Category: Misc

Mad Max 4: The Road Worker

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So, today for my 37th birthday I got dusted by a crop duster.  I guess I can cross that off the bucket list.

In order to be at an event in Louisiana in a couple days that I’m not ‘apposed to talk about, I thought I’d finish off my summer of road trips by taking an especially long one to the Big Easy and back to Seattle over 2 weeks.  For this trip however I didn’t want to get the Benz serviced since it’s a 5000 mile round trip, so Rochto graciously let me take her VW Tiguan, using the Garmin 260w GPS I got her.

There are only two things you need to know about this GPS.  You can program it to say roughly anything you want, and you can make it speak in a female Australian accent. Or, I should say, an American’s version of an Australian accent spoken by a computer synthesized female-esque Stephen Hawking/Wargames type voice. Imagine a Seth Effrikin accent mashed with an English one.

Hilarity, with this, must ensue.

Seattle is of course a beautiful place to live.  And many places between Seattle and Dallas are beautiful, but my friends I am here to report that the stimulus package is working. Every view between Seattle and Dallas, on every highway interstate or state, is marred by that unique fluorescent crimson rectangle stating boldly: “ROAD WORK AHEAD”.

Traveling at 25mph on one lane of traffic, listening to my GPS intone “Continya stroight awn Intastate nointy fuh threy moils” and watching bizarre figures toil in bright orange hard hats and other garb, it wasn’t hard to imagine myself in some new Mad Max sequel.  Especially outside Memphis, Texas.  In one of the few stretches of non construction on TX State highway 287 a crop duster appeared just off to my left, dusting.  “Oh cool” I thought, until I noticed he was flying, at speed, perpendicular to the highway stretch. At an altitude of about 50 feet.

“ohshitohshitohshit” I said out loud as he appeared to head right for me.  He cut his duster right before the highway and flew directly over my car so low it shook with the air passing and was coated in whatever stuff they use on the crops.  I could almost hear the pilot say “between them and us, there isn’t enough runway”. “Croikey!” exclaimed my GPS.

And I, just like Mel Gibson, am older. But I haven’t yet been pulled over drunk, screaming racial or anti-Semitic epithets at the cops.  So I got that going for me, which is good.

Wish You Were Here

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Well my time in San Francisco ended up being more packed that I thought it would. But tomorrow morning I leave for a coastal drive up highway 101 to Port Orford, Oregon. It’s tough to leave San Francisco though, Here’s my view from where I am writing this.

CIMG0347

The GLAAD sponsored panel on homophobia and online communities went very well.  We had a great turn out, and big thanks to Electronic Arts for providing a place for the panel.  The discussion was great and an online version will be available soon, as soon as I have a link I will post it here.

Tonight I’m wrapping up some blog entries and a pile of work ahead of being back in the office Tuesday.

A Twitter of Echoes

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So tonight we had a bit of drama where we live. Our subdivision is a small set of about 40 houses up top of Big Rock Ridge in our farming community of Duvall in Washington state.  Tonight we had some type of domestic disturbance that involved a potentially armed disturbed 40 something year old male, a manhunt, a lot of panic, and a resolution that at least means no one in our area was hurt.

What flipped me out was the sheer number of direct Twitter messages I got asking if me and Rochto were ok.  I only have like 1800 (TRULY AWESOME) twitter followers but to have 50+ messages of people asking me if everything was ok with us just reminded me of how awesome Twitter is, and really, how good tools on the Internet enable a real sense of community.  We’re fine, and honestly it was just a few hours of nervousness spent upstairs with the alarm on and looking out the window.  We’re privileged in so many ways, our alarm, police force, etc.

Our situation pales in comparison to Darfur, Iraq, etc.  Tonight, a couple of white people were momentarily spooked.

But I can’t help wondering if that level of interest in interconnected lives isn’t the future of curing the larger horrible situations, from the law enforcement angle to the individual looking out the window, to the spreading genocide angle.  Food for thought I suppose.  I get twitter updates all the time on things I can’t impact at all.  But what If we all had the ability to tell everyone who needed to know or could do something, the circumstances.

How long before a tweet says, legitimately, “They’re killing us, please help” Isn’t this the entire point?

An Important Safety Message from Stepto.com

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Living out in a close knit farming community that is now 30% Microsoft employees, we have our own email alias for community events.  Recently there was a spectacular high speed wreck on one of the back roads near the residential communities.  There were no fatalities, and the local Fire Department quote was “No one was hurt.  Drunks bounce.”

This reminded me of something and I sent the following response:

As an aside, I can somewhat verify the "drunks bounce" comment. (not through personal experience!)

In college I wrote a paper comparing injury/survival rates in DUI/DWI accidents.  The survival/non-injury rate for the drunk driver was over three times that of the victims.  Anecdotally, EMT people often surmised that weirdly, a lot of drunks wear their seatbelts (perhaps in some feeble attempt to try and be safe or perhaps to avoid a pull over due to lack of) and sober people in these situations (which usually occur at night) don’t.  Secondarily, drunks are oblivious to situational reaction times and tend to be relaxed and pliant with the physical forces against them in an accident, reducing impact and stress injuries. 

By no means should this be considered scientific since my sample set was tiny (5 years worth of data in one large county in Texas) but when I read the "Drunks bounce" comment it took me back to those EMT interviews.  They all said more or less the same thing.  I dearly wish the stats were reversed.

