Lee.org

Ben Cowden, who is an excellent kinetic artist and teacher friend of mine is looking for an apartment with his wife within biking distance of Mission Bay. Possible bonus points for sharing a private machine shop. Any leads, send to me or Ben.

BART is getting new trains. The prototype is travelling around the Bay Area. It isn’t perfect. If you’d like to help make it better, visit it in the next few weeks!

https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/cars

You can submit the online survey here.

I spoke with the guy running the event, (Adam? Aaron?) and his response to my first comment was, “That’s why I go to these things, sometimes I hear about important changes.”

Here are my comments:

The LED “destination” sign on the side of the train is currently behind tinted glass. If it was behind clear glass it would be much more visible. Glass makers can certainly make a glass window that is tinted up to a certain place.

————————————————–

Inside the train, one of the vertical handrails near the middle of the train has a collar with a sharp edge that should be curved smoothed over. Maybe this was just a problem with the demo car.

To find the sharp collar, find a single chair, look for the handrail that goes from the chair to the ceiling, look for the connector that goes between the chair and tube, look just above the connector for the collar.

————————————————–

On current trains, the audio “panic” warning (a recorded voice saying “Please stand clear of the doors. The doors are closing”) regularly comes on at the wrong time. The message often sounds while a large number of people are boarding a train. It is very unnerving to hear that message while a crowd is in the middle of boarding at a normal pace. I become worried that the conductor doesn’t see the boarding passengers and will close the door on us. Of course, that doesn’t happen but the purpose of the message isn’t being fulfilled and EVERYONE ignores the message.

Michael Moran at BART Customer Service explained to me that the message is triggered when the normal door dwell period has lapsed. Instead of this, the message should happen when the train operator commands it to.

————————————————–
I’m sure you’ve gotten this complaint thousands of times before I’m sure. From inside the train, 16th and 24th street station look the same. Passengers need to look very closely to be sure they are getting off at the right stop Here are some easy ways to fix it:

– The signs at track level that read “16th Street” and “24th Street” are literally hidden in shadow. If the sign was moved 3 feet closer to the center of the platform, they would be illuminated by the existing station lighting
– The track level signs could be replaced with illuminated signs like at Powell Station.
– The tunnels could be retiled with unique colors like at 12th and 19th Street stations (that’s expensive though)
– A long, narrow strip of unique art could be installed on the tunnel walls

Thanks!

I’ve been teaching weekend-long Arduino intensive classes with some friends for the last year or so. It’s gone amazingly well. We’ve got another class coming up April 26-27 at Tech Liminal in Oakland.

If you want a huge jump start, join us. Tell your nearly-dorky friend about the class too. As a teacher, I’ve got a $50 discount code to give you: arduteach888

Check it out at WorkshopWeekend.net

I’ve been using Aio Wireless for a few months now and I like it very much. Cell service is every bit as good as AT&T for 1/2 the cost.

Send me an email and I’ll refer you to Aio Wireless. We will both get $25 from AioWireless. Write to me at Lee at Lee dat org.

That bit of musical cheese poetry comes from facebook and Charlotte!

In 2012 I took an Abnormal Psychology class at CCSF. My honors project was a response paper to the book  Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche  by Ethan Watters. I loved the book and highly recommend it. Here’s what I wrote about it.

Introduction

Ethan Watters uses four stories to paint a picture about how American culture has a powerful influence on how the rest of the world understands mental illness. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, American culture is shaping how these mental illnesses are perceived and treated.

Americans think about mental illness in a very particular way. This thinking depends heavily on biological, genetic, and environmental factors. But largely missing in this view are the cultural factors that shape the course of mental illness greatly. This isn’t how the ill person sees themselves but how their local culture sees them. For example, the stories told about the origins of mental illness, be it spirit possession or chemical imbalance, have a huge impact on mentally ill persons and can alter the outcome of their disease.

Continue reading ‘Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche’ »

When I got a resin filling for a cavity a few years ago, it hurt for 2 weeks after. I had the sensation that the filling was “too tight”. The dentist said he hadn’t ever heard of a filling hurting afterward and that I should schedule another visit. But before I could visit the pain faded.

Last week Megan experienced the same thing, but it hurt quite a lot. The dentist told her to take a lot of ibuprofen and call in a week. The pain has been slowly subsiding.

I’m here to tell you that resin fillings sometimes ache something awful when you first get them. Take some ibuprofen and don’t worry too much about it unless the pain is steady for a week.

If the pain becomes very specific and sharp, as though you know exactly what tooth is causing the pain, you might need a root canal instead of just having filling pain.

Virgin Mobile has great cell phone service in San Francisco but terrible service in the East Bay. So this week I got a new Moto X phone and Aio Wireless. If you consider switching to AioWireless, send me your name and email address (mine is Lee at Lee dat org) so I can officially refer you, we’ll both get $25.

