Dirac Angestun Gesept

Someone tried to rob a copy shop that he thought was a bank, failed, apparently did manage to rob a couple of banks, and wound up being arrested “drenched in red dye” at a gas station (his tire had gone flat after leaving the second bank). It just wasn’t his day.

The funny thing is that I recognize the copy shop’s location from the photo and description, and when I moved to Boston in 1986, it was a bank! They closed the branch but kept the ATMs, and later the copy shop moved in.

The MBTA is helpfully shutting down portions of not one but two lines over Labor Day weekend.

From Friday (Sept. 3) at 9pm through Monday (Sept. 6), there will be bus shuttles replacing portions of both Red Line and Blue Line service, in addition to three previously-existing and ongoing disruptions: Lechmere service replacement on the Green Line, the closure of Savin Hill station, and the Orange Line signal work.

The Red Line will be closed between Park Street and Kendall/MIT from Friday 9pm until the end of service Monday (which really means early Tuesday morning). Shuttle buses will be available at Park Street, Central, and Kendall/MIT.

The Blue Line will be closed between Wonderland and Maverick from Friday 9pm until “Monday evening”. (I’d treat that as “until the end of service” myself.) Shuttle buses will be available. Massport shuttles should be running to Maverick for airport service.

These may be important notes to folks coming to town for Noreascon Four (Worldcon).

The New York Times has an amusing article Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain on the vagaries of the iPod’s shuffle mode.

For Mr. Angus, though, Shuffle can be a workout killer. He said that while working out at the gym, his portable music player invariably drifts toward the Billboard Top 40.

“It really likes Ruben Studdard,” the winner of “American Idol’s” second season, Mr. Angus said. This, despite the fact that he only has one song of Mr. Studdard’s - the soulful ballad “Sorry 2004″ - stored on his 20-gigabyte player. “There’s nothing worse than when you are having an intense workout and Ruben comes on,” he said, “but it seems to always happen to me.”

I use a lot of Smart Playlists instead, as I’ve previously discussed here and here. My current big playlist is all 3 star songs not played in 12 months, all 4 star songs not played in 70 days, all 5 star songs not played in 14 days, and all unrated songs.

At the moment that’s 4,660 songs for a total of 12 days and 21 1/2 hours. Make that 4,659 songs….

“Four thousand six hundred sixty songs on the playlist, four thousand six hundred sixty songs! Take one down, play it around, four thousand six hundred fifty-nine songs on the playlist!”

I just haven’t felt like blogging, or felt like I’ve had anything really to blog. Apologies to my regular readers, if any.

It’s busy but they seem to have come up with a nice efficient system for handling the orders. Staff with clipboards are roaming the line, filling out order sheets, and running them to the back room to be put together while the customer waits in line for the register.

They’ve brought in staff from all over the country to help out, too.

Busy as all get-out but not insanity-inducing.

Buyers get holiday from sales tax on Saturday

The money quote from this Globe article:

”Any purchase that would be worth the savings in sales tax would be a large-ticket item, and that savings is not going to factor into my buying decision,” said Regina Caggiano of Woburn. ”Large-ticket items are not impulse buys. You determine if you need it, why you want it, how much you want to spend — and then you go to New Hampshire to get it.”

So the net effect will be to depress gas sales and New Hampshire retail this weekend, I guess.

The Boston Globe has finally discovered that MBTA announcements and electronic message boards don’t work.

They’re often actively broken or wrong, too, not just disconnected:

At Back Bay station, an electronic message board flashes the word ”Rebooting,” replaced a few moments later with meaningless red dashes. At the commuter rail station in Natick, an electronic sign displays the incorrect time so often, passengers simply ignore it.

Of course, anyone who actually uses the system could have told them that they’ve been like this for years and years, if not for the entire history of the system.

Perhaps tomorrow’s Globe will tell us that water is wet.

The New York Times recently published Copter-Borne Medics on the role of DUSTOFF pilots in Iraq. I’d previously noted an article in the Boston Globe in January.

Picked up Early American Chrononauts the other day. I love the original Chrononauts, so I’m looking forward to playing this one, probably tomorrow night at SGS if folks are interested.

ckd is a burglar alarm that works upside-down, never gets tired and looks like a fish.

Amusingly, I got a Google Ad for alarm monitoring services on that page. Not quite as much fun as the Boston Globe article about Bill Gates that tried to sell me wrought-iron fencing, but hey.