Burlington Road Meet - November 9, 2013

[vdeane]

As I just posted to Facebook:
We'll meet up at the park and ride just off of I-89 exit 11 at noon. The tour includes the US 2/7 circle in Winooski, Alt US 7 in Burlington, a clinch of VT 127, the Island Line Trail bridge by Lake Champlain (meet photo), clinch VT 289, the US 2 Checkered House Bridge, and the I-189 stub. After the tour, we can go grab dinner at a restaurant (no lunch due to daylight issues).

Tour map: http://goo.gl/maps/yUU2O

And the projected times, using Steve's formula (assuming about a half hour talking before starting the tour, just to be safe):
12:30 - Checkered House Bridge
12:45 - continue tour
1:45 - I-189 stub
3:15 - continue tour
3:45 - Island Line Trail bridge
4:30 - resume
5:00 - return

[Alps]

Looks like a good schedule to me! Note the VT 127 circle shields as well as the interesting bridges overhead. I don't see Main Street in your itinerary, but it's worth a drive - a couple of intersections signal fans would appreciate.

[froggie]

Given the early sunset, plus the tendency for meet stops to run late, I'd suggest doing a later meet-up time and skip lunch, which'll also make it easier to find a parking area near one of the meet stops.  This is also something that I've found works well during non-daylight-savings meets.  I admit that skipping lunch would also work better for me...with the current schedule, I'll likely be late to lunch, especially if I wind up doing my TomTom tour with Adam Jackson that morning (whereas I'd have "house obligations" otherwise if no TomTom tour).

Steve:  saw where you're flying Down Under on 10/26.  Will you be back Stateside in time for this?

[Alps]

Given the early sunset, plus the tendency for meet stops to run late, I'd suggest doing a later meet-up time and skip lunch, which'll also make it easier to find a parking area near one of the meet stops.  This is also something that I've found works well during non-daylight-savings meets.  I admit that skipping lunch would also work better for me...with the current schedule, I'll likely be late to lunch, especially if I wind up doing my TomTom tour with Adam Jackson that morning (whereas I'd have "house obligations" otherwise if no TomTom tour).

Steve:  saw where you're flying Down Under on 10/26.  Will you be back Stateside in time for this?

Absolutely not. But I like the itinerary as shown. An 11 AM lunch has been done before. The 10:30 meetup is quite early, but people can go straight to the restaurant if they'll be a little late, or people can feel free to arrive at 1 PM if they can't make it by 11.

[vdeane]

Now time to update the post here (I got to FB this morning) with the change from froggie's suggestion.  Meet at 12, skip lunch, dinner after the tour.  Should be easier for everyone, even if I did already reserve my hotel for two nights.

Looks like a good schedule to me! Note the VT 127 circle shields as well as the interesting bridges overhead. I don't see Main Street in your itinerary, but it's worth a drive - a couple of intersections signal fans would appreciate.

Not mentioned, but it's on the tour.  Pearl St just isn't as interesting.

[hbelkins]

even if I did already reserve my hotel for two nights.

Surely you have time to change the reservation, a couple of months out.

especially if I wind up doing my TomTom tour with Adam Jackson that morning (whereas I'd have "house obligations" otherwise if no TomTom tour).

Saw in the other thread where he mentioned the "makeup" TomTom tour would have to be on a weekday, but if something does get worked out for the day of the Burlington meet, I'd be interested in visiting TomTom then, if it works out that I can travel to the northeast.

[Janko Dialnice]

With a packed project schedule in November and the possibility of winter weather, this meet looks unlikely for me. I am not giving up hope, though. It would be cool to hang out with some of you once more, and have another excuse to head back up to Québec.

[froggie]

An 11 AM lunch has been done before.

An 11am lunch has been done often, but usually not when you're dealing with a 4:30 sunset.

Saw in the other thread where he mentioned the "makeup" TomTom tour would have to be on a weekday, but if something does get worked out for the day of the Burlington meet, I'd be interested in visiting TomTom then, if it works out that I can travel to the northeast.

Missed that before but just now saw it....I'll see what can be worked out...

[vdeane]

Surely you have time to change the reservation, a couple of months out.

A lot of the rates on hotels.com (like this one) are no-cancellation deals.  But at least I can clinch NY 9N/22 between Westport and Crown Point and VT F-5 in daylight.

[vdeane]

We have tour notes! http://nysroads.com/files/burl13.pdf

[agentsteel53]

.pdf

[froggie]

Well, Jake, if even I can get a tour note .pdf while out to sea...

Meanwhile (also mentioned on the FB page), I've been thinking about the gather location and would like to suggest a change to the park-and-ride next to the I-89/US 2 interchange in Richmond (Exit 11).  This has a few advantages...it's right next to one of the meet points (Checkered House Bridge), it'll be easier to find people than in a shopping mall parking lot, and it's easier access back to I-89, especially for those heading back south, and I'd argue that even for those heading down US 7 south it'd be faster...I have personal experience with the traffic mess trying to get out of University Mall on Saturdays.  It also happens to put us closer to one of the restaurants I was going to suggest for dinner (in Waterbury).

[agentsteel53]

Well, Jake, if even I can get a tour note .pdf while out to sea...

you guys still run programs that were written in Ada, no?   

just because you can work with a shitty format doesn't mean that said format should be encouraged.  I fail to see what the advantage is of going through the effort of making a .pdf, when you can just post here, add img tags as needed, and come up with the same content, formatted equally well, for a lot less effort both in the creation and the reading by others.

[oscar]

Well, Jake, if even I can get a tour note .pdf while out to sea...

you guys still run programs that were written in Ada, no?   

just because you can work with a shitty format doesn't mean that said format should be encouraged.  I fail to see what the advantage is of going through the effort of making a .pdf, when you can just post here, add img tags as needed, and come up with the same content, formatted equally well, for a lot less effort both in the creation and the reading by others.

