It'll drive you crazy

Why are there so many horrible drivers on the roads?  I used to think that I was just catching a bunch of people on a bad day, because Lord knows I occasionally do something stupid behind the wheel and then count my blessings for the next 5 minutes, but, the number of examples I see these days leads me to believe that a lot of people just don't follow ANY of the rules or courtesies of the road.

Yes yes, I know I sound naive.  I know it's crazy to expect everyone to follow the rules while doing an activity that can kill large numbers of people.  But, it's just getting worse and worse.  We'll see if we can somehow blame our politicians before we're done here.

Some examples first though.  Yesterday I am driving in a 45 MPH zone.  It is very hilly there, so some people go flying through the "downs."  That was the case here, but, there's more to this story.  I had moved over to the left lane, as had everyone else, because a cop had someone pulled over in the right lane.  Not this idiot driving a Mustang though.  He not only stays in the right lane, but is flying down the hill and swerves into the left lane a few cars ahead of me maybe 15 feet before he would have hit the cop car.  I'm sure the officer would have loved to chase him were he not already in the ticket-writing process.  Then there was this great example.  We have a few short one-way streets near my house.  I was going the correct way when a car started coming towards me going the wrong way.  Due to all the snow and cars in the street, there is no way to pass each other.  We both keep coming.  I look at this idiot and motion to him to back up or pull into a driveway.  He makes the same motion to me.  I open my door and mention that he is going the wrong way down a one-way street and he needs to turn around.  He indicates he is in a hurry.  I indicate that I don't care and that he's going to get wherever he needs to get a lot faster once he turns around because I'm not getting out of his way.  He seems to believe the make of his car (Mercedes) and perhaps his size will somehow intimidate me.  Neither do.  He finally understand that I have much more time to waste on this then he does and so he turns around after calling me quite a few names that made me tempted to spend some insurance dollars by ramming his car.

Then there is the Yield sign.  I am thoroughly convinced that no one in the greater Cleveland area understands the meaning of a Yield sign.  I think they believe it means speed up and honk your horn at the car you almost hit (me) by not yielding.  Oh, and there's also the guy on an on-ramp who is far too important to merge at the bottom of the ramp as everyone else is doing and who instead drives along the berm for awhile until he can force his way into the flow further up.

I know we have licensing for driving, but, for what I pay every year for plates, it seems like we could do better testing for existing drivers, or at least SOME testing of existing drivers.  Or perhaps, just maybe, people could take some personal responsibility and make driving safer for everyone?  Nah, it must be the politician's fault.

Posted by trupundit @ 11:38 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

No one wants my business

It's astonishing to me how many different ways companies have driven me away from them in just the past few weeks.

At my local McDonalds, the manager took over a register, looked at all the people in line and said  "I'm open, Come on people, get over here."  My reply just before I left was, "you do realize I am a customer and not an employee, right?"

I bought a game at Gamestop, got home and realized there  was no disc in the box.  They were closed by then, so I called the next morning and got the manager.  When I told her the situation, she asked if I had been helped by a young man with brown hair.  I said yes.  She said, "He's been doing that a lot lately.  I'll talk to him."  I asked how she could tolerate that sort of mistake "a lot."  She said she would talk to him.  I asked if I could just pick the disc up at my local GS, since that one was pretty far from my house and I'd just happened to be there.  Nope - their inventory system doesn't allow that.  I asked if she could ship the disc to my local store so I could pick it up there.  Nope.

On the highway and need to get over to make my exit.  I speed up to change lanes and the van next to me speeds up to block me.  It was a van for a local HVAC company which I had used before.  Won't use them again though.

There are other examples, but you get the idea.  I keep hearing how bad the economy is.  I don't doubt it, but I have to wonder how much of that is due to companies basically driving sales away with the way they handle themselves.  And, at least two of the people I was dealing with were middle-aged managers, so not like I can blame it on "those darn kids."

I  hear at my company all the time how hard it is to gain a customer and how easy it is to lose one.  I can't believe we're the only company pointing that out.  The good news is that I am now fiercely loyal to any place that actually seems to value me as a customer.  The bad news is that that list of companies seems to shrink by the day. 

I may sound like a grouchy old man, but COME ON world, do your work like it matters.  Treat customers like their entire opinion of your company will be based on that single interaction.  Think about what helps your customer, not what is easiest for you.

