Another Boston Globe ***article|http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/11/09/charlie_to_begin_new_ride_with_modern_fare_system/*** on the ***MBTA|http://www.mbta.com/***’s new CharlieCard notes:

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Some riders, particularly the young, had no clue about Charlie.

”I thought maybe it had something to do with the Charles River,” said Kara Kitner of Boston, emerging from a Green Line trolley. When the reference was explained, she predicted, ”People won’t know.”

Ted Holmes of Newton agreed. ”Ask anyone under 30: Charlie just isn’t going to mean anything,” he said. ”It was almost 60 years ago.”

…

MBTA General Manager Michael Mulhern said the T’s marketing experts warned that Charlie might not be recognized.

”It did come up when we were weighing the pros and cons of the different names, but we wanted a card with a strong connection to Boston, Boston’s history, and at same time weave in some MBTA history, and the song does that,” Mulhern said. ”It transcends generations. And now we have a fictional character all our own, that is uniquely Boston’s, that other transit systems don’t have.”

…

As for some younger T riders not getting the Charlie reference, [interviewee Coco] Delgado said, ”Get the Dropkick Murphys to record a version of it, and you’re golden.”

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Out of a brief survey of the two people available at the moment (my wife and me), both respondents were familiar with the song “Charlie on the MTA.” Both of us are under 30. Becky is familiar with the song because, she says, “I had probably heard it on the oldies station.” I, on the other hand, am familiar with the song because one of my computer science professors at ***Gordon|http://www.gordon.edu/*** told us about it to illustrate a point.

I guess this just means that other young folk will have to become more in touch with their cultural heritage. What a shame!

***Boston.com reports|http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/11/08/mbta_unveils_new_fare_card/*** that the ***MBTA|http://www.mbta.com/***, the oldest public transit system in the United States, is finally ditching its token system and switching over to a passcard system. The system will be called the “CharlieCard”, in reference to the 1940’s Boston political song, ***Charlie on the MTA|http://web.mit.edu/jdreed/www/t/charlie.html***. The song concerns a man named Charlie, who paid ten cents to get on the T, but didn’t have the change to pay the five cent exit fare – a hot political issue at the time. Charlie’s fate is left up in the air, or down in the ground, so to speak – he just keeps riding along on the MTA.

I’m looking forward to the new system. It will be nice to be able to load fares onto a card, and keep that handy, as opposed to needing to buy tokens and have them jingling around in your pocket while traveling. Even better would be if I could use my debit card at a machine to add value to the CharlieCard, as I rarely carry cash. But I don’t know if they have any plans for that. As an aside, our laundromat switched from a quarters system to a smart-card system a while back, and it’s been great just having to slide that card into the washers and driers to do a load or two or three. You even get bonus credits if you add $5 or more at a time.

As for tokens: You might want to buy a stash of tokens before it’s too late – they could be collectors items some day!

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Becky and I visited the new Jordan’s in Reading today. It’s a huge building, with an IMAX 3D theater, an indoor trapeze school, a carnival-style “Duck Boat” race, an indoor water/light/sound display called Liquid Fireworks, replicas of various Boston landmarks (such as Fenway Park’s “Green Monster”) made entirely of Jelly Bellys, an ice cream store, a candy store, a cafe, and even a Bose home theater store.

Oh yeah… they also sell furniture.

Photos here.

… is apparently the way to get the call telling you that you’ve just won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Congratulations to Betsy’s husband Frank Wilczek, as well as David J. Gross and H. David Politzer, who shared in the prize.

The excited grocery shopper approaches the store with some fear and trepidation. While the bright lights draw her in, she can not help but notice the buzz of excitment that surrounds her fellow shoppers. Slowly pushing her cart she heads to the right in her familliar route towards the Dairy section. Amid the throng of Friday night shoppers she quickly notices that the ‘egg and cheese’ section is twice the size as she remembers it. The dairy case is to be a harbinger of things to come. The shopper continues on and finds the aisles comfortably wider and the floors noticibly cleaner.

What had started as a cautious visit to a brand new store was becoming quite enjoyable. For once our shopper was not run down by elderly fellow shoppers and their wayward carts. She could turn around in the produce department without knocking over the green pepper display. In addition to the surprise of extra checkout lanes with cute, polite bagger boys she was glad to see an aquaintence. Her college roomate, Kendra Nicholas, shopping for sushi.

Leaving the shop with a couple weeks worth of groceries she vows to return in the future. Next time she will study her new map of the aisles and will have a perfectly ordered list, corresponding with those aisles. Though she will miss the cozy, cluttered, chaos of the original Danvers Market Basket, the shopper decides that change is good and she just may take advantage of the wide variety of Asian and South American goodies.

Today is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ first ***sales tax holiday|http://www.dor.state.ma.us/forms/SalesTaxHoliday.htm***. Normally we have a 5% sales tax (which really isn’t that bad), but today on items $2500 or less, you don’t have to pay sales tax. A great place to use this would be to purchase something like a new computer. Fortunately, the Apple Store is making this very easy – they will be open for 24 hours today at all three Massachusetts locations. Unfortunately, not only do we not need to buy a new computer, we also don’t have anything else we need to buy. Going shopping today would only motivate us to buy things we don’t need (which, of course, is exactly what the Commonwealth and Commonwealth businesses are hoping for).

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing I *want*, of course. If you hadn’t noticed already, I’m keeping track of such things in the new ***Stuff Peter Wants|http://prwdot.org/?p=stuff_peter_wants*** page. It’s on the left navbar of our main website.

In more exciting news, we had some folks over last night for a little party to celebrate the 2004 Athens Olympics. There were nine people there, including Becky and I, which is just about as much as our living room can hold. 🙂 We did some Olympic trivia, watched the opening ceremonies, and had lots of food and desserts. Becky made a ***watermelon whale|http://gallery.prwdot.org/craftiness/IMG_8797*** which she filled with fruit salad. There were also various munchies, and several delectable desserts: peanut butter cheesecake with chocolate topping, which Jenn brought, strawberry cake, and ice cream sandwich cake. Recipes are available. if anyone is interested. 🙂

One other thing I missed posting earlier was that I attended the ***BMAC|http://www.bmac.org/*** meeting this Wednesday. You can see the ***photos I took|http://gallery.prwdot.org/bmac_august_04***. The topic of the meeting was “Stump the Chumps”, where people bring in all sorts of Mac problems they are having and try to stump a panel of Mac “chumps”. Many of the questions were beyond arcane, but it is always an interesting study in Geek group dynamics to see all of these people interact. Of course, the free ice cream at the end of the meeting was a nice bonus. 🙂

Can you believe that we are halfway through August? Before you know it, it will be October — which means my birthday (see the aforementioned ***Stuff Peter Wants|http://prwdot.org/?p=stuff_peter_wants*** page), Dad’s birthday, and our second anniversary! 🙂