Tweet
a recurring theme
Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me, the people who freak out that the doors on TRAX aren't opening when they are staring at the button that says "press to open door" especially on the new trains where it doesn't just light up, it flashes to draw your attention to it.
yet another victory in the holy war
For those unfamiliar, the holy war refers to the college rivalries between BYU and, well, pretty much every other school in Utah.
It's USU vs BYU in basketball, UofU vs BYU in football, and now apparently UVU vs BYU in NOT BEING A FREAKING DOUCHEBAG ON THE BUS. Now, I know that most BYU students are considerate and mature people (something very hard for a Ute fan to admit), but so far on the 811 the total occurrences of witnessing UVU students being inconsiderate pricks is at zero, now that doesn't mean we are all necessarily the next Ghandi, but we follow commonly accepted etiquette.
BYU students on the other hand, there is not a single day that you don't see someone from BYU (and we know they are from BYU either from their school gear or the fact that they showed an ED PASS which there are only two institutes in Utah Valley that issue those, and if they didn't board at the UVU stop, well by process of elimination) who aren't either a) talking loudly on their cell phone, b)being seat hogs (seriously, the 811 is always at or above capacity, you aren't so special that your bible needs its own seat), or c)insisting on chatting with the driver (this one isn't very common, but seriously people, let the man do his job, he's navigating a 45 foot long bus through a construction zone I get nervous over with a compact, and you can tell the driver is not comfortable talking while he's on the freeway).
speaking of BYU and cell phones
Just as a slight aside, it doesn't reflect very well on your school when you are wearing your school gear, yapping on the cell phone, admitting to committing religious discrimination at the high school you coach at... doesn't particularly reflect well on the high school either, but at least you aren't wearing the school pride gear to advertise your affiliation with them... oh and you paid with a BYU faculty pass (I love the large text read out on the pass readers). Bravo.
Not a UTA sighting
But with me spending so much time harping on BYU, I should for fairness through out at least one UVU student sighting. It is not really a good way to get ahead to on the online discussion board for a class to respond to a professor posting a due date to reply "this assignment is so gay, I didn't think you'd be a fag enough to actually make us do this"
The assignment in question, was submitting a half to one page summary of a speaker, for a lecture series class.
Yeah, I don't see that student on the class student list anymore... I wonder why.
Thank you ATU, your (dis)service to us all is appreciated
Okay, ATU (I don't know what it stands for) is the union for UTA, please don't turn this into a fratching debate about the merits of unions, let's keep it on topic please.
Today there was (another) system shut down because of a mechanical problem.
Said mechanical problem was the complete failure of all propulsion systems on cars 3 and 4 of the train I was on. I was somewhat lucky in that our driver was able to dump the last two cars and continue with just the front two (granted 20 minutes behind schedule) so that a tow train could retrieve the dead cars. Everyone behind us, not so lucky, they had to wait for a tow train to remove the dead cars from the track.
Now, these trains are only 12 years old, the average service life for the model of train that is being used should be over 30 years, so they really shouldn't be having these many problems.
There happened to be a transit police officer on the train I was on that I talked to, I asked if he knew what was going on and he explained that the radio chatter he could listen into the driver reported to dispatch the failure of cars three and four (yeah, thanks for letting us know that dear driver, thank you officer for tuning into his radio frequency). He obviously was upset because he wasn't going to be able to do his required number of fare checks for the day (you know, being stuck on a dead train during a system shut down will do that), but was especially upset that the same mechanic who was responsible for the last system failure was likely responsible for this one too because the ATU reps were protecting the guy from termination despite the fact that he is blatantly not qualified to do the job but they didn't want to have to admit to the national management for the union that they had fucked up and hired someone not qualified
Granted, it's the hearsay of a bitter transit cop, but still, just how corrupt is that management that they will protect a proven incompetent employee just to avoid admitting to the higher ups that you made a mistake (assuming the transit cop was correct).
Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me, the people who freak out that the doors on TRAX aren't opening when they are staring at the button that says "press to open door" especially on the new trains where it doesn't just light up, it flashes to draw your attention to it.
yet another victory in the holy war
For those unfamiliar, the holy war refers to the college rivalries between BYU and, well, pretty much every other school in Utah.
It's USU vs BYU in basketball, UofU vs BYU in football, and now apparently UVU vs BYU in NOT BEING A FREAKING DOUCHEBAG ON THE BUS. Now, I know that most BYU students are considerate and mature people (something very hard for a Ute fan to admit), but so far on the 811 the total occurrences of witnessing UVU students being inconsiderate pricks is at zero, now that doesn't mean we are all necessarily the next Ghandi, but we follow commonly accepted etiquette.
BYU students on the other hand, there is not a single day that you don't see someone from BYU (and we know they are from BYU either from their school gear or the fact that they showed an ED PASS which there are only two institutes in Utah Valley that issue those, and if they didn't board at the UVU stop, well by process of elimination) who aren't either a) talking loudly on their cell phone, b)being seat hogs (seriously, the 811 is always at or above capacity, you aren't so special that your bible needs its own seat), or c)insisting on chatting with the driver (this one isn't very common, but seriously people, let the man do his job, he's navigating a 45 foot long bus through a construction zone I get nervous over with a compact, and you can tell the driver is not comfortable talking while he's on the freeway).
speaking of BYU and cell phones
Just as a slight aside, it doesn't reflect very well on your school when you are wearing your school gear, yapping on the cell phone, admitting to committing religious discrimination at the high school you coach at... doesn't particularly reflect well on the high school either, but at least you aren't wearing the school pride gear to advertise your affiliation with them... oh and you paid with a BYU faculty pass (I love the large text read out on the pass readers). Bravo.
Not a UTA sighting
But with me spending so much time harping on BYU, I should for fairness through out at least one UVU student sighting. It is not really a good way to get ahead to on the online discussion board for a class to respond to a professor posting a due date to reply "this assignment is so gay, I didn't think you'd be a fag enough to actually make us do this"
The assignment in question, was submitting a half to one page summary of a speaker, for a lecture series class.
Yeah, I don't see that student on the class student list anymore... I wonder why.
Thank you ATU, your (dis)service to us all is appreciated
Okay, ATU (I don't know what it stands for) is the union for UTA, please don't turn this into a fratching debate about the merits of unions, let's keep it on topic please.
Today there was (another) system shut down because of a mechanical problem.
Said mechanical problem was the complete failure of all propulsion systems on cars 3 and 4 of the train I was on. I was somewhat lucky in that our driver was able to dump the last two cars and continue with just the front two (granted 20 minutes behind schedule) so that a tow train could retrieve the dead cars. Everyone behind us, not so lucky, they had to wait for a tow train to remove the dead cars from the track.
Now, these trains are only 12 years old, the average service life for the model of train that is being used should be over 30 years, so they really shouldn't be having these many problems.
There happened to be a transit police officer on the train I was on that I talked to, I asked if he knew what was going on and he explained that the radio chatter he could listen into the driver reported to dispatch the failure of cars three and four (yeah, thanks for letting us know that dear driver, thank you officer for tuning into his radio frequency). He obviously was upset because he wasn't going to be able to do his required number of fare checks for the day (you know, being stuck on a dead train during a system shut down will do that), but was especially upset that the same mechanic who was responsible for the last system failure was likely responsible for this one too because the ATU reps were protecting the guy from termination despite the fact that he is blatantly not qualified to do the job but they didn't want to have to admit to the national management for the union that they had fucked up and hired someone not qualified
Granted, it's the hearsay of a bitter transit cop, but still, just how corrupt is that management that they will protect a proven incompetent employee just to avoid admitting to the higher ups that you made a mistake (assuming the transit cop was correct).