Sorry to hear about your friends and family AP and Orhan.

H&R? Didn't someone else "die" on archinect? Or maybe I'm mixing up my online forums.

yeah techno you'd think some one would start an alternate tc somewhere...

Archi,
Very exciting new stage in your life...
Hurrah!

Also, TC jumped the shark?

nam go back and reread page 1 of this thread.

vado, lets talk next week about that bloomington, indianistan project. we're gearing up to make a full court press.

well tc, I'm off for a long weekend and to visit with my bro-in-law who is our first official house guest... the new computer is set to arrive on the 6th, so maybe I'll be back to posting from home by next week.

Took Mrs B to get her pictures taken for her Naturalized Citizenship
Application. Now I have to figure out where to come up with six hundered and some dollars for the processing fee.....oh well it shouldn't be a problem. She had a dream the other night that and the next thing I know she is filling out all the papers.

Life is wet here.....has been all summer long....keep waiting for the sun to shine.

Hey TC, sorry I haven't been posting much - too many planes and trains as of late!

Well, I just made my first blog entry! It's covering my foreign studio in Copenhagen, DK, so be sure to read it and leave my plenty of nice comments! :D

AP, hang tight dude. =/

snook - you must be out in my neck of the woods. I've already built the ark, now I'm trying to fill it with archinecters - two of each species.

I had to run out to the corner store this evening to pick up some cat food, and I saw something pretty cool: Two brand-new subway cars being delivered to the 207th Street Yard a few blocks away.


Car 9508


Car 9511

toast,
which species am I?

oh wait...
Cool pics LIG.

and Vado.
Hilarious!!!!

And for a fourth:o

LiG, those pics are awesome and I love that you are such a transit junky.

mantaray: I'm right there with you, dear.

AP, good thoughts for your step dad and for you too. I'm sure you are feeling the stress with the big move combined with family difficulties.

You too Orhan, caring for the second friend in a short while with a serious illness.

Hold tight to the ones you love, everyone.

snook, I'm so excited for your wife to become a citizen! For some dorky reason when I see images of people pledging their allegiance (or whatever they do in that ceremony) to become citizens it just chokes me up completely. Congratulations to her and make sure you elt us know when she completes the process!!

thanks lb and other friends. my friend said it is the worst when you lose control of the parts of your body. i've been thinking about that a lot.
going to hospital makes you think how primative science is and how primative the nature seems to be but not really...

I want to get off this ride that is currently known as my life.

So much has happened in these past 24 hours... let's just day I am really beginning to see first hand how the system utterly fails the mentally ill.

Congrats Mrs. B on your naturalization.

Ohran and AP... my thoughts are still with you and your loved ones.

Time to hit the sac, so that I can get up and hopefully only do part of it all tomorrow.

hi all. I've officially resigned. Spoke with both the director and head of the HR dept and both understood my difficulties in the job and wished me well. They were almost teary that I was leaving, and asked if there was anything they could do to keep me...

*m my heart goes out to you. Things will get better, I promise.

I wish I was better at consoling and comforting people. It stems from the fact that I never know if someone would rather handle it on their own because thats how I feel sometimes. I wonder if my words, anonymous and behind a computer monitor, hundreds if not thousands of miles away can really affect how someone feels on the other side of the computer monitor.

Words count no matter where you read them.

^^ Very true Dapper, very true.


Congrats Atechno - Nice to hear that the resignation went so well. I'm always aprehensive in that situation, because there are an infinite number of ways it can go. So when is your last day?

TC needs a collective massage, hot tub and and a cocktail. not necessarily in that order.

I guess the way I figure, its hard enough trying to get sarcasm or humor across on the internet, how is sincerity easier...

If it makes you feel any better *m, I was eating a turkey melt (no tuna today) and thought of you today. What you must be going through. Sometimes the only thing that gets me going is the thought that something good may come of enduring difficult times together. A closer bond, maybe, or trust, I don't know. I don't want to sound like a life coach, but maybe you get what I'm saying.

A black russian for me vado

I;m making sangria for Saturday's party. I will be sure to poor TC some.

Its been slow on here today. R..e..a..l..l..y...s..l...o...w...

