Santa Fe Bus System & The Walk of Doom

Last Saturday we decided to go to the movie theater to watch "Kick-Ass" the movie. Getting to the movie theater went smoothly, and we had some time to spare when we arrived at the movie theater. We got on the route 2 bus near the train station and took it until the Olive Garden stop near the movie theater. The map below shows where the movie theater (B) is compared to where we live (A). The distance is about 4.5 miles.

The movie started at 5pm, and ended at roughly 7:05pm. We left the theater and at 7:10 we were just leaving the parking lot when I noticed a route 2 bus coming down the road, and knew that we needed to get on that bus. I told Joel and Ho Fong, and they didn't believe I had actually seen the bus, until it was far too close to be able to get to the bus stop in time to board the bus. In any case, we hoped we could make it to the next stop before it left, so we sprinted across 7 lanes of heavy traffic. We ended up getting to about 50 feet behind the bus while it was stopped at the next stop, when it tragically pulled away, leaving us behind.

Upon inspection of the bus schedule at that stop, we found out that the bus that had just pulled away was in fact the last bus of the night (at 7:12pm). How could a city have their last bus running only until 7:12 on the weekend???

In any case, we decided to begin the walk home. As we were walking we saw several buses that said "not in service" on their screen. The walk took forever, and took us through some fairly seedy feeling areas of the city. We got home at about 8:50pm, roughly 90 minutes to 100 minutes from when that bus had pulled away from the bus stop.

For future students:

do not rely on public transportation to get around Santa Fe on the weekends. The weekdays aren't even that good either, I think they end around 9pm.

Cost of the Santa Fe IQP

Airfare: 422
Rent: 1250
Overweight Luggage Fee: 50
Shuttle from ABQ to SF and the Taxi Ride that Followed: 45
Replacement Suit Cases after Southwest Airlines Abused My Old One: 50
Having Three Pairs of Pants Sent to Me After I Found Out that I Only Packed Three Pairs: 20
Food: 500
Household Items (cleaning and sanitation): 50
Train Rides to ABQ with Student Discount: 12
Zoo Entrance: 7
Car Magazines that Allowed Me to Keep My Sanity: 50
Cold Medicine:5
Soar Throat Medicine:5
Excedrin that Allowed Me to Work 40 hours in 3 days: 5
Drinks: 80
Bus Rides: 20
Movies: 40
Getting Robbed: 219
Charitable Donation: -200
Cowboy Hat: 52
Shuttle back to ABQ Airport: 25

Total: 2707

WPI, please use this as the estimated costs for the Santa Fe IQP, even the cowboy hat.

In a world that doesn't, neither does one of the Verizon stores in Santa Fe

One of the advertisement slogans for the new Motorola Droid that Verizon has is "In a world that doesn't, Droid does!" I couldn't agree more, as that phone does more than I thought a phone could, however, one of the Verizon stores in this area does not live up to the standards of the phone they sell. So I got the Droid at the beginning of April at the Verizon wireless store near the Santa Fe Depot. I couldn't speak any more highly of this store if I tried. They were EXTREMELY helpful, however today I discovered my phone was apparently defective. All at once it went from working perfectly to not at all what so ever. I went back where I bought it from, however they told me at that branch they were unable to do exchanges as they were only authorized to do sales at that branch, they gave me the location of the place where I needed to go and I left with no hard feelings. I still claim that that store is fantastic. I then stopped by the other store, just off of Cerillos Rd., where they could make the exchange, this is where I started having problems. I started talking to one of their technicians and he immediately accused me of "abusing my phone" because the screen protector had been scratched by my keys. I calmly explained that if he were to peel it off he would see that the screen had no damage what so ever on it, he stormed off to get his manager saying my warranty was void and that I would need to pay to replace the phone I had just bought 3 weeks ago. When the manager came over, he immediately said that his employee was wrong and that my warranty was fine. The issue was he left me with that employee. The entire time I was there he was extremely condescending and talked to me as if I had no clue what I was talking about when I clearly knew more about how the phone functioned considering the fact that it would not even turn on meant there was clearly a hardware issue with the phone, and he tried restoring it to factory settings. Any time I showed that I knew what I was talking about, I was instantly told I was wrong, and was later shown i was correct. This employee also claimed that he had held his position for 6 years, I very highly doubt that as if that were the case I would not have outsmarted him so easily. The final problem I had here was the fact that after a 40 minuet argument with this man just to get access to my warentee neither he nor his manager could find me a replacement Droid in the entirety of the country! They claimed they called the corporate office and that they said that every single warehouse in the nation has zero available. I don't know if what they said was true or not, but I do know I find it very hard to believe that there is not a single one available anywhere, especially where there are other stores other than the designated Verizon owned stores, such as Best Buy that sell their phones. As far as I'm concerned they should be assuring that they can take care of their customers whom they have sold defective products to before they are selling more phones to other stores. Any way the moral of the story is my experience at the Verizon store by the intersection of Cerillos and Zafarano was less than acceptable.

Over all I love Verizon and the Droid phone, I understand that there are defective products sold occasionally, and I am fine with that. My issue was with the service I received today. I assure you I will avoid that Verizon store as much as possible for the rest of my time here!

What Does it Take to get a Paradigm Shift Around Here?

