Driving home today, I spotted a redneck truck flying a large America flag. I got a picture of it at a red light.
This guy was probably on the opposite side of every demographic measure from those that died in New York city, but rich or poor, from the country or from the city, CEO or car mechanic, southerner or northerner - when one of us gets attacked, we all do.
God bless America.
My little Mercedes is back running again, no longer am I The-Master-Of-All-I-Survey and He-Who-Is-To-Be-Feared.
I drive like a mouse. I wait for openings in traffic, instead of making them. I don’t do 70mph in a 55mph zone. The little, dark grey 1983 Mercedes I drive has to be the choice of spies that want to avoid attracting attention.
Sadly, the Mercedes, broke down a week ago. I had to borrow the “Old Green Truck” to get to JAARS and back. Now the “Old Green Truck” is a large, ex-military pickup. It looks like a tank, sounds like a tank, is painted non-reflective olive drab, and has a personality something like a Vietnam-era drill sergeant. It burns $5.00 worth of diesel just to get to JAARs and back.
So there I am, going down the road the truck. A mini van rounds the corner ahead of me, and suddenly pulls all the way over to the edge of the road as I pass by it. Odd.
Then an oncoming black SUV pulls close to the opposite edge of the road as it approaches me. Odd.
Then one of those tricked out little Hondas with “Death” written in old english lettering across the windshield comes up from behind me. It does not pass me. Odd.
I need to turn across highway 521, a four lane, 55mph road. with no stop light at this intersection, I usually have to wait a bit for a chance to cross. The truck rumbles up to the stop sign. Several cars immediately apply their brakes, and open up a hole in traffic to let me through. Odd.
Suddenly the manners of every driver in South Carolina has changed. Everyone was giving healthy amounts of respect, and maybe a little fear.
Slowly over the next few days, I begin to realize that people were deciding what kind of person I was by looking at the Old Green Truck, and then acting based off that assumption. It was spooky.
It would be weird to be of a different skin color for a few days, and see the subtle differences in the way strangers act around you.
I’ve have never “given a rip” about how I dress. As long my clothing is comfortable and has plenty of pockets, I’m happy. However, it seems that by wearing different clothing, I could drastically change the way strangers act around me. Worth trying sometime.
It’s amazing how much power over people’s actions that people themselves let you have.
I was building a web based application, when I decided to make every piece of text on the site be editable. A few quick functions later, it was so. I am really surprised how nice being able to click on an edit button beside anything is. The customer is really happy too - because suddenly this application feels more in his control, and he does not feel like he is going to have to find a programer to make changes to the site.
Sometimes programing and designing is a joy. Sometimes I don’t want to touch a project with a 15 foot pole. Today I should have been designing - instead I downloaded the “new” version of Konfabulator and had a good old time making a little widget to track the status of the servers I take care of. Up in one corner of my secondary LCD are two floating transparent “Korean faces”. When a server goes down, the face goes red, changes to beat-up, and my computer starts beeping.
: 
(About the computers: Doc is a Windows(TM) Powered machine, and it goes down from time to time. Wallace has an uptime that corresponds exactly with the length of time that has elapsed since I mounted it in the rack at the colo facility - He is really monitored to test my own connection to the internet.)
Lawyers have sometimes been painted as following ambulances around, looking for clients. Today, after our little incident, we got in a good chuckle over our mail. Three letters from lawyers offices, and one from a autobody shop.
One lawyer, smarter than the others, had written “accident report enclosed” on the outside of his letter. (The accident report is not even available online yet.) Coincidentally, that letter was the only one we opened - the rest went into the trash.
Here is my “little” brother’s account of what happend while I was out of town, the next day after our little smash.
Time, 5PM, location, Chiropracters Waiting Room, reason, getting my back put back in the right places.
The guy next to me, was talking in his cellphone, I didn’t pay much attention, until I heard the words, hit and run. Well, he was desribing how a guy flew into the parking lot he was sitting in his car in, barely hit him, and took off. Well, the guy who just got hit, took off after him. I heard a nice description of a chase soundling like ours, 90MPH, crazy driver, etc…
He described how eventualy, the guy slowed his truck, and jumped out, and ran into the woods. He said he stayed with the still rolling truck, to stop it if it would hit a house, but it went off the road into the woods.
He then, told how name X(Can’t remember) sniffed the guy out, I am guessing it was police dog, or officer perhaps to.
