Quote of the Day
"Poopin' always holds me up. If I didn’t have to poop in the morning, I would always be on time.”
- Anonymous
Keep Your Hands and Feet Inside the Vehicle At All Times....
I’m sure someone has already asked this question but I wasn’t around to hear the answer. It struck me this morning, as I followed a school bus in my neighborhood.(I just this very minute decided that I don’t like the word “development” to describe the community in which I live…so there.)
We, as a country, spend millions of dollars and year upon year, researching car safety for babies, toddlers and kids. Babies must ride in federally regulated car seats that face the rear of the vehicle at an exact angle of 72 degrees, secured by a saftey belt that is made of federally approved polyester/polypropylene fiber, weighing exactly 2.743 googagrams. “Consumer Reports” dedicates entire issues to rating Infant Seats, Convertible Seats, Toddler/Booster Seats and Booster Seats. There are web sites dedicated to help parents understand, research, purchase and install a wide array of infant/child seats. Every manufacturer of child seats claims to be “the safest seat you can buy” or “ranked #1 by 'Consumer Reports'”.
A quick search on google for “infant car seat” will produce 562,000 hits….not including this particular post. A search for just “car seat” produces 3,080,000 hits.
Then we move onto seat belt safety. Let’s be honest, it is wisely the first thing a parent tells a child when said little boy or girl finally gets to sit on the actual seat that came with the automobile. In school, kids are taught “safety first”, "buckle up" and “always wear your seatbelt”. Even adults are now advised, “click it or ticket”. (Isn't it interesting that the adult version has to rhyme? What the hell.) I haven’t gone without a seat belt since I was 17. I can drive from one end of the mall to the other and still put my seat belt on...I am that programmed.
It’s an important subject and I, for one, am glad to see seat belts being taken so seriously. I honestly believe that they do save lives. Yes, we will always hear of those exceptions where someone was killed BECAUSE s/he had a seat belt on. For the most part, however, we’ve become pretty serious about it. I applaud that.I vividly remember sitting in the front seat of my Dad's Plymouth, hanging on to the door handle, not wearing a seat belt and almost falling out of the car when I pulled up on the handle. I was wondering if it would open while the car was moving...it did. Thank God I kept a tight grip on the handle as my Dad reached over and pulled me in by my shirt. I was probably around 7 years old. We never told Mom. Dad forgets that it ever happened. Now we have car doors that automatically lock at 15mph. I take some credit for that.
Child safety in cars is clearly at the forefront of every parent’s concerns.
So why on Earth do we stress this message over and over to kids and then corral them into a big orange, square container that has not a seatbelt in sight except for that of the driver – the stranger to whom you’ve just entrusted your child’s life for approximately 180 days each year. I also read that seat belts will usually fit kids between the ages of 8 and 12 and, until that time, kids should be in booster seats so that the belt fits properly. Last time I checked, except perhaps in some remote parts of the world, kids started school – and started riding school buses - WAY before 8.
Like I said, I’m sure I’m coming late to this party and this has been debated before but I haven’t heard about it and it just hit me this morning….and confused the shit of me.
Now Entering Middle Earth...
This is too funny. When I checked on Wil Wheaton's site this morning, he had this survey on there; "Which Sci-Fi Character Are You?". I've already admitted that I do like sci-fi...and for anyone out there rolling your eyes and shaking your head, here's a news flash for you. If you liked "Star Wars", "E.T.", "Lord of the Rings", "X-Files", "Battlestar Gallactica", "Star Trek", "War of the Worlds" (the story, not necessarily the movie) or anything remotely like those, you like sci-fi, too...at least on some level. Sorry to break it to you.
Getting back to the survey...
It was very short and there were even some not so typical questions in there about bribes and immortality. Anyway, I am Galadriel. At least I was the first time I took it. Since there were a couple questions that I could have gone either way on, I may take it again and see if the combination of answers compliment one another. The narrative that goes along with this result is:
***
Possessing a rare combination of wisdom and humility, while serenely dominating your environment, you selflessly use your powers to care for others.
"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
***
Galadriel is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. ("Lord of the Rings") I'm okay with this result...especially since Cate Blanchett portrayed the charater and rumor has it that Cate and Gillian Anderson (Scully from "The X-Files") were lovers for a while. And I had a big time crush on Scully. In my warped sense of thinking, this as close as I'll ever get to sleeping with Gillian Anderson. It's like a surreal sci-fi threesome. I wonder if we gain the ability to hover...that would be cool.
I took it again and it turned out the same.
On the Verge of Techno Weenie
I haven’t done much with the new web site so I’ll just leave it at that, rather then be boring and talk about why. Does it really matter? No. I have, however, learned oodles about domains, domain name transfers and domain privacy. All very interesting. (And oodles is a brave overstatement…I learned a little....like, two or three things...but they were VERY useful.)
What is very cool, however, is that I’m also messing around with similar type technology at work. Microsoft’s SharePoint, to be exact. Trying to explain SharePoint is, for me, a little challenging. It’s like trying to explain how wet feels. It’s, well….wet. You know….wet. Not dry. The book I bought does an excellent job explaining SP, but it also takes several pages to do it. In simplest terms, it’s a web portal. It’s a web site…sort of…but with better collaboration and better “links”. It’s easier to share over SP then on a typical web site.
Regardless, it’s a tool/technology that my company has latched on to like the leeches to those kids in “Stand By Me”. It’s here to stay ….actually, it has been for a while. While I use it here and there for keeping track of things, I haven’t really delved into doing anything with the management site for my organization. And that’s what I’ve been doing a little today. It’s interesting. To the point where I tracked down a book so I could do more then what my feeble little brain could figure out by trial and many errors.
My boss has also encouraged several people around here to start blogging at work. Yeah!! But he means about company related stuff. Yeah. Still cool. So I’m creating a place on the SP site for that as well.
(I don’t believe anything in that previous paragraph crosses the line of “talking about your job” – it’s not as if I was complaining.)
Since I’m on a technology theme here, I’ll also throw in here that Andrew Sullivan’s site was hacked last night. When I checked in this morning, as I always do to skim his headlines, there was a big message about it - from the hackers themselves. Idiots. All is restored now and one of the entries indicates that he has a lead on
who might have done it.Big loser. Get a real job and stop being an oxygen thief.
