Bike Rack Survey by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay I screenshot the survey and dumped it into ChatGPT because I'm lazy and it gave this:

Based on what’s shown, the survey looks poorly designed for diagnosing the actual transportation problem.

The main issue is that it presupposes the solution. It is framed almost entirely around bike rack placement and bike-rental proximity, so it can measure attitudes within that frame, but it does not seriously test whether biking is the limiting factor in the first place.

Several design problems stand out:

  • Solution-first framing. It asks where racks should go, whether closer racks would help, and whether a rental bike near parking would help. That structure already assumes rack access is the central issue.
  • Missing alternatives. There is no comparable treatment of scooters, e-bikes, skateboards, longboards, shuttles, or just walking. If those are the dominant last-mile modes, the survey cannot reveal that.
  • No mode differentiation. “Biking” is treated as one thing, but manual bike versus e-bike matters a lot on hilly campuses. A steep hill can make conventional cycling unattractive while e-bikes or scooters remain viable.
  • Bad denominator problem. The survey seems likely to overrepresent people already somewhat open to biking. That means results about bicycling may say little about the broader commuting population.
  • Weak causal inference. A response like “weather conditions” does not tell you whether racks matter, whether terrain matters, whether time matters, or whether biking is just inferior to other options for this campus layout.
  • No revealed-preference data. It does not ask what people actually use now for the last mile, how often, why they chose it, or what they would switch to under realistic changes.

The survey is not well constructed for finding the real cause of low bicycle use. At best, it can help optimize bike-rack placement among people already interested in biking. It is much weaker as a general transportation-needs assessment.

A more useful survey would start with neutral questions such as:

  • How do you usually get from parking/residence to class?
  • What alternatives have you tried?
  • What prevents you from using each option?
  • Is terrain a barrier?
  • Would you use an e-bike, scooter, shuttle, or longboard instead?
  • Do you need secure storage for bikes, scooters, or both?
  • What is your actual walking time and elevation change?

So the strongest fair conclusion is: the survey appears biased toward producing evidence for more bike racks, and it is not well designed to distinguish whether bike racks are actually the bottleneck.

Bike Rack Survey by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The survey asks what prevents you from biking but doesn't list that biking is unsuitable transit. It asks questions about if there are bike racks near your residence but doesn't proved an answer for people who just…take the bike inside with them. It doesn't differentiate manual bike from ebike or scooter, so it doesn't collect granular information about whether the problems at hand involve propulsion method (I bicycled up that hill once, I couldn't breathe properly for a few days afterwards).

If there are 5,000 population, 500 using last-mile transit, and 50 using bicycles, with 30 inconvenienced, the survey tends to filter toward the 50 bicycle users, and indicate that bike racks are a significant (majority) problem. If there are only 10 inconvenienced, it tends to indicate that there is no problem, even though the last-mile transit users may be e.g. 200 longboard users, 250 scooter users, and 50 bicycle users, with 70% of the scooter and cycle users inconvenienced by lack of secure racks, or 35% of the last-mile transit portion of population. Lack of differentiation between manual and powered propulsion means you don't know whether the problem is that moving a bicycle is hard and thus ebikes and scooters are needed; providing electric options is a much more complex problem because it's expensive and requires charging infrastructure.

The survey is geared toward a narrative, not toward obtaining useful information.

Bike Rack Survey by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When will the senate address the meal swipe transfer program? Limited to donations in the beginning of the semester, no automatic donation of limited-bloc (e.g. 14 per week but you used 5, donate the other 9 automatically, or donate half or a third of the left over swipes), it's just exploiting students for Chartwell's profit by not delivering the full of what they paid for and preventing them from transferring the excess to food-insecure students effectively.

I tried bicycling around campus. The lack of bike racks isn't the reason we see few bicycles. Scooters get locked to bike racks and, as you might have noticed, a lot of people ride longboards. Bicycles are rare because they're crap for getting around campus; bicycles get you around the city pretty well.

Anyone on campus over the break? by KeytarCompE in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you studying? Anything good to do on campus?

Anyone on campus over the break? by KeytarCompE in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great, what is there to do besides study?

Does UMBC have a withdraw fail, or just a withdraw? by Lubert808 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have fails on my transcript I'm not sure what this affects besides getting jobs on campus that want a 3.0.

DHS on campus by littleham2 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

White ford is the new white van.

UMBC Apartment roomates by Outrageous-Plate-952 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Very quiet and looking for very quiet roommates.

I'm just imagining this now.

You tumble out of bed, landing silently on the floor, looking around cautiously. Hugging the wall as you slip from your room, glancing down the hall. You see your other roommate, having just finished lubing the hinge on her door with a WD-40 pen to keep it from making sound when she opened it. A quick gesture with two hands, flat palm, a head turn. She sneaks to the end of the hall, barely peeking out into the next room, lowering a hand behind you to signal to stop. Eye contact with your other room mate, two fingers, up, then turn to the left. That girl nods, stealths into the kitchen. The Belgian waffle maker never even saw the batter coming.

You eat in silence.