[/grouchyOldManRant]

Posted by trupundit @ 12:55 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

My brain is filling up

I never, ever thought I would say this, but there's too damn much for me to learn right now.

Let's see, we upgraded all of the following software titles at work over the past month:

• Captivate 2 to Captivate 3 (I am a SME for this and must become an expert)
• ACT v7 to ACT v8 (This is a training delivery platform, and I am both a SME and an admin for this and must become an expert)
• Swishmax to Swishmax 2
• Photoshop CS2 to Photoshop CS3
• Ditto for Illustrator CS2 to 3
• We also added Adobe Presenter and Connect.  These ones are fortunately not hard to learn, but I still have to learn them.

OK, so all that would keep me pretty busy.  Bear in mind that learning all of these upgrades is in addition to my regular workload, which recently increased tremendously when 37% of my peers were "right-sized" 6 weeks ago.

In addition, I bought a new pocket PC wireless phone that I have had almost no time to play with or figure out, although I have figured out how to have a Halo ring tone and play the two games that came on it.

On top of that, going back and forth between COD4 and Halo3 is making me throw grenades when I want to reload in COD4, and making me throw a bubble shield when I want to reload in H3.

I must be getting old.  I used to soak up stuff like a total sponge and have it all nailed on pretty much the first try.  Not anymore.  I was actually in Illustrator today trying to figure out where one of my panels was when I realized that the panel I was looking for was only in Photoshop, not Illustrator.  I went to call my wife's cell phone today, and had to use the contacts list because I couldn't remember her number.

Did I mention I'm helping my wife out by creating all new forms for her to use in the Doctor's office she works in? 

Oh, we also got a bunch of new software at work, or did I say that?

Anyway, I wonder if this is how my parents felt when we got our first VCR and I had it programmed in 5 minutes and they were still trying to grasp the concept of recording TV?  Will I soon reach the point where my nephew will have to come over to make my holovision unit stop blinking 'Enter dilithium code,"  while I keep pressing buttons on the fridge remote and saying "I AM entering the damn code?"

Speaking of codes, at work we have something called a Universal Passcode.  Only, we have three of them.  Yes, I have three different Universal passcodes, each of which gets me into maybe 2 or 3 systems.  I'm pretty sure my company doesn't really grasp the concept of "universal.".  Luckily, each one must be changed every 90 days or it might get really complicated.  I have found myself asking on many occasions "which universal do I use for this system?"  Then there are the systems which have not yet been converted to a "universal" standard.  Those ones I tend to neglect until I get an e-mail with lots of bolded words from my boss about it.

Fortunately, my new Pocket PC can keep track of all of those passcodes for me, if I ever figure out how to make it do that. 

At least I still remember the square root of 7 to 7 decimals: 2.6457513  Man, I'm a freak.....

Posted by trupundit @ 10:58 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Next License

OK, my first blog where I proposed making people pass a test and get a license to do certain things in life elicited a comment that indicated my moral fiber was missing a few threads.  Fortunately, my ego is way too big to care about that, so here goes another blog, another topic, and another license suggestion.

I had really hoped to get out of the retail world for this next one, but I guess I'll just have to quit going into stores if I ever want to move onto another topic.  The next proposed license is called "License to Shop in Grown Up Stores Where Adults Act Like Adults."  This license is necessary because of a trip to Walmart and K-mart today.  Apparently, there is a fairly large group of "a-dolts" out there who believe all the rules of common sense, common decency, and common courtesy go out the window when they walk into a store.

Now, it may have something to do with how they were raised, but I sure don't remember seeing stuff like I saw today when I was a kid, so, since they were kids at roughly the same time I was, I'm willing to bet the majority of them know, deep down somewhere, that what they do is wrong.

