I’m going to the MetaFilter Meetup for Dallas this evening. However, if you’re also going, keep in mind that, even though the DFWBlogs page lists the location as Ben’s Half-yard House, the actual page at Meetup.com lists the location as a TGI Friday’s (the one on N. Market St.).
Author: Ashley Bischoff
PC Injury
I was woken at 6am this morning by the Bwee-Bwerp Bwee-Bwerp of my slot-loading DVD-ROM drive continually trying to eject a non-existant disc. I knew something wasn’t right, so I got out of bed and walked over to my PC. I shook the mouse to de-activate the screen saver (as I normally do), but the screen remained blank. I tapped on the keyboard, but still nothing.
Figuring that something was definitely wrong, I hit the reset button on the front of the box — nothing. Finally, I held the power-button to power it down before going back to bed.
Once before, I had problems with this box. Previously, my CDR drive had aparently gone bad, and was mucking with the system’s stability as a whole. That time, I just unplugged the CDR drive’s power cable, and the system returned to normal. So, after getting up and having a shower, I tried that trick once more. One by one, I unplugged the power cables from my various drives, trying the power switch after each one. But, the box still wouldn’t come to life.
Running out of options, I figured that the power supply itself may have died. So, I put my hand up to its output-fan to check for a breeze: nope. Curiously enough, the internal fans in my case were still spinning, so I wasn’t certain if the power supply was dead.
I headed off to Fry’s to look for a new power supply. Pleasantly, they had almost a dozen to choose from. So, I asked one of the employees about the differences between them. He mentioned that, with the more expensive ones, you’re mostly just paying for the brand name. But, after telling him my story, he suggested that I could try a power supply tester to see if it really was the power supply that had gone bad.
The power supply testers were only about $12, so I decided to give that a try. “Besides,” I thought, “if it turns out that the power supply is ok, I can always make use of Fry’s 30-day return policy.”
Once back at the apartment, I plugged my power-supply into the tester and, sure enough, it was dead. So, I drove back to Fry’s once more. Still not entirely sure about which power supply would suit me best, I picked up one from JGE — it was 300 watts (just like my old one) and AMD Approved (which was reassuring).
I drove back to the apartment and, before installing the new power supply, I tested it with the power supply tester (both to check on the power supply but also to make sure that the tester was working properly). The little LED on the tester lit up green, so the power supply looked to be good.
I installed the power supply into the case and, after a gathering of courage, turned on the machine. Success! So, once again my machine is alive and well. Whew.
DART: Mostly Harmless
After my adventures with Airtran yesterday, I still needed to get home from the airport. Of course, Amanda had offered to give me a ride. But when I heard that I had missed my connecting flight to Dallas, I didn’t want to burden her any further with picking me up the next morning.
So, I figured I’d just make use of DART, specifically the “Trinity Railway Express” — a rail line from the airport to downtown (where I could catch an ordinary transit train). I wasn’t concerned about this, as I had previously used the Trinity Railway Express when I went to visit my parents over the winter solstice. And, I knew that there was a DART bus that would take me right to the Trinity Railway Express station, just a short ride away.
So, I followed the signs in the airport for the “Ground Transportation”, and from there to the specific Trinity Railway Express bus-stop. My flight landed just after 2:00pm, so it was probably about 2:30pm at this point. I waited about half an hour, and a yellow DART bus came along. I checked its window-sign, but it turned out to be just an ordinary DART bus (not one that would take me to the Trinity Railway Express station). However, as 3:30pm rolled around, I became concered — “Are the Trinity Railway Express buses really that infrequent?&rdquo, I thought.
So, I used my mobile phone to call the DART number that was listed on the bus stop. After pressing just a few buttons to navigate through the voice-menu, I was able to speak with a real human. And, she sheepishly informed me that the bus from the airport to the Trinity Railway Express station doesn’t run on Sundays (bah!).
