i fought the train and the train won

September 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The Blue Line struck and killed a pedestrian yesterday. The Times report says that brings the line's body count up to 62.

Including Wednesday's fatality, more than 22 occupants of vehicles and more than 40 pedestrians have been killed along the Blue Line since it began operating in 1990, making it the deadliest of the MTA's four rail routes.

That number sounds a lot worse than it is, and the people who like to use this as fodder to hold against Metro are really abusing the facts. These accidents are almost exclusively the result of people failing to obey the appropriate warning signals. Everyone thinks they can beat the train, but the truth is you really can't. It's really big, and it moves pretty fast.

All the warning systems indicating an approaching train — including blowing whistles and flashing lights — were working, Ubaldo said.

With a rush-hour crowd gathering at the station, the woman joined a group of people, including her companion, in racing across the tracks in front of the oncoming train, Ubaldo said.

She was struck near the entrance of the platform and died at the scene, Ubaldo said.

Now, first off, let's all ask ourselves who's editing the Times. If I ended three straight paragraphs with "Ubaldo said," I'd get a lot of red ink on my paper. Maybe the Times doesn't grade so hard, though.

Los Angeles is in no way unique in this problem. Any time you have a rail line operating at street grade, especially in the roadway, you're going to have accidents. Drivers are dumb; pedestrians are dumb. These are just facts. If you look at coverage of Houston's light rail, you'll see that they've had 56 accidents since January. And most of these accidents involve drivers making illegal left turns into the path of a train.

Bottom line: Don't try to outrun the train, and don't blame the train when you try to outrun it and fail. Yes, grade-separation is wonderful, but the expense means it's not going to be a universal reality. Drive (and walk) smarter, and you won't die.

the life of a computer

September 01, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Kathy's computer died yesterday. She awoke to a blue screen, and then after restarting it just blacked out while she was working on something. I'm pointing my finger at either the motherboard or the video, but seeing as they're one and the same it's a good target. Yesterday I grabbed the drive out and threw it in my roommate's computer to get a couple files off. Now this evening I'm going to run over to the Burbank Fry's and pick up the guts of a new system.

I hate the fact that when a motherboard dies it's so hard to just replace it and keep the same CPU and RAM. Specs are always changing, CPU slot types are changing, and by the time something dies the industry's moved far along to something else.

I think I'm also going to take this opportunity to update my desktop machine. On July 27, 1999, Gospelcom upgraded my machine to a PII 400 with 256MB RAM. That same setup has been in my computer for five years now. The case and power supply are even older, dating back to 1997 (I think... possibly late '96). Here's a history of a piece-meal machine:

• Late '96/Early '97: Gospelcom buys me a PII 200, 64MB RAM, 3.4gig HD. 17" monitor. s3 Virge video card.
• Sometime in '98: Upgraded to 128MB RAM
• 07/03/1999: New video card, a Diamond Viper V550. 16MB, NVidia Riva TNT chipset.
• 07/27/1999: Upgraded to PII 400, 256MB RAM. Had picked up some SCSI drives by this point to bring total HD space to 40gig.
• 09/30/1999: I got my first CD burner. 16x read, 4x burn.
• 09/04/2001: My power supply fan died leading to some fun makeshift computing.
• 02/08/2002: New hard drive: 60gig.
• Summer of 2002: New CD burner to replace my dead one. 40x read, 24x write.
• 12/25/2002: New video card: NVidia GeForce4 with 128MB RAM.
• 06/24/2003: Bought a second monitor.
• 01/11/2004: Power supply fan died and needed to be replaced.
• 01/12/2004: New hard drive, 160gig.
• 01/14/2004: My ancient sound card no longer worked with Linux, so I bought a Soundblaster Live.
• 03/14/2004: My original mouse died. I replaced it with a Microsoft wireless Intellimouse.

I'm not sure exactly how complete that is, but it's close. It's also kind of cool to see how much this blog serves as my collective memory.

