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I was stopped at a stop light - 2nd in line. The car in front of me put their car into reverse - I didn't do anything. A second later, they were still in reverse - so I got ready to honk the horn in case they started to move backwards. Then they did start to reverse - so I laid into the horn. The woman driving started to look around - left, right - but still kept coming. The results are above.

She got out and apologized, explaining that she's lost and trying to get to the hospital to get her mother or something. Not really my concern, but whatever. I told her to turn the corner and pull over, since we were blocking the lane we were in. I got her info, and she was very emphatic about going to get her mother and dealing with this later. I told her we would talk later, and as she drove off, I called the police. A few minutes later, they were there, listened to my tale of woe, and took my and her info.

Since we had exchanged phone numbers, she called me twice - once to make sure she hadn't erased it, and the second time to find out why I had "lied" to her - by calling the police, I apparently broke some sort of promise between us. I don't remember that - I remember telling her that we would talk later. She was very upset and doing lots of yelling, so I didn't really understand what she was saying - except that she was apparently coming back to the scene.

When she did arrive, she came from down the road, and I didn't recall seeing her pull up. She glared at me as she walked by, and then went to the police officers. After a minute or two, the responding officer brought my paperwork and notes back, gave me my case number, and told me that she hadn't wanted to hang around because she was..... driving with a suspended license. At this point, I drove off - cranky, but able to move still, so happy for that - the last accident I had resulted in a car that I didn't really feel safe driving in.

Fast forward to today - four days later. After making a few calls, getting the insurance company's estimate, getting my own estimate, and making more calls, I got a voicemail this afternoon from my insurance agent. Their auto-accident person was calling me back - I had asked for help figuring out which of the many companies with the same name she was actually using for her insurance. It turns out she doesn't have insurance. Of course.

Now, look, I'm not saying that she didn't have to go get her mother or whatever. But if you're license is suspended, and you don't have insurance, DON'T DRIVE YOUR CAR. Simple, straightforward, and easy. With my last incident, I'm waiting for the insurance company to "subrogate" the claim - meaning that if they ever manage to get money from him, and we all know it will take more than a couple of weeks - then I'll eventually get my deductible back. Maybe.

AWESOME.

Daylight savings sucks. First of all, why start it on Saturday night/Sunday morning? It takes a week or so to get used to it - just start it on Friday night/Saturday morning so we have a fighting chance come Monday. Seriously.

I realize that the concept of DST is quite useful - we get up earlier, so there is a bigger "useful" part of the day. Really - it's pretty clear to me. (The US Navy has a write up of some of the details here) But we are no longer an agrarian society. Well, we still farm, but it's a smaller percentage of the population that does it. Not that I mind getting up at "0 dark thirty" to get ready for my day - I'm used to that from the fall and winter months. And while having the daylight on the front end of the day is useful, I was just getting used to the idea of the sun still being up on my ride home.

There is some argument among scholars, economists, and who knows who else that the change to and from DST costs the economy money (Google search on "daylight savings time money"). I would argue that it does, but only in lost productivity - and that's mostly because of the fact that the change happens on Sunday, not Saturday. It may not seem like much, but I think that the extra day would be very useful.

My experience is always the same: I wake up one hour late on Monday morning. This year the problem was compounded by not feeling well (chest cold that makes me sound like I should be looking out for the Grim Reaper) and being up late the night before. If Jen hadn't come home early today, there's a good chance I would have been asleep until about 9:00 - possibly later. Since I was supposed to have the kids at school at 8:00, that would have been a bit of a problem. In the end, they got where they needed to be and I did what I needed to, but it seems to me that there's a solution to this problem:

Don't use Daylight Savings Time.

This might be boring, tedious, or both. If you don't have Cablevision for your internet/tv, or if you don't live in an area where they are located, or you just don't care, then move along. The rest of you can read more by clicking the link....

Todays drive into work was pretty atypical for several reasons. One was that I left the house when I meant to - since Jen was long gone when this happened, and the kids weren't actually fighting me (for a change), this was a pleasant surprise. Drop off went well, so that was good. A left, a right, a left, another left, and one more right and I'm on the highway - but the iPod is coming up with nothing but things I just don't want to hear. I had yesterday off so the family could visit my Aunt and Uncle who are visiting from Australia, so today is my Monday. I needed a little something to pick me up and get me going. It was a long hard road to finding something - I was 3/4 of the way to work when it finally happened: "Hot for Teacher", from Van Halen's "1984".

