Trains' Name Game

When a recent fast-moving winter storm coming our way was referred to as a “Clipper”, it got me thinking of the old names that used to be given to specific trains, like The Yankee Clipper.  Of course, that name originally derived from the fast sailing ships, but trains have personalities too!

The Europeans do a great job “branding” their trains.  There is, of course, “Eurostar”, the popular train between London and Paris via “the Chunnel”.  There’s also “Thalys” from Paris to Brussels and Amsterdam, and “Lyria”, a super-fast service from Paris to Switzerland using French TGV’s.

All of these trains sound a lot more exciting than “Acela”, Amtrak’s best effort at high speed rail.  As one-time Amtrak President David Gunn once said, “Everyone knows what Acela is… it’s your basement.”

Amtrak still has some named trains though they are pale shadows of their historic namesakes:  the Silver Meteor and Silver Star to Florida, The Lakeshore Limited to Chicago, The Adirondack to Montreal.

The old New Haven Railroad used to name its trains:  The Merchants Ltd., The Owl, The Patriot and Senator.  When Amtrak inherited The Owl, a night train from Boston to Washington, they renamed it “The Night Owl”.  But it was so slow and made so many stops, it was better known to staff and passengers as “The Night Crawler”.  It’s long gone.

Even stations’ names can evoke grandeur:  Grand Central Terminal (not station!) says it all… big, NY Central and a dead-end.  South Station and North Station in Boston give you a sense of location, like Paris’ Gare de Nord and Gare de L’Est. And Gare de Lyon tells you one of the big cities where the trains are coming from.

On Metro-North most of the station names align with the towns where they are located.  But Westport residents still insist on calling their station “Saugatuck” in honor of the adjacent river. And Green’s Farms memorializes John Green’s nearby 1699 farm.  But why is the Harlem line station “Southeast” actually far north of NY near I-84?

Though it no longer names its trains, some Metro-North Bombardier-built cars carry names tied to Connecticut lore:  The Danbury Hatter (alluding to the city’s old industry),

 The Ella Grasso (named after our former Governor) and my favorite, The Coast Watcher.

Even before Amtrak, America’s railroads similarly named many cars, especially sleepers, parlor cars and diners.  Today’s long-distance, double-deck Superliners carry the names of the states and such historic figures as A. Phillip Randolph, founder of the Pullman porters union.

So the next time you’re on some generic Metro-North train known only by a number, think of how much more glamorous your commute could be on a train with a name like “The Silver Streak” or “The Weary Commuter”.

Malloy's Plan to Widen I-95

Be careful what you wish for.  After years of pleading, we finally have Governor Malloy’s full attention on the problems of transportation.  But his recently announced plan for the state sound like he’s been reading from the book of Moses… Robert Moses, the NYC planner who never met a highway he didn’t like. 

Governor Malloy has announced that he wants to widen our interstate highways. All of them, everywhere!  “Look at New Jersey,” he said recently. “They were smart enough to build parallel highways to existing highways,” evoking images of the six-lane wide New Jersey Turnpike where cars and trucks run in their own lanes.

Great, perhaps, for the swamps of Secaucus, but Governor Malloy says he wants to replicate that on all of I-95 from Rhode Island to New York, adding lanes that would eat into some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

Imagine the decades of construction and the billions of dollars in cost.  The exit 14 widening on I-95 in Norwalk alone cost $41 million and it’s still not done.

And once built, would adding an extra lane or two really solve congestion or would it just encourage more traffic?  Wouldn’t a six lane I-95 actually potentially reduce ridership on Metro-North?  Sorry Governor, super-sizing I-95 is not the answer.

Widening our highways is not viable environmentally or economically.  It’s a non-starter that will see years of lawsuits while a better long-range solution sits right in front of us.

What we need to do is better utilize Metro-North, the railroad line that parallels I-95 for its entire length.  We need to turn it into a suburban “subway” line.

If we increased train service from twice-an-hour off-peak to trains running every 10 to 15 minutes, you wouldn’t need to worry about a timetable.  Just show up and catch the next train.

