Category: General

UP Express Toronto is Low Key Excellent

I recently had the opportunity to try the UP Express in Toronto.

“UP” stands for “Union (Station) Pearson (International Airport)” and was apparently conceived as a premium service to shuttle people from the airport through the city of Toronto via a couple of stops taking you as far as Union Station in the heart of the city.

Fortunately the “premium“ aspect of pricing this service was recognized to be a bad idea and this service is now premium in every way except for the price which is extraordinarily reasonable.

On a recent visit to Toronto, Michelle and I took the UP Express one way from the airport to the Bloor station at a cost of CAD $5.65 each. The trip from Pearson’s Terminal 1 takes about 17 minutes.

After flying in to Pearson Terminal 3 coming in from the States, it is simply a matter of taking the terminal shuttle train over to Terminal 1 (a single stop, don’t ask about Terminal 2), making the short walk to the UP Express train station, boarding the train, and shortly there after being deposited at the Bloor station.

They have a great little mobile app with which you can sort out purchasing and activating tickets. Basically, you can purchase your tickets ahead of time and, just before boarding the train, activate as many as needed for the trip and, simple as that, you are on your way.

I originally purchased tickets to the wrong station (Weston), don’t ask why I thought I needed to be there instead of Bloor, and had to phone their customer service. This was an unexpectedly pleasant experience where in there was no hassle whatsoever at getting those tickets refunded so that I could purchase the correct ones.

Since I was not intending to rent a car on this trip and was staying with family, this worked out very well for everybody. Saving them a trip to the airport and saving us the hassle and expense of taxi or Uber. From the Bloor station we were picked up by our hosts, but we could just have easily have taken the TTC or GO trains to get where we needed to go.

The UP Express trains were clean, quiet and uncrowded (at least for our visit).

I would easily use this service again. 



Clarifying Delta’s “Full Trip” Upgrade

In checking the Delta Airlines app for some details on an upcoming trip I saw that they offered an upgrade to First Class for 7,400 points per person for Full Trip.

After doing a bit of research I saw that others had upgrade offers that specified each segment.

Since both going and return segments were listed on the same page I was not sure if this really was a “Full Trip” upgrade – which could understandably be interpreted to mean the return trip since I have only a single segment each way.

Anyway, to clarify for anybody else also wondering about this, Delta’s use of Full Trip just means all the segments within the one here-to-there trip.

It’s obvious in retrospect, as many things are. But it was ambiguous to me up front.
If you’re reading this, hopefully it’s no longer ambiguous to you.

Silver Comet Trail Missing .75 miles between Hiram and Rockmart

One of my favorite rides along the Silver Comet Trail (official Site I think) begins at the Hiram Trailhead (mile marker 14.69) and heading toward Rockmart.

Something I’ve known for years is that *somewhere* along the route, nearly 3/4 of a mile disappears. It doesn’t matter what cycle computer or what GPS I’m using by the time I hit the mile markers near the end of my ride I’m always off by that much. 

I leave mile marker 14.69 and the following mile markers hit at (as expected) 1 mile intervals give or take a few hundred feet.

But when I hit mile marker 25 (ostensibly a little over 10 miles into the ride) I find that my various measuring instruments universally agree that I’m really only a bit over 9 1/2 miles along.

The other day I finally decided to take note of where and by how much the variance occurs. My new cycle computer combines both GPS info with the usual magnetic wheel speed sensor and is about as accurate as anything that is going down the trail.

As I mentioned, it’s not unusual for most mile markers to be off by a couple hundredths of a mile either way and it pretty much averages out.

However between mile markers 21 and 22 I have measured the distance to be about .82 miles, between mile markers 22 and 23 the distance is .76 miles, and between mile markers 23 and 24 the distance is about .7 miles.

Altogether these represent about .74 missing miles.

Not a big deal in the scheme of things. 

But if you’re timing your performance against these mile markers, this could explain those spectacular rides / runs between mile markers 21 and 24…

Trying on the Metric System for Size

I’ve recently begun to use the Metric system in my personal life. Most notably for temperature. Only recently did I realize just how alone, and asinine, we are being as a country by holding out while the rest of the world has standardized on a consistent system of measurement.

Never mind that scientists and airlines need to use the metric system and constantly translate between it and our obsolete Imperial system, but we come up against this every day. How many people go out for a 3.1 or 6.2 mile run? If you want to compete in the Olympics I’m sure you’d be in for a surprise if your practiced every day in a 25 Yard pool. Or ran 100 Yard sprints. Anything we want to do where *we* don’t control the environment we have to translate. It’s inefficient and, frankly, it’s pathetic.

If the spineless politicians of the 1970’s hadn’t backed down we would have two generations of Americans comfortable with this system and it would be another non-issue-that-was-an-amazing-vote-grabbing-issue-of-the-day.

