London Calling–Part II

Like I said, I'd been to London twice before, and have "done" most of the tourist things.  But that doesn't mean on my time off, that I didn't do some of the touristy thing and revisit some old favorites.  And I got to check the last two items off that "Must See" list.

Below is a set of pictures from all around London.  They are roughly in chronological / geographic order.

Bank of England.  And another underground sign.  I shot a lot of them, but didn't publish many here.	Trying to recreate the classic pose from HERE.
Gringotts Bank – Also the Bank of England	St. Paul's Cathedral – I walked by St. Paul's so many times, it was almost like it was stalking me
St. Lawrence Jewry	Saint Alban Church Tower, Wood St. London.  It seems like 90% of London is built on or around old church grounds.
I love the red filter in Chinatown.  I was lookin' for the place called Lee Ho Fooks.  Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.	When I was in London 20 years ago, I saw the juggle on the taller unicycle in this very spot, juggling fire.
Trafalgar Square with the anti-Trident nuclear sub rally going on.	The gates of Buckingham Palace.
The London Eye, peaking out from behind they Horse Guard Parade.	The London Red-Eye.
St Margaret's Church; the little parish church.  Not to be confused with Westminster Abbey, which sits behind it.	Westminster Cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral in London.  Not to be confused with Westminster Abbey.
These are the newest photo op stars in London:  The Levitators.	Yoda & the Goldman.  These aren't the only two.
Careful Dick, Batman is readying the Bat-Pole.	Scope, hanging out with the Queen.  See the flag?  She's home.
Platforms 9, 9 3/4, 10, and 11 at King's Cross station.	And I'm heading to the Hogwarts Express!
Tower Bridge at night.  Not to be confused with London Bridge.	I have a thing for the Underground signs.  This is right outside where I was staying.
Me, Richard, & Mike, crossing at Abbey Road.  The drivers in the area must plan routes around this intersection.	Abbey Road Studios gift shop.  Not to be confused with the Westminster Abbey gift shop.
I would hate to wake up in bed with this horse's head next to me in bed.	Flowers in Hyde Park.
I took a lot of pictures of flowers.  Not just for Cora.	Allow me to introduce you to an old friend, Peter Pan.  I have visited him in Kensington Gardens each visit.
They have moved the pigeons out of Trafalgar Square.  They have found a home in Kensington Gardens, by the Round Pond.	This gate at Kensington Palace is where all the flowers to Diana have been on my previous trips.
This little dog took himself for a walk.	St. Margaret's Church at Parliament Square
The Esme Percy fountain in Kensington Garden.	We refer to these as "Eric Pictures" where I take a picture of something through something else.
Went with a vintage look for this one.	It's almost 2 o'clock, better get moving.
Do you even need to have a "Keep Out" sign?	I'm on a boat, headed to Greenwich, in the Mean Time.  I am also weary.
Is that guy doing what I think he's doing?	At least she said, "Yes".  That would have been awkward if she would have said, "No" while trapped on a boat.
Did you see "Thor: The Dark World"?  This is where the big battle took place.  They cleaned it up nicely, it appears.	Prime Meridian @ Greenwich Royal Observatory.
Dolphin Sundial.  The gap between their tails.	I'm East.  I'm West.  I'm East.  I'm West.
This ball isn't in Times Square.  It drops every day at 13:00.	At 221 B. Baker St.  Just dropping in on an old friend.
I was really hoping to see the horse bite or kick someone.	And this is the Sherlock Holmes Pub.  Located no where near 221B, but not far from Scotland Yard.
He's smiling, but he will pop a cap in your ass.	While I was there, I went to see The Doctor.
Last time I was here, this pool was a flower garden.	Imperial Camel Corps Memorial along the Embankment.
St. Bride's Church: The inspiration for the tiered wedding cake.	"Defend the Children of the Poor & Punish the Wrongdoer" – Old Bailey courthouse.
Coworker Lalie & her fiancée Richard.	Coworker Mike and I on our way to Abbey Road.

And now, off to Brussels…

London Calling–Part I

For the last 2 years at work, we've been working on a big project, and this February / March, we finally started rolling it out world wide.  As part of that rollout, I was tapped to visit our European offices in London, Brussels, and Geneva.

