How (and why) to Ramble on your goat sideways
02-15-2011, 09:45 AM
#6505
Yay! I got a ticket this morning.
Motorcycle cop sits under the overpass, slowing interstate traffic down to about 45-50 mph. I'm in the right lane, waiting to exit at the next off ramp. Lady in the SUV (stereotype, but it's true) in front of me finally catches sight of the cop sitting on his bike and slams on her brakes down to about 30 mph. I check the right lane (on ramp from previous exit) quickly and rather than get rear-ended in traffic, signal and move over to the right.
BOOM. Lights on.
I'm polite and cooperative. When it's clear that he's writing me a citation (for "Improper Passing" because I crossed a solid white line) anyway, I say, "Did you see that the lady in front of me slammed on her brakes when she saw you? I had a choice between moving over or slamming on my brakes too and possibly getting rear-ended if the guy behind me isn't paying attention." He just looked at me and said, "That's improper passing, sir, it's unsafe."
Traffic was FINE until you came out here this morning and slowed traffic down 10 mph BELOW the speed limit, bunching up 2 miles of cars together. NOW it's unsafe, dipshit.
Motorcycle cop sits under the overpass, slowing interstate traffic down to about 45-50 mph. I'm in the right lane, waiting to exit at the next off ramp. Lady in the SUV (stereotype, but it's true) in front of me finally catches sight of the cop sitting on his bike and slams on her brakes down to about 30 mph. I check the right lane (on ramp from previous exit) quickly and rather than get rear-ended in traffic, signal and move over to the right.
BOOM. Lights on.
I'm polite and cooperative. When it's clear that he's writing me a citation (for "Improper Passing" because I crossed a solid white line) anyway, I say, "Did you see that the lady in front of me slammed on her brakes when she saw you? I had a choice between moving over or slamming on my brakes too and possibly getting rear-ended if the guy behind me isn't paying attention." He just looked at me and said, "That's improper passing, sir, it's unsafe."
Traffic was FINE until you came out here this morning and slowed traffic down 10 mph BELOW the speed limit, bunching up 2 miles of cars together. NOW it's unsafe, dipshit.
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02-15-2011, 09:48 AM
#6506
Boost Czar
iTrader: (62)
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Chantilly, VA
Posts: 79,488
Total Cats: 4,077
But he's serving and protecting.
I also find that traffic signs that display current conditions or lane closures cause worse traffic than without.
People slow down to read "heavy congestion exits 60-200" and make **** worse.
I also find that traffic signs that display current conditions or lane closures cause worse traffic than without.
People slow down to read "heavy congestion exits 60-200" and make **** worse.
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02-15-2011, 10:31 AM
#6508
In your case, I would go to court, plead not guilty and state it was a matter of safety that the car behind you was about to rear-end you and that to prevent any accident you had to move to the lane to the right to avoid the impending accident. BS them and even go as far as to say that you've been rear-ended before in a similar situation and that you'd prefer not to be in that position again. Also state that you were slowing down at a proper following distance from the car in front of you but the car behind you wasn't paying attention. If that fails, at least ask for a reduced offence that is a 0-point or non-reporting offence. But that's just what I would do.
Serving road-use tax bills and protecting his job security....that's about all that stands for.
Serving road-use tax bills and protecting his job security....that's about all that stands for.
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02-15-2011, 11:45 AM
#6513
Boost Pope
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
Posts: 33,017
Total Cats: 6,587
So, yesterday morning, the PC which I use at the office (running XP SP3) bluescreened hard. On rebooot, it shows the splashscreen but then it BSODs before the login screen.
This happens to be a fairly small office (20 people) located quite a long way from the nearest "official" Harris location.
I call the corporate help desk (in Florida) and they say that I have two options: I can FedEx the machine to them and they'll try to have it back to me by Friday, or I can wait until next Tuesday when they have a tech scheduled to be in this area. Clearly, neither of these choices are acceptable.
