Taps V13.2 » Traffic

Some stereotypes are wrong….

Taps — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Had to work late tonight. Another IT guy from our Ohio office came down to lend me a hand with our network change over. We didn’t get done until 7:30. Not too bad. Only a few hours in total. No major hiccups that we weren’t expecting.

But as I was leaving, I noticed a streak of lightning miles away. Crap. It was going to storm, and I am strapping my backpack to the bike. I start the bike to let it warm up a bit while I finish the backpack. My phone rings. I already have my jacket and wind breaker zipped up. I unzip them both real quick and answer the phone, just because it is xavi7734‘s ring tone. Our daughter hasn’t been feeling well, and it could have been important. She is calling to see how soon I am leaving, because she is watching a storm form and doesn’t want me caught in it. heh heh I hastily answer “I just turned off the bike so I could hear you. So… Ummm… now!”

I get all my gear on, start the bike back up and head out of the parking lot, up the street, and towards the highway. As I get on the highway, a few drops of rain hit. The a few more. It isn’t really raining yet, but its about to. I get past exit 12 on my way home, where the highway goes from 3 lanes down to 2, and of course, with a few drops of water hitting the windshields, everyone slows to a crawl. For fucks sake people! Get out of the way. If you want to do 45 on the highway, do it in the left lane so I can get the hell out of here before it starts pouring. Did they? No. So here I am stuck in 45 MPH traffic for no damn reason.

I look over to my right, and I see a cop from a county quit north of us. I wont say where, just in case, but I will say he was quite far from his own jurisdiction. So that also tells me why everyone has slowed down, there is a cop visible on the road. Fucking great.

A few seconds later, I hear a horn. Its the cop. I look confused trying to figure out what he wants. He points at me and uses his fingers to show me the numbers “1″ and “3″….

WTF does that mean? I shrug my shoulders in what I am hoping is the universal sign language for “huh?” He points ahead… Uses his hand to simulate veering off to the right, and then repeats the “1″ and “3″ again…

OOOOH!!! Am I getting of at Exit 13!!! I shake my head no and take my hand off the clutch long enough to signal “1″ and “5″ which is quite a bit up the highway.

He points to himself. Then points in front of me. Then points to me. Then points behind me.

Got it. I ease off the throttle a bit to give him room to get in front of me. He moves over and turns on his blue lights. And of course, everyone immediately gets out of his way. We then proceed up the highway at a respectable speed. The road wasn’t wet yet so he had no problem going a little above the speed limit. On the way, before we hit exit 15, we passed two other guys on motorcycles in similar predicaments. They ended up joining me in the wake of this officer. I made it to exit 15, flashed my lights as a way to say thank you, and he continued on up the highway with the other guys behind him.

He must have cut 10 minutes off my commute. 15 or more if people would have continued going as slow as they were. I got off the exit, came through the center of town and pulled into my driveway just as it started to rain harder. I got into my garage with only the slightest bit of dampness on my backpack. By the way, the backpack contains my Digital SLR and Laptop. Not to mention a handful of lenses, memory cards, and a lot of other high dollar electronic equipment. So I am very thankful that I completely missed the rain.

An open letter to Flickr and Yahoo…..

Taps — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:56:45 +0000

Dear Flickr/Yahoo….

A while back I posted a nice message in my journal here about whether or not I should renew my Flickr account. I thought about my options. I weighed the pros and cons. And I came to a fairly conclusive decision that I enjoyed having a Pro account on Flickr. So I ponied up my $25 and prepared for another year of the happiness I had come to know from Flickr. The warm fuzzy feelings that I got knowing that I had a lot of space and traffic on which to display my wonderful works of art.

And by Art, I mean the beautifully crafted images of boxes stacked up in my office that I have accumulated over the last couple of years.

Not to mention the friends of mine who I love. The ones who answer the question “Can I photograph you?” with “Can I be naked?” These are the best kind of friends to have.

Whatever it was, as long as I stayed within your guidelines, you proudly displayed my creations with the kind of love and devotion of a lioness proudly displaying her cubs. Even the retarded cub that keeps attacking its own shadow.

And those guidelines are pretty easy to follow. General rules of thumb: 1) If you cant see it on daytime TV, then mark it as moderated. 2) If you cant see it on Late Night premium cable, then mark it as restricted. 3) And if you cant see it in seedy porno theaters, or hiding in your closet with a web browser… then its probably illegal and you cant display it anywhere.

