Never give up, never surrender

Now that I live in Jersey I plan on leaving the pub around 9:30. That'll let me catch the 10:15 Hoboken train (home by 11). If I stay a little too late then I'll aim for the 11:15 train (home by midnight). Redundancy planning. There _is_ one more train after that (00:05) but I'll not go for that one.

So tonight... oops, was having such a good time that I missed leaving for the 10:15 (even allowing for the Penn/Secaucus kludge factor). Oops! OK, so I'll get the next one. OK; get the Penn 22:09 train; that's perfect for the Hoboken 22:15 train. Get off at Penn... can't find my ticket! Check all my pockets. Shit! Must have left the ticket on the train. Dash down the stairs and get on the train just as the doors are closing. Eh... I guess I'm going to the next stop. Get back to my seat... no ticket. Huh? Check the carriage. Check the carriage either side. Shit. Damn. Oh... wait... my book is thick... I'd put my ticket inside my book so as not to loose it! Stupid fucking idiot. I didn't need to get back on this train! Now where are we going....

Ah, Newwark Penn. Been here before. OK; 23:45 train goes back to Secaucus, that allows me to get the double-redundancy train (00:15 at Secaucus). Shheeeeesh. Let no one say that my anal-rententive nature isn't without cause; I've essentially missed two trains and can _still_ get home.

Get to Secaucus. Glance at the transfer boards... huh, no 00:15 listed. Hmm... Go to the main concourse transfer and look at the Bergen board... umm, a midnight main line train, but nothing else! Umm.... Go to a display desk and pick up a timetable and check... yup... 00:15... hmm... ask a cop on the platform "Umm, excuse me sir... this timetable says there's a midnight fifteen train but..." and glance at the board. "Oh, it will reset at midnight." "Oh, thanks!"

And I wait. At 00:03 I glance at the cop

At 00:04 he calls out "It's on platform H". Still nothing on the boards. "Thank you!" and I head down.

As I get half way, the display changes... "Platform H 00:15 Port Jervis" Yay!!!

I get to the platform. All looks good.

00:09... the display changes to a secaucus advert. Huh. Well, the displays haven't worked for the past week, so what do I expect.

00:11 I check the timetable board. 00:15 Platform F. *blink* Check again. Platform F. Whuh? Glance over at the other platform... the display is yellow, which is a Bergen Line display. Run up the stairs and across and down to F. Yup; 00:15 Port Jervis. Fuckers change the platform without notice.

00:13 Notice two groups on platform H. Call over "What train do you want?" "Port Jervis" "It's changed platform! It's here now!" They rush over.

Lessons learnt:
1) Having doubly redundant planning is good for personal life as well as for work (otherwise I'd have not got home)
2) Never trust fucking New Jersey Transit; they'll change your train platform for no reason and not tell you!

Feelings:
1) dammit, I fucked up so badly that I misplaced my ticket and had to wander round random train stations
2) I _can_ recover from these mistakes and get home; that's better than a lot of people I know who would panic at the first sign of mistake and start calling for help.

Trust in my own ability to fix things and it worked. I may have got home an hour later than expected (00:45, rather than midnight) but ) I got home under my own power and didn't need to emergency call Tori.

All in all...ambivalent. I'd rather not have got myself in such a situation, but at least I worked my way out of it!

Eeesh

When Polar tell you to return the HRM to them to replace the battery that's because they've really fucked up the internals. To replace the battery involves the watch falling into about 7 pieces. I finally got it back together and it seems to be working OK _except_ one character on the top row sometimes displays the wrong character. Eh... this is a minor fault (eg "SETTING" has a bad second "T") and is probably fixable with a fractional move of the digital display against the motherboard.

However, since the rest of the watch appears to be working OK and it's reading the transmitter and calculating numbers and beeping when it's out of range... I'll live with that minor cosmetic fault. Well, for now :-)