Castle Magus

My bus was seven minutes early yet again today, at least according to the time posted on the Trip Planner. The Trip Planner claims that it is supposed to be there at 5:13pm, yet today it was there at 5:06pm. I missed it once again because I was standing there waiting to cross the street when it went rolling by. I sent in another complaint about it to Metro today.

However, I noticed something new today. I plugged in NE 51st St into the Trip Planner instead of my stop at NE 31st St. The Trip Planner claims that the 266 is supposed to be there at 5:15pm, which also matches the route schedule for 266 (which doesn't mention my particular stop on it at all). Now, as anyone who has attempted to travel along 148th Ave NE between 5:00pm and 6:00pm can surely attest, it is NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE that a bus (or a car or anything else for that matter) can travel twenty blocks or so in just two minutes (i.e. from NE 31st St at 5:13pm to NE 51st St at 5:15pm), given how incredibly constipated the traffic tends to be around that time of day.

I noted this as well in the complaint I sent in today. Likely, if they bother to do anything at all, they'll fix the issue by simply moving the time for the bus to reach my stop up to 5:06pm from the current time of 5:13pm or some such crap, rather than moving the later stop down to a later time. I guess this will be the case given that the stop at NE 51st St is one of those Time Point things, at which the buses are supposed to match their time with their actual schedule, whereas my stop is just some rinky-dink "just got off the highway" stops. I'm pretty sure this is why the bus is always so incredibly early in getting to my stop: he's trying to get to NE 51st St by 5:15pm. Changing the Trip Planner results, while it would be more accurate I suppose, would do absolutely nothing to help me. Well, aside from the fact that it would stop misleading me into thinking I can actually catch this particular bus without, like, leaving work 10 minutes early or something.

Of course, I should keep in mind that this is the same Trip Planner that gave me these staggeringly awesome results.

I'm getting pretty damn sick of the Redmond post office. Once again, I ordered a bus pass from King County Metro and then, once again, the post office failed to leave a notice that they had received it and that I needed to come pick it up. Like I said, this is not the first time that this has happened.

What a load of crap. King County Metro is apparently raising the prices on their fares and bus passes, starting March 1, 2008. This isn't all that bad in and of itself, I suppose (and I'm actually somewhat surprised that they haven't already done so long ago, what with rising gas prices and all), but because of this they are not selling three-month passes for February-April at all, which sucks ass.

I finally got my bus pass today, just 2 days shy of a full month after I ordered it. Since I had not received my replacement as of yesterday, I sent an email to Metro about it. Metro replied this morning that they had contacted the post office, and that the post office claimed to have attempted to deliver it on November 1 and had left a notice about it. Maybe they did attempt to deliver it, I don't know. What I do know is that I never received any sort of notice, particularly since I was keeping an eye specifically for this notice. I even went back and looked through all the mail I've received in the past week and a half or so, just on the off chance that I'd somehow overlooked it, but it simply wasn't there. The only thing I can think of that may have happened, assuming they delivered it at all, is that they delivered the notice to the wrong mailbox. If this is the case, it definitely wouldn't be the first time that they've delivered mail to the wrong place. I've gotten mail intended for neighbors in my condo complex, which I always go back and put in the correct mailbox, and I know that at least one piece of mail intended for me was delivered to a neighbor, because I found it lying outside my door with a little note saying that they'd accidentally opened it up before realizing that it wasn't addressed to them.

Something went down at the B tonight (that is the 7-11 near DigiPen, for the uninitiated), though I don't know what it was. I was in there around 9:00pm or so, give or take a minute or two, having just gotten out of class, but didn't see anything weird. About 5 to 10 minutes later, when I was standing across the street at the bus stop, a police car came down 148th from the direction of Redmond and pulled into the parking lot there, then a few seconds later, another came from the direction of Bellevue and did the same. After being there for about five minutes, one of the officers pulled their car closer to the building than they had stopped when they originally gotten there. Not a clue what happened. *shrug*

Anyway, on an unrelated note, the bus was about six or seven minutes late, which was annoying (but, on the bright side, there were no yammering kids on board for the trip back, unlike coming in to class earlier). I walked in the door tonight at 9:36pm. Last week, I walked home from this same class rather than taking the bus. Last week, I also walked in the door at 9:36pm. Weird.

Well, I got a call from Sears Optical saying that my glasses were ready to be picked up, so I decided to go and get them today.

However, it turns out that the buses through the Redmond Park and Ride and the surrounding area are cancelled today and tomorrow due to some dumbass parade or something. This was NOT mentioned AT ALL on the Metro website, so I didn't find out about this until after I had already walked to the Park and Ride and stood there like a fool for about ten minutes. Finally, someone else also waiting for a bus came up and happened to see the single tiny sign that was posted on the other side of the bus schedule board.

Guess I'll have to go pick up my glasses during lunch break or after work on Monday or something. This sucks ass.

Kiss my ass, William Willett.

Note to self: actually change the clocks next time, instead of saying "Oh, I'm too tired to bother going around and changing them now. I'll just change them tomorrow. Surely I'll remember to get up at the right time."

Also, as I've said before, Sunday/holiday bus schedules suck ass.

Dear driver of the bus who brought me to school this morning,

Please scream and curse into your cell phone about your dysfunctional family's inheritance disputes on your own time, rather than while driving the bus. Especially if your parents are both still alive, which seemed to be the case based on the extremely loud conversation you were having with the person on the other end of the line.

Thanks,
Me.

I finally got a thing in the mail today that said they tried to deliver the 3-month (Jan-Mar) bus pass that I ordered back on January 2. I just need to go to the post office tomorrow morning and sign for it. It's a good thing too as I was starting to run low on change for bus fare again.