A Commute

While those of you in the Pacific Northwest understand how poor drivers are, I know some of you don't believe me when I say that drivers here are the worst I have come across in the United States. Sure, folks complain a lot about drivers in New York or Los Angeles, but those are aggressive drivers, and their behavior is pretty predictable-leave enough space for a car to merge into your lane, and it'll happen.

When I do drive to work, it's a 4.3-mile commute each way. With no traffic it takes about 10 minutes to get to work, but when there is traffic, the same route takes about 45 minutes, which can be shortened to 30 by taking an alternate route. I wait until after most of the traffic has died down, but by no means does that mean there aren't poor drivers on the road. For example, my drive home last night (yes I'm a grad student so I work weekends):

Mile 0.4: The driver in front of me stops at a green light for no reason, and stays stopped while the light goes from green to yellow to red 5 seconds later.
Mile 0.9: A driver with a green light waves a pedestrian to cross the intersection in front of the car (Seattle drivers are notorious for screwing up right of way at the expense of safety). There are two left turn lanes at the intersection. I'm in the left one, and the person in the right turn lane always cuts in front of my lane in the turn itself and after the turn starts driving in the lane where the left left turn lane turns into instead of the lane the right left turn lane turns into (2 lanes per direction on that 4-lane road).
Mile 1.6: There's a bus stopped at the bus stop in the right lane, and I'm driving on the left lane. All of a sudden the car in front of me slams on the brakes and allows everyone in the right lane behind the bus to merge into the left lane until the bus moves again. (Seattle drivers are notorious for screwing up right of way at the expense of safety, again)
Mile 2.4: I'm behind a car going 25 in a 35 zone so I move into the other lane to pass, but as soon as I pull alongside the car, the other driver all of a sudden starts going 35.
Mile 3.4: Same as mile 2.4, except someone going 25 in a 40 zone.
Mile 3.8: At this intersection, the road I'm on has a left turn lane in both directions. However, most drivers use this as an opportunity to expand their own lane into the left turn lane while going straight through the intersection and to continue using the opposite direction's left turn lane as part of their own lane.
Mile 4.3: At the turn into the complex I'm living in, the middle turning lane has a clear demarcation for when each direction has a left turn (instead of fair use for both directions). However, this doesn't stop the car opposite me to use my left turn lane to get into their left turn lane while I'm approaching the turn with my indicator on.

While Seattle driving is bad, not everything else is-like these pictures I took when I went to Grand Teton national park earlier this month:

(Click to Enlarge)

(Click to Enlarge)

Edit: and now, for the second time in the last 4 months, someone has managed to hit my parked car...

Nissan Rogue and Marketing

I recently returned from a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and while there rented a Nissan Rogue (which was an upgrade over the booked Nissan Sentra courtesy of my National Executive status). Over the 5+ days of the trip, I ended up driving the car 1,349 miles and ended up getting a pretty good feel for the car to the point I had to take a second to figure out how to drive my own car when I got back home from the trip.

The Rogue, in my opinion, is straight up awful, and essentially felt like a crossover SUV based on the Versa or Sentra. If you've driven either of those cars, you know that both of those cars are incredibly weak. A Versa starts at 109 horsepower, and a Rogue starts at 170 horsepower, which is not necessarily ideal for going through the mountains of a national park. Even National straight-up told me that the Pathfinder at 284 horsepower was a much better option.

Through those 1,349 miles there was many challenging points for the car. At its weak power it particularly struggled on hills. At about 6 degree incline the car maxed out at around 50 mph, and at a 10 degree incline the car would not travel above 38 mph (my car, with 228 horsepower on the base model, has no issues getting past 35 on a 24 degree incline near my place). Additionally, the car really struggled on turns, and in general the balance did not feel stable. The center of gravity felt way too high for a crossover, especially since I had previously driven a 2005/6-ish Honda Pilot when I had my permit (and when I initially had my license) and that felt incredibly stable compared to the Rogue. It also didn't help that any time a car passed in the opposite direction on those rural highways the hood would shake profusely as if it would become detached in the front and obscure the windshield.

Now, I understand that not everyone is looking to take this car through a mountain pass in the snow or drive it over uneven gravel to get to a river. However, these cars are marketed as such to the general public, when most of them will never need these cars for those purposes. Of course that's marketing at work.

Nissan Rogue Pitch (Click to Enlarge)

I believe that this kind of marketing is used to make people feel like their car can do anything; that it's some status symbol of some point (look at me, I'm outdoorsy!) that's easy to display. Obviously this seems to work, as the Rogue is still around and selling. However, the vehicle itself is next to useless in any challenging condition requiring anything beyond basic all-wheel drive functions. I'm not even sure the car would make it up my parent's driveway, which might be 25 degrees, during a snowstorm. While I think the Rogue is much better suited for city driving, advertising it as such isn't going to drive sales as much as advertising it an an outdoors car, which is too bad for consumers who don't look at all the specifications before buying a car.

