Category: This just in

Late Night Site Crash

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Words of wisdom people…If you have a blog or website in general, you need to do regular backups.  Especially if you are making daily updates to your site.

Late last night, there was a major screw up on the SUBWAYblogger backend.  Our main host attempted to restore a day old backup, but that failed no matter what they did.  In short, they were pretty worthless.

Luckily, SUBWAYblogger does a manual backup on a daily basis, and it was worth it.  Well into the night, we were restoring our back up.  If we didn’t have the most recent backup, we easily could have lost all of April and May’s postings.  That would have suuuuuuuuuuucked!

So take it from us:  Backup early and often!

Introducing: unRAILED.com

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unRAILED.com

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are proud to present the newest addition to the SUBWAYblogger family: unRAILED.com.

Shouldn’t it be “derailed.com?” Well, yeah…but that domain name was already taken. Plus, unRAILED.com is a little more quirky in that it really isn’t a word. Who knows, maybe it will become mainstream one day!

What is unRAILED.com? In a nutshell, it’s everything NOT subway related. So often while cruising around the city, we see things that we think would make a cool blog post. But many times, there’s no subway connection. So, we don’t ever want to fill up SUBWAYblogger.com with bullshit, non-subway related stuff. We like our little niche here! So, we created unRAILED.com as a place for everything else. As we go along, I’m sure it will take much more of a specific focus.

Who writes unRAILED.com? Well, SUBWAYblogger people write unRAILED too. But, we are looking for contributors. So if you would like to become a regular contributor, let us know and we will get you set up to post. It always helps to get your own name/blog out there in front of other audiences.

Anyway, go take a look! We hope you enjoy.

Daniel Boggs: MTA Employee Killed by Subway Train

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Daniel Boggs, 42, was struck by a train near 59th Street/Columbus Circle when he was working on the tracks. It was about 11:30pm when a downtown 3 train struck Boggs who was working on placing “flagging lanterns.”

The lanterns are designed to warn train operators that workers are on the tracks. I guess it is safe to assume that the lanterns Boggs and a partner were placing were not activated in time. It’s sort of an ironic (but sad) death. That’s like getting run over by a car while installing a stop sign.

Apparently, Boggs and his partner thought that this train was the last one scheduled to come through the area. There is speculation that the train was actually running a little late. So, the two men thought it was clear to begin setting up the red stop lights.

Second Avenue Subway Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM)

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Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the latest MTA employee, the TBM.  I wonder if it’s in the union?

Anyway, this machine is the workhorse of subway tunnel system.  It’s going to do most of the Second Ave tunnel digging.  They can even be fitted to lay the concrete roof structure and tracks!  So they can do a heck of a lot of the work in an automated fashion.  Also, they should cause the least amount of disruption up on the street level.

Check it out.

Ooo that smell…

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I think that’s a song.

Stumbled across another interesting blog today.  This might become an addictive habit of searching for blogs to which I can relate.

Anyway, the blog in question,  The Odd Broad, had a post about subway smells.  Obviously, SB was attracted immediately.

Do you play the “What’s that smell game?”  SUBWAYblogger sure does.  However, it’s not always that easy to play.  During peak commute times, it hard to move around to explore and trace down the scent.  However, on a not-so-crowed morning, it may not be that difficult to locate where your local bum has taken a leak on the platform.

In case you didn’t know, the drains along the platform (usually where the wall meets the floor), bums use as their private urinals.  Also, they tend to head to the ends of the platform.  They will walk all the way to one end or the other and let loose off the edge.  Just an FYI for the next time you stand near the platform edge or near a drain.

So yeah, playing “what’s that that smell” can be fun.  However, when all you want to do is get away from people after a long day at work, smells can push you over the edge.  Nothing like standing face to face with a sea of humanity on a hot summer day with the smell of rotting Indian food lingering in the air.  Yum.

Ooo that smell…

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I think that’s a song.

Stumbled across another interesting blog today.  This might become an addictive habit of searching for blogs to which I can relate.

Anyway, the blog in question,  The Odd Broad, had a post about subway smells.  Obviously, SB was attracted immediately.

Do you play the “What’s that smell game?”  SUBWAYblogger sure does.  However, it’s not always that easy to play.  During peak commute times, it hard to move around to explore and trace down the scent.  However, on a not-so-crowed morning, it may not be that difficult to locate where your local bum has taken a leak on the platform.

In case you didn’t know, the drains along the platform (usually where the wall meets the floor), bums use as their private urinals.  Also, they tend to head to the ends of the platform.  They will walk all the way to one end or the other and let loose off the edge.  Just an FYI for the next time you stand near the platform edge or near a drain.

