A Final Holiday Guffah

With the holiday season coming to a close, and plenty of plans to start off the new year in a positive fashion, one sometimes need to look back at the holidays for a smile.

The Christmas season always brings a smile to my face. Usually it happens with the misunderstanding of something such as Christmas carols.

During the Christmas season I heard a story from my church where one young lady was singing the second verse of Away in a Manger which she sang as:

"The castles are lowing..." The music director stopped playing during the rehearsal of the song before the church service started and said "The cattle are lowing..." The young girl replied "O...Ok....cattle...got it."

To end this post, I link to Mary P. with the best story of kids misunderstanding a christmas carol.

Transit Trip Planner

York Region Transit has been promising since their October 2006 newsletter to create an online trip planner for people wishing to plan out a route from point "A" to point "B". The fare increase coming in January 2007, which according to media reports will raise an additional two million dollars for YRT, will also provide funding for new technologies including the online trip planner. Now, as a YRT transit rider, I wait for this come to fruition.

Toronto also has one in the works as well. However, I would think the Toronto one might even happen before the York Region transit one due to the fact the TTC (Toronto's transit agency) is attempting to team up with techno geeks at Google to accomplish this. Google already has the experience in this trip planning with trip planners already created for U.S. cities like Burbank and Tampa. So the technological expertise of Google is already there and all that is really needed is for the TTC to turn over the needed maps and schedules to Google. Once Google acquires these necessary items, the techno geeks can start working on creating the interface.

Why will the Toronto one happen before the York Region one? Knowing the bureaucrats running York Region Transit, they will try and do it themselves instead of handing it over to a company like Google to do it for free. A company like Google, who already has experience in doing this, would have completed this task probably as little as three months. But of course, for York Region Transit, this would make too much sense and thus would not be possible to do. Thus, I don't the promised York Region's transit planner until at least six months to a year from now.

Are there other cities in this world that have great transit planning technologies?

New York City currently has four transit planner

SUBWAYblogger takes a look at the four of transit planners that New York City has complete with links to the planning websites themselves. I've used Hopstop.com while during my time in New York City and found it to be pretty reliable and convenient to use.

What would York Region and Toronto need to include in their trip planning systems?

Here is a list of needed features the trip planners would require:

1. A clean and easy to read map in order to clearly show the directions visually to the user. Hence why Google would be a good company to do a transit planner considering they have the Google Maps technology already in existence.

2. Integrate the system maps and schedules of TTC, GO Transit, YRT, Missisauga Transit, Brampton Transit and Durham Transit. This is to ensure a full Greater Toronto Area transit systems are available to transit riders. Currently it takes flipping between websites, schedules and maps of at least two transit agencies to complete an inter regional transit trip. This only leads to frustration. With all of these transit agencies in one easy to use trip planning system, it will be easier to use transit across borders (e.g. Mississauga to Toronto, etc.).

3. Clearly worded instructions on directions of where to go. Basically clear instructions on how to get from point "A" to point "B" which means the instructions need to include what station or intersection to transfer at and what route (and direction!) one needs to get on. Also, these instructions need to include what time the connecting bus is expected to arrive at the stop.

4. Indicate the fares required to complete the trip. If one is crossing from Toronto into York Region, a rider needs to currently pay two fares in order to ride the TTC and York Region. These fares need to be clearly listed of how much each fare will be for the individual transit agency (e.g. YRT $2.75 TTC $2.75 for a total of $5.50).

5. The route taken needs to have the shortest travel time possible. With the schedules included in the trip planner, connection times between buses can be optimized for riders. There is nothing more frustrating than to realize that you have to wait half an hour for a a connecting bus to arrive. Hopefully, the mapping system can avoid this and suggest another route that may take longer distance wise, but at least the overall travel time is shorter.

6. Take a look at the New York City's and other versions of trip planners. Why should Toronto and York Region "re-invent the wheel" when ideas have already been thought of and implemented? The inventors of the planners should take a look at hopstop.com's options of walking routes, less connections, etc. These options will further assist the transit planner technology to be even more useful to people.

7. Use of GPS technology should be . GPS units on transit vehicles will provide real time arrival times (i.e. is the bus going to arrive on time?) and assist planning an appropriate route. For people with PDAs (i.e. Blackberries) the trip planner could quickly re-map the route one is taking in case unexpected problems (i.e. accident or heavy traffic) occur.

These are just some of the possible suggestions that York Region Transit and Toronto should investigate for their respective online trip planning gizmos. Their own transit planning gizmos? Why can't the transit agencies of the Greater Toronto Area get to together and provide Google with the required information to do an excellent online transit planner? Because that would be thinking and, as we all know, bureaucracies would never do that!

