crschmidt

crschmidt, 1 year ago to random

Google today announced that the board has approved $70B of stock buybacks.

Stock buybacks are not considered a universal good: "Some economists and investors argue that using excess cash to buy up stocks in the open market is the opposite of what companies should be doing, which is reinvesting to facilitate growth (as well as job creation and capacity)."

At Google that might mean things like (for example) "Choosing not to fire 12,000 employees."

crschmidt, 6 months ago to random

As of this week, I have loaned out E-Bikes from the Camberville E-Bike Lending Library for a total of 52 weeks of borrowing time since the start of October.

Given the typical price of renting an e-bike in the community is $400/week, this means that I have saved members of the community $20,000 in rental fees.

crschmidt, 2 months ago to random

Today, @Streetsblog published an article about E-Bike Libraries, and I could not be more pleased with how it came out. It did a great job of summarizing the work that we do in the library, and what the experience of running an e-bike lending library is like, why we do it, and how it's done.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/03/18/how-and-why-to-start-a-neighborhood-e-bike-library

crschmidt, 11 months ago to random

In addition to the NYC Air quality being terrible (it is dangerously bad), it's also very very orange outside. It looks like someone dropped a sepia IG filter over the whole city, even if you can see far enough to see something. More cameras linked from the EarthCam feed. https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/worldtradecenter/?cam=skyline_g

A graph of AQI over 2 days shows a huge increase from ~200 to ~400 over the past two hours.

crschmidt, 2 months ago to random

The Camberville E-Bike Lending Library just crossed two years of bike loan-days since October 1st, with 4200 tracked miles on the odometers of the library bikes.

The first loan from the library was a year ago this month, but I didn't get serious about tracking loans until October. Since then, more than 144 different loans have happened... and more than 45 people bought e-bikes after borrowing one!

crschmidt, 6 days ago to random

Aventon is having a memorial day sale: $200 more off all their bikes.

There are two that I'd say are a hearty recommend at this price point:

• Soltera.2: Basic hybrid bike @ $800
• Abound: 2-kid cargo bike with necessary accessories included @ $1600

Save $50 extra with https://www.talkable.com/x/7M4wX3 .

I've helped put 40+ families on the Abound in the last 6 months: it's a great entry-level cargo bike, and this is probably the best deal you'll see on an entry-level cargo bike.

crschmidt, 11 months ago to random

This weekend, I had a houseguest who I took out on an ebike ride. We stuck almost exclusively to off-street paths, with a few connections on physically separated infrastructure, and did an easy 20 mile trip, hitting the Somerville Community Path, Esplanade, Cambridge-Watertown Greenway, Fitchburg Cutoff and Alewife Linear Park.

On ebikes, this 20 mile loop took 90 minutes at a leisurely pace.

https://www.strava.com/routes/3108448799282593920

crschmidt, 11 months ago to random

Tonight, Cambridge passed an updated Building Emissions ordinance requiring building emissions reductions, including emissions for large buildings to be reduced to 40% of a 2018 baseline by 2030, and to 0% by 2035.

Carbon emissions from buildings that fail to meet this target will pay a fine of $234/ton (adjusted annually by the City), creating a strong incentive to achieve serious carbon reductions.

https://twitter.com/johnhawkinson/status/1673500657225981953

crschmidt, 8 months ago to random

Last night, I went out to Pintastic, an annual New England pinball convention (Thanks to a mention from @nathanw). I wandered around for 4 hours playing freeplay pinball games.

I had missed out on the modern pinball revival: I knew Jersey Jack was making games again starting 2013, but in the past few years it seems that there's a half dozen different folks besides Stern making games.

My love is 70s electromechanical games and late 80s/early 90s solid states, but I mostly just love pinball.

crschmidt, 8 months ago to random

Housing discussions on Twitter are cursed and every time I am tempted to respond to them I am reminded that having housing discussions on Twitter has probably never changed somebody's mind, and so I don't need to do anything to change people's minds, just connect to the people who already agree with me so that we can do more to connect with the people who aren't arguing on Twitter.

90% of the people who vote in your local municipal elections have never read a tweet about housing politics.

crschmidt, 3 months ago to random

New Addition to the Camberville E-Bike Lending Library: The Tow Monster, from #Schleptastic https://schleptastic.com/

This accessory adds the ability to tow a bike, and I'm adding it to the library to let folks who have a kid bike to haul explore; and also to explore the utility of being able to tow a bike with a bike.

crschmidt, 2 months ago to random

Good morning!

This morning, I handed off three e-bikes to borrowers from the library, one each from RadPowerBikes, Velotric, and Aventon.

All three went to comfortable cyclists looking to figure out if an e-bike will help them expand the range of trips they take by bike, replacing current car trips for things like longer errands.

This is one way we replace car miles on e-bikes: by targeting the trips that are far enough to be annoying on a normal bike, in the 2-4 mile range.

crschmidt, 2 months ago to random

Cambridge Bike Safety will be hosting an event about starting a Bike Bus on March 27th. RSVP form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSehieMYDYSzBbMAts5B0U5KKuG8Lr8J2TY5FuIs14B-pL5k6w/viewform

crschmidt, 3 months ago to random

If all goes to plan at the moment, this coming week, I will have 8 of 10 bikes out on loan from the Camberville E-Bike Lending Library; this includes all of the non-cargo bikes.

I was worried that I would have trouble keeping the library active throughout the winter months, but despite the overall weather, there's a lot of folks still interested in including biking in their regular routines.

crschmidt, 4 months ago to random

I'm looking at changing jobs. Experience in backend development, geo tech, networking, logs analysis, search, etc.

Currently a Senior SWE (L5) at Google; at most other companies I expect that I would be looking at a Staff SWE role, given my experience and expertise. I'm probably not going to make the jump without a comparable comp package. (My comp package at Google is about average for an L5 SWE, at $350k; I recognize that prices me out of roles at most companies without a big title jump.)

crschmidt, 1 month ago to random

I made a pivot table of people who are currently waiting for each e-bike in the e-bike lending library and ... it's a lot.

Thankfully, it's also a more event distribution than I had thought! Like, given that I have 58 people in line, having no particular bike with more than 9 in line is pretty good!

crschmidt, 29 days ago to random

A brief vignette of a recent lending experience from the E-bike Lending Library, as captured by a borrower.

crschmidt, 13 days ago to random

today, i rode a bike from the Camberville E-Bike Library to the Roslindale library; picked up a trike from there to take to our maintenance partner (NEMO), picked up a bike from NEMO and went to the office, left the office to come back to NEMO, went from NEMO to the Rozzie E-Bike Library again, then took a bluebike e-bike back from Rozzie to Somerville.

This is what it looks like to be your own inter-library loan program.

crschmidt, 2 months ago to random

If you're going to run an e-bike rebate program, it's probably important to pick a goal that you want to hit with it, because what your goal is should drive how the rebate program is designed.

Is your goal to provide economic benefit to low income households? Is it to reduce vehicle miles traveled (my recommendation)? Is it to get more bikes on the road and build a mass movement? (rebates probably not the right tool)

crschmidt, 28 days ago to random

There are 295 people signed up for public comment at the Cambridge City Council tonight, most of whom will be speaking on a policy order to delay the city's implementation of bike lanes.