Category: Personal Stuff

OK, so I went home and consulted my accountant. It turns out that the car-less commute cost me:

1. $2.50 in subway tokens
2. $0.90 in bus fare
3. $8.00 in shuttle fares

for a grand total of $11.40 for the day. If aimee hadn’t come to pick me up in the evening at the subway station, it would have been $12.30 instead. So for the week, that’s over $60! Gas costs about a third of that right now (I only fill the tank every week and a half or so, and I only use it on the weekdays).

So, economically, this car-less commute thing would be a pain in the butt. However, I did some maths: I can get a monthly subway pass for $44 and a monthly bus pass for $31 (or a monthly combo pass for the same total). Thus, I would save $11 bucks off the daily fares per month. Now, if my employer ever joins the business council, my shuttle fare would be $2 each way instead of $4, which would save me $20 a week. It would be slightly costlier than my car but not prohibitively so. Not that I’m pressuring anyone to do anything, I’m just saying, is all.

The thing I did find out, however, is that I get a tax deduction for those passes if they are > $150 for the year. That’s actually fairly cool, then.

Well, I did it. I left my car at home today! I hopped on a bus around the corner from our apartment, for a two minute ride where I crossed the street to catch a second bus (free transfer) to the T for a subway ride to the next stop where I caught the business council shuttle right to work! The shuttle was the longest part of the ride, clocking in at 30 minutes. I caught the first bus at 7:41 this morning. I was at work by 8:45. I grant you, it takes longer. However, had I caught the shuttle before that (catching the first bus at 7:20 or so instead), I would have had a shuttle ride right to the door of the building where I work. Today involved a ten minute walk. If I can time that alternative one correctly, then it should take about as long as it did when I drove through all the traffic in Somerville and Cambridge, but with a much reduced environmental cost.

Digging it so far. Tomorrow, I’ll try and remember to bring my book.

Thanks to everyone for your advice in my previous post about winter walking.

So now that we live closer to the urban Boston area, the T is about a mile and a half from home. And if I take that to the end of the line, I can hop onto a shuttle that’ll take me right to the building where I work. It’s a 2 dollar ride on the shuttle and a buck and a quarter on the T — overall, less than I pay for g)asoline (because my car apparently requires the highest octane).

Aimee and I walked it today to go meet up with Nichols for dinner. It took about a half hour to do it. However, when I arrived back home, I was pretty ripe. So that gets me thinking: I would absolutely love to do the more environmentally friendly commute to and from work. However, in the winter I would have all those layers on, and so I’d be sweating like a pig, really.

I have several questions for both of you readers of my blog: do you walk during your commute, and how long of a walk is it? What do you do about the sweat factor? If you shower at work, how icky is that experience? Where do you store your clothes? How do you carry your work clothes? Where do you store the soap? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s these details that freak me out about this.

Flame away.

Well, this is the end of my second week at StreamBase. I’ve learned a bunch this week, as it has comprised of my ramping up my knowledge of the way things are. I’ve been catching up on my reading of the logs over at the CEP interest group on yahoo (b2evo won’t allow me to link). And also, I’ve been reading Marco’s blog at rulecore. I discovered an open source CEP/ESP engine.

That’s most of the technical stuff. On the marketing side, I’ve been looking at the StreamBase website with a critical eye to making it more developer-friendly. The area of the site that I’ll be most concerned with is the Developer Zone. Currently there is not too much content on there, and I aim to change that. There’s so much that this platform is capable of that it’s a shame not to show off some of it. So, if you’re one of the 2 people who read my blog and you’re marginally interested, I’ll be making some changes to the DevZone, so please stay tuned. I would welcome any and all ideas for the DevZone.

Back in the first quarter of this year, my wife and I purchased a second hand hybrid, because her old car died. Now, we’ve been very impressed with the gas mileage we’re getting in that car — so naturally we drive that one more. While I’m not financially ready to replace my car just yet, I’m definitely keeping my eyes open for either a commuter hybrid or something that runs on a slightly exotic fuel.

It’s not just a gas price thing for me, though. I’ve had my SVX for about 6 years, and I think I’ve grown out of it. Before my Suby, I had a station wagon, which really worked for me. So I think in the coming year I’m on the hunt for a Golf or a Passat or worst-case, a Jetta.

Either way, the whole idea of running on biodiesel or better yet, grease and waste vegetable oil is very appealing to me.

