Joel Up Front

Rode 1636 on the N32 yesterday. I knew about the John Deere engine, and it sounded great and was strong enough to really move the bus, but there was a cop car near Cornwell Avenue and the eponymous elementary school. An NCPD officer waited for the bus operator and stood on the sidewalk, explaining that "two others came through," but he didn't know if they made it through or not. While the bus operator had no problem getting through the streets, I noticed that the brakes sounded different and were noisier, like the brakes they use on the NGs. Even worse was that because there was so much traffic trying to get through those tight streets, he was on the brakes every 3-5 seconds. After 10 minutes of snaking through one of the better off parts of West Hempstead, the bus operator got to Cornwell Avenue and turned back onto Hempstead Avenue. And I saw it again when I was coming home on the N25. I just wish they'd fix the transmission. I haven't heard it with a good tranny in over a year.

Something is missing from this map of NYC's neighborhoods. Guess it and win bragging rights over nothing. http://www.richegreen.com/NeighborhoodMaps20080216.pdf

When I joined last June, I thought you, S78 via Hylan, and LRG were all the same person. As much as I love animals, if I see one biting a person's throat, I don't think it'd make anyone happy if you tranquilized it.

Now I remember - the third guy was Fresh Pond.

I love the clashes between people with "sources" and actual TA employees (namely train operators and conductors), especially when the matter of the R44s comes up. I confused Ditmas and Ditmars a lot when my interest in the subway was small, and then I learned that not only were they two different streets, Avenue and Boulevard respectively, they serve two different lines...

Finally, this guy I knew in HS crashed his stupid VW Golf. Well, according to him, some old guy hit him, but he had it coming. He obsessed over it like crazy and kept posting statuses about doing stupid shit to the car (i.e. getting stupid paneling instead of basic stuff like... I don't know, weight reduction or anything that can improve handling or maybe make the engine put out more power). I came close to just trashing the guy but alas, I have no license, so doing so would show that I'm no better than a bench racer, those guys that obsess over a car but don't drive. He even claims that his father knows someone at a repair shop so he can get it fixed easily. God Almighty, I can't stand this.

There was a third person I used to confuse them with, but I can't remember who he was. I trust Verizon more with FiOS than with their cell phone service.

When I first joined here, I thought S78 via Hylan and LRG were the same person.

I rode 1700 on the N25 today. The old deceleration lights that were mounted on the rear panel were either removed or they grabbed a rear panel from another NG and just put it on there. Anyway, Berlin Wall of text ahead, do skip ahead to the end if you wish. >old friend from HS was a gearhead and a motorcycle mechanic from the start of 7th grade >buys a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass and spends most of HS restoring it, gets it roadworthy by the end of junior year >fast forward to November 2009, skips first to third period, see him when he gets back between classes, and tells me that he took and passed his road test >ends up shuttling this slightly-less-than-fortunate, drug addicted, and extremely annoying girl and her more annoying friends around for the rest of senior year >only offers to give me a ride... twice out of the whole year and have no choice but to walk otherwise >graduate and never see him around as he moved to FL for school >he graduates from there, moves back to NY, gets a job with Harley-Davidson, and drives around before deciding his Olds wasn't cutting it or whatever >he decides to get a pickup truck much to the chagrin of his strict father, and thinks it is a good idea to try a burnout >mfw I read on FB that he was put into an extremely bad mood because of him ____ing his truck up with that attempted burnout >mfw two years later it takes me an hour and a half to get home because I have to take three buses, the first two being late and crowded every time I use them, and if I miss the third, I have to over a mile home when I'm already tired and it's getting cold

