Carma

This past weekend, I finally got up the outside Christmas lights. I also cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom. Now, that may not seem like a lot of activity, but apparently, it was enough to tweak my back a bit. By Tuesday morning, I was finding it extremely difficult to move or bend.

I must have also pissed off the gods of nature because I was delivered a car-mic blow coming to work. I have about a 35 mile commute which can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. Now, I leave in the dark and get to work in the dark, so noticing any potential problems with the car when I leave is somewhat hard. As it was, I didn’t notice anything while driving for about 25 to 30 minutes.

In fact, it wasn’t until I entered the Squirrel Hill tunnels that I noticed something wrong. As I was exiting, the car felt and sounded weird. My first thought was a tie rod went. So, I pulled off to the side of the road and looked. The back passenger tire was flat and smoking. Apparently, I’d been riding the rim pretty good for awhile. Yet, somehow, I never noticed it until then. Realizing I had no room or light to change the tire on the side of 376 West, I limped into Oakland and stopped at a Sunoco. I was hoping to just fill the tire with air. Hopefully, it would be enough to get me to the office and I could deal with it when it was light out.

As I hooked up the air, I could hear it hissing out from somewhere else on the tire. This was not going to be enough of a patch. So, I dug out the donut and jack. Now, over the course of 10 years, I have changed a few tires, using the supplied jack. It’s a pain in the ass, but in a pinch, it gets the job done. However, the jack on my ’05 Malibu Wagon was not one I had ever seen and harder to get disassembled. Realizing I was probably fighting a losing battle, I called my dad (A.K.A. my insurance agent) to ask him if my insurance covered towing back to my place or the local garage I use..

“No.”

So, I sucked it up and fought some more with the jack until I thought I had broke it. Then, if there was any more proof needed that there are still good people out there, I was saved by a random stranger. He was there getting gas and saw me struggling with the jack. He came over and managed to figure it out and we began changing the tire. Unfortunately, the iron they supply to remove the lugs wasn’t exactly great and a few of my lugs felt like they were rounded off, slipping as we tried to turn the handle, probably from over tightening at the garage I usually get tires put on at. My savior apologized because he had to leave and go pick up his wife. He did say that he would swing back around and if I was still there, he’d continue to help.

I struggled with the last two lugs, resorting to smacking the end of the iron with the bottom of the jack to get a snug fit. Stepping on the handle and applying the equivalent of my full body weight in torque nearly dropped me to my knees when the iron slipped off the lug. Random stranger returned and we both worked on the last two lugs, getting them off and pulling the tire. The inside of the tire looked as if Edward Scissorhands had put it on in the first place. The inside was completely shredded and smelled of burnt rubber. We laughed at the sight and I told him that if he wanted a real laugh, know that my last name was ironic. He said something to the effect of “If I was a girl, I’d have a whole pit crew out here changing this thing.” Unfortunately, it was hard for me to get any torque or even bend over to work on the car. My back was making it hard to breathe. The stranger did most of the work, which made me feel like an invalid, but I was thankful.

During the whole ordeal, I offered to buy him and his wife coffee for their trouble. He declined the offer. I then realized I had a $100 bill in my pocket. Our department meeting was going to be at the Casino later and afterwards, I was going to do a little gambling. Hard to fathom, I had been gambling with my life on this tire.

After the donut was on, I thanked the stranger, named Matt, repeatedly and made a last ditch effort to compensate him for his time. I tried to give him my $100 bill, but he declined, again. I tried hard, but he wouldn’t take it.  He was a decent person, selflessly helping a stranger in need. Gave me a good feeling. I hope to pay it forward, as long as someone doesn’t need tire changing help.

As a side note, I drove to work, on the donut, with the hazards on, going around 40 mph. Even with my four ways on, I still had plenty of people honking and flashing me with their high beams. Turns out, the same side as the blown tire had a blown turn signal bulb. So… I looked like that one jackass, driving 40 on the highway with his blinker on for 10 miles. During my lunch, I went to a local shop up the street and got two brand new winter tires. They were probably both due, anyway. Merry Christmas… again. After all, I wasn’t about to drive downtown, to the casino, on the donut and I wasn’t going to just ride with someone else and come back to a donut at six o’clock in the evening, still needing to change out the donut. Then, today, I stood out in the cold and fixed the bulb. Did wonders for my aching back, standing there without a coat.

