The I Miss the Old Days Complaint Thread
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the news story said cigarette lighter left in pocket
but the dryer itself had to be faulty to do that!
Lithium would be a vibrant red color flame.
Complaint: Arghhh... just got another order from a doctor wanting me to go for yet another blood test, tomorrow! Another trip up town this week, I'm going to go broke!
Non-complaint: Wheee..., it will be another mini-adventure. I might even get to the Chinese restaurant this time. Wheee..., eggrolls, orange beef and moo-goo-gi-pan. Lunch and leftovers for three days.
My mom just 'loves' it... One needs to see a doctor for whatever, but first one needs to fetch a sample jar from the laboratory in person, then one needs to return the jar with the sample in person before one can see the doctor (in person), which is three trips to the hospital on three different days and the trips must be made within relatively short timeframe during working hours of the hospital.
First, there is no functioning public transportation anymore (last bus went some 30 years ago), so I need to get out of work during my work day, drive some 20 miles to collect her and drive her to the hospital (an other 20 miles), wait for her in the hospital, drive her back and then come back to work.
Second and the worst part, is that she must make herself presentable for each of these trips, which she really, really doesn't like
And, that was just for one doctor appointment...
Non-complaint: Yay! New footage of the new train station at the Orlando airport. Yeah, yeah, I know, for the Europeans this is a yawn, they've had modern trains for decades. But the US is just now waking up to smell the coffee and finally get on the train train. New high speed (~110 mph) trains that aren't covered in grime, and don't look like they're 80 years old.
Hourly trains, along the 230 miles of new track & bridges, between Miami and Orlando begin later this year.
Is that the train to that new attraction "prison land" that someone keeps promising to build?... Maybe I misread the brochure... it seemed rather dumb.
They can't seem to keep the trains on the tracks here lately! If they were going that fast, I really wouldn't want to see it on the news, it would be horrific!
Dana
Last time I looked at the stats for HSR - there was 37,000 miles of HSR (over 155mph) globally, with 456 miles in the US (and that was speed limited to 100mph). HSR is doable, but its a pricey and complex issue.
Which is why it's not such a thing here. 456 miles in the US wouldn't even cover from Boston to somewhere south along the Eastern seaboard. We have 3,000 miles from coast to coast. And like I said, even in short runs, they can't seem to keep the cars on the tracks! Even the "T" in Boston has had numerous derailments and crashes in the past decade. And they don't travel nearly that fast. In fact, the Feds have made them lower the speeds until they can get a handle on safety. I'm glad I do use public transportation, and really glad I don't have to drive in Boston. I pass through there when going to NH once a year, and even that is nervewracking, and I just stay on 93 N, I don't get off in the city. Haven't done that in a couple decades. Well, I brought or picked up my sister at Logan Airport a few times, but that's about it.
Dana
Yeah, I saw that crash from a few days ago. I notice that the train involved had two "BrightPink" cars. And in the video above, they mentioned that half of the new 4-car BrightPink train in Orlando was being sent to Miami to add to the original 4-car BrightPink train down there, to accomodate seasonal travel in the existing active southern part of the line Between Miami and West Palm.
All drivers in Florida, when approaching train crossings, have to make decisions, but some choose badly. So far, the trains haven't seemed to be too badly damaged. I know a lot of those crossings, all up and down the Florida East Coast. Some of them are truck traps. The solution is to either elevate the tracks or the roads or un-trucktrap them. But as for the persistently stupid in cars? I have no comment.
The speeds down the East Coast leg of the run is lower speed, especially through the cities, ~60 mph. The 110+ mph leg is eastward, across essentially open territory/swamp from Orlando to Cocoa Beach, no intersections, elevated roadbed across the roads over the swamps, under & over I-95 and other various roadways, then turns south toward Miami along, and through the centers of the numerous, nearly connected, sprawling cities for 200 miles. That's a LOT of intersections.
And here we go.
...meh, another less than wonderful April winter day in Portland. Mid 40s with icy cold ran bucketing doiwn. Today marks the eleventh week of winter here since groundhog day,.five more than predicted.
This is getting really depressing.
I've heard that the manufacturer of groundhog alarm clocks has issued a recall to fix this year's batch that apparently fail to ring.
Complaint: Driving in Boston. (*shiver*)
that's one of the reasons HSR is so pricey to implement - you really need a dedicated no crossing right of way, all set up for higher speeds (superelevation, curve radius, rail weight, etc..)
Even with not having experienced that, I would guess it's childs play compared to driving in Moscow... In practice, there are no rules.
