Another day another mental ass kicking

Seriously...

The highs  are getting higher.
The lows are getting lower.

Either the stakes are getting higher or I am going bi-polar.

or both.

*sigh*

Why I love Ann Arbor : (hint its not for the proposed Vehicle idling ordinance)

There is so much to love about Ann Arbor. The beautiful parks, the diverse people, the culture, the general tolerance of everyone... it really is a wonderful place to live and work.

There is, however, a dark side to our beautiful city. It is an over legislated attitude that is becoming more and more pervasive and is driving a legal wedge between the people in power and the people whom they are supposed to serve.

It would be comical if it was not so crazy, and before I condemn any one person or entity let me just say this: it has not passed yet. Still the fact that it is being proposed, in its current form, is just mind blowingly stupid.

No, really, if you read the proposal it could not be more ludicrous, idiotic, and a waste of the cities time and efforts. Counsel please I implore you. Listen to the poles, look at what is going on around you and think about what you are doing.

Have we leaned nothing from the crosswalk law debacle?
Still think it might not be such a bad idea?  Before you decide, check out this story about it *here* and *here* but my understanding is as it reads in its current recommendation:

The proposed ordinance would make a $100 ticket the minimum punishment for a driver who leaves a vehicle running while unoccupied for any amount of time or running for five minutes while occupied. For commercial vehicles, that minimum fine increases to $500.

I don't care what other cities have done, and know that the city leans toward the tree hugging side of the scale and that is not in itself a bad thing but seriously who in there right mind could possibly think that this is a good idea.

What happens when the person that starts their car and takes off in less than five minutes can not see out of the frost laden windshield and kills a pedestrian at one of your newly anointed cross walks? Its not good enough to scrape the window when its 20 below, your breath alone will kill your visibility until your car warms up an that is going to take more than 5 stupid minutes in those temperatures. What about warming a car for your infant child, or the elderly or...wait why do I even have to explain to anyone why that is a terrible idea? If a bad idea itself could have a worse idea the crap that it came up with would still be a better idea than this.

Here is a partial list of things that are WAY MORE IMPORTANT to deal with then the emissions from idling vehicles:

Funding for essential services (PS funding them from this insanity is not the answer)
The growing homeless problem
Parking, the lack thereof and issues surrounding it.
Keeping downtown a safe, thriving business friendly zone
Just about ANYTHING ELSE you can think of honestly

All I can say it the people of the city are really at the limit of dumb laws that make no sense, create more confusion then good, and in the end cause more harm.

As I said there is so much to love about this great city. This ordinance and others like it are not why.

The real reason Kids dont want to get there drivers license at 16....

It is the start of the Detroit International Auto Show this week , so I thought I would write a little post about something I have noticed for a while... young adult not wanting to get there drivers license. 

Its really weird. Picture this: your 18 and you don’t have a license yet? Really? When I was in school the only reason you did not have your drivers license at 18 was due to a court order of some kind. Seriously.
But over and over I see kids waiting… 18,19,20… older. Waiting. Worse yet not even caring.

So I guess I am not the only once to notice, but I am really tired of people saying its because of  social media giving kids digital freedom, a shrinking world, the lack of a need. In fact its not ONE of those things. Its all of those reason and more.

Yes you can tweet all your friends, and let them know that your checking in at your living room in a press of a button on your phone.  Really though, I think most are just a little lazy.

Lets face it, like most things every year its harder to get your license as well. Make it hard and young adults start to question the value of it. Why try when I can just get mom to drive me? It is really a little over regulated. I am not a huge fan of the graduated process most states have adopted. I say teach you kid to drive, and let them get there license. Its gong be hard, just do it for gods sake.

Parents make it worse, coddling there kids. If you were my kid, you would want to drive. If for nothing else just to get away from me. Not to mention that if you are 18 I am not going to be driving your ass around.

I also believe that it helped that we had motorcycles, go carts, and all sorts of dangerous fun when we were kids. Now this stuff is way to dangerous for the general populace now days. Hell you have to wear a helmet to walk outside these days. When did everyone become such wussies?

Of course you are talking to a guy that was not happy with his drivers license and went on to get his pilots license. So maybe I just don’t understand the mind set. Maybe I never will. One thing for sure, I do see the trend. For what it worth I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.

Overheard Tonight On The Couch: New Year Edition

(While watching the Blackberry Bold commercial)

Me: "Blackberry Bold..."

The Girl: *blink*

Me: "He might as well be riding around on a dinosaur and taking notes on stone tablets."

The Girl: "Wow sweetie..."

Helllo Friday, thy name is Cray Cray

 I dont know why I plan to get anything done on Fridays when in the end I just have to learn to relax and ride the crazy wave back into the sanity shore.



Photo Cred to : Ignorance management  

Some People

How can somthing so small ...

Like this little hole... cost me so much money.
And Stress, did I mention the Stress?
Shit.

RE-post: The US Patent System Is Killing Innovation

Re post from Gizmodo

The US Patent System Is Killing Innovation:

HTC sued Apple over mobile patents today. Again. Pretty soon Apple will likely sue them back. Again. Shrug. Throw it on the pile. And while the patent Cold War continues to heat up, weep for the real casualty: innovation.

Please click *here* to check out the entire article by Gizmodo

Tuesdays Rant: absolute douche edition.

