Archive for the ‘Pet Peeves’ Category

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Well since you weren’t using them…

Friday, December 29th, 2006

This afternoon on my way back to the office from lunch I got a semi-frantic call from my mom. Now I am used to daily and sometimes hourly(Hi Mom! You know I am just kidding….right?) and can even be accused of doing it to her(like when she drives to St George, I like to know that she got there alright). Today, however, she called because the speakerphone on her cell phone, one of my old ones, got turned on. It’s a button on the on an odd area of the phone that if you hold it, it turns the speakerphone both on and off. Of course I am speaking retrospectively and I haven’t used that phone for about a year and change, i think. So just imagine about 10 minutes of randomly trying to tell someone to try different things, when you can’t see what they are doing and they can’t tell you how they did it in the first place. I eventually told her I would have to look in the manual and call her back with the correct instructions.

Now when she originally called she told me she had two things to talk to me about. Having dispatched the first I asked what the second was, assuming of course that it related to cell phone or computer related help. Not this time, apparently my mom went to the gym for a little while and when she came out she couldn’t find her car. She walked over to where she thought she parked and didn’t see it. So she walked around most of the parking lot looking for her missing car with no luck. Just as she was about to call the police she decided to walk back to where her car used to be and she noticed that the car was similar. It had was the same color, make and model. It also had the same pattern of dirt/soot that you always recognize is your car after a snowstorm and inside it had the same stuff that she had left in the car when she went to the gym in the first place.

Now this is an odd turn of events, because the car didn’t have the right license plates. So she used to remote to unlock the car and……IT WORKED! Apparently someone had switched her license plates with their own, thinking that no one would notice immediately. Unfortunately for them a long time ago my mom had another car that was Champagne colored and, it seems, nearly every other person in the state had one too. So instead of looking for your car it became more important to find the your license plate in a sea of Champagne colored cars. Getting back to the original story now, I asked my mom if she had checked some of the other cars too see if it was some kind of prank. Maybe someone rowdy teenagers had decided it would be a funny prank to play musical chairs with everyone’s plates. I struck out and she wasn’t able to find her plates. So to the bastard who decided that he didn’t want to renew his license plates, deal with his emmissions or needed to get rid of plates of a stolen car or something. I have a message for you:

License plate REMOVED has been reported to the police as being stolen and my mom has already replaced her plates with new ones!     UPDATE: About 2 or 3 days later my mom got a call from the Provo police department informing her that they had her license plates. She has them back now and is very happy!

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The Buck Stops…….Over There

Monday, October 9th, 2006

First off this was not going to be my first post after almost a month of inactivity, but the loss of common sense and the increase of stupidity are some of the few things that can piss me off enough to speak out. In recent days we have heard two major stories the first is Patricia Dunn, the now ex-Chairman of HP’s board and her spying campaign to track down the source of some leaks. The second story is the one that just broke recently featuring the now ex-Representative Mark Foley and the advances he made to underage male pages. Both acts, although reprehensible, are not my focus. Instead I think it is more important focus on the one thing that is never focused on and never remembered: the inability/refusal to accept responsibility for one’s own actions.

In Dunn’s case, just recently this Reuter’s article has her lawyer saying:

“These charges are being brought against the wrong person at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons…. They are the culmination of a well-financed and highly orchestrated disinformation campaign.”

And then later in the article, it’s reported that

Dunn has said she regrets the way the probe was handled, but does not take personal responsibility for any deceptive methods used.

Now did I miss something or didn’t Dunn order the investigation and guide its progress? You can’t order something to be done, be briefed on methods, guide other parts of the investigation, and then claim no responsibility.

Now Mark Foley on the other hand, so far as I have read, hasn’t actually denied sending his messages. Instead he has relied upon making excuses for what actually caused his behavior. So far, he has blamed alcohol and being abused when he was a kid. I can’t speak for his being abused as kid, but it was still his conscious choice(s) to do what he did. Alcohol on the other hand doesn’t have the ability to change a type of behavior, usually alcohol will only release/lessen the inhibitions of a person.