Footnote: Google explains how the Google Transit Planner came about here on the Googleblog.

Tipping at Restaurants & Clubs

I was out with a friend last night at The Laugh Resort comedy club in downtown Toronto. The comedy was good and the price of admission for two hours of stand up comedy entertainment of $15.00 was excellent.

However, I was disturbed when I received the bill for one pint of Rickard's Red beer which came to $6.66. No, I wasn't disturbed by the "666" price, although that is weird too. But the fact that there was a 15% charge on there for "service." Why this charge? I can only think of two reasons:

1. The Laugh Resort was charging me for having to hire a waitress to take orders and bring drinks to the table instead of me getting up and going to the bar myself. But then again, wouldn't I be tipping the waitress for this service instead of being forced to pay this service charge?

2. Forced tipping. This gets to me every time. The fifteen percent charged goes to the waitress as a guaranteed tip for serving me. But why should a waitress, or waiter for that matter, receive a tip if they provided bad to mediocre service? This concept offends me every time and I avoid places as much as possible that have a guaranteed tip or a "gratuity" automatically added on to the bill either at a flat rate or as a percentage. Sometimes this gratuity is added on to parties of six people and over.

I believe, in the case of The Laugh Resort, that the "service charge" is probably option #2. However, it did say on the bottom of my bill that "tips were not included." If tips are not included then what is the charge for then? I assume it can't be option #1 above as there was no notification (i.e. sign or verbal indication) that I could find anywhere in the club.

So on the basis of it being a "forced tip" then I'm going to assume the fact, in case of The Laugh Resort waitress, she made exactly twenty-six cents. Also, obviously the waitress either doesn't want any more of my money or the club is shafting their waitress/waiter staff in tips. Shafting? Sure, I was willing to leave the comedy club waitress a two dollar tip after I left. Why two dollars? The beer came at a reasonable time and, when serving other tables around me, she made sure she didn't block the view of my or other tables of the main stage. But I guess she doesn't need any of my money if there was a 15% charge on the bill.

Forced gratuities or tipping makes me sick. Wait staff should be tipped based on the service level they provide. If the food is slow or cold, if a waiter is grumpy, etc. then the tip should reflect that. Sure if the food is cold or slow it might be the kitchen and some would argue that perhaps it is not the fault of the wait staff. But I argue that if the establishment doesn't provide a decent kitchen, then the wait staff should indicate this to the owner of the business through either complaint or resignation. Also, some restaurants and clubs share the tips that the wait staff collect with the kitchen staff as well. So everyone should loose money in terms of poor service. A restaurant or club is a team employment environment. To be successful each person must work as a team to make sure the customer is satisfied. Failing "the team" idea means a customer is less likely to return and provide even more business and possible tips for the staff. So there should be incentive for the team to work together to ensure customers are happy. Thus, tipping should not be "forced" because if "the team" provides great service, the customers will overwhelming ensure "the team" knows their appreciation through the tips left behind.

Gratuities and tips automatically added to the bill only give me one impression: The owners of the establishment do not believe their employees will give satisfactory to excellent service to their patrons. This is because if the owners did, obviously there would not be a need to force customers to tip or provide a gratuity for possibly bad service. With this in mind, why would anyone want to work at a place where the owners of the business do not believe in the staff? That is what I left The Laugh Resort last night thinking.

Footnote: The Laugh Resort closed by at least October 2008.

Mental Note...

When going to the store to buy milk to make Macoroni & Cheese, always make sure you have Macaroni and cheese first.

This is very important! Otherwise you will be left to swill milk without Macaroni & Cheese.

Total Weirdness

There are two kinds of weirdness I felt over the past week:

1. On December 24th I was at my church's ten o'clock Christmas Eve Service. It is a tradition that near the end of the church service, the lights of the Sanctuary (the place where the worship service occurs) are dimmed, each member of the congregation has a candle lit and the carol "Silent Night" is sung. On this night as the pipe organ was finishing, the town clock, located across Yonge Street and a little to the north, chimed off the eleven o'clock hour. The bell was the only thing that could be heard after the organ finished and there we were, 150 people holding candles enjoying the silence with the bell tower quietly chiming off in the background. It was eerily weird. I still want to know if the minister and the organist had this planned or whether it was an eerily weird coincidence.

2. Here's an excerpt from Joe Warmington's column from today's Toronto Sun that totally gave me a "that's totally weird" moment:

" 'It was actually supposed to be Gretsky,' laughs Walter. 'My dad did the 's' backwards and it become a 'z.'" - Walter Gretzky, father of current Phoeniz Coyote Head Coach & Member of the Hockey Hall of Fame Wayne Gretzky.

