its introduction over five years ago. Compare the original iPhone and its capabilities to the current iPhone 6s and the difference is fairly dramatic
The reason I decided to write this is because I think Apple’s iPad strategy is muddled right now and what they are doing is unlikely to reverse the declining sales (it should be noted that in Q4 2015 Apple sold 9.88 million iPads–the lowest number since Q3 2011–but that’s still an awful lot of iPads, so it’s not going away anytime soon, regardless).
Let’s see how Apple is addressing the above factors.
Cheaper alternatives. Apple is never going to produce a bargain-priced tablet. Apple doesn’t do bargain-priced anything and that’s okay, no one expects them to. But they had to do something to bring pricing down and their solution has been to retain a selection of previous generation models at lower price points. Hence you can get the current iPad Air 2 for $499 or the previous generation iPad Air for $399. This is probably the best Apple can do here. They are never going to compete against Amazon’s $50 tablet-soon-to-be-in-a-cereal-box approach.
Longer upgrade cycles. This is something Apple has no real control over. It affects all tablets, so it’s not a problem specific to Apple. Would dramatically different iPads spur people to upgrade sooner? It’s possible but it’s just as likely it could push people into keeping what they have if the new version deviates too much from what they expect an iPad to do.
Larger smartphones. Apple has chosen to go the route of cannibalization here by introducing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in 2014 with larger 4.7″ and 5.5″ displays. While they’d prefer people buying an iPad and an iPhone, having them buy a larger iPhone is better than having someone eliminating both and getting a big screen Android phone instead.
Smaller, lighter laptops. Apple is again going with cannibalization by introducing the MacBook, a 12″ laptop that weighs less than two pounds, comes with a single USB-C port and is available in three different colors–just like an iPad! Price-wise it’s in an entirely different market but design-wise it’s definitely the first step by Apple toward making a laptop that is as light and portable as a tablet.
Hybrid devices. Apple executives like to make fun of products until they decide to do their own take on a particular device a few years later. Such is the case with the iPad Pro and its optional keyboard and stylus. Apple’s take on a Surface Pro-style device is more iPad and less laptop than the Surface but it’s clear Apple is trying to pull away sales from Microsoft’s hybrid while also attempting to expand the iPad’s reach.
The 2015 iPads all do the same things the original did in 2010, they just do it faster while weighing less and looking better. This is one area where Apple does not appear to have a plan–or has yet to reveal it.
Looking over the list, Apple is clearly doing some things to address problems with declining iPad sales, even if some of those–like the introduction of larger iPhones–help the company more than they do the iPad itself. The reason I stated that Apple’s iPad strategy seems muddled is tied directly to its current iPad lineup and how it’s evolved over the last year.
In 2013 Apple introduced the iPad Air. The next year they brought out the iPad Air 2, a faster, thinner, lighter model. This year Apple did not update the Air–the primary iPad model–at all. They refreshed the iPad mini by replacing last year’s embarrassing iPad 3, which only added Touch ID–something Apple apparently thought people would be happy to shell out an extra $100 for–with the iPad mini 4. They also introduced the iPad Pro, the really big iPad. They retained the iPad Air and iPad mini 2 as “budget” alternatives.
The mini sells well but it doesn’t sell as well as the 9.7″ model. One could argue that its sales may decline even more as larger phones encroach on its space–a 5.5″ display is closer to a 7.9″ display than 9.7″, after all (Apple doesn’t break out sales per iPad model but industry fancypants generally agree the 9.7″ model is the main seller). The iPad Pro, while still fundamentally an iPad, is so much larger and more expensive that it is likely to draw people looking for its unique qualities rather than as a general tablet. Someone who just wants a good, solid iPad still has the iPad Air 2 and despite it being a year old, it is still a fine tablet. But by not updating its main model, Apple seems to be saying it doesn’t know what to do with it. They can probably make it faster, maybe a little thinner (they are hitting limits in this area) but is that enough to woo people to upgrade? It doesn’t look like it, but at the same time no update at all makes the iPad Air 2 feel a bit forgotten and again, it’s their primary iPad.
Will the improved mini 4 turn sales around? It’s unlikely, though the improvements are welcome.
The iPad Pro is still a bit if a mystery in how it will play out but I think its high price will keep it from breaking out and becoming a huge seller. And people considering a Surface Pro are probably still more likely to get a Surface Pro, if only to overcome the limits of iOS that the iPad Pro still has to contend with (some would argue–as I would–that Windows 10 is a better operating system for productivity than iOS 9).
Rumors are circulating that Apple will reveal its next revision of the Apple Watch at a March 2016 event–about three months away as I write this– and the event may also reveal the follow-up to the iPad Air 2. If this turns out to be accurate, it will be interesting to see what the next iPad will look like and if the delay in updating it is due to product drift and uncertainty or because Apple is poised to bring some truly new features to the iPad.
Having an iPad Air myself, I admit I wouldn’t mind the lighter Air 2 but given the differences between the two models, I can’t justify the expense of upgrading. I’m curious to see if Apple can talk me into parting with my money in 2016.
