driving

Keep On The Grass

Well for the last two months I’ve been away from Geek Squad, settling into my new job, and loving it. No more people approaching the counter demanding refunds for the laptop that just “stopped working” with the promise that there’s “no way in hell” they dropped it, and oh, what’s this crack in the LCD? Well that stuff just happens. Or it came like that. Or software did that. :rolleyes:

Anyway, it’s nice not to have to deal with the brunt of society’s idiots on a daily basis. Now I provide desktop and server support to all the clinics for the company for which I work, but really there are no stupid people here. There are those who have no idea what’s what in the world of techmology, but they’re sensible people. This is, after all, the medical industry. And I love it. So why am I writing? Ah, you know me. I don’t write about things when I’m happy about them.

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  • Reading time:5 mins read

It’s all Exxon’s fault. Again.

Seriously. I am sick to death of gas stations and their evil ways. Oh what, have you not noticed? Seriously? So for the last thirty years there’s been a conspiracy between all gas stations. Every single one of them lists gas prices the same way. It’s not $1.32. It’s $1.32.9. Like anyone actually uses penny tenths. That’s the cheap way of saying the gas costs $1.33 per gallon. Unless you’re giving me back my tenth of a penny, you cobbler.

:rant: I am outraged because I know deep down inside that everytime my wife or my buddies tell me how much gas is, I know they are actually a penny off. And that’s PER GALLON. And I’m actually probably guilty of it too. I fall victim just like the rest of you. I glance up at the sign and think I’m getting a good deal when I see the gas costs 2.42, but I forget to add in the .9. Enough with the chicanery! The tomfoolery! The ballywho! The SKULLDUGGERY!

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  • Reading time:2 mins read

Roadside Memorials and You

Let’s talk briefly about the roadside memorial. Well, I’ll write a few words about it, and you can read them. Then, if you’re not too lazy, you can reply in comment form and let me know what you think. If not, then feel free to throw your hands in the muthafukkin air. Then I’d like to ask you to at least consider waving them around like you just don’t care.

This is sad.Okay. So what is the point of the roadside memorial? And here’s what I mean by that: What is the point of the roadside memorial? You see, if I were to lose someone on the side of the road, or someone I knew were to die in a horrible tragic accident on a highway, I would be pretty saddened. But I don’t think I would feel compelled to decorate the place of their demise with flowers and headstones and whatnot. Seriously, why would you want to decorate and commemorate the place they died? I’m okay with putting those same flowers and trinkets on a grave site. That’s where their final remains lie eternally. Or until the lease is up on the site. :rolleyes:

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

Weekend in Houston

A buddy and I are heading to Houston this weekend, formally so he can golf in some charity event (he’s an executive at a pretty large corporation here in Dallas), but additionally so we can catch a Texans football game. So it’s a road trip, all the way. I understand he watches the wrong football team, but at least they’re from Texas. I don’t know how to feel about all that. It doesn’t matter who’s playing when you’re in the stands though, I suppose.

Anyway, during this golf charity event he’s playing Saturday morning, I’ll be running around Houston by myself. All the gir- um- people I used to know who lived in Houston, well – they no longer live in Houston. So I’ve been scouting my links and contacts and myspaces and facebooks, getting in touch with everyone I used to run with back then, trying to find a friend of a friend who still lives there. No such luck.

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Is there a woman who can drive?

I had to miss work yesterday because of an injury. Let me tell you what happened. I (once again) was the victim of a CWDOCP – a Careless Woman Driver On a Cell Phone. Not a big deal, but it did render my vehicle undrivable this time. I was sitting at the intersection of my street and the main street, waiting patiently to get out of my neighborhood when a woman comes barrelling into the entrance, aiming for the wrong side of the median! It was obvious she had been going too fast, and since she didn’t want to set the phone down, she couldn’t stop fast enough, and rather than keep going and u-turn to come back to the entrance of the neighborhood, she decided to turn into the wrong side of the median. While I was there.

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Part-Time Badass

A friend of mine relayed a story the other day that I was quite fond of, as it sounds a lot like something that would happen to me. She was sitting in the right-turn lane at a stop light and saw that the person in front of her started pulling out. So Rebecca (SheBang) looks back to check the traffic, and steps on the gas. SLAM.