Huh?  Creating pdfs, such as from a word processing program, is much easier than your workaround if you have "print to Adobe PDF" set in your menu of printers.  So is reading them, if you have some flavor of Adobe Reader installed, which seems nearly universal, at least in the Windows world.   And a pdf is easier than a post on this forum to save to your computer, and print out later when you're offline (good features for a tour itinerary). 

I just don't get the disdain for .pdfs.

[agentsteel53]

Huh?  Creating pdfs, such as from a word processing program, is much easier than your workaround if you have "print to Adobe PDF" set in your menu of printers.  So is reading them, if you have some flavor of Adobe Reader installed, which seems nearly universal, at least in the Windows world.   And a pdf is easier than a post on this forum to save to your computer, and print out later when you're offline (good features for a tour itinerary). 

I just don't get the disdain for .pdfs.

[checks installed printers] nope, "print to PDF" isn't here... is it that standard?

the Adobe reader is indeed universal - it's also a memory hog, crashes often, requires updates for seemingly trivial reasons (that do not cause it to crash less often), and basically hijacks the web browser interface, especially via the keyboard.  it's one thing that the zoom, pan, search, etc are different keys - fair enough, it's a different program - but when it takes over the hotkeys of its wrapper, effectively disabling such basics as CTRL+W (close window), CTRL+T (open a new tab to do other stuff), etc ... then I start to wonder exactly who died and gave it so much power.

it's just a shit program, really.  that's why I disdain it. 

[agentsteel53]

that said, until Flickr puts in a button that says "give me back my old interface!", there is something on the internet that is gratuitously worse than pdf.

[oscar]

[checks installed printers] nope, "print to PDF" isn't here... is it that standard?

My PCs got the .pdf printer added during one of those infernal Adobe updates.  If you're skipping them, that might be the reason.

[Dr Frankenstein]

The PDF printer is only available in the paid version of Adobe Reader, Oscar.

That said, PDF being a standardized format, there's no reason to download Adobe's app either, there's plenty of other readers. Foxit is one; Google Chrome also doesn't run Adobe Reader anymore by default and handles the PDF by itself.

[agentsteel53]

Google Chrome also doesn't run Adobe Reader anymore by default and handles the PDF by itself.

I wonder why Firefox doesn't.  I would bet they could make the interface more consistent.

[NE2]

Firefox does, but it's some sort of mini-Acrobat. I disabled it because I find Foxit slightly less bloated.

[froggie]

And for the Mac users, both Preview and Safari have built-in PDF capability.

The problem with your idea, Jake, at least in my current situation, is that I have an inherently more difficult time getting graphics than I do PDFs and text-based files.  Not to mention that it's a lot easier to print off a PDF file, to scale, than it is a webpage.  I think that was the intent of Val's use of .PDF...it's something that's easily printed for the day of the meet.  I've done it myself for past meets, albeit in Powerpoint.

[hbelkins]

The ability to print directly to a PDF is native in the Mac OS. It's been built into OS X since OS X was introduced.

Prior versions (I had OS 7, OS 8 and OS 9 through the years) did require the pro version of Acrobat to produce PDFs.

[vdeane]

Here's what the tour would look like with the meet-up location changed to the park and ride: http://goo.gl/maps/nFTph

We do push time at the end, so it would be a good idea to start the tour close to noon; the hike on the I-189 stub will provide ample time to catch up anyways (I assume we can walk and talk at the same time?).  Checkered House Bridge can be either at the beginning or end; the mock-up here has it at the beginning.

Moving the meet time to 11:30 is an option as far as I'm concerned, but I don't feel like moving the meet time yet again.

Huh?  Creating pdfs, such as from a word processing program, is much easier than your workaround if you have "print to Adobe PDF" set in your menu of printers.  So is reading them, if you have some flavor of Adobe Reader installed, which seems nearly universal, at least in the Windows world.   And a pdf is easier than a post on this forum to save to your computer, and print out later when you're offline (good features for a tour itinerary). 

I just don't get the disdain for .pdfs.

[checks installed printers] nope, "print to PDF" isn't here... is it that standard?

the Adobe reader is indeed universal - it's also a memory hog, crashes often, requires updates for seemingly trivial reasons (that do not cause it to crash less often), and basically hijacks the web browser interface, especially via the keyboard.  it's one thing that the zoom, pan, search, etc are different keys - fair enough, it's a different program - but when it takes over the hotkeys of its wrapper, effectively disabling such basics as CTRL+W (close window), CTRL+T (open a new tab to do other stuff), etc ... then I start to wonder exactly who died and gave it so much power.

it's just a shit program, really.  that's why I disdain it. 

That is why I don't use Adobe Reader.  Actually, since I don't use Windows at home, I only really use the Linux Mint built-in one, and Google Chrome's, both of which are far superior to Adobe Reader.  In any case, the document in question here is indeep optimized for printing.

The ability to print directly to a PDF is native in the Mac OS. It's been built into OS X since OS X was introduced.

Prior versions (I had OS 7, OS 8 and OS 9 through the years) did require the pro version of Acrobat to produce PDFs.

It's native to most (all? probably not safe to say all since Linux from Scratch is a thing) Linux distros as well.

[Alps]

I'm fortunate to be one of the few users at work with Acrobat Standard. I still have Reader, and it will pop up for secure documents, but man, Standard actually works! I can add and edit text, draw pictures, all that good stuff. It doesn't crash or eat memory. I set it as my default to view all PDFs just to avoid Reader.

[vdeane]

My workplace actually uses Foxit on the computers on the corporate network.