stop

Yes folks, that sign means you, in the car, should stop. I was walking home today and I almost got hit by a maroon Mercury Sable. I was crossing the street in a crosswalk at a 4-way stop and saw this car coming at the intersection pretty fast, so I paused in the middle of the road. Completely expecting the driver to blow the stopsign, I left enough safety room, but she slammed on her brakes at the last moment and skidded to a halt in the spot where I would have been had I not anticipated this. Hand over her mouth (aghast), she watched as I smiled politely at her and calmly walked around her car and continued on my way.

I know it's a Tuesday afternoon, and drivers are in a hurry to get home, but honestly. Stop if you see a red octagon, or at least when there's a ped in the road.

I swear, most drivers in this town have installed an SEP field on everything outside their car. Some stop at 2-way stops when they are the non-stop direction. Some blow through 4-ways. I don't care that they're not following the rules, I care that they're often not paying attention. I especially care when crap like this happens and the driver blames the person walking. Honestly, would I step into the road if I thought you would hit me?

grokster

Shit.

big frickin' pipe wrench

I need a BIG FRICKIN' PIPE WRENCH.



There are about 15 air conditioner units outside my window (I kid you not, 12 for my building and 3 for the neighboring ones). One of them is dying. About every fifteen minutes, it whirrs on, and then slowly grinds down. It sounds much like a prop plane's engine spinning down in mid-air. A friend of mine who is a pilot actually drew that analogy today while he listened in. He was then shocked to hear the enormous *THUD* that follows the down-spinning and sounds like something faceplanting into the ground.

Yes folks, I need that huge fricking pipe wrench to carry as I walk outside and fix that broken AC unit with one last final thunk. Okay, maybe thirty or forty thunks with a man-sized wrench.

Every day that I live in this apartment I am reminded how well off I've been for the first many years of my life. I've never had to live in an apartment like mine with the surplus of annoyances and evility. Inconsiderate landlords. People blasting Norteño (circus) music from their van and throwing glass bottles around at 2am (there are large shards in our parking lot). Car alarms. Windows that shake when wind blows. Parking on a 20 degree incline. Linoleum that sticks to your bare feet and lifts off the floor when you walk on it. A pit in the middle of my floor under the carpet. Two-inch walls (thinner in some spots). Bass-blasting neighbors. Frequent tours of my apartment by the leasing agents. Unresponsive maintenance. No parking-space lines (people park diagonally sometimes). Loose electrical outlets that don't hold onto plugs. A cable/internet company that my landlord contracted to cut my previous service and take 6 months to finish installing shoddy internet while entering my apartment unsupervised and leaving on all of my lights. Black soot all over my apartment from chimney sweeps that (they claim) didn't happen. An overflowing sink and accusations that *I* used draino to stop it (thus damaging my silverware). Paying $30 more per month than my neighbor with an identical unit. Three feet of counter space. And *NOW* a kamikaze AC unit outside my window that dives and thuds four times an hour.

Maybe when I'm done with that AC unit, I'll take the wrench down to the leasing office ... and that's probably immoral. 44 days left. Must hang on for 44 more days.

kung-fu

This is the cooles thing EVAR!



(Link)

the onion

Occasionally I read The Onion (it's a newspaper), and it brings back fuzzy memories of actually picking up a copy at the U-Dub for laughs. Lately I stumbled upon a quite funny futuristic issue.
(Link)

cancun

So I spent some time last week in Cancun, Mexico. It was quite fun... we stayed at one of those all-inclusive places and I learned a few things.

1. Beach is good


2. Don't get Italian food in Mexico, even from an Italian restaurant


3. Too much sun can hurt, but not for long


4. I don't know enough Spanish

But seriously, the water is amazing. I want to live on a beach in a little hut. Maybe I should reconsider my schooling as a CS and just become a beach bum.

The story behind the Italian food is mildly interesting, so I will sum it up here. I ordered "Chicken Parmesan" and got a dry breaded chicken breast with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled on it. All the Italian chefs out there are groaning.

I like lists, so I'll make another list of funny things that happened:

1. I forgot to tip our maid the first day, and we ended up with five hand towels and two bath mats. The next day I overtipped, and we had five body towels and no bath mats.


2. I burned the top of my feet. I must have spaced out putting on sunscreen.


3. A pelican swam up to us while we were playing in the ocean. Then he flew off, and dive-bombed face first (of course) into the water nearby. Diving pelicans look funny.


4. I watched a man and monkey play tag


5. Walking through a pool area, some random staff person ran up to me saying something in Spanish, holding a squeeze-bottle of liquor. He took a squirt-shot and then started squirting my face with it so I would drink. (News to staff member, no need to coerce me. I like liquor!)


6. Outside the buffet they had 10 different bottles of types of tequila/mescal along with a dish of salt, limes and shot glasses. Hmmm... not so funny, but definitely a good idea. Appetizer sampler?

Okay, end of lists. Maybe I'll post more when I get pictures back.

don't do this

Things not to do:

1. Laugh heartily while eating stuffed breadsticks. A chunk of pepperoni may exit through your right nostril.

new specs

New specs:



What do you think?

coffee and comfy chairs

I went to a coffeeshop on Friday to get some work done, and got assaulted by an overbearing and bored barista. He just wouldn't shut the hell up even when I started taking my work out and doing it. Go figure.

Anyhow, he left and I settled in a very comfy chair and got lots of work done. When I went to get a refill of coffee, the (other) barista just filled 'er up for free. Said he was having a bad day, which was too bad. Anyhow, when I went to school at Rose-Hulman, I took a film class and thoroughly hated it. While I was working at the coffeeshop, the professor who taught the class mosied by. That was fun, we chatted a bit and she recollected how crappy that class was and stuff. At least we're on the same wavelength.

This weekend, the server that delivers my email went down (on a scheduled power outage) which isn't usually a problem for me. This time, however, I got lots of important emails DURING the power outage, a few of them about critical things that had to get done.

Blarhg. Back to the grind...