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:

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.

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!

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.

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…

Just recently I had another problem with my laptop, it still works, but the sound card is apparently dying. When I say dying, I mean a very slowwww death. When it works I get to hear any noise coming from it warping in and out. It interferes with shutting down Windows and sometimes the driver can’t even start the card at all. Before attempting to contact Dell I replaced the driver, removed the driver(to make windows reinstall it), completey unpowered the laptop(attempted to turn it on with no battery or power. Don’t try to tell Dell that though. I decided instead of waiting on hold for 3 hours only to not understand a word of what the support representative was saying, I used the online hardware support chat. Before you ask yes, yes I did it from a different computer. Give me just a little bit of credit.

See for yourself how well the conversation didn’t go. The names have been changed to protect the guilty and any sensitive information has been removed. Other than that nothing in the conversation has been changed in order to make myself look better or Dell look worse.

In Utah right now we have an epidemic of rubber-neckers! For each and every accident, no matter how small expect traffic on I-15 to slow to a crawl. Once for all thr rubber-neckers that must slow down to get a full view of the accident. Second they just caused another accident because they were paying attention to the accident and not the car in front of them that decided to stop.

I promise to find something other than Utah drivers to write about for my next post!

Another term for a station wagon, mini-van, or any other kind of vehicle that is targeted at the “family” demographic(also M.A.V.) and Any vehicle whose express purpose is carrying 8 or more children at the same time, with groceries.

Many Utahns have large families or are planning on large families so they have acquired these large vehicles, which I can fully understand. What I can’t understand is why they can’t learn to drive them accordingly. They still think they are driving their old beat-up little Civic, Corolla, Focus and Metro.

What does that mean to the rest of us? Expect close encounters when you are in the right lane and a MAV come barrelling in from the side along the shoulder to turn right. This may have been okay when they were driving a Small car that could fight almost anywhere, but now they have the ability to take out all the smaller cars without even noticing it. Be wary of shopping centers that have small parking places, because if you park in a spot where your small car can fit, but just barely. There is a good chance when you get back you will have at least one MAV wedged in next to your car. If you know gymnastics or yoga be prepared to use it in order to gain access to your car.

If your car is a MAV please, please forget about parallel parking. Unless there is room for two cars in that parking space, there is a good chance you will hit one of the other cars. Or hold up traffic for 15 minutes while you attempt to come into the parking spot from all angles. Just because your car is a MAV does not give you the right to force your way into a lane on the freeway. See all the other cars piling up behind you, it was caused by you forcing your way into a lane where the driver of the Metro had no chance. Last but not least, if you would have hesitated doing something in your old car don’t even think about it now! This includes tight parking spaces, driving on the shoulder, pulling a U-turn in the middle of ANY street.

Thank you in advance for following any of these guidelines. You may have just kept from flattening me and my Civic.

P.S. If you are in front of any of us smaller cars at a stoplight, please remember we most likely cannot see when the light is going to change, this is especially true of the left hand turning lane. Find some way to let us know the light is completely red that you are turning left on. Just because you can make it through doesn’t mean that we would survive the onslaught of cars that are now barrelling towards us.