Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

The Sound of Silence

Random Thoughts

The one thing that sucks most about having your car stereo stolen is driving without music for several days until you get it replaced. I’ve never been one much for keeping quiet when I drive… singing or talking, there’s usually something being said or at least thoughts rumbling around in my head waiting for the right moment to come out. But music always fills in the empty spaces. Driving now is creepy… when I stop talking to myself, I can hear the tires on the road with perfect clarity. I can hear the changing sounds of cars switching lanes. I hear the plink of little bits of road debris plinking in the wheel wells.

Silence has always kinda creeped me out. When people ask that question, “If you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind?” I agonize on it for a long time, but ultimately come down on the side of blind. I think I could handle not being able to see… but living it a world of silence, I think that would be too much for me.

Anyway, my replacement stereo arrived today by UPS, so I shouldn’t have to put up with a music-less drive for much longer.

Tremors

Random Thoughts

“Running’s not a plan! Running’s what you do, once a plan fails!”
-Earl Bassett, Tremors

Its funny… I often find myself quoting Tremors, but this one stands out. Mostly, this quote keeps popping up because of how I have come to apply it to life. Too many people rely on things that should be backup plans or fail safes as their primary plan. You can see it on the streets when you drive. There are people out there who have insurance, and they’ve covered themselves in the safest car on the road, and they drive like they don’t care about anyone else. They trust the car to save their lives and the insurance to cover the damages, and it never crosses their minds to, you know, pay attention to the road. They run yellow lights at high speed, they change lanes without signaling or even looking, and they are more intent on finishing phone conversations than they are on actually driving their car.

Lots of people deal with relationships, jobs, and other things the same way. They run out instead of trying to work on the problems, instead of trying to fix it.

That’s what this quote means to me. And he’s right… running isn’t a plan, its what you do when every opportunity to succeed has failed. Running is a last resort, and should be treated like one.

3rd time’s a charm

Random Thoughts

Its a good thing I don’t write on Mondays, because if I did, yesterday would have been a venomous stream of epithets denegrating the upbringing of a portion of society and a slander of the dubious pedigree of their mothers.

For the third time in six months, I exited work with a skip in my step. Having completed a good solid day of work and embarking on my journey home, ahead of schedule and ahead of the traffic, I came upon my car in the parking lot, minus one window and a stereo. In the morning, I’d had visions of program code dancing in my head, and absentmindedly forgot to take the faceplate of my stereo with me. When I returned in the afternoon, I found my rear passenger door was missing a window, and my dashboard had been skillfully disassembled and my stereo deftly removed. I say ‘skillfully’ and ‘deftly’ because the thieves, as always, caused no damage to the dash or the wiring in removing the stereo. They just popped the dash, pulled the stereo and unhooked all the wires.

As with before, its largely an exercise in annoyance to me… my insurance has been in great standing for years. I haven’t had a speeding ticket in almost a decade, have had only one accident and that was eight years ago, I pay my premiums on time. The last two thefts caused no change in my insurance. This one won’t either. I have a zero deductable for glass damage, and the stereo is fully covered. As of today, just one day later, the glass is already fixed, and the check is in the mail for the stereo. By the end of the week, I’ll actually have a better stereo than the one they stole, for less money than I paid for the last one (and certainly less than what the check will cover). I just don’t get it though… is there really a market for stolen stereos? The one they took, you can buy new for about $100. So the thief will hock it for maybe $20 to a fence or pawn, who will turn around and sell it for… $50? I get $200, buy a new $100 stereo and pocket $100. Hell, if I could just get them to steal my stereo every week, I’d make $5200 a year in non-taxable income.

I could do a lot with $5200. But its still annoying, especially when you consider that I would actually prefer to take public transportation if I could get from here to work with transfer silliness and dealing with two systems that seem to want to refuse to work together. And annoyance leads to fantasy, and I dream of car alarms… no. I dream of theft deterant systems. I dream of spinning blades that cut perpatrators off at the knees, simultaneously cauterizing the wound, leaving them to run away on their stumps.

I’ll sleep pretty well for the next few weeks…

The Death of Innovation

Random Thoughts

There is an article on CNN… Here. And what I have to say only deals with it abstractly. The gist of the article is, a number of years ago, to raise awareness of the ostracizing and belligerent treatment of homosexuals, GLSEN came up with the idea of a “Day of Silence”. People supporting the cause would choose to not speak for an entire day, the idea being that if enough people do it, then perhaps those that treat gays (and other) kids badly might see what its like to be separated from the rest. The article isn’t about the Day of Silence, but about the “Day of Truth” being organized by ‘the other side’. Religious folks and whatnot who are going to use the day after the Day of Silence to wear loud T-shirts and hand out pamphlets, and basically be anything but silent about how being gay is a sin and is harmful to humanity as a whole.

Honestly, I really believe that people can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t hurt people who don’t want to be hurt. (Surprisingly, there are a number of people who for one reason or another, in one form or another, actually WANT to be hurt, and I feel they are free to do so.) So neither the Day of Silence nor the Day of Truth will have any real affect on me. But, when the Day of Silence was conceived at least it was original… the whole approach was fresh, and different. It was kinda neat. But these people with the Day of Truth, they couldn’t think of anything other than “Let’s do the opposite of them!”