In the 2006 article, “From Recession to Renewables”, and in my own personal reflections paradigm shifts have always had the common denominator that is social suffering. Buddhism became one of the Chinese schools of thought after centuries of a stratified society encouraged by Confucianism, because in Buddhism societal place is rationalized and the ability to move upward is dictated by karma. In order to abolish the Jim Crow laws in America, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. took place. In “From Recession to Renewables”, a small Austrian town was on the verge of erasure (think Detroit, MI after the fallout experienced by the automotive industry) when a radical new economy was instituted to remodel Gussing, Austria into the world leader in renewable energy.

The industry in Gussing can be described as something alien to a capitalist. It takes a resource that is not the cheapest and not the most fruitful and uses it in an economy that is not centralized. Where is the middleman in all of this? He does not exist. The backbone of Gussing is its district heating system which takes cut-offs from local mills to provide heat for industry and residents. The cheap heat has enticed companies into relocating to Gussing, causing the job market to swell. As a result, 18 million extra Euros stay in Gussing when compared to the days of outsourced energy. In a town of four to five thousand, this makes a difference. Instead of allowing a select few to exercise decadence, the whole town lives comfortably. The extra money in the community has led to improvements such as the only successful biodiesel/heat/power cogeneration plant in the world.

In Santa Fe the electric utility is investor-owned and, as such, its operations are motivated by profit. Wherever profit exists for one party, sacrifice must exist for another. It is stated in the Sustainable Santa Fe plan that the community desires an 18.9% reduction in CO2 emissions by the year 2012. A significant portion of this reduction would be possible if more renewable energy was used in the energy generation mix, but that would require a significant capital investment in solar farms, wind turbines, and biomass boilers, all of which are less profitable than coal. Santa Feans have no control over their energy production, which means that they have no control over the biggest contributor to their CO2 emissions. PNM (the electric utility of Santa Fe) has even stated that it will not meet the state mandate to make 20% of its energy portfolio renewable by 2020. To top it off, PNM has demanded five electric rate increases in the last 27 months.

What lesson can be taken from Gussing and applied in Santa Fe? Any change in societal standards must begin with some kind of social suffering. Do Santa Fean’s have any of that? Certainly. It is the reason that my project team became a victim to a robbery, the reason that I was called a “chink” while walking down West Alameda Street, and the reason that the high-school graduation rate is only 50% in this city. There are people who find life dissatisfactory in Santa Fe. If the energy scheme in the City is to change, it must begin with the people who suffer most. For example, the city could offer low-cost district heating for low-income neighborhoods, or even microgrids in the same fashion. This would create the “green-collar” jobs everyone keeps talking about. In Santa Fe, where the sun shines everyday and the wind blows to the chagrin of pedestrians, renewable energy can become an industry.

DeVargas Middel School

This time when we went to the middles school, we decided to do a more interesting session which means only one thing: hands-on experiments. Kristen came up with the ideas and the material purchases were made; thus prepared we went to the school. The first experiment was to make a non-Newtonian fluid, which is a fluid that doesn't act like one the way a tradition fluid should. For example, if you punch it or ht it with some force, it will act like a solid; however if just move your fingers around in it slowly it acts just like a liquid. Add some food coloring and the students and some of the WPI students were having a lot of fun. To cap off the experience, we decided to use the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment, specifically we created bottle rockets out of them. Steve was elected dropper of the Mentos, unfortunately for him, he was not quite quick enough to drop and dodge and as a result, was completely soaked with the resulting foam explosion causing him to smell of mint and Coke for the rest of the day.

Local Energy

Last Wednesday we meet with the head of Local Energy which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the keeping money inside the local economy. During our discussion Mark gave us massive amount of relevant, useful information, in fact each one of us took at least 4 pages of notes up to 7 pages of notes. He told us that the main way to get the infrastructure from PNM would be to use condemnation, which means that the City can simply say 'remove your infrastructure within 24 hours or else it's ours.' Mark also mentioned that the efficiencies of electric grid are low somewhere in the range of 25% efficiency, the loss before any electricity reaches your house. As such, he suggested a system that is designed to be as efficient as possible.

On a slightly less important note, we recently discovered Albertsons Market. Its like Price Chopper from Worcester, but bigger and better, and best of all its about the same prices, which is to say reasonable.

The Ore House

If you are looking for a place to grab a bite to eat that's not going to destroy your wallet there are a ton of awesome places you can go in Santa Fe. The Ore House is not one of them. A few of us went there for dinner this past Friday night and had an experience that was less than acceptable. When we looked at the menu the first thing to come to mind was the narrow selection, there was a grand total of about 9 maybe 10 choices, most of which were similar to each other. To top off the lack of a selection there was the unpleasant fact that the least expensive thing the menu was $15. I cant speak for everything on the menu but I was unsatisfied with my $15 half rack of ribs. To start with there were only 6 ribs, I may be wrong on this but I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be 8. Basically I finished everything on my plate and was immediately thinking about what I was going to eat when I got home to actually feel as though I had eaten dinner. I will give credit where credit is due, the food was good, however we all left in agreement that it was not good enough to justify the cost. We came in hungry and $125 later the 5 of us went home still hungry.

In summation, if you have more money than you want to have then stop by the Ore House to take a load off your wallet and get essentially a $20 appetizer.