This column also gave me a "who knew?" moment as well.

Some things are just kinda of weird. But at least there are different kinds of weirdness which, in itself, is kinda weird as well.

The loss of someone special....

"That voice on the subway!" "Who is it?" "What will they say next?" "How will they make this trip more interesting?" A first timer might ask.

"I love that voice everyday. I even wait for that train to show up because I love that voice!" A regular might recall.

But all that is disappearing on subway trains accross North America as transit agencies relieve conductors and drivers of subway trains from the responsibilities of announcing stops.

In New York City the new subway cars announce the stops in both a female and male voice. Usually, the female voice announces the stop and the male voice announces the connecting trains and services at the stop (an mp3 example can be found here). This new automated system works remarkably well for New York City because the automated voices are clear and match up with what is being shown on the automated scroll signs. That way both the blind and hard of hearing people can know where they are going on the subway.

However, the automation removes the uniqueness of the some of the conductors that people enjoy. For example, in New York City when at Atlantic Avenue on the 2 train, (click the above link to here the automated announcement) a conductor will give the transfers available and then announce "connection is available to the

Loooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg

Island Railroad." This announcement usually makes the riders smile and giggle. However, with the automated system this is lost.

New York City has gone one step further with the automated announcements. Unlike VIVA in York Region that uses a computer voice to announce the stops, New York City had paid two real life radio announcers to do the announcements for each stop and connections. The New York City announcements have been much more successful than the VIVA version. Why? Because by hiring people the annunciation is properly done in New York City. Whereas, VIVA had been struggling with the announcement at Richmond Hill Centre (one of its major stations) with the a simple announcement like this "Next stop Richmond Hill Centre, passengers can transfer to VIVA Blue, Purple and Pink Routes." However, this announcement turned into" Next Stop Richmond Hill Centre, passengers can transfer to VIVA Blue, Purple and Pink crews." Another example is "Golf Links Drive" which the VIVA voice turned it into "Goolf Links Drive."

With automation comes problems like those experienced by VIVA require a lot of time and frustaration to solve issues like those mentioned above. However, with New York City they seemed to have automated voices correct through the use of radio personality voices. However, with the automation of announcements some of the "personalization" of announcements have been lost. As conductor's announcements of upcoming stops is gradually phased out, this personalization will become a part of transit history.

No longer will you hear from fellow passengers "this conductor has the best voice!" or "That conductor sounds like he is announcing the stops via an old rusted tin can and string system." Its a shame really. But first timers on New York City subway will at least be grateful because they will know where they are going due to the clear automated voices telling what stop it is and which of the over twenty train routes they are able to transfer to.

Footnote: Click here to try these out for yourself using the AT&T demo of the voices. Funny examples include the word "Aurora" (which is one of the towns VIVA goes through). To here the "VIVA voice set the language to "U.S. English" then the voice to "Crystal". Don't forget to type in your message!

A fairly busy but good week at work and musings on the holiday season

Leading up to Christmas at work is very busy and stressful. There are so many deadlines my company is trying to meet during this busy shopping season.

From the time I walked in the office door until I left every day I was working steady. There were demos being planned, customer surveys being done and regular merchandising being done. All of this is just part of the merchandising industry during the biggest shopping season of the year. To say the least, I sleep well every night, just to get up and do it all over again the next day.

Do I have my own Christmas shopping done? Yesiree! Now I just have to wrap it all and send it.

I even got extra items like an electric toothbrush and shaver as I will be doing demos this coming weekend for one of our clients. I love these demos as I get to interact with different people and show them how a product I know well works and benefits them. On the plus side I get some product afterward and paid very well.

Even better in this industry is the gifts you receive from the clients. From Fedex I received a new key chain (of course it says Fedex on it, but that works for me) as well as a new watch from one of the clients our company merchandises for. I needed a new watch, my old Timex was looking a little battered. The one I got actually looks pretty good and sturdy for the day to day beatings that I seem to inflict on the time pieces that reside on my wrist.

I look forward to this coming Christmas season as it is really the first time I will have my own apartment to celebrate Christmas in. I already have Christmas lights in my window to make my apartment feel more "festive". Will I have anything else to decorate my "humble abode?" Probably not as I really don't have room to store a Christmas tree or anything else when not in use. Perhaps I could just hang a picture of a picture of a tree on a wall or something. Even better! I should tape a video of a Christmas Tree and loop it on DVD for my T.V. HOW FESTIVE! Oh the fun of apartment dwelling!