This would be my 3rd trip to London.  I'd been there roughly 10 and 20 years ago, totaling just over a month's time.  I only had a couple of items on my "Must See" list: Abbey Road crosswalk & the Royal Observatory at Greewich.  It would be my second trip to Brussels, my other one was maybe 25 years ago, and I'd spent maybe a day there in Brussels proper that trip.  And it was going to be my first trip to Geneva. (More on that later.)

Cora didn't get her passport in time, so I was flying solo.  I was also flying business class!  It is an nice way to spend 8 hours, but I wouldn't pay for it myself.

And relax, I'm not going to give you a blow by blow recap of the trip.  To be honest, I worked a lot.  During the week, I usually didn't leave the office until 7:00, and then went back to my apartment, ate something, then Skyped with Cora and worked the rest of the evening, because the Chicago people needed my help.

I stayed with City Apartments.  It's a short term apartment rental company that owns a number of buildings around central London.  Sort of like Airbnb meets a hotel.  I stayed with them last time, too.  You get a pre-stocked kitchen, cleaning supplies, a clothes washer, TV's in the living and bedrooms with free movies (I never even turned them on), internet, blah, blah.  I would highly recommend using them.  I was there for just over 2 weeks, and it was so nice having a real 1 BR apartment to come back to, vs. a hotel room.  I'm not a "hang out in the bedroom" person, so it was nice to have a sofa to crash on, and a bedroom to sleep in.  (I stayed at the 4 Cloth St. location.  Between the Barbican & Smithfield's)

It was a great location, I could walk to work in about 10 – 15 minutes.

Love Lane.  Lead right to my office.	A section of the London Wall that used to circle the medieval city.
And not a Target in sight.	This whole trip, I became infatuated with photographing neon lights.
The Girdler's Company.  I fell absolutely in love with this little hall tucked in with the skyscrapers.	And they had some beautiful flowers.
And flowering trees.	"The Ward of Cheap" This sounds like the worst honorary title, EVER.
There was a Subway basically right outside apartment.  This was a common dinner.	I never ate at this subway.

As I said, I was working some long hours while I was there, so instead of going out much after work, I would head out at lunch.

Bank of England	The City Wing – I giant pigeon wing growing out of the sidewalk.
The Kindertransport statue, Liverpool Street Station…	I found this particularly moving…
And touching.	But this is a statue called "The Gardner" outside of the Brewers Hall.
This little sunken garden of the Churchyard of Saint John Zachary was a favorite.  Visited it almost every day.	"The Three Printers" statue in the courtyard.
Back to "Love Lane" and the Shakespeare statue.  I tried climbing up there to see if the head tilted back to reveal a red button that open the entrance to the Bat-Cave.  No such luck.	This is Leadenhall Market, also known as "Diagon Alley" from the first Harry Potter film.
The Parish Church of St. Michael, Cornhill.	Damien Hirst's "Charity" by The Gherkin.  Statues with teddy bears.  Or, "A Girl & Her Pickle"
And now, two churches with blue glass buildings behind them.	St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate.

To be continued…

That Time I Turned 50

Hey!  I’m 50.

Went to Star Wars.  Not bad.  But disliked one of the characters.  Pretty boy.

And then we had dinner at Bob Chinn’s Crabhouse.

Good day.

I know this is short, but I just wanted to mark the occasion.

Windows Live Writer Is Dead–Open Live Writer

So, I was creating our 2015 update for my Christmas Letter blog.  I had been working on it for weeks.  Cora sent me her text and pictures, go everything layed out just right, and went to publish it to blogger, and got an error. [Not Found]

Tried again.  Same error. [Not Found]

A quick Google search lead me an article that, apparently Google updated their authentification API, Windows chose not to update Live Writer, so there we were.  The two apps won’t talk anymore.

That occurred 2 FREAKIN’ DAYS before I tried to post my Christmas Letter.

PANIC! (not at the disco)  I’ve been using and pimping WLW since 2009, and this is the moment it decides to betray me?

We’d already mailed out our Christmas letters with the link to the site.  We HAD to get this letter posted.  Bitting the bullet, I pasted the post into Blogger’s web editor.  And felt sick.  I changed the fonts all up.  Some was big.  Some was small.  It wouldn’t scale the picutres like I wanted to.  And it freaked out when I put two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence.  It took over an hour to get a passible version loaded up.