The last one I don’t ever have to worry about. The second one, maybe I have come across once or twice in my photos, but just on the side of caution. The first one I am familiar with. I have quite a few portraits and self portraits that would not be viewable on daytime TV. And of those, I mark them as moderated and move on.

Moderated is a touchy term used on Flickr. Basically, all it means is that when people search for a phrase, and they have their search parameters set to SAFE, any moderated photo will not show up. This also goes for any anonymous client.

Just to be sure, my default upload setting is moderated. And then I go back and change the ones that are safe after the fact. At least this is how I thought I had it set up. I don’t know right now…..

And that is because sometime this afternoon, Flickr found a very very large wooden dildo, complete with splinters, and anally raped me with it, foregoing any sort of lube or gentleness.

OK… Maybe not that bad… but they are pissing me off. Sometime around 2pm EST today, Flickr marked my entire account as moderated. And what a coincidence that it was only 2 days after I renewed my Pro Account…… grrrr….

I have made sure all my photos that need to be are marked as moderated, sent an email to their helpdesk, posted a request in their help forum (all of which things you are supposed to do in an event like this) and promptly been ignored.

Yea, I have other people in the forums telling me what to do. Most of which are the things I just listed that I already did…. “You should post a message in the help forum about this”….. That was a reply to my post in the help forum…… really? But I have yet to hear back from a Flickr staffer saying They had fixed it, it was a bug, or even a fuck off.

So I went back to the original email I had received from a support team member named Heather (I am not going to even go into my theory on Heathers. It would be counter productive), and replied to her via Flickr’s internal mail system. I did receive a response!!! It said she was sorry that she couldn’t deal with support issues via Flickr’s internal mail system. And I should start by posting a message in the help forum, or sending an e-mail to helpdesk….

….

*blink*

…..

But….

*sigh*

An open letter to Flickr and Yahoo…..

Taps — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:05:00 +0000

Dear Flickr/Yahoo….

And by Art, I mean the beautifully crafted images of boxes stacked up in my office that I have accumulated over the last couple of years.

Not to mention the friends of mine who I love. The ones who answer the question “Can I photograph you?” with “Can I be naked?” These are the best kind of friends to have.

And that is because sometime this afternoon, Flickr found a very very large wooden dildo, complete with splinters, and anally raped me with it, foregoing any sort of lube or gentleness.

….

*blink*

…..

But….

*sigh*

sitting in the ATL airport

Taps — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:06:00 +0000

On my way to denver. Got down here way too early. I figured the accident on 75 would have slowed down traffic on 85 as well. It didn’t.

So now I am sitting here waiting on a flight. Good thing I brought movies to keep me occupied.

And worse case scenerio… I can tether my laptop to my crackberry and get to porn if I need to.

Traffic on 400 wouldn’t be so bad….

Taps — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:13:00 +0000

…. if GA lawmakers would try something like THIS on our highways….

Hell… I would slow down, and not mind an hour drive to go 4 exits in the morning.

Taps — Thu, 11 Jan 2001 22:14:00 +0000

A week or so ago, I
wrecked my truck. That isn�t the important part of the story. I spent a few
days at home because I wanted to fix it. That isn�t the important part of the
story. I had made a stupid mistake driving and tagged a semi in the rear. I
didn�t hit him too hard, he didn�t even know, and he kept on going. That
isn�t the important part of the story. I was fine… no damage done to me…
except my pride. My perfect driving record of no "accidents" (Even
if there were a few "On-Purposes" in there) was now tarnished. That
isn�t the important part of the story.

The important part happened a few days later. I thought I had damaged my
radiator in the accident and was going to order a new one. The best price we
could find for it was at a parts store not far from here. So we, my wife and
I, went up there to order it.

On our way back, we were coming down a rather busy intersection in our part
of town. On the side of the road stood a medium sized dog. Carrie saw him
first and started to get upset, because there was a dog roaming around near
the street. As soon as I saw him I started looking behind us to see if there
was anyone coming. There was, so I couldn�t get out. As the minivan that was
approaching passed us, I noticed that the pup (Don�t care how old he is, all
dogs are called pup) simply walked casually out into the middle of the road.
He missed getting hit by a foot or so. At that time I stepped out of the car
and stopped traffic in the other lane, walked over to where the dog was and
got him by the collar. He was very friendly, but passive. I figured he was an
older dog.

