Me and the Worm

Well, life got in the way last night to any postings.  My lovely wife asked me to make sure her computer was protected from the April Fool's Day Worm.  I started looking into the problem around 8:00 PM and found that the system wouldn't install one of the files from Microsoft's update website.

Today I have to ask myself:

"Why did I spend all of my waking time last night trying to safeguard my wife's computer?"

Apparently the April Fool's Day Worm was a whimper and hardly did anything.  All this worry and no bite.  I guess it was better to safeguard against it, but after I'm disappointed nothing happened seeing that I was up until almost midnight making sure the Microsoft path would install properly.

Did anyone have any issues with their PCs today?  Do you know anyone that was effected by the April Fool's Day Word?  As far as I know, no major effects were seen due to this nasty worm.

Yuck

Huge bummer!!!

I've been out of work for two days now.  Fortunately, this is not a permanent situation.  Just waiting for my contract to be signed off on and I'm back to work.  Without further ado:

"What am I suppose to do with my free time during the day?"

I've always felt that if I didn't have to work a real job that I would get so much more done, but I'm starting to think that this is a fallacy.  Taking a day off of work to get caught up on things is quite different than taking a day off for vacation.  With a vacation day you are expected to do nothing all day, but with just a day off you are geared up to do chores or other things that need done.

What happens though, is that you end up doing a couple chores, but then you decide it's time to relax.  This is a bad situation to get into because then you don't finish the other tasks that you set out to do on your day off.  I guess a free day off isn't really a day off after all because you end up not accomplishing anything.

How do you feel about non-vacation days off of works?  Do you think you end up wasting more of the day or are you productive?

The Road Less Traveled

Lately I've noticed people doing U-Turns just about anywhere on our roadways, leading to today's question:

"What ever happened to finding a driveway or a business parking lot to turn around in?"

On more than one occasion I've seen drivers pull U-Turns in the middle of the road.  It's obvious that they are oblivious to any other drivers around them and they seem to not really understand the issues they are creating for other drivers.

My only thought on this, is that it is probably a by-product of GPS.  It's a wonderful device, but I think driver's have gotten overly reliant on GPS.  They are driving along, miss their turn and the GPS devices tells them that they need to do a U-Turn.  At this point the driver stops thinking and is just going along with what the GPS device told them to do.  The driver doesn't think about where the safest place to do a U-Turn is, they just do a U-Turn wherever is convenient for them.

Have any of you noticed more people doing U-Turns in ridiculous places lately?  I'm waiting to see someone pull a U-Turn on I-95 sometime in the near future.  Do you think that GPS has lead to unsafe U-Turn practice or unsafe driving practice in general?

White wall tires!!!!!!

As I was walking through the parking lot at work the other day I got to thinking:

"What ever happened to white wall tires?"

No car in the parking lot had white wall tire and on rare occasion I may see a car with "white walls" while driving around.

I'm not too young to actually remember my parents owning cars that had white walls. I even remember my mother contemplating white walls when purchasing new tires. What I don't know is if white walls were more expensive than tires that didn't have white walls?

What was the allure of white walls? Did they just add a certain look to the car or did they serve a real purpose? When did the white wall fad fade away? I can't seem to put my finger on a time frame when white walls disappeared, but it happened that's for sure.

More Cell Phone Etiquette

I always see people using their cell phones while pumping gas at the gas station and I always look at the sign posted on the gas pump that reads no use of electronic devices around the pumps.  This leads me to ask:

"Do these people think they are above the law?"

I guess the may reason the pumps say not to use electronic devices while pumping gas is on the off chance that an electrical charge sparks the fumes from the gas pump.  The odds of this must be extremely slim or I would see people catching themselves on fire every time I fill up one of my vehicles.

Given that the odds are slim, I can understand that most people are likely to ignore the sign that says not to use electronic devices while pumping gas.  This however, is certainly not fair to the other drivers at the pump.  It's one thing to take responsibility of our own actions with regards to safety, but it is unfair to risk the safety of the other customers at the gas station.

Ultimately, this leads me to go back to my standard cell phone question:

"Do you always have to be on the cell phone?  Can't you just put the phone down for one minute and enjoy life as it should be enjoyed? "

All this being said, have any of you ever witnessed anyone catching on fire or starting a fire from using their cell phone while pumping gas?  Isn't it more of a burden to "always be connected"?  Just put the phone down for one minute and let life be.