Author: Brian

There’s a bus driver in my neighborhood who has a groupie.

The bus he drives goes through my neighborhood, anyway. And he only drives this route on the weekends, as far as I know.

And every single time I get on his bus, there’s a lady in the front passenger seat, talking to him. She’s an older lady, about the same age as the driver. Sometimes, she has a little girl, about 10 or so, with her. Sometimes she’s alone.

I could ride the bus from one end of the line to the next, and the lady never gets out at a stop. And I’ve never seen her board, either. She’s just… always… there.

From the little bit of conversation I’ve heard between the driver and the lady, it doesn’t seem that she’s his wife. I never look for a wedding ring so I may be wrong, but I don’t recall any particular topic that would make me think they share a house at all. Maybe a girlfriend?

But it’s been going on for years now.

Sometimes, when other passengers get on and ask the driver questions, the lady will answer instead. I’m sure she knows this particular route as well as the driver, and likely the rest of TriMet’s system, too. She’ll talk about transfers to other routes, or where different businesses are along the route, or fare structures or where to buy monthly passes.

I’ve seen her in that seat on rainy, stormy days. I’ve seen her in that seat on sunny, warm days (and as a side note, man, I miss those sunny warm days right now). I’ve never seen her with a book or a music player or a magazine or newspaper. I’ve never seen her with groceries or shopping bags. I’ve never seen her engage other regular riders, like me for just one example, in the same way or with the same intensity that she talks to the driver.

I don’t really know what else to call her, but a bus groupie.

Feel free to follow along with me.

I’ve got a first-generation, 2G iPhone. 8GB of storage. It’s still in pretty good shape; a little dent on the back, but the screen is pristine, since it’s been covered with a protector for all but about 2 minutes of the 14 months I’ve owned it.

Since I’m getting a small refund from the Feds on my taxes this year, I started thinking about upgrading to the 3G iPhone, which is $199 for the same storage space I have now, or $299 for double the storage space. Also, they come in sexy, sexy black.

But what could I get for selling my old iPhone? My usual way to determine such things is to hit eBay, do a search for completed listings for stuff in the same general condition as the thing I’m selling. That gives me an idea what people will pay.

Color me surprised to find sold iPhones, just like mine, still selling for up to $400+!

Tossing out the broken ones, and the ones that sold for $1000 or more (I smell a scam there), the mid-range is still $250-$300. That’s… that’s just nuts.

Is it because 2G iPhones can be jailbroken and unlocked to work with other carriers? That’s the main reason I can see for the used selling price for the first generation to remain so high.

Which means I might be able to upgrade to the newer iPhone and gain money.

Of course, since the monthly data plan for iPhone 3G is higher ($30/month for 3G vs. $20/month for EDGE; and texting isn’t included, so that’s another $20/month – I text a lot and need unlimited), that money would go towards paying the extra monthly fees.

Even so… daaaaamn. So tempting.

I dreamt that I was wandering around a house, some kind of vacation home. It was dark inside but light and sunny outside.

I’ve read somewhere that when one dreams about a house, the house represents the person. I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, at all times, but since reading that and internalizing it, it has become true for me, after the fact. So now, when I wake up and analyze a dream of mine, if there’s a house, the automatic assumption is that the house represents myself.

Sounds nice and logical and easy-to-understand, in a metaphorical way, right? Well hang on.

In this house, I’m looking for the bedroom. I’ve been traveling and I want to rest. I’m warm and wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

And then the bees find me.

Clumps of bees land on and around my joints; a group in the pit of each elbow, a mob in each armpit, some in my groin and some around each knee. They don’t attack at first, just land and stay there, while I walk around and wave my arms trying to dislodge them without angering them.

So, what do bees mean? In the context of the house-is-me metaphor?

Eventually the bees do, indeed, begin to bite me. Or sting me. One or the other. The pain is low-key but definitely there. In dream logic, I just walk around with the bees clumped around my various joints. I don’t swipe at them or brush them off because, well, they’d bite me. More. Or… something.

And I walk into the bedroom, finally. A small mattress, big enough for one person, and some blankets lies on the floor of an otherwise empty room. And on the bed are several kittens. Small, fluffy, orange kittens.

They see me and the bees, and the kittens yowl. They jump and cling to my arms and legs and crotch. And they begin to attack the bees.

In their excitement, they are not very accurate.

So now I have kittens biting me and the bees, and the bees are agitated and biting me, too.

That’s when I wake up.

I have no idea what it means.

Feel free to share your bizarre dreams in the comments…

Got a text from my youngest nephew letting me know that there will be a dinner celebrating my dad’s birthday and that I was invited.

After reserving the closest Zipcar to me (4 miles away), missing a bus that turned the wrong way and missed my stop, then having to walk a half-mile to catch another bus and having to walk another half mile to actually get to the car, then having to put gas in the car (curse you, whoever had the car before me!), well, I was late.

But I was there in time for cake! Dad got chocolate chocolate cake with chocolate chips in the frosting, yum.

Got to hear more stories of my sister and my birthday. Mostly my sister’s – apparently mom and dad were living on N. Vancouver when my sister was born in November ’63, and the taxi driver who took them to the hospital (St. Vincent’s, which was off of West Burnside) was very very nervous the entire ride. Dad was working in a camera store at the time, and they did not have a car. Luckily dad’s friend lent him a dark blue 1963 Corvette Stingray to bring mom and baby Lisa home. I believe that was a split-window coupe that year. Damn. No, my sister did not have a child-safety seat; she just rode home behind the passenger seat. Ah, those were the days…

Dad did not tell any stories about his own birthday, unfortunately.

