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Funerals

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This week Dr. Debakey, one of the pioneers of heart surgery died. To honor him Houston is having an open viewing of his body. I know this is supposed to be an honor and all, but does anyone else find it a bit creepy? I mean we’re putting some guys dead body out on display to look at. Morbid anyone?
Funerals as a whole are weird to me. Its not the honoring the dead, or the grieving process, though those are hard. Its the whole funeral industry. People who make tons of money sometimes preying off of families at their worst time. In college I had to write a paper about this for an English class. Don’t ask me why the professor chose this subject, but he did. Anyways, in my studying I found a lot of horrifying stuff. Families would be charged large amounts of money for everything. The funeral homes would charge for the pillow that goes under the deceased’s head during the viewing, like it was necessary. Then, to make it shadier, after the viewing they would take it out and sell it to the next family. Of course there’s lots of tales of jewelry and other more morbid items like gold tooth caps being stolen.
The whole thing just seems like something to be avoided. I would rather avoid the whole thing and save my family the trouble. I don’t want to help any industry with bad people like that profit off of my family. I’ll stick with cremation and spreading my ashes somewhere cool like on the UT campus. If for some creepy reason someone wants to keep my ashes tupperware containers are pretty cheap.

Posted in creepy, funerals, rants

Competition

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In general, Americans are a very competitive bunch. We turn almost anything into a competition. Even eating has a huge amount of competing, even at the amateur level. Heck, I’ve bragged about my prowess in said arena. What surprised me is how competitive people are about babies. I don’t really mean in the way most people might thing. Sure everyone talks about how early their kids walk and talk and all that. That’s a little more normal. I speak of a more random and odd type of competition.

Once you have a baby no matter what you say someone with an older kid will say something like “wait until they do “. Its like no matter what you’re going through its not as bad as what’s coming. I don’t think people do this in a malicious way usually, its just our nature. What I find odd about it is often its very bizarre stuff. “Wait until they poop and grab it”; things like that just seem weird.

So to provide some order to this mess I am proposing parents of the world create a governing body for this competition with some set of rules. Perhaps we’ll have to keep a log book for each range of ages. In each book there will be different types of stats to keep. Spit-ups per day, dirty diapers per day, diaper blowouts, nights slept through, etc. When you see another parent you break out your log book and compare stats for the equivalent age. This equalizes it for those parents who had kids earlier. Of course it would be honor system for the recording, and you may have to get baby sitters involved for some data collection. I’m not sure if that would cost extra.

The trick comes in deciding who wins. If you kid sleeps 10 hours a night after age 3 months and keeps that up until age 2 and someone else’s kid only sleeps 6 hours a night who wins? I’m inclined to say at least for each night sleep the 10 hour parents definitely one. If you’re looking to complain then the 6 hour parents win. If you’re into the complaining though you have to be careful. Eventually your kid just comes out looking like a brat. That or you look like a whiner. Its definitely something the ruling body would have to decide on.

Anyways, next time you have to one up another parent, and we all do it, just think about how you want to be scored. Maybe challenge that other parent to a contest over time. Just make sure your record your rules and we can get this new game started.

Posted in competition, games, parenting, rants

Not orange after all

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So it looks like Walmart has rolled out their new logo and it isn’t orange after all. However, some people have some other thoughts about it. So I guess I can come out of mourning now.

Posted in pure evil, rants, walmart

Gas Guzzlers

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So recently American car makers have started to pull back their production of large trucks and evil gas guzzlers like the Hummer. I think its funny. Its sad too. So many American workers are going to lose jobs because of car maker executives making the same mistakes they made in the seventies. Of course since so many of their parts are made over seas or in other American countries it will have far reaching effects. And yes, a worker in Mexico is an American too, so the many workers there are affected as well.

Back in the 1970s American car makers spent a lot of time building very large vehicles. They were not efficient, but they were the style. When the oil problems happened back then they had huge losses. Honda and Toyota made huge gains in this time, setting them up to be the major car makers they are now in the US. Once again the American makers have focused on larger vehicles, SUVs this time, and once again oil prices have spiked, causing them to crash. Of course once again the foreign makers are ready to pounce again. They have been more efficient for a long time, and now they are ready again. At one point the only hybrid some of the American makers had was based on technology they borrowed from the foreign makers. They are getting better on some of their vehicles, but they are having to scramble to keep up. Making more ethanol vehicles doesn’t count. That’s just adding to a different problem, which is a whole other blog post.

