I’m Really Quick

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Two days ago, it was 90°F/32°C. When I checked the weather this morning, there was a frost advisory and it was freezing cold today.

The world would be a much better place if the weather slowly, progressively, and gradually got colder approaching the winter, and slowly, progressively, gradually got warmer approaching the summer.

In other news, while I was on the bus today headed to the Badger Herald office, I overheard a man:

“When I go to the bathroom, it only takes like ten minutes. I’m really quick.”

Yes. Really quick.

 

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Topic #246: What is your biggest frustration about driving?

The thing that frustrates me most about driving is watching other people who do not drive efficiently.

For example, it bothers me when I see people accelerating when it’s obvious that in five seconds, they’re going to have to brake because there’s a red light up ahead. Not only are they wasting gasoline by unnecessarily accelerating, but they’re also wearing down their brake pads for having to stop from a higher speed.

Another example is when there are multiple cars driving below the speed limit in a row on a multiple-lane road. If the speed limit is 55 miles per hour and it’s a three-lane road, if you intend on going at 45 miles per hour, you should go over to the right-most lane so other people can use the other two lanes to go at 55 miles per hour. It’s annoying when three cars who want to go at 45 miles per hour are all on their own individual lanes, all in a row.

Finally, it slightly frustrates me when people complain about high gas prices but keep their car on when it’s not in use. Are you waiting for someone to come out of a store? Turn your engine off. Are you using your car just to listen to the radio? Turn it off, you can survive without listening to music for ten minutes. Are you waiting for a freight train to pass? Turn your engine off instead of keeping it on for five minutes.

 

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Don’t Forget to Use Your Turn Signal

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Tip of the Day: Don’t forget to use your turn signal.

Today’s tip of the day has been provided by an old man who told me not to forget to use my turn signal while I was walking to class this morning.

In other news, follow road signs.

I intended on putting this in my blog for the past two days, and I continued to forget but finally remembered today. If you recall my blog post from September 11, you know that there was an Ironman triathalon hosted in Madison, Wisconsin on that day. Because of that, a bunch of roads were closed, and even more were marked off with warning signs.

One of the most common signs were “Road Closed Ahead, Local Traffic Only.” That means that everyone who intends on using that road to drive to a location past that road should not do so because they’re going to run into a closed road, and the only people who should use that road are people who have homes and apartments along that road.

I’m not sure if this was because people are just stupid or because they’re rebellious, but I probably saw about 20 or so cars today take the roads marked “Road Closed Ahead, Local Traffic Only” roads, keep driving, hit the closed road blocked off by police vehicles, and have to turn back around.

So if you ever happen to be in Madison in the future and there are roads with these signs next to them, don’t use them.

Or else a random blogger will notice you, laugh at you, then write about it in his blog.

 

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Triple Double Eyebrows

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Depending on how involved you are with me and my website, you might already know that I am the web director at the Badger Herald. You might also know that this past summer, I created a file submission form for the Badger Herald so our readers could submit files to us anonymously (and I posted about it on my blog and asked my readers to help me find bugs with it).

It seems like people have been putting the form to good use. Although we get quite a bit of spam, we also get some useful information.

Earlier today, I got an image submission titled “eyebrows.png.” Curious to see what it was, I opened it up and found this:

eyebrows.png

I did not know that such things as double eyebrows even existed, let alone triple double eyebrows.

 

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Going to a Destination Epic Fail

by   •   Highlights
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you’ve been a reader of my blog for the past year, you might possibly remember that I used to have a lot of fails with the bus a long time ago when I first started using public transportation.

For example, on the first day I ever rode a public bus, I failed to be noticed by the bus driver because I was standing at the wrong spot. A few days after that, I stood at a bus stop that was no longer in service because I misinterpreted the schedule and thought that late-night service was active on all days except Friday and Saturday nights, rather than only Friday and Saturday nights.

Today, I had a bus fail that, I believe, outfails all the other bus fails I’ve ever had in my life.

Today is Sunday, which means that the tae kwon do club at UW-Madison meets from 2 PM until 4 PM. Today also happens to be an early Sunday in September, which means that the qualifiers for the Ironman Triathalon is held in Madison, Wisconsin.

For those of you who don’t know, the Ironman Triathalon is an annual event where people swim 2.4 miles (3.86 km), bike 112 miles (180.25 km), and run 26.2 miles (42.195 km). Every year, iron men (and women) come to Madison, Wisconsin to compete in the qualifiers. For this event, there are tons of streets everywhere that are closed, and bus routes are rerouted so they don’t interfere with the participants.

Back to UW TKD. The tae kwon do club meets at the Gymnasium-Natatorium, which is quite a distance away from my apartment (nothing compared to the distance the Ironman competitors travel, but still too far for my walking comfort). So, I ride the bus from the Brogden Psychology Building up to the Gymnasium-Natatorium.