I rode 1700 on the N25 today. The old deceleration lights that were mounted on the rear panel were either removed or they grabbed a rear panel from another NG and just put it on there. Anyway, Berlin Wall of text ahead, do skip ahead to the end if you wish. >old friend from HS was a gearhead and a motorcycle mechanic from the start of 7th grade >buys a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass and spends most of HS restoring it, gets it roadworthy by the end of junior year >fast forward to November 2009, skips first to third period, see him when he gets back between classes, and tells me that he took and passed his road test >ends up shuttling this slightly-less-than-fortunate, drug addicted, and extremely annoying girl and her more annoying friends around for the rest of senior year >only offers to give me a ride... twice out of the whole year and have no choice but to walk otherwise >graduate and never see him around as he moved to FL for school >he graduates from there, moves back to NY, gets a job with Harley-Davidson, and drives around before deciding his Olds wasn't cutting it or whatever >he decides to get a pickup truck much to the chagrin of his strict father, and thinks it is a good idea to try a burnout >mfw I read on FB that he was put into an extremely bad mood because of him ____ing his truck up with that attempted burnout >mfw two years later it takes me an hour and a half to get home because I have to take three buses, the first two being late and crowded every time I use them, and if I miss the third, I have to over a mile home when I'm already tired and it's getting cold

The only thing with Dell is that all their high-performance computers are mad overpriced. If you're ever going to get a desktop, HP is a safe bet. I don't know what it is with them, but HP makes solid desktops, but their laptops suck. Dell laptops are fine, but their desktops are underpowered...

Four to five is good, I have family members with the same Dell XPS laptops and they're still using them.

If you're depressed, don't let it get to you; grab the nearest caffeinated drink and enjoy the DILLIGAF attitude.

The HDD is really paying off. Now my main concern is: Where the #2 has all my RAM gone? On top of that, my CPU usage has shot up 75%. Maybe I should build a desktop.

That's why I don't buy HP laptops anymore. HP desktops are far better. Invest in an external HDD and save your stuff before the rest of the laptop derps.

You're one to complain. The only time I got a group of guys walking through a train was on the from Atlantic Terminal to 34th Street... they just kept walking and singing, tracing figure eight paths around the poles. The last guy in the group gave me the stinkeye... This was while the train was snaking through lower Manhattan, and the T/O took a few curves a bit fast, so I slid out of my seat. I didn't look out for Cortlandt, and forgive me if it isn't visible from the tracks or isn't part of the line, this was way back in March. I really wish I could take subway trips without the paranoid thinking I have a mini-nuke in my camera flash or something.

I find it hilarious that a PS2 console will run Gran Turismo 2 better than an actual PlayStation 2 game. I tried GT3 and everything just looked muddy and washed out. When I popped GT2 in, it was even brighter and better than it looked on my old CRT TV.

NCC's Public Safety is always all over campus... but they cannot into dates (that's an intentional error... don't ask me where it came from). According to them, the Endo Boulevard stop behind the library would be only closed Friday, and from the 29th to October 2nd. Yet today I went over there and only the intersection where the road ends at Miller Avenue was removed; the start at Endo Boulevard was sectioned off, but there was no construction there. I'm glad I only have half a week..

I've needed glasses for seven years... methinks I'll be blind by 30 at this rate. I bought myself a WD external drive after months of hesitation. On the manual pre-installed on the drive, it says "Do not drop or jolt the drive." Let's see... after I got some Wendy's, I had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get to the N4... not bad. I had an Orion V with a bad transmission and the bus operator broke 35 on five occasions, all within minutes of each other.... and Merrick Road is crap because Nassau County is ****ing broke, and coupled with the bus' speed, the bumps caught a few people off-guard. And then when I got home and looked for scissors, it fell four and a half feet twice in a minute... but now it's reading how much stuff I have on my laptop. Hmm, I've done worse to electronics...

"My face hurts." "And it'll match your ass when I'm done kickin' it!" Seriously, I'm tired of finding whole, raw instrumentals on YT only for these wack ass 15 year olds from well-to-do parts of suburbs "keystyle" to them. First of all, if you had to write the shit down in advance, it ain't no "keystyle" or "freestyle" or whatever your dribble is supposed to be. And when people post the actual verses, they go unrecognized.

