A Rant I just sent to the MBTA

Recently, I needed to buy a new ticket at the Quincy Center T stop. There are 5 automated machines there. One of these was being serviced by a technician, and was unusable.

I went to the second machine. After going through the multi-step process of telling it what kind of ticket I wanted, it asked me to insert my credit card. I did so, but the machine did not respond in any way. I tried again several times, fast, slow, leaving it in for a few seconds before pulling it out – every variation I could think of. No response.

I went to the third machine. Exactly the same thing happened. My credit card was not recognized at all.

I went to the fourth machine. This time, at least it responded. It did so, however, by putting up an error message saying something about this being an invalid type of card.

I went to the fifth – and last – machine. This one, finally, accepted my credit card as valid. Needless to say, I had missed the train I should have caught due to all this delay.

This is a brand-new credit card, less than a month old, in perfectly good condition. It worked in one machine out of the four I was able to try. The other station I use most often is Shawmut – there are only two machines there. A 1 in 5 success rate leaves me extremely nervous about my ability to purchase tickets there. Please do something to improve the reliability of this system!

Sincerely,
Alexander Kay

A Rant I just sent to the MBTA

Recently, I needed to buy a new ticket at the Quincy Center T stop. There are 5 automated machines there. One of these was being serviced by a technician, and was unusable.

I went to the second machine. After going through the multi-step process of telling it what kind of ticket I wanted, it asked me to insert my credit card. I did so, but the machine did not respond in any way. I tried again several times, fast, slow, leaving it in for a few seconds before pulling it out – every variation I could think of. No response.

I went to the third machine. Exactly the same thing happened. My credit card was not recognized at all.

I went to the fourth machine. This time, at least it responded. It did so, however, by putting up an error message saying something about this being an invalid type of card.

I went to the fifth – and last – machine. This one, finally, accepted my credit card as valid. Needless to say, I had missed the train I should have caught due to all this delay.

This is a brand-new credit card, less than a month old, in perfectly good condition. It worked in one machine out of the four I was able to try. The other station I use most often is Shawmut – there are only two machines there. A 1 in 5 success rate leaves me extremely nervous about my ability to purchase tickets there. Please do something to improve the reliability of this system!

Sincerely,
Alexander Kay

Fun with voice recording

Yesterday, I spent a little time doing voice recording at work. I appear to be typecast -- once again, I am playing an insane killer on Deck 4. On the down side, this time I don't get to be the *primary* insane killer, just one of his flunkies. On the up side, the player gets to interact with, and eventually even kill me. I made sure to put the screams and death gurgles near the end of the recording session, so I'd keep my voice for the parts with words.

Today, indirectly due to the voice recording, Ken walked in and asked me "How do you pronounce 'apis'". After some googling, I discovered that it has a short 'a' if you're talking about bees, a long one if you're talking about Sumerian bull gods. I think I will leave it as a mystery which one was relevant :) It took a little while to find though; Google kept trying to talk to me about Application Programming Interfaces...

Fun with voice recording

Yesterday, I spent a little time doing voice recording at work. I appear to be typecast -- once again, I am playing an insane killer on Deck 4. On the down side, this time I don't get to be the *primary* insane killer, just one of his flunkies. On the up side, the player gets to interact with, and eventually even kill me. I made sure to put the screams and death gurgles near the end of the recording session, so I'd keep my voice for the parts with words.

Today, indirectly due to the voice recording, Ken walked in and asked me "How do you pronounce 'apis'". After some googling, I discovered that it has a short 'a' if you're talking about bees, a long one if you're talking about Sumerian bull gods. I think I will leave it as a mystery which one was relevant :) It took a little while to find though; Google kept trying to talk to me about Application Programming Interfaces...