Velocity Rapture

The end is seriously nigh, maybe.

It could be, or it won’t.

Your mileage may vary.

Tomorrow, May 21st, 2011 is the supposed day of Judgment. The Rapture. The straight to video Kirk Cameron movie. Repent! Genuflect! Sashay! Turn, turn, ball change kick turn!

I for one look forward to the quickened commute I will face on Monday. Not to mention, everyday errands will be much easier to accomplish without the crowds. I would say that Black Friday would be a great experience except that it’s after the end of the world.

But what about the variables concerning this end of days prediction.

Will Australia spoil it for everyone else, since they’ll be first in line? Are we going to hit that magical number of 144,000 before they get to NYC? What about Samoa? They are changing the placement of the International Dateline.

What if you are aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour? Will you just vacate your space suit during an EVA or are your SOL because you chose to be away from the Earth when it’s time to be called in for the big dinner in the sky?

What about babies? If you aren’t baptized, are you sticking around? In a coma? Sleeping because you have the night shift? My wife kicks me when my alarm goes off and I don’t hear it. She’d be pissed if I wasn’t there and she had to roll over and turn it off herself.

How many people will call off on Monday only to find out that the Rapture didn’t come?

How many Catholic priests will still be in mass on Sunday? (Insert parting of hair jokes here.)

Those signs on the Parkway East that estimate travel time will go nuts. “Estimated Travel Time to SQ. Hill Tunnels: Zero Minutes”. Frankly, tomorrow would be the best time to hack into the signs and put something funny like, “Estimated Time To Rapture: 25 Minutes” (thanks to Lesley for that one.)  Here's another great prank courtesy of Six Feet Under

In all seriousness, yet not, I feel bad for the people who really believe in this stuff. Tomorrow will be like their Great Pumpkin moment. They’ll be like the Cincinnati Bengals’ fans in December. Always close to the playoffs but never making it very far. I mean how would you feel if you gave up your job, your family, everything to go about preaching the end of the world coming only to find out some guy forgot to carry the one? I mean he’s already screwed up once in 1994.

Let’s face it. The bible is a good story. It was written by a bunch of people and much like today’s movies, they’ve rebooted the franchise numerous times. Supposedly, Moses wrote the first five books during the forty years that he wandered around in the wilderness. Should have been drawing a map. “That rock looks vaguely familiar.” But just like every culture, the story is changed to suit the purpose. Every religion has its own telling of creation and the apocalypse. Which one is right? The answer; all of them and none of them.

No one person got the story right and IMO that’s what it is, a story. Fantastical events occurred for everyday occurrences. With no knowledge of modern science they were chalked up to some sort of higher power. We have a world population of almost seven billion people but only 144,000 are getting saved. Surely, in the last 100 years there have been more than 144,000 righteous people born. What about them? Is there a name cutoff? Is there a lottery? Is there a reservation process?

So, Monday, I’ll be posting and the same amount of people that read today will be here. Well, that is unless you just don’t care.

And just in case I am wrong… I’m taking your stuff.

PENNDOT Tries To Calculate Traffic Again: Still Wrong

On Monday, I posted about the new traffic travel time indicators being used on the Parkway East. I also said they were crap because they were severely off in their travel time amounts. As an update, I did do some timekeeping of my own on the way home, Monday evening. Once again, the times were waaaay off in their estimation.  Channel 4 even tested it, but my experienced varied.

First up, as you approach the Forbes Ave exit heading east, there is another sign that usually reads, “Congestion: 1mile ahead” or something of that variation. Monday, at 4:16, it read “Travel Time to Squirrel Hill Tunnels, 7 Minutes.”

As traffic normally begins to back up around Bates St., I felt this was going to be an easy one to dispel and it was. It took me a whole 14 minutes to get to the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. Then, as you approach the Churchill exit, there is another sign which read, “Travel Time to I-76, 7 Minutes.”

There is no way, no way in hell that you could make it from Churchill to the I-76 / 48 / 22 interchange in seven minutes, doing the posted speed limit of 55 mph. I was not going 55 mph and it took me more than seven minutes to reach the turnpike.