---

While all the above drama was going on, I was routed to a fork of Windows Live Writer called “Open Live Writer”.  I downloaded it that night, but they didn’t have it working that night.  Now it appears to be working.

I’m writing this post on it.  So far, so good.  Can’t really see much of a difference so far.  Well, except for the fact that it works.

We’ll see how it posts out.

Car Wars Episode 8–The Tension Mounts

My oldest nephew got married a month or so ago.

The wedding was late Saturday afternoon down in Peoria; about a 4 hour drive.  The Daughter had a lot going on at college, so she wasn't going to come with us.

So, Cora and I got our act together, and got ready to leave a little after 9:00 am on Saturday.  Car loaded, I turned the engine over and …

THUNK!

Cora and I looked at each other, and I said, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."  But backing out of the garage, I could tell that I had no power steering, so I pulled back in and shut it down.

Now what?

We're making the wedding that's not in question, but how?  We unpack the laptops, and found that the Enterprise car rental is only open for 3 hours on Saturday, but it is the 3 hours we need.  And it is only a block away.  We call them up, reserve a car, and walk there in 5 minutes.

We get a VW Jetta (no a diesel), and I make sure that I know where the outlet is for our GPS (aka "Croc" since he has an Australian accent).  I can get us to Peoria fine, but I really don't know my way around, or where, exactly, our hotel or the wedding location are, and the base model Jetta doesn't have a nav. system.

We circled around, transferred our stuff from one car to the other, ran a couple of errands that we had to knock off, and hit the road.  Later than we wanted, but still with plenty of time to make Peoria.  But since we were running late, had the GPS on so that I could track ETA.

And so, it was with no surprise that we weren't out of the metro area when Croc gave me a low battery warning.  It was plugged in, but neither power outlet was working.  Must have blown a fuse.

Thanks Enterprise!

We roared down I-55 to I-74 and when we got in range, Google maps on the phone did the trick.

The wedding was probably beautiful.  It was difficult to see because it was an outdoor wedding and we were looking directly into the setting sun.

But the reception and hotel were nice.

Tech Tuesday - Windows 10 Upgrade

This weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

One word of advice – Pre-download the installation.  It's pretty big.  You don't have to install once you download, but when you do, you will definitely save yourself some time.

I'm not sure how long it took.  I started at 11:45, but after lunch, when it started in the heart of the install, Cora and I went to the Post Office, storage, The Home Depot, and Target; so we were gone for a couple of hours.  When I came home, I needed to log in.  It asked a handful of questions, I chose some defaults, and about 15 minutes later, I was done.

I mean, it was no big deal. 

No programs to reinstall.

I launched Chrome, and it even had my previous tabs still open.

I really haven't run into any issues.  I haven't explored any of the dark corners, but so far, so good.  Even my Nintendo emulator ran fine.

I'll keep you updated.

Have you done the update?  If so, what issues did you run into?

Space Meme

The other day, I read this Gizmodo post about Alan Bean.  He painted the below picture, and was also the 4th man to walk on the moon.

There's a meme running around the internet with it the caption:

"My Nose Itches"

And that got me thinking about what I could do:

And I think this is my favorite…

Rubble Rubble

So, if you've worked in an office, you know of the "office fridge".

And if there's an office fridge, there's going to be someone who takes food that isn't theirs.

We had one.

HAD

Here's some lessons (hopefully) learned by our thief:

1. If you are going to take people's food with names on it, don't make it be your Directors.  They have the power to hold a grudge.
2. Stick to the fridge on your floor.  There are cameras in the elevator lobby.
3. If you do go to other floors on your raids, eat the food where you stole it.  There are cameras in the elevator lobby*.
4. If you are going to steal half a pizza in the box, don't walk through the elevator lobby empty handed, and then two minutes later, walk back our carrying a pizza box.
   
   THERE ARE CAMERAS IN THE ELEVATOR LOBBY.

How would you like to explain that one to the family:

Wife:  You're home early.
Hamburglar:  Yeah.  I got fired.
Wife:  What for?
Hamburglar:  Stealing food out of the fridge.
Wife:  Well, you're gonna be eating out of garbage cans, because I'm kicking your sorry behind out the door.

===================================

* This is also where the non-emergency stairwell is, so taking the stairs isn't an option, either.

But Not Forgotten

Recently, we lost a blogger.

Lisa Rohrbaugh.  The Butterfly Farmer.

