Why.

You are approaching a traffic light that serves multiple lanes in one direction. The left lane is a left turn only lane and will have a protected left-turn arrow to move traffic efficiently in that direction. The middle lane has a straight-through lane and the light will turn green for your direction after a set amount of time has elapsed for those turning left. The right lane is a right turn only lane and there is no restriction as to when you can turn right, other than the approaching of other traffic headed in your intended direction.

You are in the left hand turn lane waiting for your protected arrow when you realize that you wanted to go straight through instead of turning left. What do you do in this situation?

1. Proceed to turn left as originally planned and then go around the nearest block or find a turn-around to get back on your desired course.

2. Jimmy your car to the right and try to get in front of the other vehicles waiting to go straight when the light turns green, potentially blocking those behind you that are waiting to turn left with the protected arrow but hopefully getting enough out of the way and waving a sheepish “thank you” to the person that you’re now blocking in each lane.

3. Drive straight through the intersection when the protected arrow comes on, flipping off the opposing traffic that is turning left on the left turn arrow they see in tandem with the one facing you.

Would anyone like to guess what the car in front of me did a few moments ago?

I am currently on hold with Time Warner Cable. Our internet is down again and has been down since 0600 this morning. The lights are indicating that the modem is not receiving a signal. We have rebooted everything multiple times. I even had Jamie boot random household appliances just to be safe. The dryer is working just fine, by the way.

Time Warner is obsessed with rebooting the modem. I understand the reason for their obsession but their new phone automation system gives you just three simple steps to reboot the modem and then refuses to do anything else until you have hung and called back after rebooting the modem. Oh, quick tip, screaming WHY????? at the drugged out robot woman doesn’t help. And I don’t know what kind of computer she is doing her informational lookups on, but it sounds like she’s banging on an IBM Selectric with her elbows and waiting for the ticker tape to punch an appropriate number of holes. Perhaps that’s why she sounds stoned.

I tried to avoid calling into Time Warner completely by using their chat system on my alternate Internet connection. I did this on two occasions, Matt first told me that my modem was no longer registered. I did it again when John told me that he couldn’t help me and that I would have to call an escalated support level with a case number.

