in the bay area, there are many public transit agencies and systems, and they all have their own payment systems. translink is supposed to the solution to this. you buy a RFID translink card, put stored value (“e-cash”), put electronic transit passes on it, and then use the one card on all systems.

i purchased a translink card at my neighborhood walgreens, and after registering it online, several days later it was fully functioning. i used it on bart, on muni, and on caltrain with little problem.

then on friday, january 29th, i tried using my card at the 24th Mission BART station and the card reader said ’see station agent’. i tried multiple readers and got the same error. i eventually went to the station agent, who said my card wasn’t working and to call translink. i was running late, so i purchased a BART ticket and used it to get to my destination. later i called translink, who asked that i try holding the card to the reader for 5-6 seconds. i tried this with no luck.

i talked to translink again and determined the fastest way to get service back was to purchase a new card. i bought a card for $5 and called them back to have my card registered and the e-cash balance transferred. i then logged into my account on the translink website and didn’t see the card and couldn’t register its serial number. so i called back and they reset my account, so i could login and see the new card. i tried purchasing a fast pass on the website but that transaction failed, with a message asking me to call translink for resolution. i called in again and was asked to log out and log back in and re-try the transaction. i did so, and was able to purchase the pass and had translink verify the transaction went through while i had them on the phone. then i was told it would take up to 3 business days for the pass to go through.

i waited a few days and then tried my card again, with no success. at this point i am getting really fed up wth the whole thing. while adding value to my real bart ticket i missed my intended train and ended up being late. later i called translink and was told that there was no balance transfer yet, but that they would do that now and everything should be ok in the morning (after midnight).

today i tried my card today and again it did not work. when i came home later i called translink back. i was asked to call back in front of an add-value machine. at this point, i got on first-name basis with the support rep. i let them know how fed up i was getting, and that i just wanted them to tell me where to go and what to do, to get this resolved.

i walked quickly to 24th/mission, took bart to civic center, and called back in front of one of their machines. the girl i talked to was not available but i did not want to wait. i explained my predicament to this other person, and they only offered to mail me a new card. she said it would be quick since they were local, so i offered to drive to their office. not open to the public, great.

i asked if the new card would have my e-cache balance and my muni fast pass. the answer was yes. we’ll see about that.

so in summary, my original card stopped working with no explanation. i bought a brand new card, which has never worked, and it took translink several days beyond the normal processing time to get everything transferred and it still doesn’t work. and now i am waiting for a third card, to be sent to me in the mail.

here are some pointers i’ve learned along the way:

1. if your card stops working, call them immediately and have them send you a replacement card with everything transferred over.

2. if you talk to their support folks, do not let them end the call until you are completely satisfied. i literally called them 5 times, each time getting one specific task done, hanging up, and having to call them back.

3. have a back-up plan. a bart ticket with plenty of value on it. correct change for a muni bus.

4. if your card breaks, budget at least a week to get back into using the system.

if i receive this third card and it does not work, i vow to drive to their office in concord and insist on speaking to a customer service manager. i will also be writing up a letter to them concerning this pathetic follow-through.

We have a relatively new row in our server room at work, where it is surrounded closely on three sides by walls. on one of the short ends, there is a plastic barrier you can walk through (think the thick plastic strips that cover the opening of a walk-in freezer).

Over time we have slowly filled the cabinets in the row with servers, generally working from the far end towards the center, then filling the other end. We ended up with a mostly full row.

Now in this row there are APC In-Row chillers, inserted between the cabinets, which pull air in front the back (the ‘hot isle’) and push cold air out the front (the ‘cold isle’). They measure the temperature coming out of the back of the cabinets and into the front of the cabinets to ensure they are cooling enough for the demand.

Something changed over the break, where the temperature in the server room actually jumped several degrees. And last week while installing some new servers in the remaining cabinet, we noticed the chillers suddenly had a hard time keeping the row cool. I’d enter either side, and the chiller fans would immediately speed up.