In the end I’m sure it will work out, after the behemoth reacts and adjusts to the changing times. Unfortunately, a lot of people will be hurt, and foreign companies will get the gain.

Posted in cars, oil, rants

Mourning

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It looks like the great evil of Walmart has decided to make some changes. They are still trying to fix their image, though they’ve spent the last twenty years destroying it. Unfortunately for Longhorns, they’ve decided to tarnish the awesome color that is burnt orange. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal they are going to have a new burnt orange logo with a asterisk type symbol next to it.

Sigh… one more thing Walmart has destroyed.

Posted in pure evil, rants, Texas, walmart

Street lights

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Why do cities take a road and put lights every 1000 feet on them? Were talking 0.2 miles. Can we really not work without that? Is there no back road people can use? This is a big problem around our area, and I’m sure in many areas. Major roads that are three or four lanes wide end up being packed with cars because they have to stop constantly. The lights aren’t the problem, so much as their timing. If you have that many lights in a row some effort should be spent making them coordinate. I routinely find myself stopping at several lights in a row. If I am going the speed limit this should not happen. I know a lot of cities do this, at least at night. I just don’t get why they can’t do it other times.
Another thing that aggravates me about street lights is the timing. Some lights seem to change too often. This means each side gets to go more often, but I believe it actually lets less cars through. See, most people are not really paying attention. When the light turns green people have to wake up, put down the cell phone (hopefully), turn around from the kids, stop reading their news paper and generally drop all their other distractions. Then they go. The more you turn the light red then green the more you cause this. I believe if you change from having people go 30 seconds to having them go for a minute you will actually relieve traffic to some degree.
I know I’m not the only one who sits and analyzes all of this stuff. I can often tell you the best way to go somewhere just because of the lights. My wife thinks I’m crazy and ignores me most of the time, but hey, I’m an engineer. Besides, when you’re sitting at one of those 10 red lights in a row you’ve got to do something. I think about fixing the lights.

Posted in driving, rants, street lights, traffic

Dead beat dads

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There are a lot of dead beat dads in the world and as I look towards my first Fathers Day I don’t understand them. I don’t see how you could look into the face of a child and not want to do anything you can to protect and help them. I cannot fathom knowing you helped create a life and not wanting to be a part of it. I will never understand what motivates someone to hurt another person, let alone a child. Yet all of these things happen and all too often.

Not too long ago I read an article on ESPN about Karl Malone. If you don’t know Karl Malone was a basketball player for the Utah Jazz. I always didn’t like him when he played. First off, I am a Rockets fan, and they often went up against each other in the playoffs growing up. Second off he always came off as a jerk when I’d see him. I never knew how much of a jerk until I read the article about Karl Malone’s shameful secret. It was surprising to hear that not only does he have a son that he has never met, but the son isn’t the only child he’s ignored. He ignored a daughter until she became a basketball player, and now he ignores a son who is playing football. I suppose if the son becomes famous or gets some press that is bad for Malone then maybe he’ll try to change that.

My father didn’t always do the best job of being a dad. I didn’t see him super often as I grew up, but he was around. As I got older I saw him a lot more, and I cherish those memories. I lost him a few years ago to COPD, essentially emphysema from smoking. I miss him often, but this last four months has been harder. I wish he could have met Levi. He would be so glad to meet him and see him. Feeling that loss and also the love I have for Levi makes the behavior of some people that much harder to fathom.

I suppose I would have to just attribute it to the same thing I attribute so many things in this world today. Some people are just idiots. Its not that they are ignorant and don’t know what they are doing. They know, they are either too stupid or too rude to care. If you have a child, cherish them. If your father is still around thank him. If he’s around and he’s from the Karl Malone school of parenting then confront him and try to get him to be a dad. Maybe that will be all it takes to make them be a real man and a real dad.

After all, someone who acts like Malone does isn’t a man or a father. As the article says, they’re a random sperm donor and not worth much more. A dad who is involved and cares for their child, one who is a good husband a helps whenever he can with whatever he can is a real man, and that’s what I want to be.