And, oh man, is it wrong.  I needed some socks today, so, at Walmart, I went to the sock aisle.  Now, those of you who are married are no doubt surprised that I was able to immediately go to the sock aisle without needing to detour at all.  Before you begin to doubt my veracity, let me point out that my wife was not with me, so I was able to walk in and go directly to the item I was shopping for.  Anyway, as I near the sock aisle, I see a worker picking clothes up off the floor and hanging them on a rack.  I think to myself, "self, they really ought to keep those in the box until they hang them up instead of dumping them on the floor."  But, as I walked into the sock aisle, I saw what looked like a looted-out store.  Socks on the floor, packages of socks open and dumped on the floor.  And, in the middle of the aisle, a woman had her cart sitting on several of the socks, was standing on some others, and just picked out a pair of socks and left, rolling over several other pairs of socks that were on the floor.  It was then that it dawned on me that the worker had just been picking up stuff that people had thrown on the floor.  Now, clearly, it's not my job to pick up socks, and I wouldn't expect anyone not getting paid to pick them up if they hadn't dropped them, but I did make an effort to not step on any that were on the floor, and I even pick up several pairs and hung them back up.  That was when the worker from the other aisle came over and said thanks but that she would get them.  So I asked her if a bunch of kids had come in and tore the place up.  She said no, it's just Saturday.

So, to this worker, Saturday means people come in and trash the store.  I suppose I'm the naive one.  Maybe I just hadn't noticed it before.  But, my mom worked retail for 25 years, and I can still hear her yelling at me to put things back, not just on ANY rack, but on the RIGHT rack.

Later, I stop at K-mart because they had their lawn and garden stuff marked down pretty well and we needed some mulch to repair an area of our yard that had had an unfortunate encounter with my lawnmower (the mulch put up a good fight, but the lawnmower won handily).  This time, my wife was with me, so we went through pretty much the whole store on our way to buy mulch.  In the women's clothing area, I found my wife picking up clothes.  You regular readers know my wife is OCD, so messes like clothes on the floor MUST be fixed before she can move on.  I knew better than to suggest that she didn't really need to be doing that, so I waited for her to finish.  The only thing she said to me about it was that "people are pigs."  I could tell she meant it.

Only, people aren't pigs.  At least, they don't have to be.  Once we get the license bureau set up (The Balanced Life License Commission, or TBLL-C (Table C) -remember?), we'll allow stores to hang up "Licensed Shoppers Only" signs.  These will be great stores.  They'll be clean.  The paper towel dispensers in the restrooms will actually work and won't be ripped off the wall.  The self-serve lines will move fast (because remember, you'll need a separate license to use them).  The checkers will smile because they'll have a more pleasant working environment.  (OK, I know that one is a stretch - cut me some slack).

Now, if this is kids doing it, it is far more forgivable, although their parents should be making them clean it up.  But, it's not kids.  While in K-Mart, I saw a man picking out some work gloves.  He apparently wanted the pair 4 or 5 back on the peg, so he grabbed the first few pairs and...............dropped them on the floor.  He grabbed the pair he wanted and walked away.

License revoked.

Posted by trupundit @ 8:49 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Pillow talk

So, we bought new pillows yesterday.  To be wholly accurate, my wife bought us both new pillows and then swapped mine out without saying a word about it.  I didn't realize it until I went to go to bed and found that my head was nearly perpendicular to the bed because this sucker is THICK.  And fluffy!  And some other descriptor of a good pillow.  Once I beat it into submission and forced my head down into it, it's a darn nice pillow.

It made me think of all the things my wife does that I would never do.  I would still have the pillow I had when I moved away from home 21 years ago if it were left to me.  Same sheets probably too.  But, my wife updates these items regularly.  She makes the bed too, something which is completely foreign to me.  I try to make the bed sometimes, to "pitch in around the house," but, when I do, she always looks at it like she would look at a clay ashtray built by a five year old.

Anyway, here are some more things that my wife does for us that I would never even think of doing:

1. Buys throw rugs that coordinate with the colors of the room.
2. Cleans behind large objects that are hard to move.
3. Dusts the glass on pictures on the wall.
4. Buys pictures that require frames with glass in them.
5. Puts out guest soaps.
6. Weeds behind the garage, which is an area no one else can see.
7. Wipes down the tops of the interior room doors.
8. Spreads out magazines in an orderly fashion on the coffee table.
9. Writes down things we need to do on the calendar.
10. Sweeps the street in front of our house.

Now, my wife is definitely OCD, and she does not work outside of the home, so she views all these things as part of her responsibilities as the Queen of the household.  I sometimes try to imagine what my house would look like without her.  A lot like my college apartment I am guessing.

Here's to all the amazing things our wives do for us that are not glamorous or possibly even necessary, but make life a lot better.  We don't deserve you, but we sure appreciate  you.

Posted by trupundit @ 10:52 am EDT | Permalink | 8 Comments