Unfortunately I am not a mind-reader and I cannot tell you why both of these people have made the decisions they have. Though one of my theories and, i think a plausible one, is that because both of these people are high-profile and more susceptible to lawsuits, they’re being cautious in denying responsibility. After all, anything that is said publicly or privately can come back to haunt them in a lawsuit. If they deny everything and provide excuses, then those words can’t later come back as evidence against them in some future lawsuit or campaign.

The only problem with this argument is that it falls flat on its back when applied the general public. Although there is still a possibility of a lawsuit, but it is far more remote. Sadly the reasons that the everyday Joe Schmoe won’t accept responsibility are far more simple. It’s easier to blame someone else for your own problems rather than accepting responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

UPDATE: Special thanks to Peridyd for his proofreading and reformatting on this post.
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Posted in Business, Common Sense, DoubleTalk, Pet Peeves, Politics | No Comments »

Please don’t molest my bread!

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

You heard me right the first time. I don’t mean any disrespect to the supermarket cashiers and/or baggers, but you must understand a lot of time and effort goes into selecting my bread. OK so maybe not a lot of time. Although it does take time to find the bread I’m looking for, sometimes there are only a few left and sometimes there are a lot of loaves. After finding my bread, then I have to look for one that doesn’t look like it has been mangled, stepped on or half missing. The last piece of work that goes into finding my loaf of bread is the freshness/expiration date. It’s not that I need to have one that will won’t expire for two weeks, but past experience and my close personal relation ship with Murphy’s Law has taught me that it is better safe than sorry. So maybe all of it happens in a few minutes, but there is a lot of effort and thought that goes into this.

All of that brings me back to the original point of this entry. I know all of you cashiers/baggers handle many many loaves of bread in an daily basis. But please try to understand all of the work we go through. When you pick up that loaf by squeezing it’s sides in look at us cringing….trying not to show it. Or when you put the bread in the bag and then promptly drop 2 or 3 soup cans on top of it, please notice the anguish on our faces. Above all there is absolutely no reason to continually grope and reposition that loaf of bread, it’s just wrong!

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3 Steps To Lowering Your Car Insurance

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

Two things, first you know that little stick on the left of your steering wheel. Yes that one, the one that still has the shrink wrap on it. You can remove the shrink wrap from it. You won’t be charged more I promise, it comes standard on every car. What this does is operate the turn signal. If you are not sure what I am talking about please take a look at this link. This turn signal is used to indicate that you intend to change lanes. It also is used to signify when you plan to turn onto a different street. Why is this important? Unfortunately the rest of us are not omnipotent and cannot read your mind. So when you change lanes and seem surprised at the look of horror and possible heart attack it is because we had no idea that you were planning to do that. You nearly forced into oncoming traffic, a traffic barrier or possibly a person. This allow us to either slow down or change lanes when you are planning on slowing down to make a turn.

Second thing I need to bring up, is to all the people that drive MAVs, trucks, Hummers, semis, vans, buses etc. Basically anything taller or wider than your average sedan. Please take into account that those of us that are smaller than you cannot see through you. We don’t know when you are going to slow down because of a light. Normally this isn’t a problem if you slow down in normally, but when you slam on your brakes because you just noticed that the light turned red its near to impossible for us to make that same adjustment since we can’t see the cause beforehand. Also it would be a good idea to check your sideview mirror, rearview mirror and blindspots from time to time. This means that you should probably pack the car so that the rearview mirror is actually usable. I know that it may be inconvenient to repack the car with some stuff(IE groceries) between the seats, but it will be worth it. When you check those before changing lanes or deciding to pull a U-turn the other drivers will thank you. It’s much nicer to not be forced into oncoming traffic, another car, a pedestrian or concrete slab.

Another thought that just occurred to me, I know that no one can live without a cell phone these days, but please be smart about it. How can you possibly think you are driving very well if you have one hand holding your cell phone and the other jotting down a note. Unless you have three hands there is no possible way you still have a very good grip on the steering wheel and control of the car. You have no idea the number of contorted positions I’ve seen people in as they seem to be trying to drive with their feet. If I didn’t know better I might think that they were attempting yoga or something out of the Kama Sutra. If you need to talk on the phone at least have the common courtesy to use a hands-free device.

