Tag: complaint

Email to the DMV

I have a question about right-of-way rules at the intersection of Leesburg Pike and Arlington Blvd (Seven Corners). If I am on Wilson Blvd and turn right onto Leesburg Pike West, there are two lanes going to a yield in order to go left onto Leesburg Pike East. There are four lanes on Leesburg Pike East. If I want to be in the second lane from the right after I turn onto Leesburg Pike East, should I be in the right or the left lane before the turn?If this is not the right place to come for laws such as this, could you possibly direct me to where I might find an answer?

Thanks very much

They say they’ll respond within two days. 8:22AM, the clock is running.

I will get to the bottom of this

I’m tired of this madness.  Every morning, I drop my wife off at the Metro and then drive to work.  Every morning, I think I’m in the correct lane to get where I want to go.  Every morning, someone in another lane thinks they have a right to be where I am.  I have to find out who’s correct.  Some woman flashed her high beams at me this morning in anger, and I’m almost positive I was right and she was wrong.

The intersection in question is Seven Corners, one of the most poorly designed sections of road I’ve ever seen.  The engineers responsible should never work in this field again.  If you leave the East Falls Church Metro down Sycamore/Roosevelt, then turn left onto Wilson, you arrive at a light.  Two lanes go right.  You turn onto what appears to be Leesburg Pike West, which has four or five lanes.  The two left lanes lead to a left turn yield.  This left turn takes you to Leesburg Pike East, which has four lanes.  Now, here is where the problem is.  If I see two lanes turning left into four, and I want to be in the lane second from the right, it makes sense that I get in the right lane before the turn, right?  There is no sign, and no line on the road to suggest anything.  And I seem to be the minority.  But if I get in the left lane, no doubt I will find myself again in the minority.  Because there are always fewer people who agree with you on matters like this, I’ve found.

In any event, if I was high-beamed in error, I’m very offended.  If I screw up and you flash your lights at me, I’ll take that.  I might even wave an apology.  I can admit when I’m wrong.  But I won’t stand for unwarranted high-beaming.  I just won’t stand for it.

I’m going to contact the DMV today and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

I seem to be numb

Nothing I read seems to inspire me to post since I got back.  I’m reading the same amount of junk online, but nothing catches my eye, saying, “Hey, jerk, blog about me”.  Nothing at all.  It can’t be that I’m tired of complaining, because that certainly isn’t true.  And it can’t be that nothing stupid is happening in the world, because that isn’t true, either.  I’m not still jet-lagged, since it’s been a week.

So I can’t explain my lack of posting.  I can just apologize to my legions of fans, and pledge to try and get inspired again soon.

What about Jamie Foxx?

NFL.com – Minnesota at Washington Game Recap Big things are expected of the Redskins this year, a confidence reflected in an attendance of 90,608 that set a new record for the largest stadium in the NFL. Even Hollywood made an appearance: Actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were guests of owner Dan Snyder, who has recently entered into a partnership with Cruise’s production company.

Okay, let’s focus on the total whack job who hasn’t made a good movie in years instead of the recent Academy Award winner who visited the booth to, sort of, hang out with the fans.  I didn’t like Ray, although I thought Jamie Foxx did a great job.  I liked Tom Cruise a lot in Top Gun and in Top Gun II (on the ground) – Days of Thunder.  But that was before he took the path of Michael Jackson and Mel Gibson and forgot that he lived on Planet Earth with the rest of us.

It is nice that 90,000 fans showed up for the game.  Not so nice that our brand new offensive genius decided that the screen pass to Santana Moss needed to be run three times.  I wish Moss would stop breaking those for 15-20 yard gains so they’d realize that it’s really a terrible, terrible play.  If it works, and he makes 6 guys miss, he gains 20 yards.  If it doesn’t work, best case scenario is he loses five yards.  Worst case is it’s picked off, which is an almost guaranteed touchdown for the other team because there’s no one back there to catch the guy.

We still can’t run the ball, and Portis seemed pretty healthy.  If he wasn’t, Ladell Betts is a perfectly adequate backup.  The game was close from beginning to end, so there’s absolutely no excuse for running the ball only 18 times.

Anyway, it was a pretty disappointing game.  And I lost my fantasy football game, as well.  And our flag football game.  Everything football-related for me this past weekend was bad.  At least Virginia Tech won, but that was pretty much a given.

Five years ago yesterday

On September 10th, 2001, I moved to Northern Virginia.  I was a few months out of college and unemployed, looking for a job in computers, and some friends were renting a place in Fairfax, so I went along with them.  I brought a bed and some odds and ends.  On the 11th, I was heading back to my parents’ to pick up more stuff.  I had arranged with a friend to help me load my truck.  I had just left the house when I heard from Howard Stern about the WTC towers.  At first I thought it was a joke until the WHFS morning show confirmed it.  My roommates were both off at work, and we didn’t have a landline, and of course my cell phone wasn’t working because of all the stress on the system.  My dad worked in DC at the time, and I had no idea how far he was from the Pentagon.  And I couldn’t get a hold of anyone.  I finally managed to get through at the pay phone at Wendy’s (Although the calling card I had and rarely used decided not to work.  Luckily by that time I had memorized my dad’s calling card number).

It was an interesting welcome to the DC Metro area.  And now, five years later, where are we?  We’ve destroyed the beauty of much of Washington DC with jersey walls and iron fences.  We’ve made flying in and out of the US completely ridiculous.  We’ve given our President an excuse to spy illegally on our citizens and to deny basic human rights to prisoners of war because we’re calling them “enemy combatants” instead.  The site of the WTC is still a big hole.  We haven’t found those responsible for the attack.