However, the DART-lady was happy to calculate a route — using other DART transportation — that could get me home. It would only cost me $4 for an all-day pass, so I figured I’d give that a try. And, as it turned out, the first segment of my journey was at 3:46pm (which was only a few minutes away at the time). For those curious, here’s how the route I took on DART:
- At 3:46pm, catch the 202 bus going downtown. At 4:55pm, get off at the West End station.
- At 5:07pm at West End, catch the Red Line train towards Galatyn Park Station. Then, at 5:27pm, get off at the Park Lane stop.
- Lastly, at 5:34pm, get on the “501 Mockingbird” bus, and that should take me where I need to go.
I received the complete directions, including arrival and destination times, right over the phone. And, DART was on-time as well — I could just about get-on or get-off based on the current-time alone. I ended up getting back to my apartment at about 5:45pm, which wasn’t that bad for $4.
My take is that DART may have some knuckleheads in the planning department (no Trinity Railway Express one-seventh of the week?!), but their “ground troops” can be rather helpful.
Airtran Considered Harmful
I had quite an adventure with airlines over the past few days. The result: Airtran considered harmful. It all started a few days ago...
I had flights for Sunday through Saturday with Vanguard Airlines. But, of course, Vanguard went bankrupt on me. To make things more interesting, I had already used one leg of my trip at the time of the bankruptcy.
At the time of the bankruptcy, Vanguard had arranged special deals for stranded-travellers with Frontier and National airlines. However, I quickly found out that neither Frontier nor National flew to both Pittsburgh and Dallas :-/. So, that’s where Airtran comes in.
I had checked the usual sites, but Airtran consistently had the best fares for one-way trips from Pittsburgh to Dallas. Of course, “best” is all relative, as the one-way flight that I ended up booking with Airtran cost only $10 less than the two-way flight that I had booked with Vanguard.
The flight with Airtran was for Saturday evening, via Atlanta (so far, so good). The flight to Atlanta was scheduled to leave Pittsburgh at 8:05pm EST, but it only ended up leaving at 9:30pm. So, even though the Atlanta-to-Dallas flight was running an hour late, that didn’t cover the difference — I missed my connecting flight from Atlanta to Dallas.
Of course, Airtran arranged for hotels for us. But, because virtually everyone on the Pittsburgh-to-Atlanta flight had a connecting flight (that he or she ended up missing), there were a couple hundred people in the line for the Airtran customer service counter. So, two hours of standing-in-line later, I had a voucher for the local Crown Plaza. The customer service agents were handing out vouchers for various local hotels, and the Crown-Plaza-bound bunch of us boarded the shuttle to the hotel.
Upon arriving at the Crown Plaza, however, they informed us that they had no vacancies (“The airlines don’t always keep track of how many vouchers they hand out&rdquo, we were told). Luckily, the Crown Plaza was able to arrange for rooms for us at a nearby Holiday Inn. Frickin Airtran.
The morning flights were mostly uneventful. I had asked for a later flight (around lunchtime), as I wanted more sleep than a first-thing-in-the-morning flight would have afforded me. The flight was scheduled to leave at 12:05pm. And, we boarded the plane about 20 minutes before scheduled takeoff (fairly normal).
After boarding, though, we sat on the runway for about an hour. At that point, one of the crew members came over the intercom to let us know that “We’re just waiting on one more crew member. Once he gets here, we can head off.”, to which he added sarcastically “Welcome to the airline industry”. So, it wasn’t even weather-related or even mechanical — they just couldn’t keep their appointments. The AWOL crewmember did eventually arrive, about 20 minutes after that announcement.
As such, I will hesitate in flying Airtran ever again.
Juicy Lucy
The e-mail discussion list for the American Dialect Society offers this description for a food apparently known as a “Juicy Lucy”:
Juicy Lucy—This is a cheeseburger, but with the cheese inside the burger. It appears to be the product of Matt's Bar, 3500 Cedar Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, but several other places in that town also offer it. Not recorded in Mariani’s Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink or in DARE.
To be honest, the idea of having cheese inside my burger initially sounded a bit gross to me. But, perhaps I was just thinking in an American-cheese state of mind. And, come to think of it, I would imagine that a “Juicy Lucy” made with blue cheese could be quite delicious!