Another Year

It's funny seeing all the first year grad students (and undergrads) all happy and excited to be here. It's only time until they have the happiness beat out of them.

The DIY Way

Last week, for the first time, I hemmed a set of curtains. I may have cheated a little bit by using ironing tape instead of sewing the hem, but it gets the job done. I might pat myself on the back and marvel at a new job well done (well, not particularly well done, but a serviceable job nonetheless).

Obviously this isn't about tooting my own horn-hemming curtains isn't particularly difficult. What I am intrigued by is the ebbing of the DIY mentality, where today's young adults seem to possess fewer and fewer handiwork skills (which I had also mentioned with the increase in restaurant spending with the decrease of grocery store spending).

A New York Times Sunday Op-Ed provides some intriguing thoughts, and while I'm not as quick to believe an imminent demise of functional society, it does raise some good points. Many of those "world-changing" ideas exist to create a problem to be solved, and it seems that the primary basis of many of these is the convenience of someone doing something else for you. And of course more time to socialize, which seems to be the only priority outside working hours.

While I understand that we can't do everything and are unable to acquire every skill, the lack of these skills that the previous generation had around the house is quite galling. As the Op-Ed points out, many seek to outsource away "everything their mothers no longer do" to the point that they're completely useless inside the home. This lack of DIY, outside of figuring out how to make someone else do it for you, might also explain why so many seem to have such a hard time putting together IKEA furniture.

News flash: It's not that hard. With a little bit of can-do and some common sense, a lot can be done if only you have the spirit to try.

Overheard

Overheard at lunch yesterday:

Girl: Having the freedom to do what I want means that I can choose to be outwardly sexual.
Guy: But, that plays right into the patriarchy.
Girl: But isn't feminism all about letting me do what I want to do?

Rinse and repeat for the 10 minutes I was stuck within earshot of them.

Welcome to Seattle, and now a great portion of urban America, where you're free to do whatever you want to do, as long as it fits within the narrow mindset of the hive mind behind movements whose end goals don't actually have anything to do with equality.

GoldenEye Returns!

If you're like me and you spend a fair amount of time playing the greatest game ever created, you'd be pretty excited to hear about the newest version of GoldenEye: Source. It's basically an HD recreation of GoldenEye 007 running the source engine from Half-Life 2. Eventually when I have some free time I might check this out...

Because I'm So Cultured

Because this totally belongs on r/im14andthisisdeep /sarcasm

Because if it takes a song for you to actually pretend to care about something, then you don't actually care. Read the YouTube comments for a good laugh and to see how superficial people can be (to be fair YouTube comments are generally cancer to begin with).

The tune itself isn't too bad though, if you take it in the context that it's music.

Cleaning, Changing, and Compromise

After I moved out of my parents' house for college, I've yet to ever live with anyone who is as clean about their living conditions as I am. I've always done the majority of the cleaning in the communal areas and end up cleaning up after my previous roommates. Of course it's just not possible to tell someone to be cleaner and expect them to be better around the place (like how telling a jobless person to get a job won't solve their problems).

I think it comes back to personal standards to living cleanliness. Growing up I spent time helping (or being coerced into helping) clean up around the house, making me acutely aware of my living conditions, whereas I bet that most people didn't have cleanliness highlighted as a part of growing up. This is particularly true about my roommates, as they tend not to see a need to clean (except when they're expecting guests). Their lower standards of cleanliness frustrated me to no end, as I would occasionally try to cajole them into cleaning more often. Of course this wouldn't work, as old habits (such as not cleaning) die hard, cleaning doesn't happen. I think cleaning habits are particularly difficult to change, as there's a high energy barrier to cleaning (especially when there's a lot of it to do) and I think it's difficult for people who are used to a certain standard to raise that standard. My current roommate will occasionally scrub the stove (despite splattering large amounts of it on the stove and floor daily that I tend to clean up), but he'll always miss about half of it.

I've come to the realization that it's generally not worth constantly pointing these things out, especially since there is never any change. It only creates animosity between roommates, which definitely isn't ideal. As this point I've had to be the one to always settle for my roommates' lower standards (so not really compromise) to the point that I'm (barely) satisfied if they do their dishes, shower, do laundry, and take out the trash when it's full. It's a low bar, but it's what I've had to settle for without exploding at someone.