Come on, you right wing religious zelots! Get out there and show us what you’ve got! Be original! Be imaginative! Be innovative!

Cars and Idiots

Random Thoughts

I hope I never get into a horrible car wreck in Atlanta on the highway.

Now, while I hope that I never get into a horrible car wreck at all, I feel that if it must happen, I just hope it happens somewhere else. This morning I saw a wreck. Traffic was backed up for a couple miles. Then I spy an ambulance coming up the lane to my left. So I slow up and allow a couple of people from that lane to get in front of me in order to allow the ambulance to pass.

Lo and behold, schmucks from my lane, seeing the lane to their left opening up, dart left to fill the void from all the vacating cars. Slowing down the ambulance as they block the lane and then have to make their way back into their old place. One car even cut off the ambulance, causing them to skid to a halt to avoid a wreck themselves.

Are people really this oblivious? It really makes me was to start taking public transportation despite the fact that it costs more than driving (hideously designed system transfers mean I wind up paying twice for a single ride to work).

I just hope the ambulance arrived to its destination in time, and that the people in the other wreck are okay.

One of those days

Random Thoughts

There are days that define a person’s life. Joyous highs, abysmal lows. There are days that are a test of faith, days that push you to your limits. Days were you succeed against all odd, and days when you succumb to the slighted of failures and crumble beneath the weight of the things you thought you’d set aside.

Today was definately not one of those days. Somewhere between great and horrible lay the days of nothing better to do.

Eye in the Sky

Random Thoughts

How freakin’ cool is this?

Google Maps.

I’ve been a long time user of MapQuest for getting directions. But in Google’s attempt to control the universe, they’ve put up this mapping tool. Its neat. Even more so, because over on the right side, near the top, there is a link labeled “Satellite” which switches you from boring cartoon like maps to actual satellite photos. Now, there is nothing to be afraid of, the pictures are 6 months to a year old, so its not like people can spy on you, and they can’t zoom in and peek in your windows. But, it does give you an actual picture of the place you are driving, so you can see parking, buildings, etc.

Awesome.

The Line Forms to the Left

Random Thoughts

I started laughing uncontrollably today. But it was one of those things that shouldn’t really be funny. As I’m sure you know, the Pope died. Its a sad but expected loss. His health had been dwindling, and the whole world knew he was not long for this place. Over on CNN’s website, they’ve been running constant play-by-play coverage, as they do with just about every story. And this article appeared this morning, mile-long line for glimpse of pope.

And I started laughing.

When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Disney World, and my experience waiting in lines has never ever been the same. While we stood in line for tickets, and me being a huge fan of School House Rock, I started singing “Elbow Room” and jabbed some poor guy in the kidney while I was claiming my space in the name of Manifest Destiny. But that’s not really why I was laughing… It was all the signs they used to have at the various rides.

So I’m reading about the pope, and the mile-long line, and the first thing I imagine is the Louvre museum scene from the movie ‘Eurotrip’. I picture people standing in line, and a mime-robot is there trying to entertain the masses and earn money to feed his robot family. Then I see the first sign, “The wait from this point is [240] minutes.” And the numbers are those stick-on numbers so they can change the sign as needed. At the front of the line was a standee, which looked like an archbishop with his hand put out to his side about waist level, and a word bubble hung over his head, “You must be this tall to view the Pope.” From there the scene went crazy… women holding screaming kids, people placing their belongings into cubbies before going to view the Pope, people coming out the other door some saying it was the best viewing ever while others were trying to play off that they slept through the whole thing. Finally, I turn to my friends and say, “Screw this guys, he’ll still be dead later, this line blows, lets head over to Lenin’s tomb and come back here when the line dies down.”

Hours later, I’m still chuckling. Yes, I’m weird.

Corporate Security

Random Thoughts

Its one of those things that on one hand I can understand, but on the other hand its really overstepping: Browsing the Internet from work and security. Now, I completely agree… block porn sites and other stuff that people should not be doing at work. But I’m a programmer, and there are a number of times that I come across the need to do something that I don’t know how to do. I check with my co-workers, and none of them know either… so I head to the internet. However, where I’m working now, they have a content review department. They log the urls of sites that everyone visits and they audit it for content. The more often you visit, the sooner the audit. Anything they deem “not good” they block. Many of the best programming sites on the net have ads to support paying for the site. The companies that pay the most for ads are those “scam-like” sites where their promise you “a FREE iPod*” if you punch the monkey. The review department bans any site with those ads. So, the more useful I find a website, the sooner it gets banned.

What?

I mean, I could understand if they reviewed the content, then banned it because its not work appropriate. But banning a site because of the people who buy ads on the site? Huh?

Whatever happened to monitoring people’s usage, then warning or firing them when they do something wrong? If someone wants to visit porn at work, you should let them, once, then fire them. But if they use the Internet in order to do their job better, why the hell are you trying to stop them? Why?

Spring Forward

Random Thoughts

I really dislike Daylight Saving Time. Its just such a pain in the ass to remember to change all the clocks, or in the case of my cable, to wait until it updates itself, which always takes about two weeks. Considering that we aren’t at war, nor do we really need to adjust time to avoid brigands jumping out horse carts on the way to work, why can’t we just split the difference once, jump half an hour in one direction, and call it quits?

If I’m ever elected President, I think it will be one of my first actions in office.