Hall of Wien

For whatever reason, Wien has been on my mind today. I suppose it's simply Wien being pronounced ween and the last syllable of today's holiday, coupled with my childish amusement concerning speculation as to residents call themselves Wieners. I mean, they're either Wieners or losers, right?

And speaking of losers, we've definitely got Ventra. As I mentioned in the past and as you might have noticed if you were a Chicago transit user, the system is performing rather abysmally. And it's tough for the employees of the CTA, many of whom I have interacted with over the years, and many of whom I like. People get pretty frustrated with the service already and there's a tendency to take it out on someone wearing the logo. Throw in another wrench with Ventra and I worry about the remaining hair on the already one-third bald head of a man at my nearby station.

CTA's pretty aware of just how unenthused riders are with the crap service — though not aware enough to have considered not implementing the unnecessary "upgrade" in the first place. Alas, profits [for someone]. The result is that the stop I get off at every morning has recently acquired a new jovial man to greet everyone and to tell us all to have a wonderful day. I know why he suddenly appeared and I'm sure other riders do too, but that doesn't stop me liking the guy. Using such a tactic only makes me dislike the CTA even more, but hey, I'm transported most of the way to work without having to do anything but stand there. That can be a little more difficult at rush hours, but hey, other people want to travel most of the way to and from their destination without having to do anything but stand there too. Some of them even sit.

In the spirit of Halloween, Kind was giving out bars this morning. I could have sworn when these launched they were nothing but natural ingredients but now they've got the soy lecithin and the soy protein isolate of every other "bar." Or perhaps they were always loaded with these artificial goodies and now they just choose to report it. Either way, doesn't seem so kind to me. What I mean is they're not the kind of thing I want to be putting in my body. Not at a premium cost, and [almost] not for free. But not eating free things that aren't good for you wouldn't be following the spirit of the day. Sometimes you gotta give into the spirit.

A Happy Halloween to one and all.

 

Tuned In

I'm never actually at the cutting edge of newly released, or underground, or "hip" music (I'm classifying all of these as separate items though there is inevitable crossover). As I age, it's only getting worse. I do, however, know some songs. Now it's one thing when a new song bites on an older tune that maybe we're expected to only have a vague subconscious association with, but when new songs take their cues from other popular songs not even five years out, well perhaps it just speaks to the increasingly ephemeral nature of memory and lasting impressions. After all, we're bombarded with so much content, we simply can't remember as far back as we might have -- there's only room for so much.

What that introduction is getting at is quick observations on listening to a couple of new Fall Out Boy tracks. I'm more than happy to say I enjoyed a couple of their past songs, but generally they just don't do it for me. No big deal. However, in listening to "Just One Yesterday" I'd say it's rather impossible to hear the beginning of the song and not start singing "There's a fire, burning in my..." in your best Adele voice. As youtube comments show, I am neither the first nor the only person to observe this. As far as "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark", I couldn't help but hear Kanye West's "Power." It's not identical but it sure is close.

Something much more worth noting however is the switchover occurring at the CTA to the new Ventra system. This has been going on for quite sometime, and it's pretty obvious where the real gains are. Apparently the technology was getting outdated, but the old CTA VP of Tech just happened to work for Cubic, the company that got a $454 million contract to implement this new necessary technology? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I mean, poor Cubic went through the trouble of creating this new technology, we couldn't just have them sink that development cost by not giving them a bloated contract, could we? The good news is they'll now cut a bunch of jobs to make up for budget shortfalls. And they'll increase the fare cost by 33% starting in 2014. I'm not an accountant, so care to tell me how the $454 million implementation works in conjunction with the apparent $10.3 million per year in losses the CTA's taking?

At the transit stops they've been giving out nifty pamphlets too, to explain how the Ventra system is better! Fewer cards to keep track of! Actually no, you only ever needed one. Whether it was the papery piece with the magnetic strip like the MTA or MBTA or the plastic Chicago Card Plus you could tap on the machine, that was it. So far I see frequent moments of the Ventra scanners going down. The more technologically advanced you make a thing, the more opportunities it has to have something go wrong. Everything Ventra'd, nothing gained.

As we said in my safety patrol days then, "Start walking."