platform pals
Since about the middle of the summer I have been trying to use my
car less for work and instead take the
GO
TRANSIT train. GO is a heavily subsidized train and bus system
for the province of Ontario. The train ride is surprisingly
soothing, I usually turn on my iPod and close my eyes and drift off
to sleep. It takes about 40 minutes to reach my stop and my office
is a 10 minute walk from there.
It was not high gas prices that convinced me to try the train, I
had to use it one day after my car was stolen for a week by my Dad.
I suddenly found out how much stress driving creates, and it amazed
me how better my mornings went if I had arrived via the train. I
have now become somewhat of a regular and have met some nice
commuters who take the same train as me every day, so we have
little gossipy chit chats while we wait for the train each
morning.
About twice a week I go to the gym before work so I drive to work
instead, but I intend to keep using the train for the time being,
in the winter I am told, it is a whole different ball game, you get
to freeze while you wait, and you wait longer as the trains break
down or run late in the winter quite often.
My little server has now been running without a reboot for 199
days, this is quite amazing to me as I am usually pretty adept at
crashing computers. Evidently, I am no match for Debian Sarge.
Perhaps I will fare better with Etch. I need to add a hard drive
however and I don't see a way to do this without shutting it
off.
This makes me nervous as I wonder now if it will boot back up. I
don't care about the up-time, I must admit I would get a small
measure of satisfaction if I were able to keep a computer running
an entire year without rebooting, but most times people mention
up-time on their computers it usually ends up in a silly sort of
appendage measuring contest, that ends up with a story about a
computer that got dry-walled in a closet and ran for seven
years.
Anyhow, it will give me a chance to clean the dust bunnies out and
basically check that its not falling apart. The drive by the way, I
will actually buy myself, as I have already gotten too many
freebies from my hardware friend this year. It is a 350GB Seagate
for about $120 CDN, this seems reasonable to me.
One last thing about the GO train, the seats are arranged such that
two people sit facing another two, so unless you have something to
occupy your attention, (music, newspaper, laptop) you basically
have to talk to your coach-mates or make the decision not to talk
to them, and then try to avoid staring at them, something I am not
very good at and very often get caught doing.
You also can tell when you have been caught singing along to you
iPod because everyone is looking at you and smiling. This happened
to me once, it is hugely embarrassing and I hope it never happens
again.