The possible gluten repository of Galloway’s, a local bulk/specialty food store, yielded a veritable treasure of trove of gluten and other bread-making ingredients, so my partner bought the place out and made bread.
The first loaf was whole wheat bread made pre-gluten discovery and it was fine, if a little dense. The next loaf was raisin bread, which rose to monstrous proportions (even though the image makes it look kind of stubby and short) and was very yummy to boot. Jeff’s picture of the loaf, the bread maker and some of our kitchen counter is below. The bread’s integrity did not survive long:
Raisin bread, ready to fulfill its purpose in life of being eaten.
I suspect we will be up to our eyeballs over the next few weeks in a variety of breads, rolls and anything else that can be made in a bread maker, but that’s okay. I’ve started running again and I’m reasonably confident I can outrun the calories of the many delicious things this diabolical device can create.
I was at the mall today (Lougheed Town Centre, to be precise) and it wasn’t as insane as I had feared, given it was Boxing Day.
I remember way back in olden times when the local news would run a story every year about people camping overnight outside A&B Sound to get Boxing Day deals on electronics. Now A&B is gone, vinyl records which used to be cheap are overpriced and bought by hipsters, and enough stuff is bought online that the crowds are not as madding as they once were. Overall I’d have to say things have improved, though I kind of miss checking out the New Releases section at A&B, since I often had no idea what was actually new until I did this.
My partner wanted to spend some of his Christmas money on a bread maker. It would take precious space on the kitchen counter but his eyes sparkled and I could not in good conscience deny him. Tonight we have a bread maker. It’s still in its box on the living room floor. Why?
Gluten.
Gluten is apparently as difficult to find as precious metals. Maybe moreso. Most bread recipes call for gluten and while there are workarounds, we had flour that was not enriched and gluten would be needed. I did a search for gluten in Vancouver and this produced about a billion results–all for gluten-free anything you could think of. Gluten-free bread, gluten-free cereal, gluten-free bathroom mats. But actual gluten? It’s like a unicorn. People talk about it, you hear of it, but you never see it and start to wonder if it really exists.
Tomorrow we’ll be checking some specialty food stores with the goal of buying a ten year supply of gluten should any of them have stock on hand. Maybe a 50 year supply. I can make that a bucket list item–bake bread with REAL GLUTEN when I’m a hundred years old.
It is Christmas Eve and as I enjoy some tea on this cool, crisp evening, here are my five favorite things about Christmas, in no particular order:
Eggnog. It’s actually kind of gross, like imbibing sickly sweet cream, but drinking it feels exactly like it is–a rich indulgence perfect for partaking of once a year
Presents. I don’t really care about getting presents but it would seem wrong to oppose them, unless they were mean reverse-presents like boxes of poop or something
Snow (provisional). I like snow on Christmas but only on two conditions: 1) I am not traveling 2) it doesn’t rain immediately (or not-so-immediately) afterward, turning the slow into slush
We’ve already passed the shortest day of the year, automatically making Christmas and every day up to the next winter solstice better
A Charlie Brown Christmas. It rails against the commercialism of the holiday, has a terrific jazzy score, uses actual children for the voices of children and delivers its message without feeling heavy-handed. It’s also a little weird in a way that’s hard to describe.
Bonus favorite thing: peace on Earth, if it ever actually happened.
Today it rained a lot and was cold. We didn’t experience catastrophic flooding and it didn’t actually drop below freezing, but things got wet and the buses were crowded, damp and unpleasant.
Was that interesting? No, it was not. This is a little better:
Today a series of mega-tornadoes swept through the city, blowing apart skyscrapers, flattening dozens of blocks and leaving behind nothing but smoking ruins. It also rained a lot and was cold.
Although this is more exciting it also has the small issue of being untrue in regards to the mega-tornadoes. Astute readers are likely to know that mega-tornadoes hardly ever sweep through Metro Vancouver, putting them in a negative and non-receptive state of mind for the rest of your post. They may even decide to not read further at all, knowing full well that millions of amusing cat images are just a few clicks away in another tab.
So I’m not going to talk about the weather. Instead I’m going to talk about the seasons. Most people associate seasons with weather but technically you can talk about one without discussing the other. As I am about to do in the next paragraph.
The winter solstice was yesterday, December 22, and as such this means the shortest day of the year has passed and now the days will get longer and before you know it the glory of summer will have returned. Hooray summer!
With three days to go, Weather Underground is forecasting partly cloudy conditions, a 0% chance precipitation and a chilly high of 2ºC for Christmas Day.
Good: no rain
Good: no snow
Meh: 2ºC isn’t exactly summer weather but it’s still above freezing
I can live with–nay, embrace–this yuletide forecast. A crisp, cold day is roughly a billion times better than a torrent of rain or a bunch of snow that turns to rain and creates rivers of slush and when you come back from a walk you find your pants are somehow soaked all the way to your waist.
So here’s hoping.
Also, I am still sore from my run on Sunday. This is not weather-related but didn’t seem worthy of its own post (I write after devoting yet another post to a cat gif).