Oh and even if you’re popping out the store just for milk at night, please wear your seatbelt.

So re: that last bit, be careful out there. :>

A little consumer terrorism is healthy, and even needed, from time to time.

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I think the statute of limitations has probably run out by now, if what I am about to write here actually describes the commission of a crime.

For long as I can remember, a certain major retailer of home electronics has been the bane of my existence for customer service, such that I might, maybe, possibly, go there once a year. If I have to.  And I’m drunk and forget that I hate them.  Or maybe brain damaged.  Or have EOD.

I didn’t start out hating them mind you.  It took years of this place wearing me down. a water torture of long checkout lines, inept “sales” people, and dirty tricks like never having the thing on sale from the Sunday flyer, but oh hey we have tons of the next model up for 25% more!

One day I snapped.

In the early fall of 1999 the hot device to have was the new Palm V. I’d been jonesing for one that entire summer and after bonus day at Microsoft I drove to one of the locations of this retailer to pick up a ton of DVD’s and a new Palm V. I only had my lunch hour to accomplish the task so I quickly scooped up the DVD’s I wanted, and made a beeline to the personal electronics counter.  There amongst the other PDA’s, digital cameras, and assorted gadgetry like WebTV, was my prize sitting behind display glass.

It was perfect!  So slim.  So sleek!  It’s little yellow price tag clearly on display. I had already ordered a cell modem for it.  I was going to have mobile Internet! Not that WAP crap, but a real browser! Cue a montage dream sequence set to “Everybody’s Talking at Me” with me and the Palm V laughing at a picnic,  playing minigolf, running hand in hand through a field.

The kid who worked the desk was off showing WebTV to a cute girl off to the side so I set my DVD’s on the counter to wait.  The store wasn’t crowded.  Minutes ticked by while the kid continued to tell the girl about WebTV’s features and I began to get impatient.  Another store person walked by just at that moment and I flagged them down.

“Hi,” I said, “I just need to get these DVD’s and a Palm V, I have my card right here and I’m ready to go.” 

The worker apologized, but they weren’t authorized to open that display case.  They moved on while I stood there.  Time continued to pass and now I was starting to butt up against my need to get back to work.  The kid who was supposed to be working the area was still chatting up the girl about WebTV.  I knew a lot about WebTV at the time.  I knew its feature list took, maybe, a minute to explain, let alone 15.

Another worker walked by.  I tried my spiel again.  Stack of DVD’s, credit card in hand, wants to buy expensive item.  No go, not authorized to open that display case.  Apparently that display case was the J. Edgar Hoover safe of the place.  Or perhaps the Hellraiser box for all I know, Jesus wept.

Finally the lord of the display finishes and comes over.  At this point I’m really pressed for time so I basically rattle out “HIJUSTNEEDAPALMVANDTHESEDVD’S PLEASEKTHX”.

Kid looked at me, looked at the Palm.  To my disbelief, he actually snorted and said, “Yeah good luck buddy we’ve been sold out of these for like two weeks.”

I looked down at the Palm in the case.  There’s no “Out of stock” sign or even the little rain check tickets they normally put next to out of stock items.  I’d just wasted 20 minutes when I could have bought the DVD’s and returned later. And motherfucker, did he actually snort at me?

“Ok.” I said, being calm about it, “that’s a shame because I was all set to buy all these DVD’s too, but because there’s no indication here you are out of stock and no one would help me I’m just not going to be buying anything today because you’ve wasted my time.” Ha! I thought, take THAT. Fuck you, stripey bag!

“I don’t care,” the kid replied, “but you have to go put those back where you found them,” he gestured to the DVD’s.

There’s a moment, thankfully rarely reached, where you actually are propelled straight from annoyance, passing by anger, rage, homicidal rage, scorched earth rage, to perfect divine retribution. I realized in a flash this kid was probably in charge of the DVD section too.

“Of course!” I replied, and took the stack of DVD’s.  I rounded the corner and proceeded to put them all back in the wrong places.  Then I looked at my watch and thought, screw work. Why stop there?

I made it all of the way through drama and most of the way through comedy before they caught me. I should probably also mention this was on a Tuesday, new DVD release day.  I had completely scrambled drama and comedy, not just scrambling the alphabetical order but also the genre.  The kid spotted me and I was caught sorting Ghostbusters and Contact together under Drama, “Z” by him and his manager.

The manager took it all in for a second and asked me what I thought I was doing. I calmly explained the entire situation as described above.  The kid took one look at me and said “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life.”

Well of course he was going to say that, I thought, but the manager looked at the amount of work he was going to have to pay someone to do to fix this, looked at me and said “I’m going to have to ask you to leave this store and never come back sir, or I will call the police.”

I held up my hands and said, “No problem, I totally understand. But do me a favor.  I bet there’s a security camera on that display case.  I’m going to leave, but I suggest you pull the tape and watch it real quick. If you see me talking to him, and you will, you’ll know from his one statement just now that everything I said was true.  You’ll see how long I waited too, and maybe you’ll do something about the customer service here.”

I turned around and left.  For sure they didn’t sell practically any DVD’s that day. I know that every large business has bad customer service moments, and that’s one of the reasons I’m not naming the store here. Certainly people have had reason to complain against Microsoft and specifically Xbox too.  But while what I did was petulant and certainly juvenile, great merciful fuck it felt good to do.