Friday morning, I was trying to catch an N16 before the rain came. When one did, the bus operator just flew down Charles Lindbergh Boulevard after being stuck behind two cars, the second blocking the divider for the right turn, and flew down CLB and picked up people waiting at the Social Service building. When he got onto Westbury Boulevard, there was a guy waiting by the stop, but he appeared to not want to get on. He paused his iPod and then signaled for the bus to stop, but by then the bus operator was gone. The same thing happened down the line. When he actually pulled into the terminal, he pulled into the north side (across from the LIRR station) and just dove for the N31 bay.

The only problem with Boomerang is that they're too focused on airing crap from the 1970s, all of which are clones of each other. That Speed Buggy thing was just Scooby-Doo with a talking car, Josie and the Pussycats was just the same only the group was all girls and there was no annoying anthromorphic/talking... pet thing that pissed me off so much, if I was animated into the show, I'd find the nearest weapon and bash its head in. Why can't they air something like Road Runner cartoons? Those were awesome. Nothing more politically correct than a coyote getting run over by locomotives.

Went to RFM to buy a mouse for my laptop, and then hitched an N16 to Hempstead from there. I got on the N32 (when don't I anymore?) on Orion V #1674, which someone apparently painted wrong: Anyway, when it came time for me to get off, the bus operator blew about five feet past the sign for the stop, and I got out through the rear doors, or tried. When I hit the tape, the left door opened fine, but the right door hit a power pole before it could swing open all the way. I squeezed through while the bus operator kept pumping the brakes and hitting the door switch. When I looked back, the doors were still open while I heard the engine rev up. I just walked faster until I heard the bus restart...

"If you run of water, you will die. If your car breaks down and you can't be rescued, you will die. If you run out of food, you will die. It's like driving on a crême bruleé, there's a primeval ooze covered with a layer of salty crust. If you have thin tires, you will break through that crust, get stuck, and you will die." Quoth the great poet Christopher Rios of the region north of the island of Manhattan known as the Bronx: I am not simply involved with multiple women at once, I just copulate on multiple occasions.

For whatever reason, the late afternoon ride out of Nassau went a lot quicker. When the N16 I was on got to SRO, an N16 to Baldwin (as opposed to the short trip to Hempstead I was on) stopped right behind it, and a student was pointing people at the Orion V behind me. There was no traffic at all from the Union to the entrance, except for at the red light where the bus operator had no room to turn onto Ovington. As usual, he had to flag Social Service, and the people that needed to get off on Westbury Boulevard stood near the doors. The bus operator initially didn't open the rear doors (they only do that ONLY if the bus is absolutely crush-loaded, and the late afternoon buses always are) but he did after a few seconds. A girl was standing near the No Standing zone meant for the front of the bus while an NG signed up as an N31 rolled in, so I had to tell her to move. At the same time, the Orion V in the N32 bay went back into service, so while I paid my fare, the other half of the line moved onto the Orion V. When the bus operator backed out, he only got to straighten the bus out before stopping. He was yelling and complaining about how "they always ask him to wait for the N35, when that's on the other side" or something; I couldn't hear him because my headphones were on, but I know for sure his aggression was directed towards the N35 backing up. Three N31/32s Hempstead bound passed by, and the third, a 2011 NG, had a badly glitched sign - only the right half of the sign even worked properly. Where the route number should have been was just a giant orange rectangle and the next foot of the sign was completely blank, so all you could see was "-st Broadway/Stead Ave." I made a mistake and decided to get off at the LIRR station rather than at the usual transfer point for the 25... and that backfired when an N25 sped on by with a kindly female B/O, and I knew I made a mistake because she drives NGs fast... When I was able to get off, there were no buses in sight and the schedules read that buses arrive every 15 minutes (starting at 3:00 PM). A Hispanic man asked me a question in Spanish, but I didn't understand him, so he asked me in English where he could get an MC. We both waited while I gave him change, and another woman walked up and stood at the stop while a stray shower came through. It looked as if a thunderstorm would hit, but it was nothing more than some strong wind and a drizzle.