Like most, her blog had gone quiet long ago.

And she rarely updated Facebook.  But over the weekend, her Facebook page was updated to say that she pad passed from cervical cancer.

We never met, and I didn't know her well, but she was a kind and tender soul, and the world is diminished by her passing.

She was also an artist who made me these blog banners.

Farewell, Lisa.  You will be missed.

And the Window Goes "BOING"!

So, it's Saturday morning, and Cora and I are in the kitchen when we heard a loud "BOING" from the dining room window.

"Was that a bird?" she asked.

As a refresher, we live on the 3rd floor.  The window in question has an unobstructed western view, but we usually keep the blinds closed to avoid the afternoon sun blinding us.

We both knew the answer was "yes", but with the blind closed, that would mean that effectively the bird flew into the middle of a wall.

What the hell?

So, we raise the blinds, just to make sure that the window is okay, and that there isn't a big bird sized smear on the glass.  And to make sure that there aren't kids on the rood next door, throwing balls at the side of the building of something.

Nope all clear.

20 minutes later, I can't take it any more, and run down and check the breezeway.  And there, right below our window, crumpled up in the middle of the breezeway, is the corpse of a little tiny brown bird.

Poor birdy.

I know I should get a shovel and pitch the poor thing into a trash can or into the gutter or something sensitive like that, but I just can't.  Not yet.  So I went back upstairs and reported my findings to the wife and daughter.

Another 20 minutes passes, and I man up, head to the garage, and get a shovel.  Time to take care of some business.

So, I head back out to the breezeway, and …

Wait…

The bird is up against the wall…

And did the that feather just move or was that that wind?

I crept closer and IT TWITCHED!  I could see it breathing!

OhmyGodOymyGodOhmyGod!

So, I call Cora and tell her, IT'S...NOT...DEAD!

She advised me to go to the other breezeway, get the big brick that is there, and ***SMASH*** is to put it out of its misery.  While that seemed like the humane thing to do, I just couldn't bring myself to hurt it, even though it was suffering.  The shovel went back to the garage, and the poor bird was just left in the breezeway to traumatize the small children in the building.

Another hour passes, and we are going to take The Daughter to get her hair colored before she goes off to college, and we take another peek:

The bird is now sitting up, and rocking back and forth.  Less and less dead all the time.

So, after we run the errands, we check on the bird's status one more time, and it's gone.

GONE

So, one of the following happened:

1. The bird expired while we were gone, and one of the neighbors disposed of it.
2. The JESUS BIRD came back to life and flew off.

We strongly suspect the latter: That the bird hit the window with enough force to knock itself out, and then was stunned and concussed.  Finally, it came to, and flew away.  Hopefully wiser for the experience.

===================================

And, 'Yes', I'm really glad that I didn't re-enact the whole meteor vs. dinosaur thing like my wife (and under the bus you go ) encouraged me to do earlier.

They Call Me Bruce

I will continue to call him "Bruce".  Just like that college friend who you call by their maiden name decades after their wedding, or that grade school friend who you call "Billy" even after he's tried for years to get people to call him "Will".

First knew him as "Bruce".  Will always know him as "Bruce".  No offense.  I don't care what he calls himself.  He doesn't control the metadata tags I have on him.

But most of all, from an IT point of view, why, oh why?  Having to change people's network IDs sux.  We can and do it all the time, normally when women get married or divorced, but in the transitioning gender situation, why bother?  Why change your first initial?  Then you don't have to change your network ID at all, and there would be no issue.

Also, think about those monogrammed towels that you don't have to replace.

Like why didn't Bruce (I know his first name was "William" but go with me here) go "Barbara" or if that's too staid, "Bianca"?

If not for you, set an example for those that follow you.  Think of the poor IT people.  (Or the person who had to go thru and edit Bruce's wiki page.)

But if you're going to do it, go big or go home.  Don't go with "Caitlyn".  If he REALLY wanted to stick an ice pick into his ex-wife, rename yourself "Chris Jenner".

But, to be fair, if Caitlyn Jenner wins the Olympic Decathlon, I'm willing to update some of those metadata tags.

---

              

Giving Me A CORA-NARY

Trying to keep up with my "post once a month" promise, things have sure been interesting around here:

[NOTE:  Cora's fine.  There's absolutely nothing to worry about.  Scared the crap out of both of us, true, but everything is okay, promise.]