The Amazing Drivers of Seattle

I'm not exactly sure I can pinpoint why Seattle drivers are so bad, but they're pretty bad and getting worse. Actually I can hazard a guess, and it might have something to do with how politically correct things have to be around here and how that mentality of self-importance and self-confidence regardless of actual ability and reality translating to the road. It's one thing to know that you're an awful driver, but of course here in Seattle no one is willing to admit that and everyone keeps driving like a lunatic.

Driving in the Seattle area is an exercise of hyperawareness and anticipation, where I've come to anticipate everyone driving poorly in just about every aspect. Sadly these are things I see on a daily basis that I feel that I haven't experienced on a regular basis in other locations.

• Turning out of the wrong lane-I'm really not sure why you think it's a good idea to make a right turn out of the left lane or a left turn out of the right lane.
• Turning into the wrong lane when there are two left turn lanes (or right turn lanes)-This one really gets me since there's one of these when I drive home from the office.
• Not making wider turns-This is also a huge problem with two turn lanes, as the car in the outside lane will always cross in front of the path of the car on the inside lane, regardless of which lane the outside car will take. This also applies to parking, where drivers will always get really close to the car in the next space on the inside of the turn because they start turning too early. This also results in almost every car angling towards the direction where they came from instead of fitting straight into the space.
• Not yielding-There's an on-ramp that merges with the off-ramp I use to go grocery shopping, and no one will yield to the cars on the off-ramp. Instead they just keep going and for some reason I'm the one that has to fit to their spacing.
• Matching speeds-Speaking of on-ramps, most drivers will not reach highway speeds on the on-ramp, instead choosing to coast at around 45mph and then try to merge on the highway.
• Tapping the brakes-Drivers tapping the brakes before intersections where they have the right of way really baffles me. The light is green all the way but before the intersection there's a fair minority of drivers that will tap their brakes.
• Last-minute lane movements-There's a particular street that's three lanes with the right lane becoming a separate road that's part of my commute to work. Every time without fail during the last block there will be multiple cars from the other two lanes trying to move over to that right lane, and sometimes the majority of cars leaving the road will do that. It's almost possible that before the previous red light they can go over to the right lane instead of trying to cross through everyone.
• Blind spots exist?-Blind spots are a myth to many here as well, as someone will try to cross into my lane when I'm in their blind spot, especially on the highway when I'm passing them. Excessive use of the horn has occurred multiple times.
• Going excessively slow-It's one thing to go above the speed limit, but when there's no traffic and everyone's going 10 below...
• Disrupting traffic flow (other than on-ramps)-Instead of the mentality being "I'll make the turn when it won't disrupt flow" it's "I'll make the turn and it'll be alright if that car slows down". Pedestrians and cyclists also take this route when crossing the street.
• Headlights and turn signals exist for a reason-The lack of turn signal usage seems to be a general epidemic, but the lack of headlight usage really seems to be a Seattle thing, especially when I drive home from work late at night (like I'm about to do now).
• Red lights also exist for a reason-I feel like this one is pretty obvious. I've even seen the police here run red lights after stopping at the intersection.

Unfortunately this is only a sampler of the poor driving, as there are many more things that occur on a daily basis anytime I drive (and it's only a 10-mile round trip to the office...)

Complaining Towards No Means

Recently the local bus system made an unannounced change to one of their bus routes, making it so that it no longer passed through the neighborhood (and right next to my condo) during evenings and weekends. Naturally this is not a great change (though to be fair the route was added during the latest round of expansions due to increased taxes/funding), but one of the fellow residents taped an angry note to the mailbox area that did get my attention.

In the note she posted the reason why the route had to be further truncated during the evening and weekend periods (the route is normally truncated during the evening and weekend since it can only access a particular facility that's otherwise locked during regular business hours), noting that the park where the bus would turn around during evenings and weekends did not really like the buses inside the park (which does clog up a fair bit of traffic and takes up a lot of space). She also states that she was "stranded at a gas station", which is right along another bus route that goes right past our condo complex which you can use with a free transfer. Her only recourse of action was to urge everyone to call the local transit authority to complain to restore service (a service that the park didn't like having, with the buses turn-arounds inside the park boundary).

When faced with a problem, there seem to be three avenues of responding. The first, which seems to be favored by this lady (and those "I would like to speak to a manager" types) is to get angry and demand something from who the feel to be the offending party. This approach doesn't get anything done, and results in complaining for the sake of complaining. The second of course is to offer a solution or a work-around to the existing problem. Of course most people won't want to put in the effort as they believe that everyone else should fix their problems. The third, which is how I feel, is apathy. I don't particularly care, and I go on and live my life. The note did give me a nice chuckle at how people think they have been so wronged by everyone else.