Well, this was it. Today was my last day at the old job. It was very very bittersweet. I mean, I’m overjoyed about StreamBase. I’m over the top about my new job — I’m soo looking forward to finally doing what I love. But I leave behind at Brontes a tremendous team. The best bosses I’ve ever had (Ed and Phil), the best people I’ve ever worked with (Barbara, Joe, David, Jay, Brandon, Ilya, Rob, JQ, Justin, Adam, and more). I mean, I had a great time there. The people I worked with are second to none, and I will miss them terribly. I made some great friendships there too.

Forever, Brontes will be in my heart — this was the company that ended my dry-spell of job hunting and brought me out from Los Angeles to Boston, where the opportunity is!

Tomorrow is my day off, when I get to wait for the cable company to hook us up with internet, phone and, oh yeah, cable teevee. It’ll be weird to not go into Brontes. I’ll definitely be keeping in touch with the folks over there.

Mood: Happy but melancholy.

I did notice that I put in a good bit of effort into gentoo this evening. I hope to stabilise gnucash-2 soon, amongst other things.

Monday, my new job starts. New role, new dress, new attitude, new place, new people. Excitement, butterflies, sleeplessness. I can’t wait!

Well, the lease at the old place was up on the 31st of last month. We were going to move in to this new complex that got built this summer. Unfortunately, the business practices of the management company left a bit to be desired (not least of which falls under deceptive business). Anyway, we found a place in Medford (which everyone tells me is actually pronounced Mefa), and moved in last week. Well, we moved in to the kitchen, anyway, while the hardwood floors got re-done. That is to say, Daniel, Justin and Dave did most of the heavy lifting, including hefting the mattresses up to the second floor porch using rock-climbing gear. Then we promptly took off to go to Rainchester to see my sister for a few days.

While there, I took Aimee to my alma mater, and also to where I did most of the work for my Master’s. We also got to see the abandoned ferry to Canada. That’s pork barrel, right there. And of course, we ate at Ming’s, whose noodles are still to die for. Nowhere else have I had superior Chinese food. That’s right, people, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

We got back into town last night, and spent all of today cleaning, unpacking and applying contact paper. I love contact paper, it rocks. And now, we wait ’til Friday for the cable company to come by and connect the internet pipes to the house. The place is much bigger — two bedrooms, a sunroom/study, living room, dining room, kitchen, washing machine. Makes our old place look like a cardboard box.

So, in my learnings and conversations with people over the past week, I’ve just discovered this concept of Complex Event Processing. It’s a fascinating subject — taking a fast moving data stream and performing analysis of it in real time. I’m looking at a (PowerPoint alert!) presentation that say they achieve a 1msec lag in some cases using an on-the-fly db with SQL-like syntax.

This is truly fascinating business. Anyone out there in blogland into this CEP stuff. Tell me all about it, educate me.

Heh, it’s not a generic description, it’s the actual name of the place. I went there this week for lunch with a friend of mine and with Aron and his lovely wife, Amy. Now before I get into my mini-review/ranking of the place, let me just say this. All this seeming obsession with food has got a purpose. And this post shows that purpose. More after the nitty gritty. (I should sell advertising in this space right here, shouldn’t I?).

Aron told us all about xen and ia64 and his work involving both. Amy told us about her recent work with inotify. She’s modest so she described it as “some stuff”. The link and details are from Aron. And me, I have no shame, so I’m boasting on her behalf as well. And of course Justin regaled us with some comedy.

The food itself — for the price you simply can not complain. They have a great variety of stuff, and even for the vegetarians among us. All the meateaters (which consisted of everyone except for Aron, Amy and me) were pretty happy with it. Spicy food galore! Yummy and tasty, and I’m going back there for sure. The Griffises mentioned another Indian veg. restaurant in the area that we’ve been looking for but never seem to find. We always wind up at other Indian restaurants that have sprouted up in this one restaurant’s former locations. That includes the new #1 in Framingham. Go figure.

Now the reason? Great food, great company, great opportunities to get together with Gentoo developers and other smart people to talk about technology, linux, gentoo and so on. I always find these things very refreshing and energising. Notice how I met up with Aron yesterday and fixed a couple of bugs. I think that’s a pattern.

And so there you have it, mystery solved. I’ll hopefully put up a recipe for Rach soon.