It was late April, on a Tuesday.  I was on my way home from work, and The Daughter and Cora were out; 2 bus rides away from home.  I texted Cora (as I usually do on the way home), and Cora replied back that she wasn't feeling well, and if I could come pick them up.  She was having pain in the middle of her chest. (Don't get too worried here.)

I dropped Cora off at the Urgent Care place down the road, took The Daughter home, and told her everything was going to be all right, as I was trying to convince myself.  I then wolfed down a quick dinner, and went back to the Urgent Care.  I got back there just as Cora was heading back, and I went back with her.

She told the doctor about what she was feeling, which was gastric distress in her chest, like something was in her lungs.

And he went cardiac.

Explaining the they just don't know enough about women's heart attacks (Once again, don't panic.)  He listened to her heart, and electroded her up for an EKG.

And that came out fine.

But he sent us to the ER anyway, out of an abundance of caution.

And that's when we (I) started to get nervous (but don't you dare).  A quick drive to the second closest hospital (the closest one is a long term wound care facility with no ER), and Cora was whisked right back.  Another EKG, an X-Ray, and one of two heart attack protein test later, we found ourselves sitting in a room in the ER, waiting 2 hours to take the second blood protein test and more time to process it.

So, we sat around and Cora pretended that the blood oxygen monitor made her ET.  Don't be mistaken, we were taking this as serious as, well, as serious as a heart attack.  But sitting there for hours with very few visits from the staff, we started to go a little stir crazy.

Around midnight, they released us, with every test coming back normal, a follow-up appointment on the schedule, a little scared, and a lot starving.

McDonald's drive-thru, here we come.

Thursday was a follow-up at their clinic, where the resident claimed to hear a heart murmur (not mentioned by Urgent Care or the ER) and set up an echocardiogram for the NEXT Saturday, 9 days out.  "You may have a serious heart condition, please sit around pondering your mortality for a week and a half."

Friday, we had a thing at The Daughter's future college, and Cora had a few, "episodes" that day, after eating, and then walking up stairs.  The 3rd and final one cleared up after she burped.  Hmmmm.

Not waiting around, and while appreciating the intense investigation into the cardio possibility, we felt that nothing was being done to look into what Cora thought it was, digestive, on Saturday, we went to the local branch of the University affiliated hospital that I use.  The 15 year veteran of the trauma center doctor LISTENED to her heart AND LISTENED to what she had to say, and agreed.  There was no murmur.  What she described sounded like an acid reflux issue.  He recommended Prilosec OTC.  Like ol' Larry The Cable Guy.

We got the Prilosec, and set up an appointment for the University docs to review the echocardiogram.  And for giggles, finally set Cora up with a regular doctor in Chicago.

Let's just say, the side-effects of the Prilosec were worse than the condition it was trying to cure, and after suffering through 6 days of worsening symptoms, stopped taking it.  It took her more than a week to recover from the Prilosec.

We kept the echocardiogram appointment (Hey!  I tagged along and was in the room while the whole thing was going on, it's "WE".), and were feeling good that the technician didn't tackle us as we walking out, so we figured that was a good sign.

And then the echocardiogram review a few days later with the University doctor, and once again, everything was normal.

So, the upshot of it all:  She's stopped having a spicy tomato soup.  She had been having it for 4 or 5 meals a week.  And she was off dark chocolate for about a month (the horror!).  She's now back to her normal self.

That was not a fun month.  But as our first real test, I can say that the 3 of us pulled together stronger.

Car Wars 7A–The One With The Rim Shot

Well, that sure didn't work.

So, trying to weld the rim on the tire failed, epically.  It was flat in a couple of days.

So, we contacted the shop, and the guy told me that he did some looking, and if he got me one of the rims (this is for a 13 year old vehicle where the rims are prone to defect) from his suppliers, that it would be expensive.  However, if I got one from eBay, he would mount it for free.  He's prohibited from buying parts on eBay.  Makes sense.

Okay, my wife is wizard on eBay, how hard can it be?

Well, we searched around, and found a nice one out of St. Louis.  We discussed it for a few minutes, and then clicked "Buy It Now" (it was in a no-bid store "auction".)  But, between us pulling up the wheel rim and the decision to buy, the item had been snatched out from under us.