Awww Slart that is so sweet. Mmmmmm Turkey melt!!!!

SH - Sangria, huh? Yummy. Sorry, I've been working on a deadline for a project so I haven't had much spare time for TC.

vado - I agree completely with your sentiments. I swear this month seems to have been a rough one for a lot of people I know. I'm hoping July is better.

wow techno, big step. What's next?

As all who keep track of my facebook status know, the perfect job is being help juuuuust out of my reach, so I'm giving up on Mr. Right and going in search of Mr. Right Now. After getting rejected by every decent firm in NYC over the phone, I actually had a semi-pleasant call with a firm here in Seattle, so that's something anyway.

So, Long Beach is a no-go. I think the dude liked the idea of me working for them more than he liked the reality....actually I get the impression that he thinks I would up the property value in Long Beach or something. He said he thought they would be getting more projects in but they just aren't coming. He then said I could "come down to Long Beach anyway" and stay with friends there. I said I didn't have any friends in Long Beach, and that I would probably be going to the Northwest. He said I should make some friends by hanging out at the college in Long Beach, LOL. Strange, right?

Anyway, after wearing out my welcome in my BFF's room next week, I'm taking my show on the road with my new (old) car. Woo hoo!*

Also the free internet in Starbucks is nice, but not so nice when the person sitting next to you is smelly. Ew.



*My attempts at staying positive are required so that I don't break down in tears. It's nearly happened a few times already. So I'm using lots of exclamation points!!!

that's awesome, rational. i'll be out in seattle for one measly day in september (mayyybe longer, if i can swing it) and would love to meet up for a drink if you're still around and it's possible. i like you. and i would love to catch up.

tuna, my heart goes out to you as well. if we lived in the same town i would bring you a casserole, entertain your cats while you ate, do your dishes for you and just hang out quietly in case you wanted to talk. but i don't, so unfortunately you'll have to accept a virtual hug.

you also, of course, orhan. :(

rational i keep track of your gmail status, which has been interesting lately. i am still hiding under a rock and humming to myself until facebook goes away.

wonderk you are always welcome to couch-surf here. In fact you can have the whole apt b/c I can stay elsewhere. Just a thought, in case you need it! Can't promise the job market here is any good though.

Thanks manta. I appreciate it. If my journey over the next few months takes me back in that direction I will let you know! :o/

I got my NEW (old) computer today and it rocks! now I have an extra 40gigs of storage to use as a back up.

wK, *M, et al - do you need a cheer you up phone call? send me the digits - I'm taking a looong weekend.

hey LiG - how's the thesis going? Can you use those pics as part of the project?

That reminds me, I need to call back one Chi-town lead. Too late today, will do manana. The first piece of good news in a long time: Sallie Mae has the next payment due on my undergrad loans listed as October of 2011. I can live with that! Of course if I can, I'll make some payments before then, but I like not having to worry about it while the job search is going so poorly.

Rationalist - Make sure they're open tomorrow - although I guess you'll find out either way. My office is closed tomorrow. Oh, but wait, there is a deadline for Sunday night so I'm going in anyway.

I passed a firm the other day that sounded like they did exhibit design...

HA, I was about to post the same exact thing Slart.

Oh - in all my chaos I forgot to mention I did get a little good news last evening. My grandfather is getting remarried next May. When I heard it I got all excited because I know my grandmother is looking down on him dancing a little jig of happiness. She would have wanted him to move on and to be happy. YAY!!!!!

TK: It's going pretty well... Now that I'm back from poking around in Cincy, I need to get serious about putting this thing together. I'm sure I'll use a few of the pics I took in Cincinnati.

It's still a work in progress, but here's what the route map (PDF, 9.3MB) looks like so far. I still need to add some more information and tweak a few things, that's where it's headed.

I don't know if this is backwards for a thesis or not, but I'll probably be doing most of the drawings and design work first, and then backing it up with the written research. This is mainly so that I'll have enough material to include in my portfolio for grad school applications this fall. My academic committee is taking a laissez faire approach and letting me handle this pretty much however I want. The freedom is nice, but I think I'd like my M.Arch. thesis committee to be a little more hands-on when the time comes.

