Daveblog

Is it really that hard? (Part 2)

2007-06-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Overall, I have a pretty good commute. It's about 17 miles. With no traffic, it takes about 20 minutes, and with heavy traffic it takes maybe 35-45 minutes. Usually, it's about 30 minutes, which I don't consider to be that bad.

What is bad is the way people drive in this area, particularly with regard to merging. There are a number of places on my way home where I have to either merge or be merged into. They are, in order:

Getting on to US 101
Getting on to Highway 87
When Airport Pkwy merges on to Highway 87
When the right land ends
Getting on to Interstate 280

There are various other merges on the way, but I'm generally able to avoid those by staying in another lane.

Here's what I don't understand: When the traffic is going 5 MPH and the lanes are both full and merging, why must certain assholes ride the bumper of the car in front of them so that the person trying to merge can't get in? Bad drivers are one thing, but this is just plain ol' assholery. Most of the time, the drivers will speed up to make sure they close the gap before the car next to the can merge. Is being one more car ahead in a 5 MPH line of traffic really going to make your life that much better? WTF? Have you ever seen a zipper? That's how it's supposed to work, dipshit. It's called efficiency. Let me demonstrate:

Do you see how each side takes turns and, as a result, everyone keeps moving at the same speed? This is really not a hard concept to understand.

I need a vacation.

Credit: Zipper image used under the GNU Free Documentation License and acquired from Wikimedia Commons.

Bring on the heat.

2007-05-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

It's starting to get hot here on occasion. Actually, it's not really that hot, but after last year's heat wave (see post "Holy crap, it's hot."), everyone gets worried when the temperature cracks 80F. This year we decided to pick up a portable A/C unit ahead of time. So far, it's working great (although we really haven't needed to run it yet except to try it out). Hopefully, it won't melt down when the heat wave hits.

Something is (star)fishy.

2007-05-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

I sort of have this love-hate relationship with my fish tank. It's a complete pain in the ass to take care of consistently, but when it's in good shape, it really looks cool.

Lately, I've not been paying as much attention to it. Sometime in the last few weeks, I started getting a bunch of algae growth. Probably high nitrates or something. Anyway, it's really annoying... clogging up filters and such. It really looks bad - all overgrown and you can hardly see through the glass.

Since I've gotten this tank (I had others before), I've owned one starfish. It was a sand sifting starfish and it died more than a year ago - before I moved the tank to our current house.

Last night, I was reminded of one of the cool things about salt water reef tanks. Before heading up to bed, I stopped to take a look at the tank. There lights were out, and moving across the glass was a starfish about the size of a penny. WTF? Who knows if I'll see it again, but it's always interesting to see the random creatures that pop up, seemingly from nowhere.

Is it really that hard?

2006-11-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

I love McDonald's. I know it's disgusting, but I love it anyway. The meat and onions... yum! A while back I stopped eating the cheese to convince myself that it wasn't completely unhealthy. I know, I'm still fooling myself, but that's ok.

When we bought our new house, it turns out to be a block from McDonald's. I thought, this is excellent! An easy walk to pick up my usual Quarter Pounder Meal with no cheese and a Coke for $4.86. What I didn't realize then was that this McDonald's is staffed by complete idiots all day every day.

Generally, if I go to McDonald's, I'm either in the drive-through or just getting it to go. If I had time to sit my ass down and eat a meal, I wouldn't be at McDonald's. When you get things to go, it's that much more annoying when they fuck up your order. I've come to learn that is a virtual lock at this particular establishment.

My last four orders have gone wrong in the following ways:

1. Cheese. I asked for no cheese. Fairly simple. Just leave it off.

2. No straw. This might seem fairly minor, but try drinking a full paper cup of Coke with no straw while driving down the freeway.

3. WITH cheese, NO onions. Those fuckers. Not only did they leave on the cheese I asked for them to take off, they took off the onions. Idiots.

4. One patty. What's wrong with one patty, you ask? Nothing, unless you ordered a double-burger. Idiots. It's bad enough that you have to ask for a double cheeseburger with no cheese for them to understand what you want. But to get it wrapped in a double cheeseburger paper with the special no cheese tag and find that there is only one patty. Morons.

Ok, that's the end of my rant for the moment.

Now I'm hungry.

Babies & retards & stingrays, oh my!

2006-09-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted a blog entry. Over that time there have been a number of things I've meant to write about and just haven't. So, here they are in a condensed format.

We're Having a Baby! - Yep, that's right, the wife is knocked up. Woohoo! Since you can see all the details along the way on our "family" blog I'll not post them here. Just go there and read it (you know the URL - and then come back to finish this).

