Adventures in travel; or, thinking you've lost your phone

 For the last few years, I've attended PrinceCon by traveling by train.  The trip is in multiple legs; first on Amtrak's Ethan Allen Express, and then on NJ Transit to Long Branch and then on down the Jersey Shore to visit my mom.  In 2024, no issues.  Last year, the Ethan Allen Express was so delayed that I had to run to my 5:59pm NJ Transit connection and only made it because the boarding platform was so close to where Amtrak had disgorged us.  The next NJ Transit train would not leave until 7:59pm, so I was *extremely relieved* to have made the 5:59.

This year, the Ethan Allen Express took a little nap on the tracks shortly before 4pm, and by the time they convinced the little engine it *could*, we were running half an hour late.  Starting around 4:42pm, I began receiving texts from Amtrak every 4-8 minutes confirming that we were, in fact, still running half an hour late.  Prepared for this from the previous year, I stood up early and positioned myself at the exit so I would be the first person off my train car.  The Ethan Allen Express pulled in, I oriented myself towards the side where the platform was, and launched myself out when the doors opened. 

I quickly found the escalator, strode confidently up, found Track 4 where my NJ Transit connection would be, went down the steps, and walked towards the train with several minutes of breathing room.  I reached for my phone to activate my NJ Transit ticket, and... my phone wasn't in my right pants pocket.

My phone wasn't in my left pants pocket; that's where my wallet has been this whole trip, but my phone wasn't in my right pants pocket, which is where it had been this whole trip.  I'm wearing pants with zippers so that valuables can't fall out, but my right pants pocket is unzipped.  How could I have left it unzipped?  How could I have not noticed my phone falling out?  Had I been *pickpocketed* and somehow hadn't noticed?  I was wearing my jacket, which had been stowed on the rack above me during the initial leg of the journey, tapped my left breast pocket (the right is where my gloves and hat are stowed; my jacket doesn't have any other pockets) and didn't feel the hard plastic of a phone.  

Ran back up the stairs from Track 4 and frantically looked for a way back down to the Amtrak train.  Couldn't find one and ran out and across the street to Amtrak's desk to see if there was some way to get to the train I'd just come in on.  At this point I didn't care about making my connection, I just really needed my phone!  I helped an older confused person in front of me recognize that they had been called by an Amtrak employee at the desk, and while waiting, tapped my left breast pocket again, this time lower, and felt the hard plastic of a phone.  It's a large pocket, and the phone had slipped sideways and was lying just below my ribcage.  

I resigned myself to having missed my connection over nothing and camping out until the 7:59pm NJ Transit train, and noticed it was still 5:57. Ran back across the street, through the station, patiently down the stairs as the family in front of me was also trying to catch the same train, and made my connection just as it was leaving!

Addendum: I continued to get alerts every 4-8 minutes that the arrival of the Ethan Allen Express was delayed by 30 minutes until 8:22, two and half hours after the train had arrived at NYC.

Four years of playing Wordle

The first wordle I did was on Jan 5, 2021, which I got in 1 guess because a friend came on Facebook and asked, "Has everyone done today's wordle?"  Then I went to find out what wordle was, thought about why they might be asking, and guessed right.

Since then, I've used that word as my first guess every day (with the exception of Apr 23, 2022, when a coworker started asking, "Has everyone done today's wordle?") and disabled Hard Mode because tiger is a terrible first word to use for Hard Mode (so many words end in "er").  After 4 years, starting tomorrow I'm going to start using a different first 

How have my four years of Wordle gone?  Well, recording that accurately was a bit of a challenge.  At first I used the original Wordle website, and then the Worde app, and finally the NYT app when the Worde app was no longer synced with the official Wordle of the day.  So my stats from the NYT app aren't right: 

Fortunately, I had taken screenshots of nearly all of my games, and eventually put them all into a spreadsheet, so that I have a more complete accounting:

Even cooler, I have a chart that shows the progression of my guesses over time, so you can quickly see when 3's started to outpace 4's and now 2's have started to outpace 5's.

The obvious question is: am I getting better at Wordle?!  Well, no, there are simply fewer words to choose from.  There are only 686 words left from the original Wordle list.  NYT sprinkled in 22 "new" words in 2025; unless that rate increases dramatically in 2026 and 2027, we realistically have roughly 2 years of OG Wordle left.

Degradation of public resources, NOAA edition

For several years, as a hobby project I've been downloading the previous year's weather data for Burlington VT in early January from NOAA.  I went to go do this today, and the data only goes to October 4, when the government shut down.  

