My crazy home town of Vancouver BC Canada... In 1986 I was riding this bombastic "Sky train" that BOASTED itself as being FULLY ROBOTIC and needing no humans to 'drive' it (or be employed to do so and thus 'save money'), including the use of a HORRIBLE female sounding synth voice to announce stations, which is still in use 32 years later (Imagine hearing 1986 synth voice in 2018! "Retro"!!!) Within one year of operation the computer that runs the entire system became known as "F.R.E.D." due to its constant glitches that required a complete shut down of all city trains (not just the problem one) and 're-booting' them to fix one issue, such as a pigeon landing on a track... that was built high up... where pigeons fly and rest and so forth. *sighs* I'm sure you can figure out what F.R.E.D. stands for; It is uttered every time the 'Electronic Device' acts 'Retarded'. I'd like to thank my old friend who worked for Skytrain who leaked to me this 'code name' for the entire system back in 1986. :> With some years better than others, the last few have been a total nightmare of constant stoppages and well over-due track maintenance causing me to utter "Thanks for nothing, once again, Fred!" many times. You could get media reports of people waiting so long for a crew to arrive to RESCUE THEM from being half way between two stations that they would break out of the train and walk along the sky track by the power-lines just to get to a bathroom to finally be able to urinate (in a legal sense). If the speaker system was cracking up I'd say "Need a cough drop, Fred?" Some passengers would laugh.
Over all it's an OK system... when it works... far better than the buses here in Vancouver, which are slowly improving (hard to believe!). The female voice for a robot named FRED was perfect though, as a gender bending piece of finicky temperamental hardware and software combined. But today I was told told of this plan.
http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/seth-rogen-skytrain-announcements-vancouver-2018 "It’s official: Seth Rogen to voice Vancouver’s SkyTrain announcements" So now the vocal gender will finally match the name F.R.E.D. and yet nothing else needs be changed! :> A perfect match. "Shut up, Fred!" ^^
My crazy home town of Vancouver BC Canada... In 1986 I was riding this bombastic "Sky train" that BOASTED itself as being FULLY ROBOTIC and needing no humans to 'drive' it (or be employed to do so and thus 'save money'), including the use of a HORRIBLE female sounding synth voice to announce stations, which is still in use 32 years later (Imagine hearing 1986 synth voice in 2018! "Retro"!!!) Within one year of operation the computer that runs the entire system became known as "F.R.E.D." due to its constant glitches that required a complete shut down of all city trains (not just the problem one) and 're-booting' them to fix one issue, such as a pigeon landing on a track... that was built high up... where pigeons fly and rest and so forth. *sighs* I'm sure you can figure out what F.R.E.D. stands for; It is uttered every time the 'Electronic Device' acts 'Retarded'. I'd like to thank my old friend who worked for Skytrain who leaked to me this 'code name' for the entire system back in 1986. :> With some years better than others, the last few have been a total nightmare of constant stoppages and well over-due track maintenance causing me to utter "Thanks for nothing, once again, Fred!" many times. You could get media reports of people waiting so long for a crew to arrive to RESCUE THEM from being half way between two stations that they would break out of the train and walk along the sky track by the power-lines just to get to a bathroom to finally be able to urinate (in a legal sense). If the speaker system was cracking up I'd say "Need a cough drop, Fred?" Some passengers would laugh.
Over all it's an OK system... when it works... far better than the buses here in Vancouver, which are slowly improving (hard to believe!). The female voice for a robot named FRED was perfect though, as a gender bending piece of finicky temperamental hardware and software combined. But today I was told told of this plan. http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/seth-rogen-skytrain-announcements-vancouver-2018 "It’s official: Seth Rogen to voice Vancouver’s SkyTrain announcements" So now the vocal gender will finally match the name F.R.E.D. and yet nothing else needs be changed! :> A perfect match. "Shut up, Fred!" ^^