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Darwin’s Revenge

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

Sometimes you have to wonder just what people are thinking or even if they are at all. Now I normally hate regurgitating the same thing that about a million other blogs are talking about, but these stories have convinced me that Charles Darwin is having the ultimate revenge. He proposed the original theory and now generally accepted fact of Natural Selection in 1842. The only people that are not at all convinced are those that are so those that only believe the religious word and have lost all ability to think for themselves. In my opinion this process of evolution can fit in perfectly with religion, most of the time. For instance the bible says that the earth was created/populated with animals in 6 days and on the 7th day he rested. Now the problem with taking it literally is that since the bible was written by man with the influence of god there is a problem of translation. How do you explain how long 1 day is when the person you are talking days are 24 hours long? God’s measurment of a day could be one year, 10 years, a millenia or 100 millenia. Second problem if god created the earth, night/day, trees, animals, etc it doesn’t mean that he necessarily snapped his fingers and they appeared. By implying that God is all powerful/all knowing then God has a knowledge that we don’t/can’t understand at this time of how to possible seed life and mold it over time. This makes even more sense when you take if you accept that God’s version of a day was a millenia or more. Now I didn’t mean to take this discussion into this, so I will leave this at that and get on with my original point.

The last few days( or years) I have been continually amazed and the stupid things people do. Whether it is the lady who left her 6-year old son overnight at a Chuck E Cheese, the lady who sued McDonald’s when she spilled her coffee in her lap or any one of million other similar stories. The problem comes that first people don’t think about what they are doing and second they won’t accept the responsibility for their decision/inattention, so it must be someone else’s fault.

The video clip is about a snow storm, imagine that a storm so bad that you lose control of your car going 10-15 mph and end up sliding 500ft along the curb. Now would you even think about getting out of your car to try and help slow it down. Let’s think about it for a second, say the average car weighs between 2000 – 4000 lbs, do you really think that on roads that bad that your 175lb body pulling against the direction of the way you are sliding is going to make that much of a difference? Say there is a line of 8 cars that have all crashed into eachother, how many people do you think actually got out to try and slow their car down? If you said 0 or 1 then you are mistaken, the answer in this case was 2. Now for my last question about this story, if you were to lose your grip on your car and fall into the roadway, do you think anyone else is going to be able to stop or turn to avoid running you over? Judge for your self:


Now ummmm…..I don’t even know how to explain this one, so let me just quote from the page:

So let me explain a little bit here on my situation. My dsm is down and It’s too cold to go outside and fix it. There’s no way I’m laying on the cold pavement and pulling the transfer case. So I’m carless.

Now my girl, I normally just car pool with her to work. Which is fine because we live together and we’re both working the same hours and near by each other. But I took Friday off and I opted to watch the kid instead of having her drop him off at my moms. So I was at home and everything was all good untill about 1pm. I got a call from my boss and he needed me in. I work at Burger King in the mall, so I told him I really can’t but if I must I’ll have to ride my motorcycle in and it’s 20*F outside. He said it would really mean alot and mean I might be eligalbe for management come my 6 month review. So I told him sure.

Now I have a problem, I have my son. He’s 2.5 yrs old and just a bundle, but I have no way to have someone watch him. I forgot about this detail. So with no options left I get out his old broken car seat and fix the buckles with some duct tape. Then I strap it to my bike and set him up in it. I didn’t have a helmet that fit him so I just used a towel and some tape and secured him to the carseat with that. He was snug as a bug so I put a towel over the carseat and jumped on it. I set off to my moms to drop off my son about 5 miles away. Really just a few turns down the road but it was snowing and cold as ####. I was about 3 miles to her house and I got pulled over. Freakin arrested for child endangerment and now they won’t give my bike back. I just bought it in april. It’s a 02R6 and it means the world to me. They said they’re holding it till court to display to the prosucuter and people how unsafe I was with the car seat duct taped and bungied to the bike.

I think it was really secure and I had him bundled up and me being on the bike blocked the wind.

My girl want’s to kill me and she’s all worried about our kid getting taken away. Right now they’re making him stay with my mom untill court.

How do you think I could get my bike back? I’m leaving on Wednesday for bikeweek.

This is BS.

Judge for yourself and let me know…

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