Last week, our old stand-alone DVR/DVD recorder conked out. A bit of searching shows that the market for this sort of device seems to have dried up in favor of separate DVD recorders and DVR hard-disk units. We already had another DVD recorder (a DVD/VCR combo setup we keep in case we ever play video tapes or get around to transferring old ones to DVD), so we just needed the DVR part. After a bit of research, including double-pinky-swear assurances that it was compatible with our cable service (Northern Virginia Cox Cable), we settled on a TiVO HD unit.

And so begins the tale:


I have no idea of how Tech 3 could have possibly expected the TiVO to do scheduled recordings when hooked to a glorified cable box that gets no feedback from it. I am guessing that he slapped together an arrangement that looked OK just so he could get away and let it become somebody else's problem. I realize that this is uncharitable. I have used up my supply of charity by assigning the labels "Tech 1, Tech 2, and Tech 3" rather than "Moe, Larry, and Curly".

Hanlon's Razor implies that I should not assume that Cox is making a deliberately half-assed attempt to comply with compatibility regulations in order to leverage its cable monopoly into a DVR monopoly. I suspect this of being one of those chins Hanlon's Razor doesn't shave cleanly.

Metro does a monthly "online chat" session. The advertised purpose is to provide a means for public input. The apparent actual purpose is to provide the illusion of public input.

The main problem with bus service in my neighborhood is that Metro refuses to update it to connect to the local train station. This enables them to overcharge for the bus ride (by counting a 20-minute detour out of my way as an "express" trip) and then overcharge again for the train ride (which back-tracks the detour from the bus ride). I therefore posed the following question, and received the following reply:

Springfield, VA: Why is it that Metro has updated only two bus routes in Burke/Springfield to connect to Franconia/Springfield station? Most of the routes still connect to Metrorail at the Pentagon, adding a 20-minute delay and an "express" surcharge to each bus-to-rail connection.

Reply: Hi Springfield. The total fare paid for both bus and rail to ride from Burke to the Franconia-Springfield station to Pentagon is more than the straight shot bus to the Pentagon.

Perhaps James Burke equipped with the Marauder's Map and Diogenes' lamp could discover connections between the question and the "answer". I certainly cannot. I would call it a "bed-bug letter", except that the bed-bug letter in the old joke at least purports to address the customer complaint.

I just arrived home after an adventure. I know it was an "adventure" because it was nasty, uncomfortable, and made me extremely late for dinner.

The first bad sign was a train sitting on the northbound tracks when I approached the King Street station, and still there when I arrived. The really bad sign was when I heard someone talking on a cell phone and explaining that it had been there for twenty minutes.

When the situation showed no sign of resolving itself anytime soon, I calledstarmalachite to cancel the usual plan to rendezvous for a ride to the Three Left Feet meeting, and shifted to the southbound side of the station to head home. A half hour later, no trains had shown up.

At this point, the first vague tricklings of information started to emerge from the hapless station personnel. (I don't accept "unusual circumstances" as an excuse. Under normal operating conditions, the station personnel produce 310K blackbody radiation and greenhouse gases. It is only when things go wrong that they actually have occasion to do something that justifies paying them money to be there.) From the very occasional announcements that sounded like comprehensible words rather than Charlie Brown's offscreen teacher, I ascertained that no trains would be arriving for a while, and that shuttle services were being set up.

Of course, attempting to learn from the station personnel where to await these shuttles was about as useful as feeding four hundred quarters to a gypsy fortunetelling machine. Eventually, I found a bus that was heading to a station that wasn't my intended destination, but was at least somewhat closer to it.

Arriving there, the station manager, who seemed somewhat more clueful than the one at King Street, said that trains had begun running to Franconia-Springfield. I decided to give it a try, and in about ten minutes one showed up. When I arrived, I had my first real break, when a bus that came within almost a mile of home pulled up. A ride and a walk later, I finally staggered in three and a half hours after leaving the office.

Tomorrow should be even more fun. My bus route deliberately evades the nearby Franconia-Springfield station, so that Metro can justify charging an "express" fare to take me a dozen miles out of my way to a train station where I can pay again to backtrack the detour. (This is based on the Metro business slogan "Suburbanites can afford to subsidize DC if they'll just light a few more stogies with Ulysses instead of Benjamin".) The detour up I-395 should be extra fun over the next week or so, what with all the people driven back to their cars by this fiasco.

End angry rant.