the bay area's not so rapid transit
I know I will be cursing your name tomorrow when I have to drive with an extra 350,000 people on the road. You greedy bastards. What? While everyone else is getting laid off or getting pay cuts, it’s not enough to be the highest paid (even adjusted for cost of living) workers in the country? Damn, you work in a booth or drive an automated train and you get triple digits when your benefits are included.
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Update:
“BART and the Amalgamated Douchebag Union have reached a tentative agrement to avert a strike, and service continues…”
jr. rant bart, metro, traffic
If the title doesn’t say it all then you’ve never happened across one of these pink and whatever colored, animated avatar using, I used to be a professional but, ego-centric, self-pitying, self-aggrandizing, blahblahblah websites. I don’t care who you are or were, blogging is not a career.
It’s time to start celebrating the daddy blogger! I’m talking about dads like those over at Mydadhomies. It’s time there was more testosterone in the blogosphere to hold back the estrogen tsunami. That right I said hold back. No need for any more rising up. The man has been beaten down as far as he can go.
ps etc., rant blogging, daddy blog, mommy blog
drivers beware
This driving instructor is a perfect example of a wtf bay bridge driver. Over the last 100 feet leading up to the toll booth they changed lanes 5 different times. I’m guessing the blinker must have been broken on their shiny new blue Toyota Camry because I can’t think of any other reason not to use the blinker a single time. Great job continuing your demonstration of how to create traffic with unnecessary and excessive lane changes well beyond the toll booth. I have to give you credit for reinforcing stereotypes about two different types of drivers. This WTF Bay Bridge driver goes to you driver of a blue Camry with CA license plate 5W0B169.
And while on the topic of the Bay Bridge – CalTrans, just because you are building a new span to update the bridge it does not mean let the road surface of the current bridge go to hell. Patch a pothole or two. My car will thank you.
jr. people, rant bay bridge, dumb people, traffic
a new way to funnel traffic
Whether you commute to San Francisco for work or are driving to the city for pleasure (b/c it’s oh so pleasurable to walk down the urine scented streets and get accosted by the homeless the city celebrate) there’ s a good chance you will cross a bridge. If that bridge is the Bay Bridge, you are in for a real treat if you enjoy wasting an hour in your car sitting in stop-and-go traffic. It is not just that it is slow, the amount of time it takes is, for lack of a better way of putting it, consistently inconsistent. Time to get through the toll plaza ranges from 5 minutes to well north of an hour.
So let’s look at the problems. First who was the rocket scientist who dreamed up the MacArthur Maze? Who woke up and thought, “Hey, let’s dump three major freeways into some toll booths followed a set of metering lights. What could go wrong?” Add to that two more feeder freeways (24 and 980) that feed the freeways pouring into the Maze. Second, you’ve got different types of lanes for different types of drivers (carpool, cash/FasTrak, FasTrak only, buses/trucks). So you’ve got the traffic from all of these freeways madly scrambling to change lanes in a relatively short distance. What makes all of this more frustrating is that FasTrak is actually just as slow as the cash lanes, even with the cash lanes merging into each other after the toll booths but before the metering lights. This gives us the perfect lead into metering lights. I won’t even comment on metering lights – anyone who has experienced them knows that they cause nothing but extra wear and tear on your vehicle.
building a new parking lot
Finally we are left with the drivers who drive the Bay Bridge. This is the worst part. They take the smoldering ember that is the Maze/toll plaza/metering lights and stoke the flames until we’ve got an out of control wildfire on our hands. What compels these people to act like such complete idiots? The obsessive lane changing has got to stop. wtf? do you think changing lanes every five feet is going to get you there faster? And then there are the jackasses that enable them because they insist on staying 20 car lengths behind the car in front of them in stop-and-go traffic. CalTrans needs to install some type of dividers between lanes to get people to pick a lane and stay in it. What makes these lane changers even worse is that they couldn’t care less about signaling or even be bothered with checking to see if there is a car occupying the space the so desperately need move into. So with that, I would like to introduce a new weekly segment called “wtf bay bridge driver?” Each week we will one of the idiots doing their best to clog our roads and endanger their fellow drivers. Our first wtf bay bridge driver goes to the Volkswagon Golf driver with CA license plate #5GMJ151. We raise this one finger salute in your honor!
