Tag: travel

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Photo taken in an NYC subway station showing a temporary, blue partition build around a subway sign. "Grand" is the only lettering exposed on the sign. An empty subway platform and tile wall is in the background.
Nice carpentry, but it may have been easier to remove the sign.

We started the week with our own odyssey as we traveled back from Toronto. Our story isn’t blockbuster material, a 12+ hour journey where only about 60 minutes of it was off the ground is quite the snoozer. As a result, I’ve sworn off LaGuardia flights for a while. That little airport is way too over committed. It’s as if a butterfly flapping its wings in Detroit results in a ground stop at LGA.

The other major black mark against LaGuardia is the lack of a rail connection. It’s embarrassing that one of our major airports doesn’t have subway service or some sort of air train. The massive ride share pickup area they recently constructed could be smaller and less chaotic if there were better connectivity to the transit system at the terminal. Sure, LGA is served by two bus lines, but we can do so much better than this.

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Photo of a yellow sign with the text "PEDESTRIANS YIELD TO TRAFFIC" in black letters against a blue sky with the skyline of Toronto waterfront buildings are in the background.
Really?

We were in Toronto this weekend. That is where I saw the bizarre sign posted here. In all my years, I’ve never seen such instructions, especially in a heavily touristic area. Based on what I witnessed, no pedestrians were yielding to anything, so perhaps it’s just a curiosity.

Don’t judge the city by a single sign though. Toronto was wonderful, made all the better by the excellent weather we had. There we still some vestiges of World Cup 2026, which made for a festive to the atmosphere. I won’t bore you with a travelogue, but I will say that if you’ve never been, check it out. If you want to be maybe just a little bit bored, you can scroll through a few more random photos after the links.

Enjoy!!!

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Note: This is getting posted almost a week late. Sort of “forgot to hit send” on it last weekend.

I wrote a short wrap-up post for our trip to Japan. It might have some useful nuggets for travelers to Japan. Perhaps it will also serve my future self if we make a another trip there. This concludes the posting of pictures and prose from that trip. We will now resume regular programming.

Just a week shy of a year ago, I said I might want to set up a PBX system at home. Because, why not? This week, I got Asterisk running on an old Raspberry Pi. After a couple evenings of updating the OS, compiling code and configuring things, I was able to connect two softphones. Success! Now I need to get the actual phones working.

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In my highly unscientific polling of friends that have visited Japan, “Amazing” is the number one term used to describe trip. “Really amazing” is a close second. I see no reason to be a contrarian: Our trip was “amazing”.

People have asked about my favorites, be it food, places or experiences. I’m not always so good at picking favorites, and I don’t want to bore you with a recounting of the entire trip (for that see the photos in this section). So, here are a couple things that immediately come to mind.

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Screen capture of a video depicting a blue, compact SUV on a Manhattan street sporting a large sign with the text "NEW YORKERS WON! CONGESTION PRICING". A man is standing in the moon roof with outstretched arms.
Screen capture from a Streetfilms montage celebrating NYC Congestion Pricing.

At the stroke of midnight on an icy Sunday, New York City congestion pricing began. I never thought I’d see the day. Let’s hope it sticks!

I finished posting photos from our trip to Japan. Looking at them makes me want to go back.

This Switchable Desktop Power Outlet project is one I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It was simple enough that I wasn’t sure if it warranted a write-up. However, I learned a few lessons–why not.

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