We couldn’t explain the increased temperature elsewhere in the server room, and the strange behavior of the fans. Furthermore, today we noticed the fans were going full-speed all day.

My coworker Chris finally figured it out this afternoon.

He opened the the door of the cabinet with the remaining cabinet, the one with the most open space. The door happens to have a temperature sensor attached to it, so when the door was open the sensor was in the surrounding cool air and the chillers slowed down. Close the door, the chillers speed up. He figured out that this cabinet was the only opening left in the row, so the hot air behind the row was coming forward through the cabinet – and directly into the temperature sensor. Of course, the chillers thought the row was super hot, they were measuring the cabinet exhaust temperature, not the intake temperature.

Chris shoved an unused ceiling tile in the cabinet, covering the large opening behind the sensor. The chillers immediately settled down.

It turned out to be a simple problem with a simple solution.

i was walking down mission street (2600 block) when i turned around to see a girl and her mother next to a UPS truck. the girl was vomiting on the street while the UPS delivery woman was unloading packages. *snap*

i love these little moments. this is why you prefocus and stop your lens all the way down.

from my journal, dated august 8th, 2003.

dad would be 62 today. although it is easily searchable in my blog, i like to let pass the memory of his last few days and replace it instead with the day he was born, december 9th.  people have the most potential on the day they were born. i like this entry from wikipedia:

The term birth is used metaphorically to refer to a beginning, especially of a natural phenomenon, one that is impressive in its scope or complexity, or one that is viewed favorably.

thanks, branden, for digging up, scanning, and sending me this photo.

zbigniew pik was a foreign exchange student from poland, who attended our highschool in indiana. we recently re-connected on facebook. he told me he bought a bunch of broken-and-repaired cameras and accessories in sweden. he sold a lot of it but had a few items left. he saw that i was shooting with a pentax 6×7 and had a waist level viewer for it. he sent it to me in a padded envelope — the one pictured above.

when i received it, i saw a lot of the address had been eliminated due to some sort of moisture on the sticker. it still found its way to me, thanks to human oversight in package delivery. when i opened it, i was surprised by seeing the WLF, and laughed. one of the few pentax accessories i don’t have yet. my system is one step towards being comprehensive.

i love seeing packages from foreign countries. what struck me most about this one was the stamp, which seems like nylon or some sort of fabric. it’s iridescent and very detailed — beautiful.

thanks pike, for the great gift.

a couple weeks ago, i went out shooting in embarcadero/northbeach with some flickr folks. after lunch, reese and i made our way back through chinatown where we ducked into the wok shop. it’s an old family run business where you can buy hand-hammered woks. beyond the woks, there are a ton of other kitchen gadgets, tools, and other tchotchkes. when we saw this mirror amidst all the laterns, i knew i had to take a shot of the two of us….

i ended up with images that are pretty different from usual party photos. when i’m at a party or out with friends, i am very rarely shooting them with a camera. so this was a unique opportunity to do so. i felt fairly disconnected from the usual goings-on since i was in this different mode. i’m not sure i’ll do it again, for a couple reasons.

so here’s a glimpse into what i experience at ted and emery’s annual folsom party. enjoy.

i started my day with breakfast with a group of photographer friends, wandered through the fair with them with our cameras. i rendezvoused with my friends reese and frank, and later met up the party folks.

folsom is quite an eye-opener for the uninitiated. there is a lot of public nudity, bondage and leather, and spanking going on. it’s interesting in that private fantasy and behaviors are on display. you see a lot of extreme preferences.

i was out with two cameras, both loaded with arista premium. the 24×36 frames are from a canon ae-1 program shooting at iso 400. the wide frames are from a widelux f7, shooting at iso 200. all film developed in rodinal 1+50.

arista premium 400 at iso 6400. rodinal 1+50 for 45 minutes. shot with a widelux f7.