Friday July 29 was my last day employed by the University of California, Berkeley. I am now a free agent, starting work at Moteiv full time officially on Monday August 1.

As a result, I now have a new blog and email address. My UCB site and email will be removed at some point, so be sure to update your email client / bookmarks / whatever.

My new email is: joe..at..polastre.com.

As you can tell, I've completely made over my blog. I moved from my Emacs method of posting blog entries to Moveable Type. This way I add entries through any browser, allow comments, and maintain "Trackbacks". If you don't know what a Trackback is, check out Moveable Type's definition as well as the idiot's guide. I have always said that I have my blog to post what I want to say and you have yours to post what you want to say, thus no need for comments. The software I'm using has comments built in, so I'll experiment with it for a while and if it seems dumb or gets abused, I'll remove it. Same thing with Trackbacks.

On that note, feel free to tell me whether you like the change or not; if you post a negative comment, I can always delete it. Oh yes, I love having the power...

Last, but not least, a word from our legal sponsors: some folks have thought that by posting on my blog, my company or university shares the same positions. This couldn't be further from the truth; both companies and universities are made up of numerous people that make group decisions. My comments here are just my stupid random musings, so feel free to ignore if they offend you.

I've decided that all good executives must own an Aston Martin DB9. If you've never seen one, check out the following pictures...

Interior -- stainless steel gauges are very sweet
Exterior -- oooooh aaaah

Let's say, hypothetically, that you were taking the train from your office in Berkeley back to your residence in San Francisco. The last BART train leaves MacArthur at 12:45am, and arrives at Embarcadero at 1:04am (two minutes late) based on the watch that you're wearing. You, not phased, know that this is not a problem since you've made sure that Muni runs much longer than BART. You may be bummed that you missed the 1:02am Muni train, but at least you know that they run every 20 minutes and the last train has not arrived. Or so you think. You're lured into a false sense of security by the Muni J train schedule posted that indicates the last train is at 1:22am.

Not deterred by the circumstances, you exit the BART train at 1:04am in search of the J train. You attain your Muni to BART transfer, like a responsible citizen, and exit the BART turnstiles. As you exit, a woman approaches you and loudly announces: "The station is closed. You have to leave the station now." At which point, you kindly tell the nice woman that you are waiting for the 1:22am Muni train. She, without hesitation, snaps back at you: "The Muni operators have left--Look! At that guy going up the elevator. Get out of my station! My job is to lock up the place and I can't do it with you inside, so leave." At this point, you ask the Muni employee who is now halfway up the escalator about the last J train. He responds in a very sullen and dejected tone: "Last train left. Get the F on Market, go to Castro, find a way from there to get to 24th."

And now, I sit sadly at home dejected and deceived by the Muni system. Initially, I trusted this 1851 (154-year-old) establishment to provide me accurate information in order to arrive home safely and via mass transit systems. These systems, at least as told to me, cut down on air pollution and are a significant method for reducing freeway congestion. Alas, the Muni system has failed and I can no longer trust that Muni trains will arrive after the last BART train in order to carry tired and weary commuters to their neighborhoods. The system has failed me, and for that, I am sad.

ps: It is a farce how Muni's website redirects you to 511.org. 511 only displays schedules, and anyone who has used Muni knows that it only operates on intervals. In other words, at a Muni stop, the sign will tell you that the bus/train arrives every 12 minutes, for example. But this information does not say exactly when, only how often. Instead of conveying interval information and first and last train times, Muni instead does not provide any train or bus information on their webite and redirects users to 511.org, which provides faulty timetables on Muni "schedules" which don't even exist.