I walked him over to a place by the road that I could get a look at him.
There were some guys working on something in a lot next to where we were, so
I asked if the dog belonged to either of them… they said no and that it had
been wondering around for a while.

OK… Decision time… heh heh easy decision. In the back seat he went. I
know… could have possibly been a stupid move… but you should have seen
this dog… he was very friendly and passive (I can�t stress that
enough).

So we get him in the car and proceed to drive around to see if we can
figure out where he came from. No luck. I double checked hi collar and found
a tag on him. His name was Rocky. And there was a telephone number on the
tag. Only one problem… I couldn�t tell if some of the numbers were 3′s or
8′s… the tag was a bit worn

So we start calling the possible combinations and leaving messages.

I looked again, and was happy to notice he had his rabies tags on too.
OK… he had his shots in the last year. That was good to know. And that
meant that his owners at least took care of him. (By this time, the pup was
laying in the back seat of the car, very content.) I looked at the tag again
and found that they put the name of the Vet where the animal had his shots on
it. I had never looked at the tags that closely before. This is a great idea.

We called information and got the number for the vet that rocky went to. He
is a regular there. They not only let us bring him up there, but found the
home and work numbers to for Rocky’s parents. They called both of them (The
home number we had actually already called. One of the numbers we dialed was
right) and let them know where Rocky was and that he was OK.

We took Rocky up to his vets, and left him in their care until his parents
could come get him. They ladies at the vets office were very friendly and
seemed to have a genuine love for the pup. I can see why. It was very easy
for that to happen. By the time we were half way there, my wife and I were
kind of hoping we wouldn�t be able to find the parents. Rocky was a sweet pup
and would have made a wonderful addition to any family. Especially ours

A little later that night, we were at my wife�s grandparents. Her parents
were in town and we met the whole family for dinner. Her cell phone rang and
she stepped out to answer it. It was Rocky’s mom, Carole. At this point we
had found out a few things about rocky that made a little more sense out of
the whole escapade.

Rocky was originally a stray. He was found after he had been hit by a car.
There was some serious damage done to him and this couple was kind enough to
nurse him back to health. I do not know if it was related to the accident or
not, but Rocky was also deaf. With that and the cloudiness in his eyes (Which
made me think his vision wasn�t the best either), we had our explanation why
he just walked into the middle of the road.

Rocky�s dad, Ken, takes him with him to work. He is into landscaping and
spends a good portion out doors. While fixing a problem with a trailer, Rocky
had wondered off. I�m not sure how long before we had found him. The reason
why we only got an answering machine when we tried to call the (correct)
number on his tags is because Rocky�s mom was still at work, and his dad was
our looking for him. Dad didn�t come home until 9pm that night. He spent the
entire time searching for the lost pup.

…

Well, here it is almost a week later. And I come home early from work
because it was about to storm. We have two dogs here that spend their days in
the back yard. So I had to come let them in before it started raining. When I
got home I checked the mail. I was delighted to find a card with the
following written on the inside:

——————————————————————————–

Dear Carrie,

My husband, Ken, And I cannot ever thank you enough for your good deed,
picking rocky up for us.

Not every one would do what you did. They would be afraid of getting
"stuck" with a stray.

Please accept this money as a small token of our appreciation – go out to
dinner or whatever.

We owe you a favor. Let us know if we can return this good deed.

Sincerely,

Carole Enger

——————————————————————————–

Included in the card was $50. Well, If Carole ever reads this; I want her
to know that although we thank her for her generosity, my wife and I agree
that we cannot accept this money. On the other hand it was very nice of you
to wish to reward us for helping and we wouldn�t want to make you feel
unwelcome by returning it. So we have decided it would be better to put the
money to good use: We are going to donate it in Rocky�s name to the local
Humane Society. This way we can help keep a place around to help any other
"Rocky�s" that may be lost.

I know that if I was in their situation, and either Boaz or Mystique was
missing, I would only hope that someone would do the same. Both of our dogs
have their collars and tags on, and we would only be too happy to have
someone rescue them for us.

But all in all…. The best part about all of this is that Rocky returned
home safely. I�m just glad we could make someone happy by helping him get
there.

Taps – Tue 07/03/2001