Happy birthday, dad!

Barack Obama is already saving me money!

On my first pass through on my 2008 taxes, I owed the state of Oregon $55. Then I remembered my contributions to Obama’s campaign!

BAM! That dropped my payment to just $5!

Thanks, President-elect Obama!

Yes, I know it’s early for doing taxes, but since I’m expecting a $680 refund from the Feds I like to get that money in my hands as soon as possible.

I’d love to be able to make it all come out even, but this is the best I’ve done in recent years. I prefer to have as much of my money in my hands throughout the year.

Here’s hoping your taxes turn out for the better, too!

JetBlue responds well to Twitter. I know this because I watched Jonathon Maus of BikePortland blog a BTA staffer’s complaint about JetBlue’s handling of a folding bike, and later saw that JetBlue found out on it’s own and responded via Twitter. Final result? JetBlue changed it’s policy to a more folding-bike-friendly one.

That kind of customer service rocks. Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me.

And reading it reminded me of a similar incident from last month. I didn’t blog about it at the time, but now I realize that I should. Good behavior should always be mentioned.

It started when J. D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly asked for input, via Twitter, on which online financial software was best.

I had used Mint but didn’t like it, and had just started using Quicken Online, a free service that interfaced with all my banks, showed me real-time what my balances were, and offered lots of ways to slice and dice the information. Did I mention it was free?

I’ve used the software version of Quicken for many years, but in recent years they seemed to abandon the Macintosh market; instead of the three different levels (and pricing) found on the Windows side, only the most expensive version was available for Mac OS X. I limped along by continuing to use the last version I got free pre-installed on my iBook, transferring the program to my new MacBook Pro, until it finally stopped working on the most recent version of Mac OS X.

So I’m very pleased with the free online version. It doesn’t have all the features found in the full install, but it has more than enough. For instance, it doesn’t handle cash accounts, and if you have a lot of stocks and bonds and investments you should probably pony up for the full version, you cheapskate (or pay your accountant better). Since I don’t have any stocks and bonds and investments (beyond my one share of AAPL that I own for philosophical reasons, I’m cool with it.

I summarized all that as best as I could in 140 characters or less.

The next day, Twitter user QuickenPRChels (if you can’t decode that, it’s a Quicken Public Relations person named Chels, probably short for Chelsea), thanked me, publicly, for the compliment.

Does that surprise you? It doesn’t to me. One of the things that makes Twitter great is that the vast majority of the conversation is public, and between the awesome search functions and the use of an RSS feed, it’s easy to find out if others are talking about a topic you’re interested in. I have searches for my own name and the name of my blog, for instance. Sadly, not many people talk about me unless they’re already my friend. But someday, someone’s gonna tweet something about me, and I will know. Hopefully it’ll be positive!

But, see, lots of people are likely to talk about large corporations, and Twitter, with it’s 140 character limit and “of the moment” feel, makes it easy to voice a complaint. So there are companies that have Twitter accounts, and they watch for complaints. That’s generally a good thing, unless the company in question just uses that channel to promote their products – that’s a losing strategy.

But actually responding to complaints and taking them to heart (as it were – corporations don’t have heart, but the people who work for them do) – that’s a step beyond.

Sorry for the background, but back to my story; when I saw that QuickenPRChels had thanked me for the compliment, I wasn’t sure if this was strictly PR, or if it was that one step beyond kind of service. I filed that away for future reference.

About a week later, Intuit “updated” QuickenOnline. But in doing so, they removed a simple feature that I liked; I had to click down another level or two from the main page to see the last time my bank account information had been updated. Did the total on the main page include my latest charges or not? Click, click, click – oh, there it is. Grr. I didn’t have to drill down in the old version.

Now was the time to find out about their customer service. I tweeted to QuickenPRChels my complaint. After a quick back-and-forth, which seemed mostly a limitation of the 140 character limit, I explained the problem.

And the next time I logged in to QuickenOnline, the last update time had been restored. Problem solved, and question answered. Intuit’s programmers were listening, and able to address customer complaints.

Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. Not anymore.

“This store has enough video cameras in it to float a battleship.”

Let’s say that someone had some beef that may or may not have been slightly bad. Like, f’rinstance, the “use or freeze by” date was the previous day. But the beef gets cooked and put into, say, a cheeseburger. And eaten, with some ketchup and a little mustard and Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese on some toasted 9-grain bread.

Y’know. Hypothetically.

Let’s further say that that all happened last night. And it’s now about 12 hours later.

Should the hypothetical person in question be sick by now? Or can this person stop worrying about it?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments.

When I read this article, that talks about a study that showed that playing an involved video game that requires a lot of attention, like Tetris, immediately after a traumatic incident can ease the pain of that incident…

…I’d forgotten just how much Tetris I had played when I was younger.

Is there a word for the time when you’re having a conversation with a friend via text, and each side of the conversation is seeing and reacting to something entirely different because the texts are arriving out of order?

Because that’s so annoying, it needs a new word.

Like… noncontextism.