Posted in fathers day, idiots, rants, sports

More Traffic Behavior

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Today, on the way home I saw another example of bad driving. Near the same intersection I complained about earlier someone decided to be a big jerk. There was a long line of traffic, stretching for almost a mile, as there always is in this area at this time of day (thank you city hall). Some guy in a van stops when the light turns green and lets out not just one car, but four. What makes it worse is the latter three cars ran the stop sign to get out while he waved them on. He then promptly turns into the shopping center, avoiding the added traffic he just created. I think that crosses the line into being a jerk. The average wait for the people behind the van to get to that point was probably 30 minutes or more. At least two of the cars at the stop sign had just pulled up, waiting maybe 10 seconds. I’m sure more than 4 people missed the light because of this. The annoying thing is there’s a light so close that these people would probably haven’t gotten out pretty fast anyways.

Sometimes I wish I had a rocket launcher on my car or something. It would be nice to remove some of these frustrations.

Posted in driving, rants, traffic

Traffic Behavior

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I don’t know what it is about driving that brings out the stupid in people. People seem to lose all perspective and do some of the stupidest things. I imagine if they saw themselves doing it they’d even recognize it as stupid. On the flip side a lot of what people do seems to be selfish. They either do things to get themselves ahead, or they try to make themselves feel better.

Let me give an example of the latter. Near my house there is a very large shopping center. There is a light at an overpass, and then a light about 500 feet away. The light 500 feet away is for the shopping center, to let people out so they can go either direction. In between these two lights is an exit from the shopping center with a stop sign. Every day on the way home I see people going to the stop sign to get out instead of the light. These people often just want to get into traffic to go right. About a quarter of the time they want to go across to the turn lane that goes to the shopping center light so they can do a U-turn. No why didn’t they just go use the shopping center light instead of doing a U-turn that invariably ends up resulting in them having to put their car in reverse and realign since they couldn’t make the turn. And why didn’t the people turning right go to the light where they could easily get out without someone letting them out? The problem I have with them is traffic from the overpass light is almost always backed up. Traffic exits the freeway to go to this light. Its the only way to go, so it backs up a lot for the right hand turn. The way the lights are about 10 to 15 cars make it through the right turn every light. This means often waiting 2 or three times through the light. What makes this frustrating is invariably someone pulls up to the stop sign from the shopping center and someone lets them out. I’m sure they tell themselves they are being nice, after all they just helped someone out. Of course perhaps its the analytical cynic in me, but I can’t help but think in the time they took to let that person out they stopped at least two other people who have probably been waiting through two light cycles from getting out. So you’ve helped one person, but you’ve hurt at least two who have been waiting longer. To me that’s not helping, that’s hurting.

The other time this is a problem is when someone stops to let someone out and the light is green coming over the bridge. This is a 50 mph road. When someone comes over the bridge going 50 they now have to slow down a lot, hoping the people behind them do the same because someone wanted to be “nice”. If this was the only way out for these people then maybe this would be nice, but they have their own light. There is no need to let them out, they only came to the stop sign for one of two reasons. Either they didn’t think about it, or they knew someone would be gullible enough to let them out.

So do me a favor in the future. When you’re driving along, at least in my neighborhood, and you see someone waiting at a stop sign to get out of a shopping center, when they could have used a stop light. Don’t let them out, don’t be that person!

Posted in driving, rants, traffic

Fast car, slow driver

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Why do people bother to spend so much money on sports cars and then drive them like a Geo Metro? I see this a lot on the roads and it drives me nuts. There is one particular lady I pass quite frequently on the way to work. I know if I see her car, with its particular bumper sticker I want to get around her quickly or I’ll be stuck in the line of traffic she creates. She drives a Camero, not a slow car, but generally is going 5 miles per hour slower than the speed limit.

Now I understand that many people go slower on the freeway in the slow lane to conserve gas. By dropping to 60 from 65 there can be a savings in gas that can add up over time. I get that. I’m certainly not going to do it myself, but if you’re in the slow lane and you’re not blocking traffic or screwing up the on ramps then go for it. But when you do it in the fast lane, in a Camero I think you cross the line into being a little stupid and kind of a jerk. I have a hard time believing someone who bought a Camero was worried about conserving fuel. They aren’t exactly built for that. They also aren’t built for going slow. So really I’m not sure why some of these people own these cars.

Maybe we can make a new rule that revokes their right to drive them. If you’re going to do that go buy a Civic. You can still feel sporty, but you’ll get 10 miles per gallon better. Plus, when you go slow people won’t really notice, except if you do it in the fast lane. So do us all a favor. Go trade that thing in and get a car that fits your style. If you just want to cruise around in a cool looking car that’s fine, go get a Prowler or something, just not a sports car. Heck, I’ll trade you my Civic if you really want. Just stop abusing those beautiful sports cars.

Posted in cars, rants

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