And that’s why I’m on hold.

~~~

I have just finished the call.

“Hi Christopher, I was told to call this number. I have a case number if that will help.”

“The case number doesn’t really do much for us, what’s your home phone number?”

Mind you, the stoned woman looked up my account and determined who I was, where I was and what I wanted using her IBM Selectric all based on my phone number and then automagically transferred me to Christopher, who needed my home phone number to proceed any further.

Oh, he needed the last four digits of my social security number. Not to sound overly hostile, I avoided the “it’s none of your business” standard response that I usually use and opted to append my four digits with, “I look forward to Time Warner supplementing my governmental entitlements since they have my social security number for no reason since it’s not legally an identification number.” My digits are my business.

Christopher took a hit from robo-woman’s bong and said, “Wha?”

Christopher told me to reboot the modem. I blinked my eyes rapidly for five seconds and I said “all done.” He said that I did good (even though I was 56 miles from the modem, sitting in the Jeep near work) and that he did see that I had rebooted the modem but he couldn’t get the modem to respond. I thanked him for the encouragement and worked my blinking eyes into a samba with a twitching nose. It’s all about the magic, apparently.

Christopher then asked if we had done anything with the modem recently. I resisted the urge to say that many kinky things happen in our basement but none of them involved the cable modem and instead I opted to say that no, it’s just been sitting there doing its thing.

He determined that a tech needed to come out to the house. I braced myself for their next available date being in 2014 but was very surprised to learn that they would be out to the house today between 3 and 5 p.m.

Good thing we have people at home today!

I thanked Christopher for his time by offering him a cookie. He politely declined but said that if no one showed up not to panic because they’d be there some time.

While it is very obvious that I am thoroughly a geek, I don’t know how obvious it is that I DESPISE internet connectivity failures. As one of our more expensive luxuries at The Manor (we pay for the “Ultimate Internet Experience” which equates to pr0n without video hesitation), I expect our service to be up and running 99.99999% of the time. If Ma Bell could keep dial tone to the farther reaches of our country in middle of the last century and meet that uptime criteria, there is no reason that 21st Century technology can not follow that precedent. Like Steve Jobs, I expect perfection from my technology and I am vastly disappointed when my expectations are not met.

Let’s hope that the repairman is on time and helpful.

So sad to hear about the passing of Whitney Houston this evening. She was an incredible vocalist with an amazing talent. It’s such a shame that she fell off her path and didn’t find her way back on it.

She will be missed. RIP Whitney.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Nothing demonstrates the progress of modern technology like the appliances found in today’s modern home. Where once sat a stainless steel dishwasher capable of removing even the deepest of grime from your grandmother’s china, now sits a molded piece of plastic that gently caresses the small, bite-sized piece of spaghetti that has survived not one, not two but three trips through the dishwasher. To improve the quality of the cleaning cycle, one must upgraded the firmware and then reboot the dishwasher, a task once reserved for the machines that launched nuclear missiles towards our enemies.

Ah, progress.

My mother and father had the same washing machine for nearly 20 years. Made by Westinghouse, this washing machine ran as many as six loads in one day and, aside from the Great Flooding Incident of 1976, ran flawlessly up until it finally gave out and spit grease all over a load of clothes. It’s successor was made by General Electric and served for in it’s place for over a decade.

We are on our second washing machine in our home. The first piece of plastic lasted seven years, but should have been replaced two years ago when the bearings in the spinning mechanism went out. I looked into getting the bearings replaced but the fine folks at Fridgidaire advised me that the project would be costly and in the long run it would be cheaper to just replace the washing machine. I decided to just wait until the dang thing spit grease; when the washer was on spin you could hear it clear out to the road on a hot, summer day. I’m sure the neighbors were amused.

Our current washing machine, a General Electric, stands tall with the dryer on it’s shoulders in the laundry room. The length of a cycle can vary from 30 minutes (on speed wash) to two hours and 45 minutes on the “anti-bacterial cycle”, unless the load becomes unbalanced before the final spin. Then the washer will tumble and churn and think about spinning until it feels everything is just right. The current record for determining the precise environment required for a spin cycle is nearly four hours. It counts down to 7 minutes, then up to 9 minutes then down to 7 minutes then up to 10 minutes. When one notices this is happening, you must press “pause”, wait for permission to open the door, rearrange things and add or subtract an item from the drum to make it happy, stick your head in the damp environment to look around and see that all parts of the drum are covered evenly with soggy underwear, slam the door shut and then press “pause” again. The door will lock, unlock, lock, unlock, lock, unlock and then finally lock again. Water will spurt for just a moment until the washer gets it’s wits about itself and realizes it should be emptying and not filling the tub, then it’ll juggle the hard work you did making sure the underwear is in the right place before starting the whole add and subtract minutes from the time as it’s trying to spin trick.

The old washing machines would just make a banging noise and you’d reach in and get everything in the right place and then send it off on it’s merry way again.

This is progress?

Perhaps our washer needs a firmware upgrade and reboot.

I am going to preface this blog entry by stating that I think talking on your cell phone is not the smartest thing to do while you’re driving and that sending a text message (or doing updates, etc) while driving is just downright stupid.

The NTSB announced yesterday that nearly a year after a multi-car pileup in Missouri as the result of a 19-year old sending 11 text messages in the 11 minutes prior to the crash, they are recommending that all states immediately institute laws banning the use of electronic devices by drivers of motor vehicles. Electronic devices would include everything except GPS units or the use of a cell phone in an emergency.

Here is a prime example of what is wrong with our government. I think the NTSB’s recommendation is a bunch of grandstanding hysterics. The NTSB is going down the path of trying to legislate common sense. It’s never a good path to take.

Let’s consider this:

1. Entering an address into a GPS unit is no different than sending a text message, yet one is perfectly fine and the other would be against the law. In fact, entering an address into a GPS unit is usually more difficult to accomplish than sending a text message.

2. GPS units are usually mounted to the windshield. This is unfortunate, because they often obstruct the view of the motorist, creating an unnecessary blind spot. Yet, this is okay.

3. Some folks (including me) use the GPS functionality of their iPhone for navigation purposes. I am not about to go purchase another electronic device to keep in my car when I don’t have to, yet using the iPhone would be illegal because it’s not a dedicated GPS unit.

