The MBTA has for years now had available a “stored value” type of card for subway, buses, commuter rail, etc. All very neat. You can go to a vending machine at subway stations and refill the card with cash or use a debit or credit card. It’s even possible to refill them on the bus, [...]
Winter Hobbies
Jan 21
During the good weather, I enjoy riding my bike a bit with my free time, but in the winter I am often de-motivated. That makes it a good time to focus on one of my other hobbies: electronics. I had a pretty fruitful weekend (so far!) on the electronics front. For Christmas, I had bought [...]
Sign Switcher
Jan 11
For our church pageant, we retold the Christmas story in the guise of a Christmas Trivia game show. There was going to be a person responsible for holding up signs like “Applause!” etc. but I thought to myself, “I have some scrolling LED signs. I bet with a little effort, I can build/program a device [...]
Brrrrrrrr!
Nov 2
I planned to ride in to work today when the forecast called for overnight lows in the upper 30′s. I headed out at about 5:30 this morning, outfitted in tights, a semi-thermal jersey, wool socks, and hopefully warm gloves. Both the gloves and the jersey were new and untried. I was envisioning maybe it would [...]
Hell Toupee
Oct 31
There were still patches of snow on the ground from the weekend’s Ocsnowber Nor’easter, but it was a nice night for trick-or-treating, at about 45 degrees. I had our light on from 6-9 but still only served 10 kids, and 6 of them were in one group! I do my best to be a welcoming [...]
Virtually Impossible
Oct 16
I received a new laptop at work, which is always a treat, but also always a pain trying to get the necessary programs and data migrated from the old one to the new one. My usual crutch is to create a “virtual” copy of the old laptop to run on the new one for the [...]
I Want to Ride my Bicycle
Oct 16
So I’ve been riding my new bicycle around town, but in the wimpy freewheel mode. Yesterday I got my courage up to flip the rear wheel around and give the fixed gear mode a try on the ride to Tyler’s soccer game. And today, I went for a longer ride — Arlington Center to Lexington [...]
My Bike
Oct 5
Having largely completed Clara’s bike, I moved on to my bike. This is the bike I bought in High School, early 1980′s, from the bike shop that was at the edge of our neighborhood (The Bike Rack). It cost me about $300 at the time. I rode it all over during my High School year, [...]
Clara’s Bike
Aug 29
Ever since she briefly rode a friend’s road bike on vacation last year, Clara has been wanting a road bike of her own. There are kid-sized road bikes available, but they run $700 and up! So I scoured Craigslist, and eventually came upon a 1977 (I think) Fuji Junior, which is a kid-sized road bike, [...]
A Late Start to the Season
Jun 16
Mere hours after the Bruins season came to a victorious ending, my bike commuting season has begun. This morning, I biked the sixteen miles in to work for the first time this year, which took me an hour and seventeen minutes. I forget how that compares with previous years, but I’ll assume it’s somewhat slower. [...]