Why not take the billions you could waste on highway widening and instead add more trains and build more parking at the stations, giving riders better access to the truly rapid-transit? We have already invested billions into Metro-North, so why not finish the job?

Instead we are going to hear the Governor’s grandiose dreams of paving the state as the construction companies and unions see dollar signs in their eyes.  The projected costs will be staggering.  Many will love the ideas, but nobody will like the few painful alternatives to pay for them.

There will be the inevitable debate about tolls and where they should be placed… at our borders or state-wide. Some will suggest we raise the gas tax.  Maybe even offer privatized toll roads (or “Lexus lanes”).

Those are the wrong discussions.  Instead of widening I-95 we should be widening use of an existing resource… our rails.  Let’s build the Fairfield County Subway.

Kickoff to Kscope15

Starting off with an apology

I have an old smart phone.  Like five years old.  And it’s breaking apart, piece by piece.  Droid2s are no longer thick on the ground, and once you see the fairly horrible pictures of a really nice hotel and convention center, you’ll understand what I mean.  

Where oh where oh where are you?

I’m glad you asked as I am at one of the two ODTUG board of directors in-person meetings.  ODTUG does this twice a year – once in January and again before Kscope.  

At the January meeting, we get to see for the first time (unless a director is on the conference location committee) where the upcoming Kscope will be held.

Diplomat Resort & Spa, Hollywood, Florida

This place is, in a word, spectacular.  I don’t believe Kscope has ever been in such a nice place.  

Unfortunately, what you are about to see really, really, really doesn’t do the place justice.

Here’s the lobby.  Take the almost-impressionist snapshot and multiple it’s awesomeness by 1000%.

Mary Cassatt, eat your heart out.

Continuing the o-m-g what is theme, here’s the gym.  They like blue.  It is pretty amazing looking.

And lastly, something that is actually relevant to you, oh potential Kscope attendee – a breakout room.  They’re really nicely laid out.  Hopefully not so laid out that you stare at the walls or ceiling in an architecturally induced stupor of delight.  That’s what the speaker is supposed to do with his presentation.

South Florida meetup/ODTUG kickoff

The South Florida meetup, led by Kris Callabro and Jessica Cordova, combined their second meetup with our kickoff to Kscope15.  Thank you all for coming.

From the left, you see Natalie Delemar as moderator, yr. obt. svt., Tim Tow, ODTUG President Monty Latiolas, Mike Riley, and Mia Urman.  David Schleis is not visible but he too moderated.

I think we answered some questions right.  Maybe.

The end and a question

It really is a spectacular resort and it will be a really spectacular conference.  I hope to see you there.

And now a question:  given that I own a smartphone old enough to be powered by coal and steam driven, what kind of phone would you recommend.  My only qualification is that it must be available for purchase in the States.

Be seeing you.

This was the year that was, 2014

And what a year it was

It’s really all a bit amazing – you, Gentle Reader, saw fit to read this blog almost 80,000 times in 2014, and viewed over 100,000 pages.  I never, ever, ever thought when I started this blog way back in 2008 that I’d ever attract this many people.  Really, I had no idea what to expect other than I hoped someone would read it.  I guess there must be value here, somewhere, for these numbers.  Perhaps it’s me hitting the F5 key again and again and again or perhaps it’s every evil robot spambot trawling the site?  I prefer to think that it really does come down to you find this blog useful.  Thank you.

And now, thanks to the pretty awesome Google Analytics dashboard, let’s dissect what those numbers mean.

Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those peepers?

Good grief, there were a lot of you, and the numbers got higher through the year before they took their inevitable plunge over the Christmas holidays.

And look at the growth over last year – traffic basically doubled.  

Where oh where oh where did you come from?

Where you came from in the US of A

And where did you come from, last year?

The distribution isn’t all that different – I am chuffed that I managed to hit every state.  I can’t believe there are many Essbase hackers in Wyoming, but there must be at least one.