Sometime around 1:30 PM, I boarded the bus to go to the Gym-Nat. As I was riding the bus, I noticed that we were going to places that were not on the standard route. I assumed that it was because of the Ironman Triathalon and didn’t really think much of it, assuming that I would get to the Gym-Nat without a problem.

A while later, I realized that the bus was driving com­pletely around Observatory Dr., which is where the Gym-Nat is located. I became very much more alert to see where I was going, and realized that we were headed towards University Bay and UW Hospital.

After waiting a few minutes longer, I realized that I was now far northwest of the main UW campus and had no idea where I was going. Fortunately, I knew that the bus route I took travels in a circular route, so I knew that eventually I would end up back at a place with which I was familiar. But until then, I was stuck on a bus miles away from both my apartment and my destination.

After sitting on the bus for about 45 minutes and getting a tour of Eagle Heights and Picnic Point, I finally noticed that we were heading back to the main UW campus. As we approached the Brogden Psychology Building, I pulled the stop cable and got off the bus.

So yes, you read that correctly.

I got on the bus at the psychology building, stayed on the bus for 45 minutes, then got off the bus at the psychology building.

And I never made it to the Gym-Nat.

This is the third time in the past week or so that the Madison Metro system has miserably let me down.

 

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Social Sciences Copy Shop Epic Fail

by   •   Highlights
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States and you ever need to buy something from the copy shop in the Sewell Social Sciences building, prepare for one of the most frustrating experiences in your college/university career.

Back on the 6th of this month, I went to the copy shop to buy a reader for my sociological enterprise course. For those who are unfamiliar with university vocabulary, a “reader” is basically a huge collection of documents relevant to the course for which they were made; it’s more or less a replacement for a textbook with materials that the instructor or professor specifically picked out for his or her course.

Being the beginning of the semester, there were a lot of students waiting to purchase their own readers for their own classes, so I had to wait a while in line. Not a big deal, though, and not really frustrating, because I was checking and responding to emails and texting anyway and it didn’t matter that I was doing it while standing in line rather than standing outside the lecture hall for my following class waiting for the previous class to be dismissed.

After waiting about five minutes in line, I look up and notice a sign. It’s a tad bit too far away for me to be able to see it, so I wait another few minutes until I slowly make it closer and closer to the sign as I advance in line. Then I cross the point where I am able to read the sign, and notice that it says that credit or debit cards are not accepted.

I put on my -.- face and step out of line. My reader costs a little bit over $20 and I rarely ever carry over a dollar of cash in my wallet. I walk over to the closest no-charge ATM, which is in the building next door.

And of course, it decides that the 6th of September is an excellent day to break.

I decide that it’s acceptable to wait a few more days to purchase my reader, and add “go to working ATM” to my todo list.

Two days later (which would be two days ago), I grab my keys, iPod Touch, and laptop bag to go to an ATM on my way to class. When I arrive at the ATM, I notice that my wallet is missing. The best part is that when I went to grab my keys, they were sitting right on top of my wallet, but for whatever reason, I decided not to grab my wallet as well.

So I went another day without my reader.

Finally, yesterday, I grabbed both my keys as well as my wallet before going to class to stop by the ATM. I successfully withdrew $25 from the ATM. After attending my morning classes, I went to the copy shop in the social sciences building during my lunch break to finally purchase my reader.

I arrive and it’s closed.

Resisting the urge to just hop over the counter, find my reader, and process the transaction myself, I read the sheet of paper stuck to the wall to discover that the copy shop is closed every day during lunch hours.

Whoever decided it’s a good idea to close during lunch hours when everyone has free time to stop by and purchase their readers should get fired.

Yes, I did eventually manage to buy my reader a few hours later.

To top off the frustration, it’s not even three-hole punched so I can’t even put it in my binder without hole punching a couple hundred pages myself eight sheets at a time with a hand-operated three-hole puncher.

 

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Walking on the Sidewalk Fail

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Don’t you hate it when you’re walking behind four people who feel as if it’s necessary to all walk side-by-side like a human barrier so nobody can pass them?

Me too.

I particularly hate it when I’m trying to walk back to my office after buying a burger from Five Guys (they have one of the most awesome burgers ever) (no, this is not a sponsorship or a paid adver­tisement) and this human barrier is slowing me down such that I’m unable to return to my office and eat my burger as quickly as if they weren’t there.

In other news, I think I’m finally done hiring for the web department at the Badger Herald. I did my final interview today, and I’ve narrowed the potential candidates down to the two people who have the most experience with stuff relevant to what my department will be doing this coming semester and in the future in general.

Also, special shoutout to Vivian Seeger, who found the Badger Herald through the link at the bottom of my profile page and sent me an application to be the new associate web director (and mentioned that she was a frequent reader of my blog). It was great reading your application, but unfortunately, the fact that you are not a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (and the fact that you live in an entirely different state to begin with) disqualifies you for the position. Thanks for applying, though.

 

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