wtfpwned by a Bus Driver

April 1, 2011, 8:34 PM PDT by Parkzer • 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This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.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.

At 1:46 AM today, I finished working and went out to the bus stop to wait for the bus. I saw the bus approaching, but for some odd reason, it was going a lot faster than normal. Assuming that the bus driver didn’t see me, I waved a little bit to get his attention. He drove right past me.

Suddenly, he screeches to a halt a little while later, and opens the doors to the bus. I put on my -___- face and start walking toward the bus.

Several seconds later, when I’m about to reach the doors of the bus, the bus starts moving again, and I have to do an awkward speed-skip-hop-jump-run to make sure I get on.

Apparently the bus driver had been working straight since March 31 at 5:45 AM, was getting tired, and he wanted to play some April Fools jokes on the riders.

After I finally got on the bus, he noticed that there were a handful of people waiting at one of the later stops. As they entered, he pulled out a device and pretended like he was radioing someone.

“Yeah, I got them right here, they’re entering the bus.”

Then he asks the group, “Were you at all involved with the incident that just occurred at Langdon [Street]? I have the police department here and they want to know.”

The group denies their involvement and starts getting nervous as the driver says into his radio device, “They say they don’t know anything about it.”

Then, he pinpoints an individual and says, “Are you returning from a party?”

“Uh… no.”

“Have you been drinking tonight?”

“Uh… no.”

“Was there underage drinking at this party?”

“No!”

“Ah ha, so you were at a party. Why are you lying to me?”

“…”

And he proceeded to continue and freak out everyone else until he yells “APRIL FOOLS!” and starts driving again.

I’ve never seen a bus driver pull an April Fools joke on anyone before, and I would have to say that it was quite an interesting end to my night.

… Then it snowed this morning. Even the weather is pulling jokes on me.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Invisible Businesses

March 31, 2011, 2:58 PM PDT by Parkzer • Daily Post

Do you know what I hate? Businesses that are impossible to find.

I got a free $10 coupon for a random smoothie shop called Red Mango in Madison, WI, USA. I looked it up on Google Maps and pinpointed the location, and even looked at it via street view so I could tell what it looked like from the front.

Today, when I was going to work, I got off at an earlier bus stop so I could stop by Red Mango on my way to work and use my $10 coupon. The only problem was, Red Mango disappeared off the street.

I ended up walking and looking and walking and looking and kept walking and looking until my workplace showed up. I went in and frustratedly said “Where the hell is Red Mango? I walked an extra two blocks so I could go there and the building evaporated.”

Apparently, according to a co-worker, it’s still there and I’m just blind.

Tip of the Day

If you ever choose to take a very quick nap in a library, make sure that you position yourself so you can breathe freely. Or else you’ll be like me, there will be six people in the section of the library where you were when you fall asleep, there will be nobody there when you wake up, and you’ll wonder if they all left because you were snoring.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #83: What’s the most on fire you’ve ever been? Figuratively, literally, whatever.

I have no idea what “on fire” means figuratively. I generally don’t know what any phrases mean in their figurative form, and I hate sayings that don’t make any sense literally because they’re confusing and a waste of my hippocampus to memorize all of them.

I have never literally been on fire. I’ve held my hands over a fire before to warm them up, but they never caught on fire, and they never even touched the fire in the first place.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Don’t Come Visit Me

March 30, 2011, 3:17 PM PDT by Parkzer • Daily Post, Daily Shoot

If you happen to be reading this and you know where and in which room I live, please don’t visit me, and please stop sharing the information. I become very annoyed when people come knocking at my door before 8 AM when I’m still sleeping. I’m on the verge of asking my apartment staff to electrocute my door so people will stop knocking on it.

And as a side note, this isn’t just today either. There has been a sudden spike of visitors this past week or two, so I’m guessing that someone figured out what room I live in and is starting to spread this information to whomever wishes to find out. So I highly discourage you from trying to visit me, because I’ve resorted to not answering my door at all because of all the strange people that show up here.

The Daily Shoot Assignment of the Day

#DS500

Make a photograph that features metal or a metallic surface today.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #81: Go to your drafts folder and finish an old post. We’re almost done with month 3 here at daily post. I’m sure you have a post, or six, that you started but never quite finished. Today, go back and grab a half-written post and just get it done. If you can’t finish it, write a post about why you can’t finish any of your old posts today.

I can’t finish any of my old posts today because I have no old posts. I don’t have a drafts folder, and once I start a post, I always finish it.

Also, because my blog is a heavily personal blog, I almost always write about things that happen on a day-to-day basis. Thus, if I started a blog post one day and didn’t finish it, I would most likely post it one day later and state that the event occurred the previous day, or just scrap the old post. However, I don’t ever recall not finishing a post and discarding it.

I also have a tendency to publish almost everything that I create. I hate seeing effort go to waste in all aspects, so if I start writing something, I always finish it because I don’t want the effort placed to start it to go to waste. Even in videos, if I go to an event or show to film it, I usually release the full show in addition to a highlights video because I don’t want all the footage of the entire show to go to waste.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Exam Fairness Fail

March 29, 2011, 3:19 PM PDT by Parkzer • Daily Post, Daily Shoot

I had an exam for my criminal justice class today. I’m generally much better at the essay portion than at the multiple choice, and they were weighted equally, so I decided to focus more on the essay so I could get a near-perfect score on it to make up for the multiple choice that I would most likely do poorly on. I quickly went through the multiple choice, then started on my essay.