jr. rant, travel bay bridge, san francisco, traffic
e-milyon reasons not to listen
thanks for attempting to ruin another year of broadcasts from WMC. i know WMC was a few weeks ago, but hearing her babble the intro to DJ Times Shortlist reminded me how annoying she is. even if she didn’t say her name every other sentence, she would still be easy to identify by her inane chatter. and i’m not the only one who feels this way - a quick search of her name pulls up petitions to get Emily Tan pulled from WMC coverage. unfortunately, i guess it didn’t work this year. she still managed to interrupt mixes every five minutes with some of the worst interviews i’ve ever heard. i found myself begging my stereo to make her please shut up. to no avail. she just kept talking, mentioning her name , dropping other people’s names and acting like she was a dance music trendsetter. sirius, she seriously needs to go.
jr. music, people, rant emily tan, sirius area, wmc
maggot food
This POS deserves to rot. I’m sure there’s a spot waiting in hell for the people who think he was a helpless victim too.
jr. people, rant criminals, trash
This is something that has really been getting on my nerves lately. You ask someone a question and they don’t answer. This can be face-to-face, over the phone, by email, on facebook or wherever. You ask a question and the other person ignores it or answers with a question. For example, you ask the simple question “What would you like for dinner tonight?” and the response “What would you like for dinner?” Is that an echo I hear?
Every day I deal with sales people trying to sell me this or that and they are the absolute worst about answering direct, clear as crystal questions. For example, a common question might be ”How many unique visitors does your site have?” and the typical response “We are the greatest thing since sliced bread and you know, [insert their competitor's name] isn’t even in our class.” Did I ask about your competitor or sliced bread? A simple “We have 30,000 visitors per month,” would have sufficed. Heaven forbid you ask more than one question over email. You might as well have sent a blank email because the response will have nothing to do with anything relevant.
A perfect example is a salesperson who I had to deal with this week. It was Friday afternoon and they suddenly got it in their head that they had to do a deal in the next two hours. Mind you, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled this stunt. “You need to sign this contract right now because I’ve got three other people waiting to take this spot if you don’t want it… and oh yeah, it is 10 times more expensive than last year and everyone else is willing to pay full price.” Several things are wrong with this tactic – but I will save that for another post. In the response to their kind offer (they, after all, took the time to email us out of “courtesy” because we already work with them), it clearly stated there are several questions that need answering before we can make a decision. The almost instantaneous response failed to answer a single one and went straight back to “Now or else!”
Well – I wish them luck selling their crap ad space with the oversupply of ad inventory that exists and the crummy economy further depressing prices.
jr. companies, people, rant questions, salespeople
crapcast
This rant has nothing to do with cable prices, waiting all day for a technician to show up or a dvr not recording my favorite show (the things most comcast customers would likely have an issue with). It has to do with running a pointless test of the emergency alert system during primetime on a cable channel. Seriously – WTF?! There I am, happy as can be watching Burn Notice on USA on Thursday night. It’s the last 2-3 minutes of the episode and Michael and Fiona are just starting a serious discussion about their relationship. What happens next… I’ve got no f—ing idea because my TV suddenly is showing me nothing but snow with some 1970s style text scrolling over it telling me that this fancy special defect is part of a weekly test of the emergency broadcast system. Comcast – test all you want during a commercial break or at 3a.m. – but test over prime time again and I’ll finally get off my rear and switch to DirecTV or Dish (which I want to do anyway but inertia and/or laziness have prevented).
jr. companies, rant burn notice, comcast, directv, emergency alert system, emergency broadcast system
$89 for a 4′ HDMI cable that is worth $2? I bought two 10′ HDMI cables with the same specs for less than $10 including shipping. They’ve worked flawlessly. But hey, I have to give their marketing department credit for actually convincing people that they need to spend the extra $87 for the Monster Brand. I’m just surprised that there are enough people willing to drop a Benjamin for a single cable in the world to keep them going. I would think that people who are that into a/v equipment would take two seconds to do a little research online and learn the truth.
jr. products, rant hdmi, home theater, monster cable
abandoned puppies need a good home. do you have a good home?
WTF is with people abandoning baby anythings on the side of the road/in a dumpster/wherever? People, people – take responsibility. Listen to Bob Barker and get your pets spayed or neutered (this applies to your daughter too if her name is Nadya Suleman). If you let your dog have puppies, take care of them yourself or find them a good home. Think long and hard about wtf is wrong with you if you even consider leaving baby animals on the side of the road?
Anyway – these little guys need a home or some foster parents. Contact us if you can help.
jr. animal, people, rant cold heart, cowardess, puppies