• There’s a staffed booth, but the staff can’t make change and you can’t just hand them money.
• You can’t buy a pass with a credit card.
• The turnstiles take only coins.
• There’s a change machine that will give you $1 coins for $5 and $10 bills.
• There’s another machine (marked for BART) that will make change for $20 bills and give you $5 bills.
• There’s a BART ticket machine that has an option to get change for $1 bills.

It worked out to be a 4-step process using 4 different machines (not counting the machine that issues the BART to Muni transfers):

1. Put the $20 bill in the BART bill change machine and get 4 $5 bills.
2. Put the $1 bill in the BART ticket machine to get 4 quarters.
3. Walk across the hall and put one of the $5 bills into the Muni change machine to get 5 $1 coins. Whoops, it won’t take it. Turns out it doesn’t take the new $5 bills. Fortunately, I had gotten one of the old ones.
4. Put the $1 coin and a quarter into the turnstile and hand the paper slip to the agent to let me through.

No wonder people hate using public transit.

While unpacking I found many generations of electronics Stuff: more than a half dozen cell phones, three or four generations of MP3 players, two GPS units and miscellaneous gadgets and adapters of all kinds. Some of it is still in its original, unopened blister pack.

Then there’s the clothing Stuff: shoes I thought would look good but have never worn, souvenir T-shirts and clothes I might be able to fit into again if I went back to my high school weight.

And the kitchen Stuff: a breadmaker that hasn’t been used in three moves, an abundance of pots, shot glasses from around the world, promotional mugs, water bottles, etc.

Way more Stuff than you can stuff into a San Francisco apartment.

Stuff is bad. It costs money to buy, transport, store and dispose of. You worry about it getting lost, stolen or damaged. And there’s the environmental impact of Stuff.

I’ve been relatively good this year about acquiring new Stuff:
•    My electronics purchases have been limited to a digital camera and an iPhone.
•    I didn’t buy any souvenirs for myself, despite having traveled more than I have in any other year. (Not counting a couple of Aloha shirts I picked up in Hawaii.)
•    I didn’t buy any physical media such as CDs or DVDs.

I feel like a bad American for speaking out against buying Stuff, especially given the state of the economy. But I’ve been spending money on experiences, which in the end may be better for the economy. Eating at locally owned restaurants and staying in hotels generates more dollars than buying crap made in China.

And there’s the bonus that I get to see my friends.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans puts Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page at #13 and #14 with a net worth of $15.9 billion for Brin and $15.8 billion for Page.

That’s a bit less than the $20 billion I estimated for the U.S. newspaper industry as whole. But I was being generous and not subtracting out non-newspaper assets.

For example, only 21% of The Washinton Post Co.’s revenue comes from the newspaper division. (Despite the name, it’s mostly a test prep company.) More than half of Belo’s revenue comes from television operations. Belo’s television segment also generates more than double the income. Gannett also has significant broadcast operations.

If you take out those assets, it’s safe to say that each Googler is worth as much the entire U.S. newspaper industry.

Bill Gates could buy the industry several times over with his $57 billion net worth. As could Warren Buffett. He already has a head start: Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns 18% of the Washington Post Co.

Disclosure: I went to high school with Larry. He was talking about googol even back then.

More on: google, journalism, newspapers

Seen post security at Sea-Tac. Someone call the TSA and have their metal knives confiscated!

Kudos to Colgate-Palmolive for responding to a market need: three ounce tubes of toothpaste that fit into baggies that you can get take through airport security. I was pleasantly surprised to find this at Target before a recent trip. (I got tired of buying tube after tube of trial sizes at $1 a pop.)

It must be a fairly new product. The screener at SFO pulled it out to verify the size printed on the tube.

If the TSA were half as responsive to the needs of travelers, the idiocy of the liquid/gel limitations would go away.

More jeers for the TSA for a stupid plan for special laptop cases that may or may not require you to take your laptop out of your bag when going through security. Manufacturers can make bags that may or not meet the guidelines. Bags with zippers, buckles or pockets that can hold things like cables or power adapters likely won’t. As near as I can tell, a laptop condom is the only thing that will for sure meet the guidelines. The only way to know for sure is to send your new laptop bag through the X-Ray machine and see if the screener makes you take the laptop out.

Saw this odd juxtaposition of a Corona manual typewriter and Windows Vista Home Premium at a Noe Valley sidewalk sale today.

Web2.0Expo brought an ad model I hadn’t seen before: wheelchair advertising. The jive ad you see below is on a 6-foot wooden sign attached to a wheelchair.

It seems that every time I walk through an airport, I walk by a plane with a destination more interesting than mine. This is what I saw when I landed in Seattle yesterday. The 757 that brought me there was bound for Kona.

I’m always tempted to walk up to the more interesting gate and hop on. One of these days it’ll happen.