Fooled

I did try to compose an entry appropriate to yesterday. In fact, it's still there, half-completed, mocking me from underneath an iconic eye. At first the joke was to be that I'd sold my space here to advertisers. But given how many people have already done the equivalent in order to have a few more userpics, I found the concept too weak to pack the punch of absurdity I was going for. So I began rewriting it into an announcement that I've outsourced to a paid content provider. But, once again, that made me reflect on how many people use their journals solely to post links and recycle content from their Facebook pages.

At that point I got so depressed that my head started to hurt and I gave up.

I thought I'd gotten through April Fool's scot free, but the CTA came through at the eleventh hour. Ever since I lost a chunk of change when I had a card expire on me a couple months back I've been very careful to keep no more than $10 on a transit card. (Which is tricky, since that's only four rides and I take busses more than trains.) Yesterday, as I slipped a fiver into the machine, I commended myself again on my savviness. Four hours later, I was making the second leg of my trip back home from a lovely evening of Thai food and LeGuin with my buddy Dale when my card was spit back by the reader.

"Invalid!" said the driver, wiping it on his trouser leg and calling for the next passenger to "step up, step in". He tried it again and still it didn't work. "But I just used it on the other bus!" I said. No reply. "It's still got $7 on it!" He didn't even look at me. Fuming, I slipped in two singles and dragged my ass through the bus feeling like an asshole. Hopefully, it was just something wrong with that card reader and I'm only out the $2 for what should've been covered by a transfer rather than that plus the remaining value on the card.

Title of the Day

Managing nuisance beavers along roadsides : a guide for highway departments.