Category: Boston

The Big Dig We Must

It’s somehow comforting to realize that, after all the years of construction, heavy machinery, foundation problems, and everything, the biggest threat to the two big sections of the Big Dig opening on time is… software. Or, more precisely, software plus all the infrastructure needed to run it. (Why is it that no one thinks until it’s too late about avoiding the need for “temporary… leased phone lines or microwave” data lines?) It’s not like they didn’t know they were going to need software a long time ago…

Like I said, though, it’s comforting to know that the software is the “make or break” for the opening of the tunnel. Software, after all, can be fixed, and everyone’s software is bad.
more…

Adam: the politics of talking

In a pair of good blog entries, Adam discusses the thought process that goes into participating in class discussions at HBS. For that matter, a lot of the thought process is the same at Sloan. I like the point about stale hands. I think the same is true about other discussion forums. There’s nothing more annoying that finding a discussion that was finished months ago bubbling up again because someone stumbled upon it and had to add his $0.02.
more…

Irony strikes again

As I was writing the previous item, Adam was complaining that Outlook’s support for turning email into calendar items isn’t intuitive. Why? Because it uses drag and drop.

As I wrote there, figuring out how drag and drop worked as a Windows programmer was one of the hardest things I had to do. Admittedly, that might have had more to do with the development environment I was using than the Win32 APIs…
more…

Whither Massachusetts health care?

George Chang: Taxachusetts… legislating companies out of business. Mass governor Jane Swift just signed a bill legislating cutting the Medicare reimbursement rate to 2% less than the wholesale cost of drugs. George argues this is a pretty quick way to cause a meltdown:

Let’s think about this: First, regulate the reimbursement rate of a product below the wholesale cost. Second, sue/force businesses to continue to sell this product at a loss. Does this make any sense?

…large pharmacies such as CVS have the option to pull out of unprofitable markets and continue to operate in profitable ones. However, about 20% of the 1000 pharmacies in Massachusetts are independently owned. These neighborhood mom and pop shops that are already scraping along will most likely be forced out of business.

Not to mention that decreasing sales volumes can only raise the cost of drugs overall. Have we learned nothing?
more…

Glass Enclosure

I’m currently in our hotel room on the 29th floor of the Copley Marriott. We’re staying here on Lisa’s points this weekend for Kate’s wedding. I’ve been dialed in all morning, trying and failing to get to my work email via the web. Fortunately the presentation I’m working on is mostly offline in a notebook—a paper one, not a laptop—so it hasn’t stopped me much.

It’s hard to work, though. The view from the windows is amazing:

The view from the southeast facing window in our room at the Copley Marriott, 19 July 2002.

I thought that’s what I was doing until the end of the month

George apparently did some late night fishing after the wedding–taking Niall, which is a big deal given that he basically can’t be in the same room as seafood normally. (It’s not an allergy, just some weird phobia from childhood. Unfortunate thing to have if you grow up in Ireland, where the Atlantic salmon is one of the better local food items available.) I love this quotation:

Brian, from South Carolina also taught us a few fishing terms:

  • Fishing on Credit: This is when your hook no longer has bait…

more…

Amazing how slow a day is…

Amazing how slow a day is when you’re killing time. I have an 8 pm flight that I’m trying to get changed to something earlier—so Lisa doesn’t have to pick me up at 1 am.

In the meantime, I’ve: had donuts with Charlie and Carie (on whose floor, surrounded by boxes, I slept last night—their lease is up today), seen part of “About a Boy” (giving up halfway through—I don’t think I can watch a Hugh Grant movie again without restraints), browsed through Borders and HMV, had lunch at John Harvards (where the bartender very nicely spotted me a free pint of Pale Ale as a farewell gift) and tea at Tealuxe. In other words, messed about. I hope the flight can be changed, as I’m running out of ways to mess about.

Packed, loaded, and ready to go

Ten hours later…

The moving team took a long time because their central office screwed up the permit. The van spent ten hours double parked, which meant that one of the three movers had to spend all day with the van.

Enough. The van is loaded, I am spending the night on someone else’s couch, and I have to wait until 8 pm to fly out tomorrow night. Gotta fill a last day in Boston. I think I know how to do it.

Waiting for the packers

The apartment has everything off the walls and most of the stuff that’s trash has been thrown out. Now I’m just waiting for the packers. It feels weird to be here and dialed up rather than wireless. I decided I’m carrying the base station with me, though. No way I’m going two weeks without wireless in Seattle, even if it’s still 56K.

Hell is late June in South Boston

Yahoo! tells me it’s 92° F outside, and I believe it. I was just lost for about two hours in South Boston trying to find the AT&T Broadband office so I could return our cable box.

South Boston is a little different from Boston proper. I walked the wrong way (thanks to bad directions) over a bridge that led over a railroad boneyard and under I-93, and to the home of the Boston Herald before I found my mistake. The drop location was on West Broadway, but I had just looked up the same number on Broadway—the street number didn’t exist, but that didn’t stop Yahoo from cheerily giving me directions on how to get to the grittiest part of the road under the I-93 overpass. Then the AT&T wireless operator couldn’t give me a direct number for the drop location, so I had to go through menu hell and patiently explain to the “customer service representative” that I just wanted to know how to get to the drop location.

Eventually I got turned around and headed the right way on West Broadway, past the boarded up church and parish of St. Peter and St. Paul (est. 1844), a bakery (closed), a low income housing complex (boarded up and quiet), a liquor store with elaborate murals for independence for Northern Ireland and the Dropkick Murphys logo. I finally found the drop location, turned in the box and remotes, and turned around and started back. Thank God for the otherwise unremarkable sub shop along the way back, or I’m pretty sure I would have dropped dead of heatstroke before getting back to the T.

Whose bright idea was it to make cable dependent on set top boxes that had to be returned to the cable company when terminating service? Every AT&T Broadband location I’ve ever found is in the ass end of nowhere.

Preparing for the move

Today is the last day before the packers come. By late Friday all our worldly possessions will be on a truck and I’ll be in Seattle.

Had a really good evening with George, Charlie, Carie, and Jessica last night at the Sunset Grill. I’ll definitely miss hanging out with these folks. But I’m looking forward to the chance to make new memories in Seattle.

Batching it

Lisa is on her way to sign the papers for the house closing. I stay in Boston this week and wait for the packers and movers to come, and run any miscellaneous errands we’ve forgotten about. Yes, I’m batching it. (I follow Martin Amis’s spelling, from The Information, here, because baching it looks too much like I’ll be playing fugues. But then again, you never know.)