(start rant)

Photo credit to Ken Gillies.

A long time ago I learned that words like “always” and “never” were not my friends.

Such absolutes are tough to back up because we really do live in a world of grays, a place where there are exceptions and reasons that sometimes we can not see or maybe even understand.

You should NEVER KILL- what if you are saving a million lives by killing one tiny insect?

You should ALWAYS be kind to others- what about if causes you or your family harm.

Sure some of these might be just intellectual concepts, situations we would likely not encounter but still there are reasons. Reasons, possibilities, things you haven’t considered.

Really the big problem, besides the fact the only time you can be so absolute is to say you would NEVER be so absolute, is most of the time you come off sounding like a giant douche.

When you sound like a giant condescending tower of turd-tastick absolutisms I just want to hit you along side the cranium with an aluminum baseball bat.  Even if what you are saying, is mostly right, you self centered self-righteous ego-maniac. Especially if that person has a soapbox to reach the masses, Mr. think-you-know-everything.

I don’t want to name names, so I wont, but it drives me CRAZY that people will say things like:

There is NEVER any excuse to (do something)

Or

People should ALWAYS  (do something)

I just wish people would acknowledge that no matter what they think they know, there can be an exception or reason or scenario that maybe, no matter how remote, just might contradict what you know.

(end rant)

Top Mistakes of the day:

Top Mistakes of the day:

1)      Try and reason with the unreasonable. Seriously stop it.

2)      Let the dog have a green olive. Big mistake.

3)      Watch the move “Killers”. Seriously Ashton Kutcher, stop it.

4)      Give myself green olives

5)      Wait this late to post on the blog

SWA- Squirrel with attitude

Here you see a little indignant rodent that just stayed out side of my reach chirping like crazy when tanner and I were in the front yard for our morning routine. He sat on one of the giant silver maple twins in the front yard barking at us. This little guy knew he was just safe and I was just tired enough to let it slide. I have had enough of nonsensical complaining this week already.

Swa

Dear Pet supply sellers

Even if I had a bird, and I don't, there is no way in hell that I would pay $4.16 for a Stick.
I found this stick, debarked and ready to put in your bird cage in the store. All for the low low price of $4.16. Or you can just go outside and snag one off any random tree and save yourself some green.

Meanwhile at work…

Meanwhile at work…I have the normal 1.5 million things to do and the stupid phone lines were out. This was last Monday, so I had to go into the utility room with the repair guy when I noticed something a little odd.  The pipe for the sprinkler system for the whole complex was sticking out of the cement. The cement was broken near the base. Did the pipe freeze? Did it shift?

I took this shot, sent it off to the sprinkler guys, they could not figure out what was going on. So I tabled it. Fast forward to today.

This morning as I casually drove by the utility room something caught my eye and I screeched to a stop. I backed up and saw this:

Yep the pipe was missing. Not just missing sawed off.

W.T.F

It seems that I was unable to see the obvious. It was not frozen or broken it was smashed. It was not the sprinkler guys. It appears some mental midget thought that it was a good idea to smash the concrete to get the pipe out. This particular super genius, when he could not get it out a week or so later decided just cut off the copper pipe. I estimate that this is a couple of dollars worth of scrap copper. Tops.

Ok here is where I go a little off the rails:

To the person that took my copper pipe.
It not about the money, or the time or the hassle.

Its more than that.

This really just pisses me off. I mean really really angers me. More than it should. Some might call it displaced anger, I would say it’s a focusing event.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with the sprinkler guys, the police and neither one of them are really going to give a shit. I, on the other hand, have made an enemy.

If today was a dinosaur... it would be a

If today....
was a dinosaur it would be a Dumbassasaurus.
was a car it would be a Kia SoGobacktobedto.
was a cereal it wold be frosted crap flakes.
was a color it would be burnt sayonara.
was a plant it would be a creeping-you-down.
was a disease it would be H1N2 bad for you.
was a city would be sukstobeyou ville.

(end mini rant)

Why do things have to be so COMPLICATED

Just liket that Its Phat Tuesday again,.

I know spring is right around the corner abut I have to say that Lent seems a little too depressing this year to deal with. Probably a good sign that I need it more than ever.

It seems like a long time till Easter.

I can only say that all that will make spring seem that much sweeter.

Still, that does not help me now does it?

Really Universe?

Can nothing go right today?

I give up, you win. I will attempt nothing of consequence for the rest of the day.

How to service you ATV and other ways to waste your Sunday

I had a plan.

It was a good plan.
Really more like a list of things to do. Things that I was looking forward to getting done. I had the whole day to do them.

First on the list plow the driveway.

Should be simple start the ATV, plow the snow. 15 min Job maybe get the Moms driveway. Either way, done and on to the next one.

What actually happened was far different than I had planned .

When it would not start, I thought it was the battery. So I got a new one. Filled it with acid, charged it. No juice. Tracked down the Manual, tore machine apart. Tracked down the main fuse replace the fuse, blew the fuse, shoveled the driveway by hand, gave up on ATV put ATV back together.

So much for item #1.

I have been starting on the wrong side of pyramid- and other reasons I cant talk to the public.

Conflict resolution.

Wait, really?

Your not supposed to start at the bottom?

Son of a ......

I keep finding out things that are driving me crazy!