Taking the long way home

Sometimes, technology is not the saviour, but the cause of the problem.

I subscribe to a number of feeds to give me travel information on the lines I use. If I get these quick enough I can re-route before becoming snarled up in the mess. I got one such message on my journey tonight.


Title: [Very Severe] First Great Western, Burnham - diverted

Service suspended between London Paddington and Reading due to person hit by a train at Burnham. London Underground are accepting tickets for reasonable routes


"Oh dear", I thought. However, I got this soon enough to get off at Waterloo and re-route.

Now, the problem with these alerts is that there is no time stamp on them. The BBC produce the feed from a constantly updated web page, and doesn't always mark the end of the problem with a cleared message (or if it does, my blackberry misses it as it only checks once an hours). So as soon as I got into the open I logged into some web sites and started to check.

Turns out the problem was cleared hours ago. However, it took me so long to find out that I was in danger of missing my connection at Paddington if I embarked on that route again. So I find myself on a slow train from Waterloo. The main problem with this is that this slow train doesn't stop at my station. No, it becomes fast at just that point! So I'll have to change. Of course, the first time they announce this fact is after the doors have closed and it's too late to do something about it!

All I want to do is go home. I thought technology was meant to work FOR me.

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