John Fitzgerald's dashboard

John Fitzgerald started following the idea "Sonic.net releases a few good Blogs." in Sonic.net.

Dane Jasper replied on March 03, 2008 07:34 to the problem "Hey. What's not to like at sonic.net? (Well, maybe that leaky rain gauge.)" in Sonic.net:

Okie, it's really fixed now - turns out it had a wasp's nest built inside!

-Dane

John Fitzgerald replied on February 26, 2008 00:21 to the question "Why are the trains not color coded to match the maps?" in Bay Area Rapid Transit:

They keep the colors on the maps nicely matched to all the signs in the Tokyo subway network, too. They also play different little "arriving at a station" tunes for each stop, which can help a dozing commuter remember that his stop is coming up. Lots of queues like this can help navigation and general ease-of-use.

Leslie Chicoine replied on February 25, 2008 18:39 to the question "Why are the trains not color coded to match the maps?" in Bay Area Rapid Transit:

Yep, good point John, paint would be too permanent. ;)
They could have a placard with a removable color card, and the stations could have color strips along the walls or on the floors.

I'm also actually curious around the reasoning behind not following through with the color system. For example Boston's stations are color coded AND actually tiled in their color. Maybe this causes some problems in managing the lines though?

John Fitzgerald replied on February 24, 2008 23:52 to the question "Why are the trains not color coded to match the maps?" in Bay Area Rapid Transit:

You mean actually painting the train cars? I suspect that they prefer to be able to shuffle them around based on maintenance and usage needs.

Glasshouse replied on February 14, 2008 06:54 to the problem "Missing some WAP enabled Webmail fuctions" in Sonic.net:

First, thank you for responding so quickly.
Not having too much additional clutter is very reasonable. The last thing anyone likes to do is go to a "mobile" page and have it be too big to load at all (or hard to use). The Back and/or Main Menu button would still be nice.

John Fitzgerald replied on February 14, 2008 00:50 to the problem "Missing some WAP enabled Webmail fuctions" in Sonic.net:

There are quite a lot of functions available in the full interface that don't show in the WAP version. The idea is to make the most important functions available on your mobile device with as little additional clutter from more tools as can be managed. E.g. not being able to add an address could really put you in a tight spot, whereas removing an address is something that can be delayed without jeopardizing too much. That's the rationale, at least.

I've put this in for further review by the support supervisors; we don't want to be rigid about this kind of thing.

Dane Jasper replied on February 05, 2008 04:10 to the problem "Hey. What's not to like at sonic.net? (Well, maybe that leaky rain gauge.)" in Sonic.net:

How dirt got in the funnel is a mystery.

John, I am pretty sure it is a "tipper". I believe it's a funnel which feeds water into the tipper mechanism. The tipper is basically a back/forth set of small spoon shaped water holders. They fill, then tip and dump, moving the other side into the path of the water.

-Dane

John Fitzgerald replied on February 05, 2008 02:58 to the problem "Hey. What's not to like at sonic.net? (Well, maybe that leaky rain gauge.)" in Sonic.net:

Looks like there was a blockage in the meter's funnel (it doesn't operate off a tipper as I implied earlier). I've got a report from this morning saying it's been cleared. Of course, today was a nice little break from the storms, so there's just one big spike to show for it at http://weather.sonic.net/ at the moment.

Burrowowl replied on February 04, 2008 00:11 to the problem "Hey. What's not to like at sonic.net? (Well, maybe that leaky rain gauge.)" in Sonic.net:

I'm not an expert on these things, but it looks like the tipper may be stuck or something.