Back on the Bus Again and Threatfire pop-ups!

Today I was back on Metrobus #2 this morning, but it really had not been my plan. As I was leaving the Meridian garage to walk to the Brentwood Metrolink platform, I was suprised to see an Eastbound train sitting there at 7:40, a good nine minutes before it was supposed to arrive (or a good 6 minutes late for the previous train). Before I had to ask the security guard what was up, all the passengers from the train then exited and headed up the ramp towards the bus loop. I had never seen a whole Metrolink train empty, and there must have been 100 people coming out of that train. One of the passengers told me the train was out of service and we would have to take a bus to another station. Luckily, Metrobus #2 was sitting there ready to take off on its regular rounds, so a good 30 or 40 Metrolink passengers crammed onto the bus, still leaving the vast majority standing there waiting. The primary passengers were bound for Wash U, but many were medical campus employees who were hoping to catch a train from Skinker Station. Unfortunately, since that is the same eastbound line, I was guessing they would have better luck just catching the #01 Gold line bus from Mallinckrodt Center heading over to the medical campus. Luckily Wash U is well covered by the various Metrobus routes, since it would be a cold walk in today's 10 degree weather from Skinker over to the Forest Park station!

One thing I have wondered is why the road going by the Best Buy there to the Meridian garage is now called Musick Memorial Drive? I realize now the development was constructed by Musick Construction, but does that mean they get to name the street after the family that runs the construction company. Of whom in the Musick family is the street in memory?

On other news, I have noticed one of my favorite anti-spyware freebie utilities, Threatfire from PC Tools, is starting to add some nagware pop-ups. My wife noticed it first when notifications recommending Spyware Doctor started appearing on our computers. Luckily those messages are easily removed by going to ThreatFire's interface, clicking on Settings, selecting General and then Notices and unchecking the Security Status and Bulletins checkboxes. There, now it will continue working without bugging me. It works well with Avira or Avast! and complements their anti-virus and malware protection. Our department purchased and uses Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 which runs quite well on newer systems with plenty of RAM, but it runs like molasses on older systems with less memory.