So I get on another machine, go to the Ubuntu website, and download a LiveCD image. I burn it, stick it in my main PC, and boot into Linux.
After an exceedingly short period of fiddling, I have the machine working beautifully in dual-screen mode, talking to our Windows network, accessing our Windows server, and printing to our Windows-served printers. I can see and access the local Windows filesystem on my hard drive, so I'm able to continue working normally. So far, Visio and AutoCAD are the only two things I haven't been able to use. OpenOffice is working quite nicely for everything else.
Now bear in mind that this machine is booted off a CD, so it has no actual Linux filesystem on any of the local drives. So this is roughly equivalent to personal computing in the early 80s, when you booted the machine off a floppy and had no hard drive. Ok, so occasionally I have to sit and wait for the CD to spin when opening an application, but overall, the machine is working better now than it ever did before as an official "Harris Standard Client" with all of the antivirus, antifilesharing, and antiproductivity **** they had loaded onto it.
I think I may actually make this my normal operating configuration. (Well, I'll install it on the hard drive, but you know what I mean.) VMWare in Unity mode should fulfill my need for Visio and ACAD. It's actualy quite tempting. (Though the IT folks will blow a gasket when they find out, I'm sure.)
(As an aside: if you guys aren't familiar with Unity, or with VMWare in general, it's ******* awesome. Basically, you can seamlessly run individual apps in a virtualized window as part of the main desktop, kind of like what the Mac folks do in order to be compatible with the rest of the world. This would probably be a good solution for all you folks having problems with your ECu tuning software on Win7-64.)
I love it when **** just works.
This happens to be a fairly small office (20 people) located quite a long way from the nearest "official" Harris location.
I call the corporate help desk (in Florida) and they say that I have two options: I can FedEx the machine to them and they'll try to have it back to me by Friday, or I can wait until next Tuesday when they have a tech scheduled to be in this area. Clearly, neither of these choices are acceptable.
So I get on another machine, go to the Ubuntu website, and download a LiveCD image. I burn it, stick it in my main PC, and boot into Linux.
After an exceedingly short period of fiddling, I have the machine working beautifully in dual-screen mode, talking to our Windows network, accessing our Windows server, and printing to our Windows-served printers. I can see and access the local Windows filesystem on my hard drive, so I'm able to continue working normally. So far, Visio and AutoCAD are the only two things I haven't been able to use. OpenOffice is working quite nicely for everything else.
Now bear in mind that this machine is booted off a CD, so it has no actual Linux filesystem on any of the local drives. So this is roughly equivalent to personal computing in the early 80s, when you booted the machine off a floppy and had no hard drive. Ok, so occasionally I have to sit and wait for the CD to spin when opening an application, but overall, the machine is working better now than it ever did before as an official "Harris Standard Client" with all of the antivirus, antifilesharing, and antiproductivity **** they had loaded onto it.
I think I may actually make this my normal operating configuration. (Well, I'll install it on the hard drive, but you know what I mean.) VMWare in Unity mode should fulfill my need for Visio and ACAD. It's actualy quite tempting. (Though the IT folks will blow a gasket when they find out, I'm sure.)
(As an aside: if you guys aren't familiar with Unity, or with VMWare in general, it's ******* awesome. Basically, you can seamlessly run individual apps in a virtualized window as part of the main desktop, kind of like what the Mac folks do in order to be compatible with the rest of the world. This would probably be a good solution for all you folks having problems with your ECu tuning software on Win7-64.)
I love it when **** just works.
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02-15-2011, 12:34 PM
#6516
Want fries with that?
iTrader: (3)
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota
Posts: 2,011
Total Cats: 2
Anyone got a song that honestly gives them a rush when you listen to it?
For me it's Brain Damage/Eclipse (especially) from Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. There are one or two others that I can't think of right now.
For me it's Brain Damage/Eclipse (especially) from Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. There are one or two others that I can't think of right now.
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02-15-2011, 01:54 PM
#6520
The state knows just how hard it can kick me in the face before I fight back, and this isn't it.
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