That got me to thinking that someone must have been hauling ass to the tune of 80+ mph to trigger that travel time estimation. In fact, I worry that this will promote a bigger presence of police along I-376 between Edgewood and Monroeville. Obviously, whatever formula PENNDOT is using is based on the speed of a vehicle that passes by their camera. That means that the natural tendency is to speed on the Parkway East. Well, duh!?!?

Maybe they need to move the cameras. I have no idea where they are placed but I think a better location would be at both the Westinghouse Technology Park, for the inbound, and right around Bates St on ramp, for the outbound. Then, have the cameras relay that information back to the signs, taking into account the distance between the sign and the camera.

Noticeably, the signs were not operational on Tuesday, leading me to believe they knew they were full of crap. Yet, this morning they were back up again and half wrong. The sign coming into Pittsburgh had the travel time from the sign at Penn Hills to the Tunnel at 10 minutes. It was around 16 minutes.

Once I got through the tunnel, there was another one, stating that estimated travel time to downtown was 12 minutes. First of all, what the hell constitutes ‘Downtown’? Is the end point the Grant St exit? Is it Forbes and Grant? Is it the T station on Liberty Ave? Is it a garbage can inside the USX building’s janitorial closet on the 12th floor? This one was more accurate, given I considered Grant St the end point. It took 12 minutes from the sign until the red light at Grant St. Still, that is only accurate if Grant St. is the destination.

We’ll see if there is any accuracy this evening as I drive home.

PENNDOT Uses Magic Eight Ball To Determine Travel Time on Parkway East

Where Is Your God, Now?

PENNDOT is trying, repeat ‘trying’, to get into the 21st century with ‘Real Time’ measurements of how long it will take you to reach the tunnels on the Parkway East. I say ‘trying’ because today was not an accurate estimate of my travel time.

Usually, if I can get on the Parkway East before 6:30 AM, I can make it beyond the Squirrel Hill Tunnels just before 6:45 AM. That assures me that I can make it to my office just before 7:00 AM. I like that extra few minutes of time to heat up my breakfast and make a cup of coffee before I get going.

So, today I managed to get on the Parkway East around 6:20 AM. So far, so good, right? I saw the sign before the Church Hill exit that usually says something along the lines of ‘Congestion 1 mile ahead’ or 2 miles or 3 miles. Today, it said, ‘Travel time to the Squirrel Hill Tunnels is estimated at 10 minutes’. I paraphrase the actual message as I was driving by fast enough to go back in time, given that I have a Flux Capacitor and some plutonium. Unfortunately, the 05 Malibu Maxx did not come with a Flux Capacitor. DAMNIT!

It was 6:24 AM, at that moment. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s different. Not too bad, then.’ That meant I should reach the tunnel by 6:34 AM.

Unfortunately, everyone decided to just stop on the parkway as we rounded the bend by Westinghouse Technology Park. I didn’t reach the tunnels until 6:44 AM; a full 20 minutes from the sign which read 10.

So, I guess the takeaway is that this ‘estimated’ time could mean anything from twice that. I think that’s a considerable delta. In fact, I think that is too much of one. Why don’t they just go back to the old method which was more reliable? Except that isn’t too reliable when there is an accident on the outbound lane and everyone in front of me slams on their brakes so they can see the wreckage. How about this for some traffic estimations?

“The tunnel monster is PMS’ing it. Everyone is on their brakes from here to the Edgewood/Swissvale on ramp.”

“Rubberneckers ahead. Better call your boss.”

“Remember how you tried to fit into those jeans from last year? A tractor trailer thought the same thing with the tunnel.”

“There’s snow. There are tractor trailers ahead. They never clean off the tops. Do the math.”

“’Eff it. You aren’t getting anything done today, anyway.”

And Now A Word From Our DJ

I gave up on listening to music format radio stations years ago. I do listen to WDVE in the morning on my way to work for the morning show. When they go to a song, I switch the station. Now, if that song is anything by Journey or Warren Zevon or Led Zeppelin or the Doors or… OK there are a lot of exceptions… but in any case, usually, the music means it’s time to go down the dial.
Where I end up is usually 93.7, The Fan. Us old fogies know it as The Station Formally Known As B94. I spend a few minutes there until commercial or they start talking about Pitt. I’m not a hater, I’m an alum. It’s just that somewhere in the last year, The Fan got a contract with the University to air their football and basketball games and even though this is a primarily Pittsburgh based sports talk station, about 50% or more of their discussions and coverage are about Pitt teams. It’s like they have to give lip service to the University every hour or they’ll lose their deal.