I got an email today from the professor at the University of Cincinnati I met with, and he seems interested in following my progress. I'll take that as a good sign.

Gin - I find it interesting that you have four planned routes that take you to the east side of the city yet you only have two leading to the West, both of those being along the same street. You're missing a HUGE chunk of population, especially those living in the older suburbs of the city (Price Hill, Westwood, Cheviot, etc.) in which lots of the population would use it.

what firm, manta? The only ones I know of in Chicago are Bruce Mau (of course) and Perkins + Will. And that's a stretch, since I'm lumping exhibit and environmental together, as I'm equally happy to do either.

Good point Slart, I totally forgot about that. Guess I'm the only one working tomorrow.

Gin-what's the difference between the dashed routes and the solid ones? Are the dashed ones unbuilt or unreliable or below ground? And, only read this if you're going to take it in the constructive way it's meant, I would re-examine color choices to make them a little more harmonious with each other, as right now some are reading primary and some subdued and some neon.

There's three routes going to the west side: The Red and Purple Lines that run in the I-74 median, and the Blue Line along the river.

The routes are roughly based on the 2002 Metro Moves plan, which actually had even less service to the west side. Supposedly, west side residents were vehemently opposed to light rail, so that may have been one of the reasons.

Also, there's a lack of available railroad rights-of-way serving the west side, while several corridors have been preserved in the eastern part of the area. A few years ago SORTA (the transit agency, for those outside Cincy) had the option of purchasing an abandoned CSX right-of-way for future light rail use to the west side, but they squandered the opportunity and much of that land has since been privately developed. The west side also has the misfortune of being largely separated from the rest of the city by the Mill Creek Valley industrial area, with only a few viaducts connecting it to the east.

One of my proposed streetcar lines, though (not yet shown on the map), will run between the Dent and Brighton Corner rapid transit stations via Harrison Avenue, and another would run between the Dent and Lower Price Hill stations via Glenway Avenue. Another option might be to re-route the Red Line under Glenway Avenue instead of running it through Northside.

nevermind on the dashed thing, I see it now. I guess that reveals that the legend is a bit crowded, makes it intimidating to dive into.

Rationalist: The dashed lines are underground; the solid lines are surface or elevated.

I'll take another look at the colors... The rapid transit lines (with the exception of the Brown Line) are either primary or secondary colors, typical of many transit systems. The streetcar and mainline rail lines are lighter shades of green and blue, respectively.

I can recognize what hues they are, and I'm not debating those, only the specific colors chosen. If you look on the main Metro transit map you notice how even though they are using a broad range of hues they've chosen tones and values of them that are more harmonious with each other, how the red is a tad lipsticky and the green and blue aren't neon even when they are of a lighter tint. That's all I'm getting at.

Point taken... How do you feel about the colors used on the Washington Metro map?



I've always been fascinated about how transit maps are put together... I'm working on a diagrammatic map (as opposed to the geographical map shown in my first link), and it's a surprisingly challenging exercise.

The London Tube map is a classic design:

ARGH... nevermind, looks like it's marketing, not environmental design. Man. There are some red herrings in your field, rationalist! The company I had seen was called "Event Architecture". I read something different into the name I guess. :(

I'm lost, LiG -- what are you doing this for? Did I miss a post somewhere? What's going on.

I'm developing a rapid transit master plan for Cincinnati, as my undergrad Advanced Project. It will actually mostly be about the architecture of the stations, but there's an urban planning element to it as well. Here's the thread I posted about the project on Archinect a while ago.

I really hope there's a special place in hell for spammers.

eh, it's a little bit kiddie-play-time (the washington one, not the tube), but at least it's consistently so. I've actually always been fascinated by the ugliness of the colors in the tube map--really, who thought that pepto pink would work, or poo brown? Someone with better forsight than me.

oh yeah manta, my problem with searching is running into tradeshow people ("exhibit design") or sustainable ventures of all sorts ("environmental design"). My best research has come through the SEGD awards listings. That way I get to see a project and if I like it go "oooh, who did that?" and follow the links, instead of getting psyched by a promising description but disappointed by crap work.