That song is only about 3 or 4 minutes long, so I had to find something else to fit into the remaining 5 minutes of my drive. What to do, what to do? The iPod was picking out more stuff I didn't want to hear - including several passages from an audio book that really, really needs to come off there - when suddenly I heard "Angry People" by Barenaked Ladies, off of "Are Me & Are Men Deluxe Edition". It's a double CD set that I got off of the iTunes Music Store, and it's chock full of BNL good-ness. Keep in mind that it's called "Are Me", but it's supposed to be read like "Barenaked Ladies Are Me" - or, as they put it on their podcast, "Barenaked Ladies Army" since their fans are so very loyal. Just a fun little tidbit for you there. Anyway, "Angry People" is kind of a happy, upbeat song, despite the name, and it helped continue the momentum built by "Hot for Teacher" to get me into a mindset that I'd be able to tackle the day.

Of course, when I remembered that today isn't Monday, and that I still have a piece of go-suh work cell phone and I have no idea when or if a replacement is coming. It works, but the battery won't hold a charge anymore - I need to charge it about once a day, and I don't use it to make more than two or three calls a day. BAD CELL PHONE!

But then I get to the office and there's good news! The new phone - a nice, shiny new phone - has arrived. A phone call, some idle chatter w/ the Verizon rep, and an activation later, and I'm playing with my new RAZR V3m phone. So far, it's working quite well - I've managed to get around to updating my address book with all the important phone numbers and email addresses, and then sync the phone to the work computer via BlueTooth. The biggest downside: Verizon crippled the phone. They don't let you do OBEX data transfers from the phone - which means if I take a photo with the camera, I either have to "PIX" the photo to myself (and use up messages that I think we pay extra for) or use the Micro SD card that the phone has - only you have to dis-assemble the phone to get at the card. OBEX, on the other hand, allows you to take and put data right from your computer to the phone and vice versa. Most other carriers offer it, but Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that you don't want that - they know what you want, and instead of being able to take your photos right off your cell phone, or play YOUR MP3 files on your phone, you really want to pay them to let you do it.

I don't want this to turn into a giant "Verizon is evil" rant, so I'm going to stop here, but point out that it's my phone, and I think I know what I want better than they do. Well, ok, it's the State of Connecticuts phone, but I have the same issues with my personal phone. Anyway, that's enough of that.

I used to have an "About Me" page, but with the change to my new site, I've decided to change things up a little and make it a blog entry. The nice thing is that I've got the power of Apache behind me, letting me use a .htaccess file to redirect traffic from the old file to the new one - all dynamic like and such. It's super cool, really.

Father of 4 (as of this writing, 9 years, 7 years and 5 years and 2 years), and married to the love of my life. Computer geek by nature and by trade. I spend too much time in front of displays: tv, monitor, laptop. I enjoy all kinds of stuff, but lately I've been getting into putting home movies onto my website. Apple Computer (where I used to work) makes iMovie and FinalCut Pro - software which is pretty damn cool. Their computers are pretty sweet too!

I am very happily employed. Up until 07/05/02, I was semi-happily employed by the same company that laid me off on 10/5/01. I spent a year being Mr. Mom and trying to do freelance work and such. Then I worked for a computer store/VAR (Value-Added Reseller) in the New Haven area. They were an Apple Authorized resellers/service center, which made me happy - I got to play with newer computers, fix stuff, and just generally do what I like to do. Hardware stuff - fixing computers and such - but I also do software support. I now work full time for a local University that I graduated from (sorry to not actually say it, but you can't be too careful these days....). I have a regular schedule, I get to wander around campus to fix things, and I work with people that I like and respect. Oh, and I don't hate it - in fact, I finally enjoy my work again.

What else do I do? User interface and design for both kiosks and internet sites. Design work. Tech stuff. Internet stuff (webhosting/config/etc). You could say I'm a jack of all trades.... Email me for my resume for more info. And if you wanna hire me, that'd be cool too.

define: defenestration - Google Search

the act of throwing someone or something out of a window