Driving in Boston, or in general New England, it would seem the same...nobody follows the rules. Speed limit is generally 65 on the highways, with exceptions for certain stretches where it is 55 or 50 (mph). Everybody seems to think it's OK to go 75 or 85, even in the 55 zones. They change lanes without signals, tailgate dangerously close to the next car in front of them, cut people off with less than a car length between them, tailgate big rigs - whose drivers can't even see them in their mirrors. And the drivers of big rigs do the same, tailgating and such. And they go too fast on exits. I can't count the number of times I've seen a big rig tipped over on an exit, their cargo spilled all over the road. Or they just kept going through the guard rail and down an embankment. If you leave an apprpriate space in front of you for safety, someone will cut into that space. One time, when going to work in the Greater Boston area, everyone was going about 80...you have no choice at that point, if you slow down, someone will hit you. Anyway, I was in the left lane, perparing for the split at the top of Rte. 24, a woman in the center lane flew by me. When I looked, she had one hand holding a mascara brush or something, and in the other had a compact with mirror, which she was looking at. She was alone in the car. I wondered...who was driving??? This was in the late 90s...there was no Tesla self driving car at that time! I was thankful that she went right at the split. I've seen many people with a newspaper spread across the steering wheel. Sometimes, trying to get off a rotary is kind of like the Griswalds in European Vacation! Nobody lets you make your move. Considering all this, you can undertand why I make every effort to stay off highways when possible.
Dana
I'm amazed that I didn't witness a single accident the whole time I was in Korea, because it is madness on the roads. At a red light, you'd see five cars in two lanes as everyone was jockeying to get to the front, then they'd have to merge back to two when traffic started moving again. Accidents must have been happening all the time, but somehow I just didn't see one.
That sounds more like it... The roads in Moscow are wide, five or so lanes in the same direction, but one has at least seven cars side by side , everybody driving bumper to bumper at hare-raising speeds and then there's the junctions... The worst I have been in, was a junction where two roads with 5 lanes in the same direction were joined into one road with 5 lanes in the same direction, without any traffic control and of course both roads that were coming in looked far worse than the autobahns at start of summer vacation season... We spent a few hours in that junction before we got through.
That is one place where I refused to drive, but the guy that had half a bottle of vodka with his lunch, had no problems
That, again, sounds like the Greater Boston area. Rte. 128 at the junction of Rte. 24 is three lanes. Rte. 24 is two lanes. When 24 merges into 128, two lanes are merging into three lanes. The backups can be quite tiresome. To make things worse, in that area of 128, driving in the breakdown lanes is allowed from 7:00 am to 10:00 am, and again from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. They drive at full speed or higher (55 mph is the limit in that stretch, often they're going at least 65 mph). If someone actually breaks down, the entire stretch of road becomes a parking lot, sometimes for hours.
Dana
Technically, all cars are self driving, depending on how much autonomy the idiot sitting in the driver's seat is willing to allow the vehicle and whatever solid objects or natural terrain features intersect said vehicle's trajectory...
Just the other day on one of the local highways I happened to watch some dope ahead of me lean over to the point I couldn't see his silhouette and a second later the car went over a drainage grate causing it to careen off to the shoulder barely missing the concrete divider (or maybe scuffing it)...
He apparently decided the car had this and he was going to do something else... maybe take a nap or look under the seat for that old Katy Perry CD, whatever happened the car was like "okay, sure" but the road was like "Bruh... you stupid or what!?" and the divider was like "Nooooo, not again!"
Either way, there was an instant epiphany that cars don't always make the best choices when left to make decisions on their own... especially early 2000s Cadillac Escalades... which granted is an SUV, not a car and I could see where one might think being larger than a car might make it smarter or more mature... but I'm guessing this realization was rather jarring...
In an uncharacteristic act of reason, the driver immediately slowed down and got off at the next exit... either to attend church or change underwear, or possibly both...
I say "uncharacteristic" because I see people do that kind of stuff all the time, though not always so spectacularly, and just keep on driving like nothing happened and continuing to wander out of their lane or drive half on the shoulder... that someone actually decided maybe they needed a time-out was kinda unusual... or maybe that was his exit... who knows.
Now that spring has arrived people are extra impatient or distracted or just dumber... I've been seeing a very noticeable uptick in very specific kinds of bad driving in addition to the more recent trends of wander all over the road and crossing into oncoming traffic... I had a theory on the last ones and a friend of mine has been noticing that it seems to be more prevalent in newer cars, especially SUVs... we are both convinced it's a distracted driving issue due to the massive "Infotainment" screens most of these vehicles have... the majority of which have awful GUIs and dumb designs... it's just catnip to bad drivers.
