Snobilicious

[fj]

Moments ago, I recoiled after posting a comment when I saw which manufactured bland pap 'Current Music' it ended up under.

Then I had to admit to myself I have no higher ground to stand on: it is disturbing how quickly I have regained my addiction to 'As The World Turns' now that I work at home. If I lived alone in Boston, where I commute, I would TiVo it.

Speaking of which, I have been informed that my last month at Nokia actually will be in the new Nokia/MIT lab after all, which is above the Kendall T-station Coop. Seems we're moving a month early. Which means that my commute is going to be a lot longer, going from 17 miles on mostly highway in my own car to having to take public transit for 4 miles of Green Line / Red Line.

However, I would get to read again. Or watch 'As The World Turns'.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

And theoretically, you could come over for dinner sometime more easily.

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

When you commute by T you also get to see lots of people, on a daily basis, in the communal hive of a world we as a species are evolved for. Commuting in our little private worlds sucks, but it's what everybody insists they want.

I recently had an almost job offer (the req. didn't come through after all) at a location where I would have been able to commute by bus -- either one quick bus ride and then a 1.5 mile walk or two quick bus rides with a variable wait between. Not bad on a good day, when I could do the walk. But driving and parking would have taken me 5 minutes and cost a dollar a day. It would have been a difficult choice.

Fortunately I never even had to make the choice of whether to switch jobs at all. Even more fortunately, I haven't yet lost my current one.

I loved commuting red line to orange line. I never got over the catch in my throat and happy pervasive joy of crossing over the Charles. But for my last year in Boston my commute switched to 77 bus to red line to orange line, and that was one leg too many.

[jss]

That's just freaky. My (second, lasting longer than a month) Boston job started out as the 77 bus to the Red Line to Downtown Crossing (where Red and Orange meet); my building was above the T stop. I could skip the bus if I wanted the 10-minute walk to Alewife instead of the 3-minute walk to the bus stop.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

But I don't want to have to see lots of people. Fortunately, there are the ever-popular options of staring at one's hands / the floor (if seated) or the ceiling (if standing). Or reading. People do these things (and I know this because sometimes I do look at them). Oh, and cell-phone games, for some people who are not me.

Yet I dislike car commutes, because of the inherent inefficiency — not just natural resources and all that, but the fact that every driver has to be more or less wired down to the task of directing their car, when if they were on a train or buses only the conductor[*] resp. drivers would have to care about that. Oh, and the SPOFness.

[*] Okay, conductor+motorperson. Train staff. Whatever.