LA Times picks up on downtown comedy

September 01, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Today Steve Lopez picks up for the LA Times the bit on Perry Kurtz that ran in this week's Downtown News.

Did you hear the one about the stand-up comic who tried to make a go of it at downtown L.A. night spots?

It's no joke to 53-year-old Perry Kurtz, comedian by night, mattress salesman by day. And it's been a test of his good humor.

Skipping ahead slightly...

Kurtz also held a comedy night in a community room at the downtown Premiere Towers, where he lives, and it drew four tenants.

Like I said two days ago, the numbers in the article are slightly misleading. As I recall, four tenants did turn out (well, three and Kathy), but so did three other non-tenants (who were there to see a comic who didn't show up). But again, maybe people just knew in advance that it was going to be an awkwardly unfunny show.

I rode the elevator with Perry this morning. I'm glad to see him getting publicity for his efforts, and hopefully someday I will make it out to see how the Blue Bongo show is working out.

more filming fun

September 01, 2004 by Eric Richardson

It was a bit nuts around my apartment last night. I mentioned two days ago that there were lights set up throughout the alley, and last night they got their use. Around 9:30pm they started shooting a scene where five black urban assault SUVs (mostly Hummers) roar around the corner from the parking lot to the south of our building (knocking a dumpster out of their way) and speed down the alley (which really is only 200 feet or so).

The action on Spring Street was just as intense. I drove over to Kathy's to pick up a hard drive last night, and getting out of and in to my area was a bit of a challenge. Coming out of the garage I had to wait for a water tanker truck to clear (they were doing a lot of hosing down the streets) and then a cop waved me over and told me to proceed the normal way south on Spring. To do this I drove by a giant Hummer (like they aren't big enough all ready... This one was bigger) with a left side riddled with bullet holes. Getting back 6th was closed from Broadway, so I had to go up to 4th, head south on Spring, and then tell the cop at 5th that I was going to my apartment. He let me through the roadblock there, and that put me on an empty street from 5th to 6th. 6th was closed, like I said, but the light there was red so I started to sit and wait for it to turn. The cop at that barricade, though, waved me through, so I got official sanction to run a red light.

I don't know what time filming ended, but a scene in the alley woke me up at 3:45am, so I Know they were going most of the night.

tracing farther back in history

August 31, 2004 by Eric Richardson

As I was yesterday, I'm again today doing some digging into the history of the buildings that were eventually transformed into Premiere Towers. Yesterday I found the Sep.1923, LA Times article that announced the building's opening. Today I found another article from April, 1922, announcing that the building would be constructed. The article includes a reference to the "Victoria Trask" property.

Announcements of plans for a new home for the California Bank were made yesterday for the first time. Negotiations have been completed by a group of local capitalists for the erection of a twelve-story class-A building on the Victoria Trask property, on the west side of Spring Street, between Sixth and Seventh streets.

So who or what is Victoria Trask? Apparently it's Mrs. Victoria Trask. A June, 1921, article announces "Twelve-Story Structure to Rise in New Financial District." The plans were announced by H.H. Ford, President of the Redlands National Bank, and the included drawing looks almost identical to the California Bank building announced the next year.

This property, owned by Mrs. Victoria Trask, was taken under a fifty-year lease by Mr. Ford several months ago, and tentative plans were prepared at that time for a nine-story structure to be erected on the property.

So who was Victoria Trask? She was married to Walter J Trask, or at least was until he died in 1911. Mr. Trask was a local lawyer, and his obituary says that he had been president of the Los Angeles Bar Association. They lived in a house at 1321 S. Figueroa, a location that definitely does not have housing any longer. A property Mrs. Trask owned was involved in an assessment dispute with the city in 1912, though the heart of the argument was over the city widening of Sunset, so the property involved would be different than the one that became Premiere. She was also active in real estate dealings back to 1902 (and possibly before that... I think that's about where I hit the beginning of the online Times archives).