So, we started the search again, found a tire that looked exactly like what we wanted, and while Cora pointed out to me the big red writing about it being a stock photo and the that actual item had a different finish, we bought the item.

We then needed to run out pick up our Chinese food order, but ran into a neighbor who had her toddler and new born in the elevator.  Her CO2 alarm was going off, her husband wasn't home, and she was going to try to get a ladder, and climb all 4'11" of her up the ladder with a crying newborn and a freaked out toddler to get to the alarm.

We opted to be decent humans, and I got the ladder and took down the CO2 alarm for her.  (In other news, do you know that CO2 alarms have a built in expiration date of 7 or 10 years, depending upon the model?  Guess how old our condos are?  7 years!  Ours died between then and now and chirped it's ever-loving brains out while it was doing it.  Thankfully NOT at 2am.)  We got back with the Chinese food, and thank General Tso, it was warm and delicious.

This was a Wednesday evening and I was taking spring break off with The Daughter.  I had no hope that this freakin' wheel rim, shipping from a mystery location somewhere in the United States, would remotely be there in time for us to do anything with it while I was still out.

But then, a small miracle occurred.  Cora, checked the shipping information, and asked, "Do you know where 'Fort Wayne, IN' is?"

Holy Smokes!  That's just a couple hours drive from Chicago.

And then Thursday morning, it was heading to Chicago.

And Friday morning, it was out for delivery.

So, maybe 36 hours after ordering it, the rim arrived, and I opened it.  And that's when I realized the slight mistake I made.  The picture was of a chromed version of the rim, like I have, but the rim they shipped was a silver flecked paint, like I ordered.  That explains why it was $100 cheaper than others I'd seen.

Tired of having to pump up the tire every time I wanted to drive my car, I declared, "Close enough" and we took the rim to Car-X and got it mounted.  (While we were waiting, we took a walk around to kill time.  We got back, and 2 minutes later, there was a down pour!  Dodged that bullet!)

So, here's the car.  The rims are different, but not too bad.  And the chrome one would have looked off, too, since it would have been clean also.  There one dent, between the back tire and the tail light.  For a 2002, not bad looking.

And once I grunge up that rim, it should be less noticeable.  And, if I need to replace the other rims…

I can tell you, it's been a relief not to have to run down to the car 10 minutes before you need to leave to inflate the tire.  It's the simple things in life, sometimes.

Forget Batman–The Green Arrow Is My Hero

Forget Batman.  The Green Arrow is my hero.

No, not that Oliver Queen chap from the DC comics (I've always been a Marvel fan myself, anyway), but this wonderful bit of LED magic.

Finally, our intersection has green left turn arrows.  I feel so… FANCY!

But, this is Chicago, they can't make it smooth.

They actually installed the 5 light signals lights last winter.  But they left the old 3 light signals sitting in a pile on one of the corners.

And we got excited, we're getting a turn arrow: like we are moving into the 80's or the suburbs or something.

But they covered the arrows sections of the signals with plastic bags.  So, nothing changed, except we were living with a tease for a couple of months.

And then one day, we saw the crew remove the pile of old signals that had been sitting out in the snow and mud.  And they were messing around with light control boxes.  I couldn't believe it, we were getting the signal, FINALLY!

Let me explain.  We live right off Western Ave., one of THE primary north / south road in Chicago.  And when we go shopping, we almost always head south, so coming home, we have to try to cross the two lanes of traffic at the intersection.  I'd given up on trying to do it.  I would use the red light to "throw a block" if you will, then turn a couple of blocks early, and wind around on some narrow neighborhood streets to get to where I need to go.  This turn arrow coming up from the south will save me maybe 4 or 5 minutes getting home.

And then the Lord said, "Let there be light."  And there was.  And it was good.  For maybe a week or two.

After enjoying the gift of the turn signal for about two weeks, one day, I pulled into the left turn lane, and I didn't get the light.  Now, these aren't your fancy suburban turn arrows that sense if a car is there before activating.  These are dumb lights.  They follow the same pattern, no matter what.  I got robbed.

My green light had been taken away.  And the next day when we were at the bus stop on the corner, I noticed that south bound, the green light and green arrow light at the same time.  This wasn't simply a matter of the north bound green arrow not working.  The north bound traffic was specifically getting screwed.

As I was getting ready to write the alderman, and ask why we were being treated like second class citizens…

The green arrow returned!