Tralfaz

Day: September 20, 2013

  • The crazies are back – bad drivers

    My commute is a nice sedate 7.5 miles up a major street.  No freeways, no HOV lanes. A couple of schools so you get the dropoff madness, but in general it is a smooth trip. Heck, if you time it right, you can miss almost all the red lights on the way in.

    Lately, the traffic load has gone up. Significantly. Not sure whether it is the seasonal uptick (the snow birds slowly making their trek back to the sunbelt), or just something in the water, but at my usual time, it has been heavy enough that traffic doesn’t flow at or slightly above the posted speed limit.

    Well, living in Arizona, where compensation is all around (re: truck vs. penis) I am seeing a lot of aggressive, stupid driving. Cutting in and out of traffic lanes. Passing one car and immediately cutting it off. Squeezing between a gap that barely fits your vehicle. All to go maybe 2 mph faster in aggregate.

    You are still going to have to stop at the next light. Or, if you run it (blushing) you will be waiting at the next light when I catch up to you.

    Of course, this increases the likelihood of an accident, and alas, today I was rewarded with an extra 20 minutes to get by some idiot who tried to turn left in front of a Suburban. Minivan vs Suburban = unhappy commuters.

    I am just going to the office.  I am never in a hurry. And I am watching for the zany antics. The Chandler po-po could fill the coffers ticketing these idiots.

  • Some good things about being “smart”

    Today, I got to flex some intellectual muscles.  We had our monthly engineering meeting, where we bring our founder in (from the local university) and we discuss technical projects.  I am a mere marketing flunky.

    Before the meeting started, we were discussing swimming pools, and how here in Phoenix, with our uber hard water, and high evaporation rate, that your pool accumulates a lot of “metals” as part of the cycle, and needs to be changed.

    Someone was talking about the metals build up over time in the pool water. I piped up with that you typically use EDTA to eliminate them from the water(usually part of a “clarifier”). Our director of engineering (a pretty damned smart dude) didn’t know what EDTA was. I got to pipe up with ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetate, and explain that it is a chelating agent used to isolate metals and let them be processed.  (Thank you time spent as an analytical chemistry technician)

    Now everybody thinks I am smart.

    (Until the next time I open my mouth)