The weather data that is available is only the precipitation data, and is missing the air temperature and wind speed data.  This data is not only missing for 2025, but for previous years.

This is vandalism. 

Flippers gone wild

This property is a flip, sold earlier this year for $1.6M and now being offered for $4.6M.  We have photos from the 2014 sale (for $1M); did the flippers add $3M of value?  

There was a pool, the pool is gone.  The tennis court still exists, but it looks like it's in poor shape.  My guess is that the pool was in bad enough shape that it had to be removed in order to sell the renovated property.

View from above, 2025

The listing claims the property was "built" in 2025, but it's clearly a significant renovation of the original cottage-style structure, not a complete teardown and rebuild.  From the front, it looks like a full second floor was added to the main part of the house, previously there were dormers.  A three-car garage was also added to the side of the house, and it dominates the complex. 

Front 2014 and 2025, side-by-side

The back used to have a lot of asphalt; that has been torn up and replaced with grass.

Back 2014 and 2025, side-by-side

Throughout the interior:

• fireplaces appear to have been removed; 
• cross-beams were removed;  
• interior stone was removed; 
• dark wood floors replaced with white oak; 

... in general, anything that gave the home any kind of unique cottage-y character is gone.

Interior 2014 vs 2025; I *think* this is the same room, but it's hard to tell.  All I know is that is a big damn wall. They tried to make it less severe by putting on the paneling, but it's a tough room to work with. 

Interior from 2014 and 2025.  These are *not* the same room, but are illustrative of how the house had character to it, and now it's a super white blah space.

What I read in 2025 (books)

I've logged 51 titles in my spreadsheet for 2025 so far, up from 2024 and well above my 10-year average.  What was different?  Well, 7 of those titles are DNFs, and it's unusual for me to have more than 2 in a year.  So, yay, I was trying things I wasn't sure I would like, and yay, I put them down when they didn't work out. 

What stood out this year?  Picking a few:

Siren Queen.  Nghi Vo's novel about early Hollywood with a fantastical twist, where being admitted to the studio system feels a bit like being trapped in Faerie lands.  The cameras are magical devices that can literally harm your soul, and becoming a big star literally puts your likeness in the sky. 

The Women. Kristin Hannah's novel recognizing the American women who served in Vietnam and the erasure of their experience when they returned home.  I read this on the recommendation of a friend, and then read Mystic Lake later this year.  

He Who Drowned the World. Shelley Parker-Chan's sequel to She Who Became the Sun, and the concluding novel in this series.  Unlike the previous book, this was not a Hugo finalist; I think it was equally worthy.  This is a book in which a number of people achieve everything they (thought they) desired and find out all the terrible things they've done weren't worth it, and all because their aim was simply to achieve an end, without a plan for what would happen after.  This book, and its predecessor, also neatly examine how the world treats people who do not conform to rigid gender expectations, as well as the cost to those who harm themselves in trying to conform.

What Grows from the Dead. Dave Dobson's (a friend) rollicking crime / mystery / thriller set in modern day North Carolina.  

Lines. Sung J. Woo's (a friend) Sliding Doors-style story of a couple's relationship after a collision (or near miss) in Washington Park, NYC.

What Feasts at Night.  This is T. Kingfisher's sequel to What Moves the Dead, and the second in her "Sworn Soldier" novellas, which are a mix of Ruritanian romance and horror.

Alien Clay.  Adrian Tchaikovsky's novel about a dangerous planet where undesirables are sent to toil so that Earth can learn enough to eventually be able to exploit the planet.  This got my top vote for the Hugo award this year, because it did the best job of examining a thought experiment that was reasonably novel to me (no shade on the other finalists). 

The Tainted Cup.  Robert Jackson Bennett's first novel in a fantasy detective series won the Hugo award for best novel this year.  Excellent worldbuilding and a detective that's like Sherlock Holmes turned up to 11, but so overly sensitive to her surroundings that she can't leave her rooms without a blindfold on, so her "Watson" has to do all the investigating and bring the clues back to her.  I expect to read the sequel for the 2026 Hugo finalist book club.

Another World.  Pat Barker's first book after completing the Regeneration trilogy (the first of which I read back in 2009).  I read this after finishing Mystic Lake, and it was a great chaser, for while both books are about "normal" lives, Hannah wrote an entertaining tale about the melodrama of likeable people, and Barker wrote about a thoroughly banal family.  I nearly put the book down a few times in the first 50 pages, but Pat Barker skillfully drew me in to her story, and ultimately it was a pleasure to see a master at work.