pet peeve of the day

I'm on my way to meet my friend Mel for our usual Tuesday/Thursday morning run and, as I approach the light to turn into campus, I discover someone has pulled into the right lane and decided to go straight, preventing me (and all the people behind me) from turning. Now this is one of those roads that goes to two lanes about 150 yards before the light, so it's not like this person had been cruising in the right lane for miles and just happened to get to the light. No. This person made a conscious decision to get over. And it's not like this is an intersection where people turning right is a rarity - it's the fricking university...at 7:40 in the morning. There's a steady stream of people turning right! Well, there's usually a steady stream of people turning right. Today, there was a big long line of people WAITING to turn right.

Seriously, folks - if you're coming to a somewhat heavily used intersection and you feel like you want to be in the right lane, please wait until after the light. You will have plenty of time to get over later.

Thank you.

TWC

Okay, I think I have a problem - I've become a huge weather nerd. I'm not sure how it happened. It started innocently enough - checking the weather every morning like a normal person so I could see what clothing would be weather-appropriate. Then I moved to North Carolina (home of the weirdest weather on earth) and the insanity began. First it was ice storms, then hurricanes, then more ice storms, rain harder than I've ever seen before (seriously - I don't understand how it can rain this much at once), more hurricanes. I think it started with the fear (Is that hurricane really going to hit us?) and then became fascination as I saw the predicted path change on a daily basis.

From there, I discovered that on weather underground (www.wunderground.com), they publish the results of hurricane tracking computer models, so I started checking those daily as well. Then I spent enough time doing this that I began to understand the forecast discussions they publish on the noaa.gov site... If that wasn't bad enough, I discovered that you can get up to date raw data sent from weather buoys scattered all over the world!!! I actually watched as hurricane Ivan passed by buoy 42040 (well, that one only delivers data on an hourly basis, but still...) It was so exciting!!!

Now I have a sort of strange attraction to The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore... I think I may need therapy!

the RNC

Here's my my new favorite bit of wisdom from the Republican National Convention (courtesy of Dave Barry):

"In dangerous situations, you always want to be with a cartoonist, because if something bad happens, he can draw a funny picture of it."

Cheers to that.

An open letter to Michael Phelps

Dear Michael,

Please pull up your pants. I don't know if you're aware, but you've been sporting a little bit of a plumber's crack for most of the Olympic games and I think you really need to address this fact. If not for the sake of decency (mooning a multinational TV audience is probably not all that diplomatic), perhaps for the sake of performance. In a sport where leg hair produces too much drag, I can only wonder how many precious milliseconds are lost to the drag created by water rushing into your exposed butt crack... So please, for the sake of your teammates and the world audience, pull up your pants.

Thank you.

olympic ponderings

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but it seems like every time they do one of those little athlete bios, they mention that the person in question wanted to go to the Olympics as a young child and spent time practicing whatever sport in order to achieve that goal. Now I can't help but wonder if there are any children out there that don't, at some point, want to go to the Olympics? Are there really kids out there that are watching the games thinking, "Nah - I'd really rather be a mediocre swimmer and not get past JV on my high school swim team"?

NC is so silly!

Here's yet another example of why NC is very silly:

My friend at work forgot to pay his car insurance bill last December and was, therefore, uninsured for a period of about 20 days (in December). Apparently, his insurance company informed the City of Durham of this fact sometime in June or July of this year, prompting the city to send him a letter telling him that because he was an uninsured driver for a period of time, they are levying a $50 fine on him, which is due by August 1. Well, Ali didn't open the letter until yesterday, so obviously the deadline had passed. So he called the city to ask what he should do, expecting (like I imagine most people would) them to tell him he owes a late fee as well. Oddly enough, it turns out that the punishment for paying the fine late is you lose your license plates for 30 days. Yes, he is actually supposed to take his license plates off his car and turn them in to the city, then go back 30 days later and retrieve them. I just think this is very odd. He can drive OTHER cars during this time - he's not losing his license... he just can't drive his own...

prozac computer

Well, it seems my poor little sexually misunderstood computer has had a complete meltdown. It has become so upset and confused it refuses to even turn on now :( Actually, this first happened last Monday, so I sent it away to IBM to get it fixed and they sent it back saying it was because the time/date weren't set in the BIOS. Now, I admit I don't really know much about computers, but last time I checked, the computer actually had to power up to even get to the part where it discovers the time/date in the BIOS (which mine wasn't doing). Nonetheless, the little critter booted up when I brought it into work Thursday, so I did a little dance and thanked the IBM gods and went on with my life.

Today, however, the same thing happened and I would like to recount my conversation with my new friend Mohammed at IBM:
Mohammed: ..."the last time you sent it in, they determined the problem was your time/date weren't set in the bios. Are you still getting the time/date error message?"
Me: "The computer won't even turn on."
Mohammed: "Oh.... I think then you might have a bigger problem than the time and date."
Me (silently): "duh."
Me (out loud): "I think so too."
Mohammed: "I'll go ahead and send you a shipping carton today."
So now I have a bigger problem with my computer, but no one seems to be able to figure out what that might be. Hopefully, they will find it this time and I won't have to send it back again next week (though I will admit that having to spend part of the afternoon tomorrow at home waiting for the DHL man to pick it up isn't SO upsetting!)

Poor little laptop!

As an aside, HOORAY for IBM's warranty program!!! I don't have to pay for any of this!