But that’s not what really bothers me about radio, these days. I’ve gone on about music and Top 40 and the crap that is out there, playing in heavy rotation every 20 minutes. This is more about what happens on the radio with the individual stations.

Now, let me back this rant up about 30 years. As a kid, I remember driving around town in my Dad’s old Chevy Custom Deluxe pickup truck. He had it tuned to pretty much one station, WCVI AM. It was the hometown radio station, just across the bridge from where we lived. It was mostly news with some middle of the road type music. The news was pretty much read from the newspaper, as you could actually hear the page turning as the broadcaster flipped the page to continue the story. But the real thrill for me was listening to Paul Harvey segments. You’re going to have to go look up Paul Harvey if you are unfamiliar. I could go on another three hours talking about him. I just don’t have that kind of time, right now.

The magic of Paul Harvey was part storytelling and part huckstering. He could seamlessly weave a mysterious tale about a famous person’s background and plug in a pitch for a Coleman Thermos in one breath. He excelled at blurring the line between broadcasting and commercial. Today’s equivalent would be like watching Chuck and noticing that the Nerd Herd “Herders” cars are Toyota’s, not because you know they are a Toyota Matrix, but because in the opening credits the logo is clearly shown. Also, they all love Subway, because there is a Subway wrapper shown in almost every episode. Paul Harvey was a little more subtle in his pitches but after awhile you could see them coming a mile away.

I shed a small tear when Harvey died in 2009. However, nothing burns me more than when I’m stuck in traffic from Wilkinsburg to the other side of the Squirrel Hill tunnels, or trying to frantically get back over to the middle lane at the Grant Street exit, only to hit a wall of traffic due to an accident just outside the Fort Pitt Tunnels, and I switch radio stations looking for actual content and get duped into listening to a commercial because the announcer is the same guy who I listen to during the regular broadcast.

That pisses me off to no end. I land on one station and think I’m listening to the show and find out that it’s a pitch for DirectTV or a car dealership. Now, my friends will be quick to point out that I should get Satellite Radio and hook up my iPod. First of all, I’m too cheap to spend the money on a radio that will have like three channels that I’ll listen to and my iPod has seen better days. Not to mention, the apparatus to hook up my iPod to my radio, so I can listen, is not conducive to me being a safe driver. That goose neck Belkin debacle of an iPod transmitter has nearly caused me more accidents than a teenager with a car and an unlimited text plan, who just got dumped. To sum it all up, I’m a cheap ass who would rather complain about what’s on the radio instead of doing something different.

But back to my tangent. Is it that apparent that no one likes commercials anymore that stations will do whatever it takes to try and work in their ads? Are they trying to be shifty by disguising a commercial by having the applicable on air host do the commercial? Am I just a conspiracy theory loving hater who thinks the world is out to get him? Yes, I know the last one is a rhetorical question.

Maybe this is evolution. Maybe all the tricks the Mad Men have employed over the years are leading to trying to find new ways to sell you something. I for one hate how Google has followed me around for months now on every website I visit. I’ve already paid for my vacation in the Outer Banks with a particular company. Stop showing me their ads when I go to a sports site. I know it’s a cookie thing. I guess they figure that a greater percentage of the population is able to be manipulated versus those of us who are turned away from that kind of advertising. For me, it’s like hypnosis. I don’t believe in it and usually it pushes me even further from whatever product they are selling. The Google thing just makes me want to stop using them altogether. But… it’s like Walmart, more often than not, you end up there because it’s easier.

So, as I develop stronger muscles in my right leg from commuting and a bigger sense of ambivalence towards radio and commercialism I will probably become even more curmudgeonly than I already was. Is that even a grammatically correct statement spell check? There is probably some puppy kicking in my future. And nothing kicks puppies better than my new Nike Cross Trainers… Puppy kicking… Just Do it.

And now you know the rest of the story…

Good Day…

Grrrr.