It’s been a great five years, huh?  I hope this will be the legacy of the Bush administration.  They were quick to put a nice bandage on the wound cause by 9/11, and tell everyone that things would be okay.  But then they embezzled insurance money for expensive plastic surgery, and accused those who complained of being unpatriotic.  Patriotism is not a flag sticker on your car and blindy supporting every action of the President, no matter how misguided or illegal.

I told you ethanol wasnt the answer

Appetite for destruction – August 21, 2006

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year. If today’s entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand.

While it’s nice to see GM trying to save the world, they are heading in the WRONG DIRECTION with corn-based ethanol.  It is not sustainable.  It may mean that we’re less dependant on the Middle East, but it means were more dependant on somewhere else.  Not a solution to the problem, just pusing the problem off into the future.

Security? What security?

CNN.com – Boy, 12, evades security clampdown – Aug 16, 2006

LONDON, England — Despite a high level of alert at British airports, a 12-year-old boy managed to board a plane at Gatwick without a passport, ticket or boarding pass.

The important question, though is, “Was he carrying any liquids or an iPod?” Seriously, why do we have security at the airport if it’s not meaningful? Are they really just trying to collect nail clippers and screwdrivers to sell on eBay?

Edit: Again, I say something, and BoingBoing backs it up.  The letter they link to, from a chemisty grad student, is pretty funny.  And makes our security measures look pretty ridiculous.

Terror! Liberty! Freedom! Cookies!

Hezbollah the Loser In Battle, Bush Says

“Forces of terror see the changes that are taking place in their midst. They understand that the advance of liberty, the freedom to worship, the freedom to dissent, and the protection of human rights would be a defeat for their hateful ideology,” Bush said. “But they also know that young democracies are fragile and that this may be their last and best opportunity to stop freedom’s advance and steer newly free nations to the path of radical extremism.”

Every time I hear statements like this from Bush, I hear his imitator on Saturday Night Live talking about “strategery”.  Was that Will Ferrell, or someone else?  I can hear it in my head, but I can’t quite picture him.  Anyway, an equally effective image that this should conjure up is Cookie Monster.  “Terror bad.  Liberty and freedom good!  Me love cookies!”.

I don’t like making fun of the way Bush speaks, as I’ve said before, because I think it tends to be the thing that people notice and latch onto, and then they miss the fact that he’s doing terrible things to the country.  But I just can’t help myself here.  He just enjoys saying “terror” and “hateful” and “freedom” too much.

Oh, well.  What I should be focusing on here is how he has, again, delcared victory in a fight that’s long from over.  He seems to think that he gets to determine when a conflict is over, and who won.  I know that whole “Mission Accomplished” banner wasn’t his fault, but the administration has talked about how we “won” the war in Iraq for years, but last time I checked, people were still dying over there.  That’s not winning in my book.  And neither has Israel won.  There may be a temporary cease-fire, which is good, it will hopefully allow some diplomacy to happen.  But if people start thinking that this is over, they haven’t been paying attention to the entire history of the region.

Ask, and you shall receive

Newsvine – Chertoff: U.S. Should Review Terror Laws – via BoingBoing

“What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information,” [Chertoff] said. “We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It’s not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants.”

And there you go. A wonderful quote from the guy in charge of making us safe. Who do you suppose is going to protect us from Homeland Security?

Stop using terrorism as a political tool

CNN.com – UK lowers threat level to ‘severe’ – Aug 14, 2006

“The threat level is at severe, indicating the high likelihood of an attempted terrorist attack at some stage, and I urge the public to remain vigilant.”

I’m glad that was the British Home Secretary saying that, and not someone from our DHS. It would have been really embarrassing if Chertoff said something that dumb. Now, if I had a devoted readership, it would be mere minutes before someone would dig up an equally stupid quote from Chertoff. But, since my devoted readership is about five people, I’m not sure it’s going to happen.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to attack stupid quotes. I mean, if the British government wants to terrify their citizens over the threat of attempted attacks, that’s fine. It’s idiotic, but it’s fine.

The point of this post is that all of these security measures are ridiculous. You can bring electronics on this flight, but not that flight. You can only bring a clear plastic bag on this flight, but three days later you can bring a regular carry-on. You can bring a computer or a hair dryer, “provided they are visible at security checkpoints”. So, I’m free to put a bomb in my suitcase and use my hair dryer to set it off, but I ABSOLUTELY MUST ensure that the hair dryer is visible to the security folks.

None of this is making us safe.  This is making us afraid, and this is making it a pain in the ass to travel.  But it does nothing for our safety.  It’s so frustrating that I don’t feel as if there’s anything I can do.  I could make a fuss at the airport, but what will that accomplish?  The people there are just following orders from higher up (If anyone makes a “the Nazis were just following orders, too” comment, I’m going to block your IP.  If I can figure out how to do that.), so complaining to them is useless, and likely to only delay me further.

So I bitch about it here, and to anyone else who will listen.  I’ve heard people suggest that many of these terrorists we’ve caught were planted by the government as an excuse to do things in the name of national security.  I don’t think I’ve sunk quite to the level of paranoia it takes to believe that, but the fact that it doesn’t sound all that far-fetched anymore worries me.

Note to any and all government agencies who may be listening in:  I am not a terrorist.  I am not bringing any bombs on any planes, nor have I ever even seen a bomb.  I love my country, for better or for worse, and have no ties to any terrorist organizations.  When I talk about being free to bring a bomb on a plane, I mean that in a purely hypothetical sense.  I would never actually do it.