ITP: Early Edition

A 9:40am doctor’s appt is keeping me from my normal routine this morning. The plan was to run early, go see the doc, and then head into work. A new plan consisting of blogging, go see the doc, take the day off from work, exercise, relax, is currently winning out.

If At First You Don’t Succeed
Try, try again
Put it off until tomorrow.

I was going to give running another try last night, but the ominous clouds and rumbling in the sky convinced me otherwise. Of course it never really rained in the hood, but once the mind had been made up there was no going back. Besides, there was Big Brother 7 to watch…

Open Wider
Since I’m already knee deep in the Nikon camp I thought that I’d sink myself a little deeper. Yesterday I ordered the highly-recommended Nikon f/1.8 50mm auto-focus lens. Everyone seems to rave about this lens especially since it carries a fairly-inexpensive pricetag ($109 these days). I tacked on an extra $5 to my shipping cost in hopes of getting it in my grubby hands by Friday so that I can use it over the weekend. I’ve just received an email telling me if Brown does me right it should be here by tomorrow.

Random ITP Flickr Pic
I’ve become ‘Paulie the Spider Slayer’ in my house. I’ve had spiders in the house for years and have lived in harmony with them. Recently they seem to be making bigger inroads into the house, so it’s become time to wage war.

Is Marta Going Nutta?
Over the last year Marta has been installing their new fare collection system known as Breeze. In doing so they are phasing out the use of magnetic strip cards and tokens. During the transition you purchase a temporary paper Breeze ticket in order to get on the train. Once the installation is complete they will have a plastic Breeze card that can be reused by adding credit onto the card using the vending machines.

Yesterday I was pointed to this link where I could register to receive a free plastic permanent Breeze card before Marta starts to charge $5 per card (wow). If that wasn’t bad enough, once the permanent cards are in use Marta is planning on charging a surcharge of $0.25 for the purchase of the temporary one-time use card (WTF???)! Nothing like passing the cost of your operations, plus a little extra, directly to your customers. And before you tell me that it cost money to install and operate the new Breeze system, I understand this but the supposed millions in lost fares that this system is supposed to recoup should allow it to pay for itself without adding extra cost to the ridership (imo).

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – conflicted
Current Music – Some MIA song on KEXP. I’m no fan of the MIA, CSS, Ladytron musical trend.
Website Of The Day – Who knew that even in this day of heightened airline security you could still monitor real-time flight information at certain airports via the web? Unfortunately Hartsfield is not one of the airports, but if you still want to check it out, go here and select an airport to watch.
Exercise (b)Log – none

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]