The person in the car ahead had started pulling out. But then stopped. So Rebecca gets out of the car and starts walking up to assess the damage and talk to the other driver. As she gets halfway to the driver’s window, the old coot takes off. She had no clue she’d just been rear-ended.

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People are like birds.

I’ve noticed over the last however-long-I’ve-been-driving-now that birds are evolving to be less afraid of cars on the road. Slowly but surely, they and their children grow more and more daring and brave about sitting there in that damn puddle drinking shitwater – and not moving when I’m about to run over them. Sometimes they wait so long that I don’t see them fly away, and when I look back, there’s nothing there. So they’re obviously still getting away, but they just wait until the absolute last second to move now. What the hell is up with that? I know I’m going to hit one one of these times, and I’m not going to feel the least bit bad about it. You want to take your chances and play chicken with me, then don’t bitch when I squash you with my tire.

Similarly, I’ve noticed humans evolving the same way. Nothing is more annoying, in fact, than having to slow way the hell down to wait while some asshole struts across the street like he’s on a Sunday stroll, staring right at me to see if I’m going to react. These people know they’re holding up traffic, and they know they’re being arrogant selfish pricks, but they do it anyway. And that look they give you while they’re walking is like ‘yeah, what are you gonna do about it?’

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Sweet, Sweet Morning Air

There’s not much that can get me down in the mornings like traffic. I hate traffic and – well, I think that’s mostly because of the people causing it. Far be it from me though to rant about traffic on the web! You know me better than that. Truly though, traffic is about the only thing that can throw a wrench in the intake of my good morning. Turning around and seeing my daughter look back up over her car seat to get a look at me could brighten the darkest day. I digress.

So this morning was no different. Except that my sister’s boys are both sick, so I had to take Callie somewhere else for daycare today. In Krum. Which is north of Denton. So it took 45 minutes to drive all the way out there, then an hour and a half to make it all the way back to downtown Dallas to get to work. Sigh. So that’s a lot of traffic I dealt with that I won’t be ranting about. Just to let you know.

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Day One

Today was the day. The first day of February, 2004. I woke up about eight-thirty and let the dogs out. Heather went to the bathroom, and asked if I wanted to go to church today. I said, “Yeah, as long as you feel like it.” She agreed, and said it might be the last time we get to go for a while. With the dogs out back, I lay back down for a while, and Heather came out of the bathroom and said, “Honey, I think my water broke.” We did the tests though, and it hadn’t.

Heather got in the shower to get ready, and then sat on the edge of the tub to shave her legs. I was drifting off again, rather nicely. It was about nine at this point. And a muffled yell through the bathroom door awakened me. “Brian! Brian!” I got up and ran in there. “Brian, my water broke!” I looked in the tub. Indeed it had. My mind got in Let’s Go gear, throwing things together and getting dressed. During this madness I managed to make it to a phone and call my mom to let her know, “The water is broken.” As it turns out, it was a good thing that I had called her, because she wasn’t freaking out like I was, and had a mind to call the hospital and get us a room.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

Road Trip Exchange

I guess it was around June or July of 1995, and I was driving back from Dallas to Abilene where I was stationed on the Air Force Base. I had a friend, Jeremy with me, and we were flying down the highway at no less than sixty (60) miles per hour. That may seem a little fast to the common person, but keep in mind – I was driving my old 1990 Chevy Cavalier, which had over a hundred thousand miles on it. So sixty was no sweat. No sweat at all.

Jeremy was reclined in the passenger seat, catching some Zs. A black pickup passed me on the left side, but not too quickly, and I looked over at the passengers. Seeing they were a couple of guys about my age, I waved at them. The guy in the passenger seat waved back, friendly enough. Well, they got a few hundred yards ahead and I decided to do something crazy. We had a twelve-pack of Pepsi (God only knows why it was Pepsi and not Coke, or Dr. Pepper, or Diet RC) cans on the console between us, and having only drunk about two or three between the both of us, I figured we could share a couple.

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