And then there's the Humannip... You can't drive any modest distance without having some f---knut in front of you toking up a storm.
It seems like nobody wants to talk about this either, like it's socially uncool or something... but it's getting mega stupid now... the number of people out there who think it's okay to smoke weed and drive is astounding... that and the number of commercial vehicle drivers I've seen in DIY centers that are totally baked and reeking of smoke is equally ridiculous.
Who's employing someone who smells like that and is driving their company truck with their logo on it?... Unbelievable... I can't believe this goes unnoticed...
Whatever.
And I guess to some extent this comment has come full circle... to some degree a lot of those vehicles with the skunkie air fresheners technically are self driving.
Sort of the opposite for me in San Francisco. In summer of '95 I had just motorcycled solo from Washington, DC via Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Dinosaur Monument Utah, Yellowstone Wyoming, Boisie, Spokane, Seattle, Vancouver, several hundred miles up almost to the Yukon. Crossing some of the Canadian Rockies to Dawson Creek. Then back down the mountains again to Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Cresent City California, and finally down to San Francisco along the coast road. Wheee.... Several close calls, and some stupidity and a few minor events, but by time I reached San Francisco to wait for my plane to Austrailia, I had a pretty good idea of how to handle my now three month old bike. But the little experiences that I had riding into the city itself, told me "nope", there was more to learn. But I was tired of riding and the bike needed attention. So, I took up residence in the heart of the city for a little while waiting for the next big part of my adventure. I put my faithful, but now trail-weary bike in storage at the in-town BMW motorcycle dealership. It was to be fixed of all structural damage and most cosmetic damage, then tuned-up and kept ready for me when I returned from Australia in 5 weeks to finish my trip back to Washington DC.
So, there I am, in San Francisco without a bike for a few days. I walked and took public transport, and in that short time I witnessed, as they happened, three bad motorcycle accidents. Like, bones coming out of flesh, type bad. What's the probability of that? It made me glad that I hadn't been tempted to navigate the crowds of vehicles & people and especially not on the hills.(OK, you try to park a 700 pound motorcycle on a 30 degree slope in a space that's oriented the wrong way.) (You get stuck in stop and go traffic on the lead-in to the Golden Gate bridge and the in-bound 3 or 4 lanes are steeply banked and you're on a heavilly loaded 700 pound motorcycle that would navigate the curve by itself with my hands off the handlebars if I were moving at 55 miles an hour, but it's stop and go two carlengths then stop again, all the way to the bridge, but every time I had to move I couldn't stop tangent to the road, I'd fall over. I had to stop pointed somewhat up the hill, then when we moved, I'd have to swoop up, then down, and then up into resting position again. Arghhh...but it worked. Got pretty smooth at it by time we were down on the flat again.)
It was much better that I let the motorcycle have a few weeks of spa treatment and a good rest.
indeed.. now try this - stopped at a light on an upslope on a 700 pound 1936 bike with a hand shift and foot clutch and a pretty non-existent front brake.. (left foot, non return clutch, not like a car, its a a heel and toe foot rocker pedal clutch. When you push it down basically you are moving. When you heel back you're in neutral. right foot was the back brake..so - with a really bad front brake on a slope start, you need one foot on the brake, one foot on the clutch - see where this is going?? .. eventually got the needed bits to rebuilt the fron t brake.. (oh adn the left hand grip was a twist grip that controlled ignition timing...) Bike was a 1936 ex-police Harley..
...I've seen enough of those dash cam videos to back that up. Even waiting for a bus or crossing the street to board a tram there is dangerous.
One of the common habits from there I'm seeing more and more where I live is people making turns out of the wrong lane often without using their turn indicator or engaging it after already initiating the change of vector.
...OK was going to download some new purchases and the IM is querying me for my password (which usually autofills from my password locker). Apparently something broke again so now I have to go get the password and manually insert it.
Complaint: The Internet is broken! Every site I visit first comes up all garbled without formatting. I have to refresh to get the page to look right. Every site. This one included. I'm closing everything and shutting down. I have other things to do.
Dana
...I've had times where pages would load in text only mode.
Something on your system is interfering with saving the settings - I'm not sure if the password goes in the .ini file or the registry.
Complaint: Suddenly for the first time I am no longer getting the News/Sales emails and I can't figure out why .....ugh!!
Do you ever wonder why? I do.