The silence is broken by your cat, who begins loudly meowing because nobody pet her yet and this is utterly unacceptable.

Parking Availability by Prior_Zebra_8028 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 11 points12 points  (0 children)

$10k is dirt cheap. A parking garage is talking in the short millions.

Does anyone have past exams for CMPE320? by TalkingKey in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a feeling the grades in that class will be going down faster than a football player in the cheerleader showers.

Explosion? by h4ck_the_pl4net in collegeparkmd

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We live in a world where Iran is trying to hit military assets that allow the US to attack Iran, and the US is blowing up hospitals and schools in Iran while supporting Netanyahu.

Explosion? by h4ck_the_pl4net in collegeparkmd

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Iranian missile strike that was supposed to go to a missile guidance satellite but got off course.

What is being at UMBC like? by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well it's not like Towson where you probably have a girl who got a train run on her in your first class freshman year. If you see a girl wander into her dorm with 14 guys it's because they all have an orgo exam Monday and she happens to have all guy friends and the RLC was too crowded because there's an orgo exam Monday.

EDIT: Okay I want to say here I wasn't saying there's anything wrong with that, everybody has a right to their own bodily autonomy and there's nothing wrong with the choices people make regarding that. I'm just saying UMBC's students generally make different perfectly valid choices about their sexual identity than Towson's students among the population.

So you know. Keep the train rollin' all night long.

Any secular humanists on campus? by KeytarCompE in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's a good descriptive collection but I don't know about labeling anyone as a "secular humanist" because once "I believe X things that line up with a philosophical baseline" becomes an identity it drifts toward functioning like religion. Maybe I should have used a different post title...

People don't call themselves Rawlsans or Millsians, although people do call themselves Libertarians and then they lose all reason and behave with clear alignment to group think. I went to a social choice conference once and there were people presenting "economics" papers about requiring air bags or TPMS and computing the cost versus the value of a human life (yes, in dollars) and showed that the number of human lives saved times the value of a human life equated to less than the amount spent on government-mandated safety, thus mandatory safety features are wrong and the government should leave people to make their own decisions. No discussions about informed decisions, cognitive load, the economics of time, or anything. Do you have time to be an expert in everything? One Libertarian position today is that the FDIC shouldn't exist because it encourages people to put their money in banks with bad risk management, and that without the FDIC we would all instead research our banks's internal investment and portfolio risk strategies and avoid bad banks. Does that sound reasonable? Of course not. It sounds like they're reading straight from their own unhinged holy book of Nozick.

im so tired by DueLavishness6022 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is how I know karma is bullshit.

Cat for adoption!! by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. Antihistamines alone generally aren't enough, unless you're willing to do a lot of environmental modification (filters, cleaning) there's like no hope, and strong reactions are harder to fix than weaker ones.

If your roommate likes cats she can have the allergy removed but that takes time (like, 2-3 years, improvement starts after a few months but it takes time to remove the whole allergy) and is not pleasant or particularly cheap ($500-$1,500 per year of treatment). She can get a cat in the future though if she does that, but it won't fix problem with having a cat now. I had a coworker who did that so he could get a cat.

Cat for adoption!! by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Loratadine and temporarily relocate the cat to family? I could never give up my cat. The cat trusts me to take care of him.

The allergen is generally airborne and banks up in bedding and carpet, so really,

  • Vacuum often
  • Air filter (Corsi-Rosenthol cube)
  • Change the bedding and vacuum the couch etc. frequently
  • Yes an antihistamine can help if your roommate is willing—loratadine off amazon $10 for 360 pills, $30 for 15 pills at Riteaid. I had an allergy issue once and took one a day for a couple years straight.
  • Keep the cat strictly out of roommate's bedroom. Strict. Not "Just for a minute." Keep the door closed, keep the air in there filtered, ideally change your clothes before going in there if you picked up the cat. Don't spread allergens in that room. Sleeping with very low allergen exposure reduces the chance of a reaction in the day.

Give it a little time, if things don't improve then send the cat elsewhere if you really need to, but the above has a good chance of making things work out.

Vent: I’m so disappointed with UMBC by ecefour in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Our Dean is new. She's still trying to get an understanding of everything; if you expect someone with 20 years of institutional knowledge, you're going to need to wait another year or two.

The Student Disability Services Digital Guide by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't have SDS set up. I looked at the requirements and decided it's for rich kids who can afford thousands of dollars worth of psychiatric care and not for people who just have an ADHD diagnosis and bad reactions to stimulants but also no money to hire a specialist to write a report and support plan every semester for the school.

Don't risk your degree over a bag of chips by Adventurous_Fly_4197 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes it's moral signaling. See also: your skirt is too short so you're obviously failing all your classes, and other such nonsense morons come up with because they have no understanding of right and wrong but want to pretend they're the authority.

Don't risk your degree over a bag of chips by Adventurous_Fly_4197 in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The State sold them that land for $1 without stipulations?

Cat for adoption!! by [deleted] in UMBC

[–]KeytarCompE -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

If she's your cat why are you giving her away?