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No offense, but why didn't you just take the DART train to work? It's pretty fantastic and only $5 for a day pass.

I still do not think this is enough evidence to convince T-mobile of Phone Cloning. So I am thinking of switching either my number or my service provider.

You ask the question, "Has my cell number been cloned?" I ask the more pressing question... "Has your brain turned to mush?" DUH, if you're getting calls that you're not getting, then there's a problem.

You say "Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something." I say, you need to adjust your message to give them the facts -- customer support reps are only human. If you ramble on with your life story, or rant and rave, or interject useless details, then you might get hung up on. But T-Mobile gave me good service when I had them (I only dropped them because they didn't have good service in the middle of nowhere, where I live). If you call and say "Here are the calls that I neither made nor received. Please remove them from my bill and block me from ever recieving calls from the associated numbers." I can't imagine they'd refuse.

There's also the distinct possibility that the owner of the second line isn't being straight with you. I'm reminded of a poem I read on the bus:

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

-Dorothy Parker, Unfortunate Coincidence

The upcoming DST changes will reduce the amount of energy we use. This is good. Hopefully, market forces and high gas prices will change American buying habits for autos. If gas prices stay high people will slowly change their buying patterns on vehicles, their views of mass transportation, etc... I know the DART rail here in Dallas is now over crowded due to high fuel costs. When I drive to work I notice that the parking lot for the DART rail nearby is often overflowing with cars. Here is a quote from our local Dallas Morning news:

"Rising gas prices are prompting a growing number of North Texas commuters to park their cars in favor of buses and trains, but Dallas Area Rapid Transit is considering service cuts to help balance its budget.

Though DART ridership has increased 11 percent on its bus and light-rail lines and 18 percent on the Trinity Railway Express commuter line, the additional passengers have not helped the agency's finances." -Dallas Morning News (Subscription Required) Bugmenot.com

Thats market forces in action and thats how capitalism works.

JOhn

None of which are representative of LRT. To have a better sense of light rail, go see DART, Houston METRO, Salt Lake City UTA, St. Louis Metrolink, San Francisco MUNI, Santa Clara VTA, Philadelphia SEPTA, Portland Max, Baltimore MARC, and so on.

Jointed tracks cause the "clickety-clack" most people are familiar with. Modern systems use Continuously welded rail to solve this problem.

Referring to me? I'm for transit in all its forms (bus/BRT, LRT, heavy rail, monorail, even maglev)but I just want to make sure people make their decisions for the right reasons.

Of all places, Dallas has had this for years.

This is part of the trend toward automated mass transit. Suck all the joy/autonomy out of driving by constraining the ways you can legally drive, and after a while there will be no "freedom" in having your own car. You may as well get on the subway with a toy driving wheel and make vroom-vroom sounds.

Interesting argument, if a bit on the shiny side of the tinfoil hat.

I'll be happy when I can eventually get on the subway, sans toy driving wheel, and forget about the traffic, road rage, and riding with Bin Laden.

Meanwhile, we're driving toward our own destruction. Each time you (not you personally) drive to the 7-11 in your Hummer, you're using up the oil that a future generation could have used to cruise Route 66. Where's the "freedom" in that?

The psychological effects of terminal illness are probably not best handled with opiates anyway. Counselling and antidepressant medication would seem to be indicated--not doping patients into a blissful stupor.

Absolutely correct! How can a physician diagnose a patient's condition when the patient is in la-la land due to his/her meds?

That said, though -- and not to belittle the point at all -- I see this as something of a Godsend for straight-arrow geeks like myself. Never so much as took a single puff of a joint -- I was like that kid on the commercial who passes it on down the line without sampling it. Coke? LSD? You gotta be nuts. That crap voids the warranty.

Once I know my number is up, all bets are off. If I had my choice, I'd be sorely tempted to spend my last two or three months indulging heavily in all the vices I avoided during my "healthy" life for fear of harming myself. Nothing that would hurt anyone else, just a blissful slide into the abyss.

And now, no worrying about the opioids interacting with each other? Set the table, baby! One of each!

* Important Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, and with my luck, I'll get hit by a bus anyway.

In my experience, the problem with sufficiently long commutes (we're talking DART here) is that slight asyncs with the system added up to huge penalties. What I mean by this is that to reach my job I had to follow this route:

1. Drive to train station
2. Take train to another station 3. (FIRST PENALTY) Wait for next train...10 minutes 4. Take train to next station 5. (SECOND PENALTY) Wait for bus...12 minutes 6. Take bus to transit center 7. (THIRD PENALTY) Wait for last bus...17 minutes
Total penalties: 39 minutes. Add to this the drawback of having to be very specific about what time I arrive and leave, not being able to drive anywhere for lunch, having a very hard limit on how late I can stay...it simply wasn't possible.

Thinking like a good economist, I thought that commuting makes a lot more sense for people for whose time is less valuable, i.e., if I work at a 7-11, and public transportation saves me from having to own a car, then it's a much better deal.

Anyhow, you missed the point of your own project. It seems to me that the main application would be for shipping rather than personal transport. Items are shipped in trucks rather than trains for the same reasons (asynchronicity, necessity of trucking at least a portion of the route). Trucking routes have almost exactly the needs you describe.

People looking to save some money on transportation from
DFW (or Love Field) might want to look into DART
(Dallas Area Rapid Transit). As there is no direct route from
the airports to Mesquite, you will have to switch buses a few
times, but the whole trip will cost less that $5.00.

This option is reserved for people with an adventurous spirit
as the whole DART system is confusing and the possibility
exists that you may get lost. DART does have a Customer
Assistance Line, and they can help you plot a course.
Their number is (214) 979-1111.

Used to be you never heard of cities/towns like Lewisville, Flower Mound, Highland Village, Denton, Plano or Frisco on the evening news (hell, even Lake Dallas [no relation] and Hickory Creek, two of the smallest ones around), now it's all about "new development [here]", "new shopping center [there]," etc. The first four cities on that list are in severe danger of being built out in the next 3 years. True, Silicon Valley already is, but this is news in North Texas, since there's just always happened to be land.

In Lewisville, some of the fields I would ride bikes through when younger are now huge parking lots with shopping centers (shockingly enough, all looking the same) on them. There are 2-3 gas stations on every major street corner, and even on some minor ones.

Expansion has occured so rapidly that street infrastructure cannot keep up, and local mass-transit is far worse than a joke. To give an idea: The main road linking Flower Mound to Lewisville and Interstate 35E is a two-lane blacktop road. Forget using it during rush hour at all ... hell, we used to not even have a rush hour.

*sigh* Wish my grandmother hadn't sold her house in East Texas (Berryville/Frankston/Lake Palestine area) ... I'd buy it and move out there.

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