SITE UPDATE: Capen Street Station at night

I tried to head into Boston this afternoon to meet my friend Bernie, but never got out of town due to weather-related problems (we just had a snow and ice storm). When I got to Capen Street, there was a trolley idling at the inbound platform and a hi-rail line truck on the side of the road. The motorman informed me that the line was being bustituted because a tree had fallen somewhere on the line. Naturally, no bus ever showed up at the usual Capen Street bus stop (as I subsequently learned, the T seems to have adopted for such emergencies the same bussing scheme it used while the line was shut down for the loop rebuilds: busses via River Street or Brook/Central, and vans to Capen Street and Valley Road). Eventually I walked back to the station to see what was happening, arriving as they were partway through getting the line truck onto the tracks (the trolley had backed up to Mattapan in the interval). The truck proceeded to Mattapan on the inbound track, so I assume that’s where the fallen tree was. About 45 minutes later it came back on the same track, and switched back to using rubber tires. That was about 6:15, and at 6:20 service on the line resumed, with several trolleys in a row returning from Ashmont or wherever they had been sitting.

The snow and ice on the tree branches was quite beautiful at night with the station lights illuminating them, so I went back home and got my camera for some night shots, which can be found here.

New cellphone

I got a new cellphone yesterday, a Motorola RAZR V3m. Looks nice, and it makes calls. It also charges without any trouble, using a regular mini-USB plug (my old phone used a charging station, which was apparently sensitive to changes in the earth’s magnetic and gravitational fields. The last few months I had to stick a cotton ball between the phone and the charger so that the electrical contacts would make sufficient contact with each other for the damn thing to charge). There are some weird things about it, though. ‘Battery charging’ is indicated by flashing the low-battery indicator (yeah, that’s obvious). The belt clip attaches to the front of the phone, so you have to take the whole thing off just to check the time (fortunately, I rarely need the belt clip). And per Verizon SOP, the Bluetooth is crippled. I’m actually amazed that I can use that to transfer photos and videos from my phone to my computer (and add photos to my phone for wallpaper). Music is right out though, as that is restricted to Windows XP users who want to pay more money each month for the right to put music on their phones. Hopefully, by the time my contract runs out in 2010 I’ll be able to afford an iPhone.

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