The USA insisting on using its own measurement system (well.. we’re in the company of Liberia and Burma… can you even find those places on the map) is reminiscent of the bully tactics for which people criticize entities such as Walmart. Making everybody with whom we do business conform to our way of doing things. We might as well also dig in our heels and insist on different timezones than the rest of the world. Because we can.

My only two criticisms of the Metric system are:

  1. I can’t really identify with the temperature scale. This is because I have very little history with it. I can viscerally understand that 72 degrees Fahrenheit equates to a pleasant summer day and that 90 degrees is hot and 40 degrees is not. But this is something that I am now working to overcome by adopting metric, at least personally, for the next few months. And would be a no-brainer to the kids today if they just grew up with degrees centigrade.
  2. Harder to fix: I’m not sure why some genius decided that we should move from “Miles per Gallon” to “Liters per Hundred Kilometers”. There is no level on which that works for me. Why we just can’t use the directly relatable “Kilometers per Liter” is a mystery to me. It’s a small issue but it’s a very foreign way of thinking. I am curious if Europeans or anybody else in the world are comfortable with that approach to performance.

Just my rant for the day. I hope we take this up and that we can get past the old guard that can’t let things change because they are too terrified or mentally challenged to work with a system that, while probably not *better* in every way is most certainly *consistent* with the way the rest of our planet does things.

Replaced my venerable 4 1/2 year old iPad cover with a nice new Leather one

Michelle has been “commenting” on the condition of my iPad cover for a couple of months now. I *like* older, warn things. They just feel right. But when the face of the cover started to tear I couldn’t avoid it any more.

I’m still amazed that I can find things on eBay and they actually show up early and as promised.

 

 

HULU Ad complaint 20140117

I sent this to HULU this morning:

I like Hulu’s offerings. But the ads have become an overwhelming issue for me.

It’s bad enough that I cannot get rid of them entirely even though I am willing to pay a premium to do so.
But can you PLEASE do something about the repetitiveness of the ads? Last night there were 6 ad slots in the show I was watching and you aired the same series of ads in every slot.
I can be persuaded to watch an entertaining or novel ad but once I’ve seen an ad I usually never need to see it again. Having the same ad foisted on me every 8-10 minutes is not only annoying it’s downright insulting. I am astonished that anybody deems this effective.
There are plenty of viewing alternatives out there and, while HULU does a very good job at managing and delivering content, for me it is worth pursuing the other more cumbersome options to avoid this ongoing vexing issue.
I do ask that you rethink your model – there must be an ad free alternative – even at a premium. It is literally a weight off of my shoulders when I watch programming on Netflix and don’t have those constant interruptions.
Thanks for your consideration,

Marc

New Tires for the CR-V from NTB

I have a 2009 CR-V.

Yesterday I decided to replace the tires at NTB (National Tire and Battery) and elected to buy some Cooper Discoverer LSX Plus tires.

I went to register the tires on the Cooper site and found that I have 3 with one DOT code  (UP2Y 1BT 4111) and 1 with a slightly different code ( UP2Y 1BT 4211). I’m pretty sure that this is fine. It tells me that the tires were made one week apart and that they were made about 2 years ago.

What I’m concerned about though is that my receipt from NTB shows a DOT number of UP9H CL7 1513. This tells me that they are claiming to have sold me a set of tires that was made a little less than 3 months ago.

Am I going to run into issues over this? i.e. if the tires decide to pull a Michelin and fail prematurely I suspect that this will affect any pro-rating that I receive.

Any advice on how or even if I need to do anything about this?

Back in the saddle again

I kind of dropped out of much of the social network scene with the exception of trying out Yelp! and FourSquare’s “Check-in” features. Those proved to have some value by actually providing a free dessert here or a discount there.

As for the value of living one’s life online, I see great value on sharing your escapades, trials and tribulations with your family and friends – especially those who are geographically separated from you. But I balance that with the privacy and safety of those with whom I may share time and experiences.

Not to mention the challenge of being a professional in a large company and projecting an image that is consistent not only with my current career state but also with any and every other career movement that I may make both within and possibly outside of my current place of employment. Who knows what I’ll be doing in 15 years. The only thing I know for sure is that these posts will still be available in *some* form over which I can either wax nostalgic or cringe that I thought it would be a good idea to post that publicly.

That said, forgive some dummy posts I’ll be making shortly as I test some unifying software. While facebook seems to be the primary portal for communicating with folks, it is terrible for use as a repository. I can’t find anything I liked in there or anything in the newsfeed that I thought was interesting in the past to save my life. So I’m trying to make a two-way tie between FB and my personal blog where postings in one consistently end up in the other.