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For today I wanted to cover the ride sharing technologies that seem so popular in other cities and if and when they will be available in Pittsburgh. In my experience Pittsburgh has a notoriously poor taxi culture; that is there are few taxis compared to other cities, the only ones that are available seem to run just in the city core - forget about the suburbs and there is no such thing as calling ahead the night before to arrange a cab the next day. Therefore it would seem to be a good place for the ride sharing companies in that there would not be much competition from taxi companies - because the service they offer stinks.
Another reason these services should come to Pittsburgh is that we have relatively dense cores both downtown (expanding to the North and South sides) and in Oakland (and now expanding to East Liberty) where people really could use the service. We also have many students who occasionally need to go from campus to shopping or the airport.
The regulatory front is another matter. The ride sharing companies have encountered difficulties in other cities due to presumed encroachment on territory regulated by Taxi and Limousine commissions, etc, and I imagine Pittsburgh would likely have the same issue.
Let's start with Uber. Uber is based in San Francisco and started back in 2009. You ask for a ride via a smartphone app and watch as the one responding approaches.
Uber does not list Pittsburgh in its supported cities, although this past summer they had a blog post in their Philadelphia blog about hiring for their Pittsburgh office. Since then nothing. Not sure of they never found anyone to run the office or they are just moving slowly. It is indicative about the way outsiders think of Pittsburgh that they start their Pittsburgh office in Philadelphia, rather than say Washington DC, which is closer and probably has more Pittsburghers living there.
Lyft started out of San Francisco in 2012. It is kind of interesting that in one city, which already had Uber, someone felt that it would be a good idea to start the exact same kind of service. And this worked!
They have a few marketing memes to help people remember them - specifically they have a fist bump thing going and a pink mustache on their cars. Just like Lyft services you summon a driver via a smart phone app.
Lyft does not list Pittsburgh in its supported cities, not could I find any news about Lyft coming to Pittsburgh.
Sidecar is a company based in - wait for it - San Francisco. Wouldn't you think it would make much more sense to start the third identical company doing ride sharing in say, New York, where nobody owns a car and there are still plenty of technical resources. But whatever - I can't find any substantive difference in the service Sidecar offers than that of of Uber or Lyft.
Sidecar being newer supports fewer cities than Uber and Lyft, and no the list of cities does not include in Pittsburgh. Nor is there is any news about this.
So the 'burgh has no ride sharing service, nor is there is any indication that one is coming soon, aside of the glimmer of hope that Uber provides. As I mentioned above I think Pittsburgh is super prime for this kind of expansion with extremely poor taxi service and relatively high urban density.
So there you have it ride sharing services - get out of San Francisco and come to Pittsburgh! The opportunity is here and we need you.
Well I heard from the First Alert people today about disposing of a smoke detector. A woman called me and said to check with my local disposal authorities; that they may not mind if I just dump a small number of them in the trash. However she also mentioned that if you can always send a smoke detector back to First Alert by sending it to:
You should write For Disposal on the Package.
I also mentioned I thought the disposal issue warranted discussion on their web page and she promised to pass this along. My suspicion is that First Alert would rather not get too many units back, and so has neglected to mention the return policy in their FAQs, but hopefully I am wrong about this and it is just an oversight.
A little update on the smoke detector issue. First Alert did have a Twitter account and I sent them a tweet on this issue. They responded by telling me to DM them and someone would call me about "disposal". So far, no one's called yet, interested to see how long that takes and what they wind up saying...
Is it OK to throw away a smoke detector or not?
Seems like a simple question, right? I have a First Alert smoke detector that I have recently taken out of service. I vaguely remember something about smoke detectors containing radioactive material, and so wanting to be a good citizen, I Google "Disposing of Smoke Detectors". Well, I find yes indeed that Ionizing Smoke Detectors have some small amount of Radioactive material in them. This is the kind that I have. This material is not dangerous while in the smoke detector, but is very toxic when ingested. So what to do with them? The consensus seems to be among all the state and Federal EPA sites I find is that you should contact the manufacturer. Mine is a First Alert which is the market leader. So I go to the First Alert website. They have 10 or 12 FAQs about smoke detectors - nothing about disposal. I do a search of the First Alert website - Nothing about disposal.
Gee Wiz! I can't be the first person with this question.
I can only assume that "No, it is not a good thing to just throw Ionizing smoke in the general trash" and "First Alert wants no part in helping you get rid of them". Come on, First Alert, at least put something in your FAQs! Maybe I will try and see if they have Twitter account.
I wound up throwing the smoke detector in a drawer and I guess I will figure out something sometime down the road. Maybe I can get a few more and create a sculpture!
The gas price situation resolved itself by all the prices going to $3.69 or so. Guess I should have bought gas yesterday!
If I can believe the advertisement that just went by on TV Despicable Me 2 is the number one movie in the country. I have already seen it twice - life with kids - and while it was OK, I was a little disapointed. The original one was very funny and innovative; there was a lot less surprising in this one. I still like the minions, the gang of little yellow fellows which help the title character with his plans.
Very interesting to me that gas prices here in Western Pennsylvania are varying by as much as 50 cents from station to station. Just this morning I have seen prices anywhere from $3.29/gallon to $3.79. This is very unusual in that I have observed that local prices usually are only about 10 cents different from place to place.
The only explanation I can offer for this phenomenon is that I belive crude oil prices recently spiked but then fell. So perhaps some of the stations are currently passing on the spike to their consumers and others are "eating" it, knowing that it will pass soon. Not sure if this is because the refineries did the same to some of the local stations, or if it is decided on an individual station basis or what.
I am going to start writing a blog here, mostly just to keep practicing my web page creation skills, but also to note anything that I find interesting. Following the practice of my favorite blogger Michael Covington (whose blog can be found here), I am calling this my daily notebook, rather than a blog.
These days if you just wanted to write a blog I guess it is easier to just use wordpress or typepad or something like that, but since I am trying to also practice HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc I think it's better to just work in the raw, which in my case at the moment means typing this into a notepad window. I am going to confine my observations here to things that I think other people that I don't know will find interesting which means there will be nothing about what me or my family are doing. Rather I will be discussing technology, baseball, movies, books - things like that.
We'll see how it goes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if nobody ever reads this but me and the Google spider.
With the All-Star game hosted by the Mets this year, the New York Times did a nice article on the 1964 All Star game also hosted by the Mets, in what I believe was the inaugural year of Shea stadium. The Mets themselves were around for two additional years, having played their first game in 1962. Anyway the interesting thing for a Pittsburgh Pirates' fan was the great pictures of Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, both in the dugout and running out onto the field to great the winning run. Bill Mazeroski was also mentioned in the article but I don't see him in the pictures. Also clearly visible in the pictures and quoted in the article was Pittsburger and Pirate great Dick Groat, who by 1964 was a Saint Louis Cardinal where he led the league in assists.