After playing with it for 2 days, the Moto X phone is super-cool:

• Lightning fast
• a battery that mostly lasts all day (2 days it ran down to 30%, 1 day I made it a wifi hotspot for an hour and it was dead at 10pm)
• Google Now is awesome-creepy-cool. I can speak things to it. Last night I said, “Ok Google Now, set an alarm for 5 minutes” and it did! “I just said, “Ok Google Now, give me directions to El Cerrito Plaza BART Station by bus” and it did!

And with Aiowireless (instead of Virgin Mobile) I actually have cell phone service! So far I haven’t found any dead spots. Ask me again in a week. Aiowireless costs just $35/month for unlimited talk, text, and 500mb of wireless data. I’m excited to think it’s all going to work out well on the cost-coverage front!

I had a blast this past weekend teaching an Arduino intensive class called Workshop Weekend: Arduino with friends to a great group of students!

Here we are putting on a little play, demonstrating how an Arduino takes input from a potentiometer and then controls a light. I got to be the Arduino!

The class was held at Tech Liminal, a great co-working and technology space in Oakland, CA.

See more photos of the event!

I’ve been earning lots of airline miles and cash over the last several years with credit card offers. I often fly on miles alone. Here’s how.

Short form:

Every three months or so I sign up for a new credit card that offers me miles. I spend the money I need to on the card, then set the card in a drawer for a few months. Then I cancel the card. When I am looking to travel, I look in my little spreadsheet to see what miles I have, and fly for free!

Long form:

• When signing up, pretty much the only important benefit is the signing bonus. Look for credit cards that offer things like “25,000 miles if you spend $2,000 in the first 3 months”. Offers for 30k or 50k miles are even better.
• Keep track of your cards by putting notes on them. I print out a document in 6 point font and tape it to the card. Notes usually say something like “spend $2k by [date] for 25k miles. 2pts/$ on restaurants. Cancel by [date] or $95 fee” Then I leave a space to write how much I’ve spent on the card.
• Always pay off your credit card in full every month. Always. If you are tempted not to, stop reading right now.
• Keep 2 cards in your wallet, an Amex and a Visa/Mastercard.
• Cancel the card before they charge you a yearly fee. Most cards say something like “$95 per year, waived for the first year”. It is rarely  worth paying the yearly fee for the next year’s bonus like a free companion airline ticket or points-back.
• It mostly doesn’t matter what airline or offer you sign up for, you’ll find a way to use the miles eventually. Though I usually stay away from hotel miles because I rarely stay in them.
• To start with, just get one new card every six months. Once you start getting the hang of it, you can get a card every two months. Juggling too many cards can be complicated to manage. [July 2016 update: I was recently denied a Chase card because I had opened too many cards in the last two years, I had opened 10 cards so I guess that’s the limit… 10 cards every 2 years]
• Sign up for cards slowly, maybe a card every other month, and cancel your cards at the same rate. If you try to sign up for too many cards all at once, the companies will worry something funny is going on and they might deny you a new card.
• If you have a business, you can open cards under the business’ name and use more cards.
• Keep track of your earned miles from all your airlines and such in a document. When you have enough miles for a flight, use them!
• Sometimes you can spend your miles on Amazon.com points or trade them for cash. Those can be nice because they are easier to deal with and you probably only fly so much.
• Always consider the “exchange rate” of points to dollars when you are considering a card. Earning $0.01 per dollar is the “norm”, like on a “1% cash back” card. But when you pay attention to signing bonuses, you often earn $0.10 of value  per dollar. It’s like getting 10-15% off EVERYTHING.
• Where to find the best offers keeps changing. Google “credit card offers” and you’ll find lots of them. Here are some of my go-to spots: http://milecards.com/, http://www.flyertalk.com/, http://milevalue.com/, http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/, http://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/,  http://www.mybanktracker.com/news/bank-deals/
• Keep track of all your cards in a document. Even the cancelled ones. It’s good to follow this stuff. And for most credit cards, you can sign up for the same offer 24 months after cancelling the old card.
• Hang onto one credit card (I keep a 2% cash back Amazon.com card) so you always know you have a card that works.
• Here are the credit card perks I pay attention to. All the other perks are usually not worth my time:
  • Signing bonus
  • Free first checked bag on an airline. Otherwise, checked luggage can cost $35/bag
  • Can I trade the miles into dollars at a reasonable rate? Trading 100 points into $1 at Amazon.com is great
  • 3% or better “cash back” might be worth paying attention to if it’s on something I spend money on
• If you are worried about your credit score, I’ve been doing this for more than five years and my FICO score was above 800 last time I checked.