Category: Uncategorized

DISD’s insane bus route proposal

UPDATE (7:42 PM): Routes have already changed. Route 3093, while still long, has different schools. Other long routes have appeared.

Despite platitude-filled community meetings, a good sign of dropping a stupid idea, and vague promises, Dallas Independent School District declined to fix its long, bizarre bus routes.

For example, this is an actual bus route for 2019-2020 for Sudie Williams TAG:

Route 3093 for Sudie Williams TAG Vanguard & Academy (link to map)

Google Maps says this seven-school, 24-mile route (!) takes 1 hr 10 minutes. DISD thinks it will only be 53 or 54 minutes. Hmm, what’s DISD’s logic? Slower vehicle (bus) + pause for several minutes at each school (load/unload) = 16-17 minutes faster drive time? Just like last year, a hefty dose of magical thinking!

All the schools served by route 3093, along with DISD’s laughable stop times. Morning pickup times on left, evening dropoff times on right.

This isn’t the only one. Many routes are long and complicated.

With half of his brain tied behind his back, one of my fans created a 10% faster route simply by reorienting the stops. And by removing one stop, he made a 30% faster route.

DISD Transportation repeatedly promised to fix this. They declined to. We’re seeing more of the same.

Superintendent Hinojosa, your “drastic changes” failed to deliver. Time for more firings.

(In case DISD makes further changes, here’s my own archival copy of the “special programs” bus-routing spreadsheet that shows the state of the routes when I saw them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103Y2aey36uDkAszoax7x8ZKBSMYsWWknrlKVrgmucwI/edit?usp=sharing.)

Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash sucks

Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash chain sucks for three reasons.

Problem 1: Their product is bad. I have an Infiniti G37 and a Honda Odyssey. For both vehicles, Carmel’s equipment isn’t able to get a good clean. Vertical surfaces, and some other parts, get missed unless the beginning-of-line attendant remembers to manually brush-wash those parts. Often, that attendant forgets or does a poor job.

Overall, their equipment just doesn’t do a good job. Here’s the result of a Sunday (July 14, 2019) wash on my van:

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that van just needed a second run through the equipment? I admit, it was pretty dirty. That leads to…

Problem 2: They don’t stand by their product. I went back to Carmel to ask for that second run on my van. (If you’re from Carmel, it is the Mockingbird Lane location. I was there on 7/16/19 around 5:30 PM and went to the left lane.) I presented my receipt, asked for a re-run, and was told they do not stand by their $7 wash, so I would need to pay for another $7 wash.

Problem 3: Plus-sales are out of control. Every time you do the basic, $7 wash, you’ll get hassled about gift cards or car-wash extras that Consumer Reports says are not worth it. This started a few months ago. I am tired of it!

We’re done, Carmel Car Wash. Not even #friendzone. Just done.

Adding books to Kindle Freetime accounts

If you want to add an e-book to your child’s Freetime account, it’s more complicated than delivering it to the device after you buy it. I cannot find any documentation, so this is how I did it:

  1. Visit www.amazon.com. Log in if you haven’t already.
  2. Hover over Accounts & Lists and select Your Content and Devices.
  3. Click Show Family Library.
  4. Place a checkmark next to all books you want to share with your child’s Freetime account.
  5. Click Add to Library.
  6. At the bottom of the Add to Library dialog, select the child you want to have the books.
  7. Press OK.

(EDIT (2020-08-07): This paragraph may be an unnecessary step. Let me know in the comments.) After that, you then need to pick up your kid’s device and exit Freetime. Restart Freetime, and when you do so, you’ll check the box for the book you just purchased.

OneDrive is throttled and slow

OneDrive has a low speed cap for new files. Uploading new files is slow.

To test, I uploaded several GB of data with Google Drive and OneDrive. I used NetBalancer to monitor upload speeds. Over 10 minutes, I averaged these upload speeds:

  • Google Drive (googledrive.exe): 2.3 MB/s
  • OneDrive (skydrive.exe): 0.2 MB/s

That’s right, OneDrive’s upload speed is about one tenth of Google Drive’s! This test was done over an 802.11n wifi connection to an unthrottled corporate network that has at least a 1.5 Gb/s upload speed to the internet. Yes, there was upload activity the entire time, although OneDrive paused uploads between files or batches of files.

Others experience slow uploads.

Also, moving files into your OneDrive folder is slow. Instead of a move, it does a copy-and-delete operation. This is painful on spinning media, especially with a lot of files.

OneDrive isn’t good. It’s slow.

Sitecore blogging song

This is a song about Sitecore blogging woes, with the answers to the woes at http://mikael.com/2013/11/sitecore-mvp-summit-team-7/. Sung to the tune of the Scout camp song “I met a bear”.

I have a blog
About Sitecore
I can’t find time
To write the blog

I like to write
About Sitecore
I don’t know what
To write about

I have a blog
About Sitecore
Nobody wants
To look at it

I like my blog
About Sitecore
MVPs want
To talk to me

I’ve got a blog
About Sitecore
It wastes my time
I need it short