Monday, April 5, 2010

Day 325 11:56PM

I'm well aware that I haven't posted in almost a month and for that I apologize to my avid follower. I've been freelancing and consulting which makes this blog both difficult to do and kind of a farce, since I am somewhat employed. That being said, I am still mostly unemployed and certainly live like it so we press on.

It's late but I wanted to get in a new Employed Dave vs. Let Go Dave: I've recently become aware of the fact that I spend an unreasonable amount of my mental capacity on trying to figure out exactly how much money I need to put on my Metro Card so that it winds down to zero. For non-New Yorkers - and you rich fucks who stay above ground - a subway ride in NYC costs $2.25, a somewhat reasonable amount (don't let anybody wax nostalgic about the time it was a buck as that was also the time when subway vigilantes with tiny mustaches, Coney Island gangs with awesome vests, and Turk 182 owned the underground). When you put $8 or more on your card, NYC Transit sees fit to bonus you a little cash and so you receive a 15% bonus (for example, a $20 purchase gives you $23 on your card). This is where I stumble: If I in fact purchase that $20 card and use it all the way down I still have $.50 leftover. Employed Dave would let that $.50 go, chalking it up to a win for the MTA; Let Go Dave refuses to allow breakage in his already broken state and has spent, on more than one occasion, about five minutes in front of the vending machine with his credit card, his Droid calculator app, and a tiny little Asian grad student trying to figure out if it is worth it just to throw $4 on the card for two trips and no bonus or invest $9.35 which, with my 15% gets bumped up to $10.75 plus the $.50 to $12.25 which equals almost exactly five trips and one "insufficient fare, please swipe card at this turnstile again" upper thigh bruise moment in the near future.

No comments:

Post a Comment