Let’s go into this a little bit further:

1. A man can no longer shave with an electric razor because it could probably be considered an electronic device, yet a woman could still put on makeup while driving because that’s manual all the way. I’ve mentioned my dislike of men using electric razors before so you know that I’m not defending either activity in this case. Another broad piece of recommended legislation that doesn’t make any sense.

2. Wanda Wigout can still get a hot cup of coffee from McDonalds, ignore the warnings printed all over the cup and proceed to dump the hot contents of the cup all over her va-jay-jay as she tries to balance said cup of coffee on her knee. Since the coffee cup is not electronic, there’s nothing wrong with that, other than a burned va-jay-jay. And quite frankly I don’t care about her va-jay-jay, but I bet she would be distracted and could easily smack into another vehicle while screaming about the pain she is feeling in her nether regions.

3. The recommendation includes the banning of MP3 and CD players but allows the use of radios, which is a hoot to me because apparently you have to listen to one station at one volume because adjusting anything would be against the law. You are not to be distracted by changing the track or anything like that.

3a. Does that mean that we will get a payment from the government to have the CD and/or MP3 player removed from the dash of our car? What do I do when SiriusXM flashes the artist and title of the song I would like to dance to but dare not do, do I ignore it? Do I risk hitting the nob to blank the display? Do I shake both hands in the air and silently say “help me, help me?”

4. As a roadgeek I can apparently still take photos and movies of road signs and highways as long as I am using a film based camera, but I can’t do it if it’s a digital device.

5. If I were a smoker, I could still smoke and drive with one hand and not be in trouble in anyway for doing so.

6. We’ve already covered Ms. Wigout’s va-jay-jay, but consider that eating a Whopper and smacking kids in the back seat of the car would still be okay, because no one is electronic unless I adopted a robot.

7. It is apparently perfectly fine to drive by looking around the flailing ass of a random Irish Setter.

8. What happens to On*Star? Do I risk pushing the button built into my review mirror or do I drive the car into a guide rail to get their attention?

35 states already have legislation banning both hands on cell phone conversational and text messaging use by a driver. These laws are ignored by a good majority of the driving public and attempts to enforce these laws are feeble at best. Why does the NTSB think that making a national legislative recommendation such as this going to get any sort of special consideration?

Look it, as I’ve said before, I think that when you’re behind the wheel you should be concentrating on your driving and doing little else. I’m not afraid to risk scratching my nuts once in a while and quite frankly I can handle having brief conversations while using my headset. In fact, if you’ve talked to me on the phone while I’m driving recently, you’ll note that I precede the conversation with “I’m talking on my headset!” I am so tired of our government trying to legislate anything and everything down to the lowest common denominator of intelligence. And quite frankly, this is none of the federal government’s business, it is a matter that belongs to the states. If I don’t like the laws in one state, I always have the option to move.

The NTSB will probably get their way by conning someone to withhold federal highway funds unless a state complies, just like they did when some states didn’t feel the need to raise the drinking age to 21 in the mid 1980s (which, by the way, has done little to reduce alcohol-based road fatalities yet ended up with an increase in under-age drinking).

Our government is too big, too intrusive and apparently has too much time on their hands. Education, not legislation, is the key to solving the problem of distracted driving. I would much rather see a significant increase in the standards of obtaining a driver’s license (and the need to retest in specified intervals to maintain your license) before just adopting more repetitive, unenforceable legislation.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I just finished making a purchase at Lowe’s. While there, I bought a reusable Lowe’s bag so that I could carry the items I had purchase home and help the environment by using one less plastic bag, now and in the future.

The cashier kindly folded up the reusable bag and put it in a plastic bag to bring home. She seemed shocked when I suggested otherwise.

Oy.

Right on schedule last night, since it was Sunday night and all, I had a wonderful case of insomnia around 2:30 a.m. Sunday nights have always been rough for me. I don’t know if it’s the pressures of returning to work or what the deal is, but I couldn’t get my head to slow down soon enough so that I could fall back asleep. I was still looking at the clock at 4:15.

There are few things more frustrating than staring at the ceiling, knowing that you need to fall asleep but you can’t and then getting more panicked about sleepwalking through the workday when you know you’re not going to have enough sleep under your belt. I tried counting sheep but that didn’t work. I tried the trick of walking through my old elementary school and remembering the teacher that occupied the room, the color of the room and the like, but that didn’t work. I counted backwards from 100 in French. And in English. I tried saying “Om” to myself. None of it worked, but then I guess I fell asleep around 4:35 or so, just in time for the alarm to go off at 5:30.

One of the things that bothers me about insomnia is that I usually get a song stuck in my head and it plays really loud and I can’t turn it down. One time it was “The Lord’s Prayer” by Sister Janet Mead and I couldn’t get it to stop until I looked the dang thing up on the internet and listened to the entire thing. It’s kind of catchy when you’re exhausted. Last night it was “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney and Wings, but then just before I fell asleep I found myself trying to find a way to mix Jenn Cuneta’s “Come Rain, Come Shine” into “Silly Love Songs” (because Jenn’s song samples the older track) and then apparently this is what made me fall asleep.

I think another contributing factor to the bout of insomnia is the brightness of my alarm clock. A couple of years ago I bought a beautiful HD radio alarm clock, complete with iPod dock, surround sound and all sorts of goodies. Aside from the fact that we don’t have many HD radio stations in the area, it’s a sweet sounding setup, even though I had to install modern rabbit ears to get it to work properly. The problem with this little technological wonder is that it uses a backlit LCD display and even on it’s very lowest setting, the damn thing lights up the room like Times Square. When modern digital clocks started rolling around in the 1970s they used the dim, red LED displays and it was good – they barely lit up the room but you could still see the numbers without an issue. I think the backlit LCDs are cheaper and that’s why they are in use today. I usually put a picture of the husbear in front of the alarm clock, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a clock on your nightstand since I could easily rely on my phone to do the waking duties in the morning. Perhaps that’s what I’m going to do: sell the high tech alarm clock and just use my phone. I always squint at Earl’s clock on the other nightstand anyway because it uses the aforementioned red LED display.

Anyone want to buy an HD radio? You’ll be helping cure insomnia and I will have one less thing to bitch about here on this bloggy thing.