Well, he said they found the guy, he described him as a….”Big White guy”….when he hung up his cellphone, we started a conversation, “Are you a policeman?”. He said yes, we told him of our hit and run last night said the driving styles seemed similar. He asked where it was, Told him the road, he said “Thats the road we caught the guy”. I described the truck, big red checy, well, the guy who hit the cop, was a big red chevy!
So, apperently, after losing us, this guy flew into a parking lot speeding, and hit a parked cop, and took off. He was drunk, etc. The guy had 14 charges written up on him for the incident.
So, we dertimed, that Mr. Smart driver who hit us, was the same Mr. Smart driver who hit him.
Small world, to sit in the same waiting room, with the cop who caught the guy who hit us, caught him for totaly different reasons.
I was just about to make a nice long post about Dan James’ post on stupid drivers. Well, tonight, we ran into one - or more truthfully, he ran into us. Riding home tonight with my brothers, we were stopped at a red light waiting for a chance to turn right onto the interstate entrance ramp. Suddenly BAAAM. We got slammed from the back by a red pickup truck. After the usual Dang-Did-we-really-just-get-hit thoughts, we put on the flashers, and John stepped out to talk to the guy. That is when he backed, up and floored it on past us. We were not able to see the license tag number. John gave chase to see if we could read the tags, but we lost him. ( He had a good head start, flipped his headlights lights off, was fond of driving through red lights and in the oncoming traffic lane.) I thought it was too risky try to catch up. So we lost him. We went back to the light and spent 25 minutes waiting for the policeman to show up. Then reports, etc.
So now it is 1:15am as I am writing this, and I have to be up at 5:45am.
And if anyone wants to go on a photo scavenger hunt in the south east charlotte area and surrounding towns and countryside for the pickup that hit us, here is a description.
Ow, my neck hurts.
[ Update, looking on eBay, it kind alooked like this, except it was red, not maroon ( I think) ]
We went to Busch Gardens yesterday with some relatives. The Williamsburg Busch Gardens theme park is built into little “countries”, each with their own distinctive archetecture, music, rides, and eating. (When visiting Europe we were reminded a lot of Busch Gardens.)
I’m not a theme park person. My line wait tolerance is only about twice the duration of the ride, and that only happens on off days for a park. I also see very little point in rides in which you have no control. Going with relatives whom you can watch scream and shout is not so bad, of course. And taking little kids who really like moving fast through space is fun too.
Now next time I go to a park, and get bored in the first twenty minutes, I’m going to play bounty hunter. Pick a person, briskly walk off to the opposite part of the park, and then HUNT THEM DOWN. Should give me something to do.
The “4D Haunted Lighthouse Film” was our first stop. It was one of those 3D steroscopic films where you wear the glasses and see depth in the screen. The story was very well written to the medium and for the audince. The movie had everyone watching it off ballance and surprised the entire time.
After that we went over to “Escape from Pompii”. As I overheard one not too bright young man say to his girlfriend, “Escape from Pompii is this ride where you go in a boat through Atalantis.” The fire inside the ride was pretty fun. It’s spooky with nothing between you and the fire inside. I’ve gone down one log flume in the last ten years, so it was a bit of a thrill at the end of the ride as we emerged from the darkness at top of the building and took the dive toward the ground. I was hanging onto the hat to keep it from flying off my head when the little dawrf inside my head began to panic. I let go of the hat and grabbed for the rail. A few seconds later, I was hatless. “Scratch one hat, I announced to the air as we were riding the boat in. Then somebody behind me tapped me on the shoulder, and handed me my hat. Phew!
I noticed on some of the rides that they used had a bunch of prerecorded “yell” messages for things like “Do not spin the swingy-chairs around or we will stop the ride.” The ride opperator just presses the appropate button, and out of the speakers comes the appreate cease and desist message recorded by a professional actor. It lets someone with almost no English skills run a ride.
The rides seem much tamer at Busch Gardens this time then I rembered. I wonder it is me, or the park.
I also noticed that all the rides have the one way turnstyle. I’m guessing the primary reason for them is not crowd control, but as a counter. I’m would be willing to bet someone walks around at the end of each day and writes then totals down. The really fun thing to do would be to put them on ethernet and have live stats during the day.
Here is a typical photo inside the RV as we eat up the miles between us and grandmother. Dad’s driving, John is playing Axis and Allies on his laptop while two large dogs sleep on his feet, Elizabeth knits, and Mom holds Elizabeth’s iBook on her lap so we can all watch the DVD. Andrew and I usualy sleep most of the way.
PS: I’m posting from the road via my Treo. COOL.