NASCAR Fan or Retard? - I know, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. We live in these townhouses, and there's this area between the buildings where the garages all open to. It's pretty quiet here for the most part, but loud noises can kinda echo around back there. A while back, when it was really hot (see previous blog entry "Holy crap, it's hot"), we started hearing this whaling noise coming from the area behind our house. It was pretty loud. At that time, everyone had their windows open pretty much all day and night. We figured that there must be a new baby back there and that, with the windows open, the whaling was just more noticeable. But it went on and on. WOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! At some point, Heather started yelling back. This went on for a couple of weeks. Early in the morning - WOOOO! During the day - WOOOO! At night - WOOOO! We thought, that can't be a baby. And it sounds like those drunks watching NASCAR raising their beers and screaming as the cars go by. Then one morning just after school started we discovered the truth. At about 8am, the short bus pulled up and out came an overweight teenager yelling WOOOOO! heading for the bus. Question answered.

Crikey! That Sucks - I'm not even sure what to say about the death of Steve Irwin. I know a lot of people think he was crazy or had it coming. To them I say "fuck you". Steve Irwin was an amazing environmentalist and wildlife conservationist. He brought the face of wildlife into the living rooms of people all around the world - people who would never have known anything about those animals. The man was so full of life, it's hard to imagine him dead. My condolences to his family. Rest in peace, mate.

Holy crap, it's hot.

2006-07-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I hate the heat. I grew up in Florida, so you'd think I would be used to it. It gets really hot there and it's seriously humid. But then I moved to the Central Coast area of California where it's mostly perfect weather all year around. And I got used to that.

Now, in San Jose, it's 11:43pm and it's 90.6 degrees in my bedroom. We get a little break downstairs where it's currently only reading 90.5. How chill.

I'm sweaty. I've been sweaty all day. I went through two pairs of shorts and three t-shirts before I gave up on that and just started walking around in my underwear. Of course, everything I sit on is now sweaty.

Obviously, I don't have AC. Normally, that is not necessary in this area, but WTF? Al Gore said shit was getting hotter... maybe I should have paid more attention. I do have this sweet fan into my attic. You'd think, hey just turn that on and suck the hot air out. Well, there are two problems with that. First, the air outside is not any cooler. Second, the fan blows down. Yes, that's right, the fan blows hot air from the attic into the house. Who's moron idea was that? I'd go up there to fix it, but can you imagine what the temperature is in the attic? Fuck that.

We went to Target and Costco and walked around just because they have AC. That got old. We went to the movies but they were sold out. I guess everyone had that idea sooner than we did. Right now, I'm seriously considering a motel.

Even our overeating cats (who are supposed to be on a diet) are too lazy to walk their fat asses to the food bowl. At least that's a bonus.

I could go on, but I need to stand up before my ass sweat permanently soaks into this chair.

Chris vs. Nutty

2006-06-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

This is really pretty stupid, but for some reason it cracks me up so I'm going to share with you all.

Chris vs. Nutty Video on YouTube

(So, I tried to embed it, but I couldn't make it look right and I'm too lazy to figure it out.)

Go.

2006-06-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

I couple of my friends have started blogging fairly regularly these days so I've been spending some time reading their stuff. It's mostly useless banter, but it amuses me. At any rate, blogging seems to be the thing these days, so I thought I would give it a try.

I started occassionally posting stuff on my Yahoo!360 page, but that interface is not so hot. I'm not dogging Yahoo!360, because I think it's kinda cool, it just needs some work. I noticed that a couple of the blogs I read had recently been moved to blogger.com. I'm not really "in the know", so I wondered WTF, eh? Turns out it's a Google property. Who would have thought that cool technology on the Internet would be owned by Google? Anyway, I decided I should check it out.

So, yeah, this is pretty easy. And one of the things that I think is way cool is that I can publish to my own server using my own URL. That's sorta cool. Now I can actually put something up on this domain, which I've had for 10 years or so and have really only used for email.

Now I just have to come put with some useless banter to post.

We soaked up Philly like a sponge.

2006-01-04T13:02:00.000-08:00

We just got back from a quick trip to Philadelphia to visit my brother. The highlights of the trip include a visit to Independence Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra New Year's Eve concert, and a sandwich (Whiz wit) from Pat's Steaks.

However, the one thing that truly said South Philly was our first visit to Caffe Italia. The place was full of older Sicilian men who all paused to look us over as we entered. While waiting for our cappucinos (excellent, btw), a larger Sicilian in his best 'Tony Soprano' outfit comes out of a door in the back simply marked 'Private'. About the time he reaches us at the counter, the phone rings. And just to make sure we fully understood the situation, the ringtone that played was the love theme from 'The Godfater'.

I jus hoped it wasn't the day of his daughter's wedding.