So yeah, playing “what’s that that smell” can be fun.  However, when all you want to do is get away from people after a long day at work, smells can push you over the edge.  Nothing like standing face to face with a sea of humanity on a hot summer day with the smell of rotting Indian food lingering in the air.  Yum.

Funny New Discovery: I hate Duane Reade

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It looks like a fairly new blog, but I hope it stays around. It’s so funny, that there’s probably no reason it won’t take off: I Hate Duane Reade: Service From Hell.

Basically, the blog rails on how poor the service is at DR, and how absolutely trashy the people are that work there. It’s one of those, “It’s funny because it’s true” blogs.

I stumbled across it because the author also sprinkles in a few NJT bashes every now and then. So of course, SUBWAYblogger loves those too.

As far a Duane Reade…yes, they are as bad as the blog says. I think the only reason they stay in business is because there’s one every 3 step in NYC. They have almost as many locations as Starbucks. Also, if you are a Chase Bank customer, there’s an ATM inside every DR location.

Other than that, the place is a complete nightmare. The stores are nice, but the people are morons. Here’s what you need to work there:

-A pulse
-One working eye
-Really long, fake nails
-A bad attitude
-Pants 3 or 4 sizes too small (women). Pants 3 or 4 sizes too big (men).
-Preferably no work ethic or customer service skills whatsoever
-5th Grade diploma (optional)

If you have any of the above, you’re in. Give it 3 weeks, and you’ll be regional manager.

Congestion Pricing: Friend of Foe of the Subway

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Good or bad?  Let’s hope good!

Let’s backup.  What is congestion pricing?  Good question.  Congestion pricing is the theory of charging a fee to drive in congested areas of NYC during peak traffic times.

In this case,  rumour has it that Mayor Bloomberg is looking to have everywhere below 86th Street fall in the “fee” zone.  Right now, the proposal may be $8 to get down there.  How the fee would be collected is still up in the air.  Boy would toll booths suck!

Anyway, the idea is to 1) relieve traffic, and 2) improve the environmental quality of the city.  It is forecasted that by 2030, an additional million people will be in the city.

But, people still need to get places, right?  So that means people will be more likely to take public transportation.  That’s the goal anyway.  And everyone’s favorite public transportation method is the subway.

So is this a good thing or a bad thing?

On the bad side:

-More people means more crowds
-More wear and tear
-Slower commute

On the plus side:

-More subway revenue
-More an implied need for more service
-Perhaps delay a fare hike
-More focus on upgrading/maintaining the system

So yeah, it could suck that there would be a ton more people riding the subway.  But it could be a good thing because maybe that would draw more attention to repairing and fixing the subway.  Also, it might require more frequent service.

Ohh, and there’s the plus side of cleaner air and less horns on the road to honk.  So that’s good too, but the straphanger in me is a little scared!

BlackBerry Crash: SUBWAYblogger down for the count today

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Blackberry

For once, it was not a MTA failure that caused drama in SUBWAYblogger’s morning commute. This time, it was BlackBerry!

As you may or may not be aware at this point, SUBWAYblogger writes most posts from the subway while actually riding the trains. Then, the posts are published remotely via BlackBerry.

Not today though!

BlackBerry had some major issues today. Most New Yorkers were without their hip-mounted friends for most of the day. Actually, the problem started around 8pm yesterday!

But I guess there’s worse things than a lack of subway related postings. The Canadian Parliament almost came to a screeching halt today. Politicians were throwing their handhelds against the wall.

Can you imagine Wall Street? People were probably wandering around like zombies, not knowing what to do with their lives!

Bloomberg Calls for New Yorkers to Ride Mass Transit Today

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Mayor Bloomberg

Late in the evening (within minutes of posting this), Mayor Bloomberg’s office released a statement urging New Yorkers to use mass transit in the morning.  He wants to keep as many cars of the road as he possibly can.

Yikes.

If you turned on the news overnight, you saw roads under water all over the place.  Hoboken is swimming, but hey, now the ferry can pull right up to your building!

The LIRR is already seeing water get too close to the tracks for comfort.  Westbound tunnels into Penn Station are also looking like they are going to flood.

And then there’s the subway.  There’s guaranteed problems all over the place.  However, you won’t know about most of them until you are already well on your way to work.  The MTA isn’t exactly speedy then it comes to publicly reporting transit delays.  It usually takes a pretty significant outage for it to make it on the MTA website.

Flooded Tracks + Potential Power Outages + More Passengers (thanks to Bloomy’s request) = a hell of a morning commute.  Oh, and it’s still going to be raining.  😦