California continues to be the number one state for readers.  Given its size, population, and tech industry focus, this is hardly surprising.  

The skew towards Pensylvania is probably me writing this blog.  Okay, maybe not all of it, but a good deal of it.

Is there really more to the world than the States?  Yes.

The US is the largest site but that’s not a huge surprise given our population.  The distribution doesn’t change much.  I still have the goal of reaching Greenland if it’s broken out separately from Denmark.

The largest percentage change is Germany, followed by India, and then Brazil.  That’s three continents.  I should note that I don’t speak German, any of the dialects and languages of India, or Portuguese.

I have been to Germany on holiday, and when I was a young child I lived in South America (Guyana, and no, not as a member of a cult but when my father was on a USAID project to design and build bridges).

Origins

No, not the origin of man (way too controversial and besides you don’t read this blog to get my take on this), nor the origin of Cameron – ask my parents how that happened ‘cos I’m pretty sure it was either a stork or the cabbage patch, but where you come from.

If you discount service providers, the number one reader of this blog is Oracle.  Personally, I think they read it for a chuckle as they spot the mistakes in my wild surmises and guesses but perhaps they really do find value in it.  Or humor.

What is your lingua franca?

Although American is your first language, the second place winner is the British Empire (yes, I wanted to be a history professor, and yes, it would have been on labor in the British Empire, and yes, I find imperial history, particularly South Africa, Rhodesia, and South West Africa, “The Cape to Cairo”, Cecil Rhodes, Joe Chamberlin, Victoria Falls, Spion Kop (Boer War battleground, I’ve been there and it’s absolutely haunting), and any number of other places in southern Africa to be fascinating, and yes, I had a fellowship for a doctorate and ran away from it, and yes, I used the imperial names, and no, I have no idea why this interests me other than I had relatives there).  Whew, that’s way more than you wanted to know about me, isn’t it?  I expect Commonwealth countries to now boycott this blog.

It’s the 21st century, so you’re mobile.  Not that I am.

It looks like the iPad is the winner.  One of these days I have to spend more than 5 minutes with one.   It still seems like a crippleware version of a laptop.  I may be in the minority with this opinion.

Browsing the web

Alas and alack, my Very Favorite Browser in the Whole Wide World, Firefox, is in number three.  I just can’t warm up to Chrome and I only use IE when I absolutely have to.

Who referred me?

Google but a huge margin.  I guess Googling “Cameron + Essbase” really works.

Celvin Kattookaran is right after the premier search engine.  Celvin is my younger brother from different parents that I love to torture, although I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s smarter and more talented than I.

I find it interesting that Edward Roske, my former employer, is still in the top ten given that it’s mostly a moribund site.  Edward, I’m looking at you – you could beat Google if you posted more often.  Personally, I miss your industry insider comments.

What interests you?

Data export, Calculation Manager, death, death, death to Load Rules, How Cameron is the Worst Infrastructure Consultant in the World, Financial Reports, block creation, backups, and Hybrid Essbase.

If I ever finish my Special Project That I Have Only Hinted About, I have posts on Calc Manager, yet another Stupid Load Rule rant, and block creation all queued up, at least in my mind.  Someday, and hopefully soon.

Going strong, and still going

Would you believe that I broke the 200 mark for posts?  I find that amazing.  Perhaps it reflects my stubbornness, or my big fat mouth, or my desire to share my limited knowledge, or hubris, or maybe something else that I haven’t quite figured out.

What does matter, to me at least, is that you find this blog valuable as evinced by the numbers above.  I wouldn’t bother writing this all down if I didn’t think there was an audience.  And there, somewhat to my continuing surprise, is.

Thank you for putting up with my sometimes completely out there (c’mon, I’ll bet very, very, very few have ever heard the slogan “Cape to Cairo” and even less of you care) references and what is hopefully somewhat relevant Essbase and EPM content.

Thank you again for believing in me.  I’ll do my best in 2015 to keep the good stuff coming.

Be seeing you.