For whatever reason, about five minutes after I noticed that someone had written “Time Remaining: 15 min” on the chalkboard, my professor’s alarm went off and he told everyone to stop. Of course, I was seated in the front, and the professor happened to be standing right next to me, looking at me, so I stopped without getting a chance to check through my multiple choice answers.

As I got up to turn my exam in, there were people still frantically writing, and some were even writing while they were standing in line to turn in their exams.

What I learned from this? If you want a fair shot at the curve, sit in an arbitrary seat in the middle of the lecture hall so you can get five extra minutes like everyone else, as opposed to sitting on the side so you have to stop immediately when time is up because your professor is right next to you.

Tip of the Day

If you’re in lecture and you notice a loose strand of hair on your paper, don’t grab at it or try to brush it off without first making sure that it is in fact a loose strand of hair.

Or else you’ll end up like me and end up noticing that this “loose hair” is still attached to the girl sitting in front of you.

Picture of the Day

Epic Grease Fail

I think this is an epic using the proper amount of grease on a pizza fail.

It looks bad now, but it’s nothing compared to what it was like as I was eating the pizza. As I lifted up each slice, there was a thick glossy layer of grease on the bottom of both the pizza and on the box.

This is what it looked like after I ate 3/4 of the pizza, let it sit (and dry) for a few hours, then came back and finished the remaining two slices.

If you look over at the top-right corner of the photo, you’ll notice that that’s where the lid of the box is, and it’s also covered in grease – that’s where I tried to wipe off the excess grease from the pizza slices.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #80: What non-exercise activity do you wish would keep you fit?

The answer to this one is easy – the non-exercise activity that I wish I would keep me fit is typing. Although some people addicted to using their computers may consider typing to already be an exercise so they have an excuse not to leave their desk, I don’t think moving your fingers and using the muscles in your forearms is enough physical activity to be considered exercise.

However, if I were to choose an activity that would be considered exercise that I do a lot, typing would be the best candidate. Because I’m an extremely fast typer (extremely fast being defined as faster than any other human being I’ve met in person before), typing takes more energy from me than it would from pretty much anyone else (unless there’s someone that has a unique typing style of lifting their fingers several feet into the air before hitting the keys). In addition, the amount of time I spend typing is still massive, even though I save tons of time by being a fast typer.

Thus, I think that if I got a full-body exercise from everything that I typed, I would essentially be one of the most fit people alive. Unfortunately, if this was the case, I would probably cut down on other outdoor activity that is considered exercise, though. For example, instead of walking to class, I would probably find a bus that takes me as close as possible to the building containing my lecture. As a result, I would probably not receive enough sunlight intake and get a shortage of Vitamin D and overall not become healthy.

But of course, that could easily be solved by doing some of my typing work outside.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Bus Bewilderment

March 28, 2011, 3:23 PM PDT by Parkzer • Daily Post

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #78: What is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you on a bus? If you don’t take buses often, how about on an airplane? While driving to work? While walking home from school? And if nothing strange has ever happened to you while using transportation of any kind, what is the strangest thing you can think of that you wish had happened to you while using transportation?

I’ve never had any strange experiences on buses – weird things have happened, but they’re things that could happen anywhere, not only just on a bus. However, I do recall an event that other people on the bus thought was strange at the time.

I’m not sure if it’s like this for all public buses, but the buses at my university have a yellow cord that extends across the side of the bus. This yellow cord is the signal cord – you pull it when your stop is approaching so the bus driver knows that (s)he has to stop at the next bus stop. If the cord is not pulled and there is nobody at the stop waiting to board the bus, the bus passes the stop without stopping. Unfortunately, many first-riders don’t know this; if I hadn’t read through the Metro website before my first time riding a bus, I would’ve never known either.

One day when I was going to work, two women entered the bus. Apparently, they weren’t getting off very far from where they got on, and they were expecting the bus to stop at every stopping point regardless of if people were present at the stop or if the cord was pulled or not. When one of the women saw her destination approaching, she stood up and put her bag around her shoulder. As she shifted momentum to start walking towards the door, the bus driver passed the stop because nobody pulled the cord. She looked slightly confused and sat back down.

As the next bus stop approached, she got up again and put her bag back on her shoulder. As she again shifted momentum to start walking towards the exit door, the bus passed the stop without stopping. This time, she looked completely puzzled.

This went on for about two or three more stops.

As my workplace was approaching, I pulled the yellow cord to signal that I was intending to get off. When the bus got to my stop, it pulled over so I could get off. When the women saw this, they stared at me in bewilderment and gave me a “how did the bus driver know you were getting off here?!” look. I’m pretty sure this was the strangest bus moment for these women.

Picture of the Day

Sleeping Lawyers

From my criminal justice textbook:

“… lawyers have fallen asleep during their clients’ death penalty trials, yet one Texas judge found no problem with such behavior. He wrote that everyone has a constitutional right to have a lawyer, but ‘the Constitution does not say that the lawyer has to be awake.'”

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Don’t Have a Car?

March 27, 2011, 3:25 PM PDT by Parkzer • Daily Post

Picture of the Day

What Happens When You Don’t Have a Car But Still Need to Use the Drive-Through at the Bank?

Easy.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #76: What’s your favorite number and why?

My favorite number is 8.

Figuratively, it’s the most symmetric numeral other than 0, and nice proportionality is important in being physically appealing.

As for the actual number, 8 appears very frequently in many different aspects of my family, including house numbers, birthdays, important dates, and sums of the digits of important values.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2