Robert Pence

Thank you for these! They're beautiful, and they awakened memories of time spent there twenty years ago with a dear friend.

eTicketing on Amtrak An article by Bob Johnston on page 20 of the February 2012 issue of Trains magazine says that Amtrak is testing eTicketing in Maine and will test it on certain other trains and on some Thruway buses. I hope they roll it out system-wide. Sometimes I want to make a reservation on short notice and the nearest staffed Amtrak station to me is in Toledo, 100 miles away. That means the tickets for on-line reservations have to be sent via a parcel delivery service and it adds $15 to my cost. It would be a great convenience to me to be able to make a reservation on line, print out a pass with a bar code, and let the conductor scan it when he comes around to collect tickets. Sometimes it would save me $15, too.

I am cautiously optimistic.

Neat shots, and some interesting architecture.

Yes, he did. Peace and quiet and no annoying relatives.

Not bad!

I think the building on the other side of the river, just to the left of the Hull Umbrella Factory, may be this one:

Beautiful set.

I read Clockwork Orange before I saw the film, and was impressed at how well Kubrick used visuals to convey the whole chaotic, disordered nature of what I had read.

The large structure at the rear of the municipal building may be a gymnasium/auditorium. Some small-town city halls of that period had those.

I think I've dodged the bullet this year. Not until Thursday did my niece call to give me the schedule for the family Christmas that she and her family host, and I was able to truthfully tell her that I already had made other plans; I did not elaborate that those plans involve a peaceful, contemplative Christmas in the comfort of my leather recliner with a good book, favorite mostly-classical CDs in my CD player, and probably more than one large mug of hot chocolate laced generously with rum or brandy. I really enjoy kids, but ten or a dozen of them all keyed up over Christmas, plus grownups involving me in boisterous party games, leave me seriously craving tranquility. I look forward to my respectful and respectable Christmas. Whatever your faith, I wish all my good friends at UO an enjoyable and fulfilling season and good health and a reasonable amount of prosperity in 2012.

I'm not sure I'd want to work for that guy, anyway. He sounds like someone who doesn't know enough about the job/profession to steer questions and discussion in an appropriate direction, and wouldn't recognize competence and commitment if he saw it. I had a boss like that, who looked after an employee who could bs about sports and go golfing with him, at the expense of the employees who kept the place running. Appropriately, after a couple of years he was reassigned to a created "special assignment" where his real task was to find another job within six months.

Now THAT is a run-on sentence! ;-) But ... but ... it's hard find a stopping place when enumerating the ways in which train travel is superior to flying! :-D

When people compare the cost of a sleeper with cheap air fares, I don't bother explaining that they've paid some substantial tax dollars to keep those air fares low; I know their eyes would glaze over and they'd tune me out. Instead, I explain to them that you get what you pay for; $500 for a relaxing overnight trip in comfortable surroundings with scenery, halfway-decent food served on china at a table where you have the opportunity to meet friendly, interesting people, versus $300 for two hours of treatment that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile, where the lack of an in-flight meal is a blessing considering the quality of food and its presentation on longer flights, and where you spend two hours crammed into an uncomfortable seat with no legroom, two chances out of three that you won't get a window that may or may not offer a view of anything on the ground depending upon weather, and limited opportunity to get up and move around.

Mark "Philander" Souder, he of the overpowering sanctimony? Probably. As a legislator he always opposed legalizing marijuana, and often came out in favor of harsh penalties against people caught even with small personal-use quantities. Ultimately his admitting to an affair with a female staffer (only to pre-empt being exposed) diverted most of the attention away from his morality crusades.

Nice!

When Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" (the Bean) in Millennium Park was new, security guards stopped people who attempted to use tripods when photographing it, saying that the sculpture is copyright-protected art. They didn't interfere with hand-held photography, so I suppose they assumed that anyone using a tripod was a professional photographer with commercial use in mind. I've taken quite a few hand-held photographs of it at various times of day and year, and have never been approached by security. I haven't heard any reports recently about prohibiting tripods.

In "Dumbest Generation," Bauerlein also makes a strong case that implementing technology in the classroom produces a generation proficient in the use of technology, but not really better educated in the fundamentals of how to acquire and apply new knowledge. And I agree that prior to the 1980s many of my friends found jobs in fields that were unrelated to their college majors. One who graduated with majors in fine arts and architecture found his career in banking, and his wasn't an unusual case. Another majored in English education and then went to work in a data center at a large bank. I was trained as a draftsman and machinist toolmaker through an apprenticeship program, worked a few years at that, and then spent 16 years in manufacturing cost analysis. That job morphed into becoming a programmer-analyst and developing applications to streamline the cost analysis work. From there I became a systems analyst, and ultimately retired from tech support, providing software, network, and hardware support for PC users in financial services. As I moved from one field into the next I took some college coursework, but most of my education was from self-study and hands-on experience.

My first glance at the photo of the towers gave me a shudder, and I still try to avoid looking at it when I visit this thread. If I lived there, I don't think I'd be able to be where I could see them. The architect ought to be expelled/blacklisted from any professional organizations and any licensing or certification should be annulled.

Neat stuff. I like the Deco tower in the first shot, and I'll bet the food aromas on the street are great.

It's not always a "distant drone." In my neighborhood, two or three blocks of potentially valuable historic residential properties have a clear line of sight across block-wide parking lots to a busy NS crossing. The frequent ear-shattering blasts of locomotive horns, around the clock, amplified by echoing off nearby brick and concrete buildings, suppress the value of those properties, resulting in their remaining as low-quality rentals. That's the only grade crossing in the immediate area; to the west there's undeveloped former railyard land for almost a mile, and to the east the line is grade separated as it passes through downtown and adjacent residential neighborhoods beyond for at least a mile, possibly two. The line is the NS former Nickel Plate main line through Fort Wayne, and traffic only promises to grow there.

I even tried to get into Wal-Mart by wearing sweat pants, but they picked me out as an infiltrator because I'm skinny!

The process already is corrupt in some places; I've read of tissues being harvested from people after they die, and sold through the black market for transplant. My concern with making body parts a marketable product is that market forces would drive pricing, and ability to pay would become a dominant decisive factor in who gets a transplant and who doesn't. If two people needed a kidney and both were genetic matches with only one kidney available, the person with the greatest ability to pay would have the best chance of getting the transplant and wealth could override otherwise pragmatic factors like age, overall general health, and the potential for returning to a productive life. A wealthy, obese, life-long heavy smoker and drinker with a life history of scams and shady dealing could win out over a fit, young, active person who works hard to support a family.

I like that; the residential styles have a lot in common with Midwestern/Great Lakes cities, but it's in better shap than many of those. In the summer with everything green and leafed out, I imagine that's a gorgeous place.

Thanks. The residential construction isn't exactly my cup of tea, but I've always liked settling in one place and staying until I have to change, and that looks like a place where a people stop by on the way up. The materials used in those buildings aren't intended to last as long as it takes for an area to mature and feel permanent and established. Still, it's attractive in its own context, and I hope that the Northeast's tradition of valuing access to rail transport will continue to spread westward. The station looks attractive and functional.