Today’s Traffic Asshole was driving a black Ford Escort station wagon. Let me set the scene for you.

I was driving along, going about 65 in the left lane (there were only two lanes). The right lane was going around 55. About four car lengths in front of me was another car, also going 65. Out of nowhere this black station wagon hauled up onto my ass. I figured that there was no point in getting over into the slower traffic, since I was passing them anyway, and not four car lengths ahead of me the traffic wasn’t going any faster. No action required on my part.

That isn’t the way this guy saw it. He got over into the slow lane, zoomed up onto the ass of the person who happened to be in front of him, then got in front of me and zoomed up onto the ass of the car that was previously in front of me. What was the point of that? Four car lengths and no speed gain? Where did he think he was going?

Lesson for the uninitiated: Regardless of how fast you might like to go, your speed is always regulated by the line of cars in front of you.

I just got commissioned to work on a demo for our product. It’s supposed to be static, so that a user could take the demo, unzip it on their desktop, and just start right up with IE… but I looked at the existing demo, which fills this requirement, and it’s hundreds of pages, all of which have embedded Javascript to take care of any sort of dynamic stuff.

Fuck that shit, man.

I’m going to see if I can at least make some use of dynamic stuff, at least for automatically including common elements like headers and footers. I’m supposed to come up with two new demos (one new, one a revised version of an existing demo) in five weeks of half-time work?

I don’t think so. Not the way they’re asking for.

I was driving in to work thinking, “Man, it’s already Wednesday and I haven’t found a Traffic Asshole yet. Well, hello! It’s like the devil knows you’re thinking about him.”

There, in a feeble attempt to pass, was the Traffic Asshole.

We were coming up on a pretty heavy interchange where not only does a major highway merge with the one we were on, but the road goes from three lanes down to two. (Yeah, we can discuss the logistics of the traffic planners later. I’ve got a beef with them myself.) Anyway, this guy saw that there was a huge truck hauling cars that was merging in front of him, so he zoomed up alongside me and tried to get into the narrowing gap between me and the car in front of me.

Fuck that, man. You get back where you belong.

He ended up having to merge in behind me. God forbid the guy get in behind where there’s nobody, he wanted to get into the tiny space in front of me. Asshole.

We eventually get past that bottleneck and the road thins out a bit, so he decides it’s time to pass again. By this time, I had the camera out because I was going to try to get a rear view mirror pic of the guy. That was when he made his move, so I aimed the camera out the side and shot…

Voila! A perfect side view of the Traffic Asshole of the Week! (I’m pretty amazed that turned out. He was moving past pretty fast so I only got the one picture.)

Of course, as is usually the case when assholes want to pass, they pass really quickly and don’t realize the traffic is stopped up there. If you could have gotten through up there, you’d be there, right? Some people never learn.

Gotta love people.

I got home last night and Jenn was working with the new sewing machine I bought her for her birthday. She’s making some pajama shorts or something. I went in the room to see how she was doing, and she was fussing around with some fabric, mumbling about the buttonhole foot on it. It sounded to me like she thought it was broken or something. She just couldn’t get it to work.

I sat down and asked her if she followed the instructions. “Oh, yes,” she said, “of course I did!” All of the instructions? She looked insulted.

I started looking at the instructions, at which point she decided it was time to start cutting something and then get pissed off because I was instantly in the way, so I left and figured I’d look at it later.

She left for her meeting, and after a while I decided I’d check it out. I mean, how hard could it be? Don’t these machines do everything for you?

I picked up the piece of test fabric she had sitting there, and, following the instructions in the manual, proceeded to try three times to make a buttonhole. And you know what?

It is that easy. The machine does do everything for you and I got three perfect buttonholes - one on each try.

Let’s get a closer look at this, shall we?

Here’s one of Jenn’s “buttonholes.” Note it’s not so much a “hole” as a “rat’s nest of thread.”

Here are my buttonholes. Note that I am the Buttonhole Master.

Turns out that Jenn didn’t really follow all of the instructions, just most. Funny how you can’t just skip the steps you don’t understand or don’t “feel like” doing.

Reminds me of this one time I sent some instructions to one of my users on how to fix a problem he was having. He calls me back a few minutes later and asks how come step 8 isn’t working. I’m like, “Did you follow all the instructions?” and he said, “Yeah - I did step 2, then 4, then I went back and did 3, then 1…” You get the idea. I never thought I’d actually have to specify that you need to follow the numbered steps in the order they’re provided.

Lesson learned: Follow all of the instructions in order prior to saying a process doesn’t work. Chances are, the instructions are there for a reason.

Remember the Space Pen I lost a while ago so I ended up buying a new one? Yeah, well, I found the one I lost. It was in my car, under the seat, between the floor mat and the metal track that the seat sits on. Since it’s dark down there, the track is black, the carpet’s black, and the pen’s black, I didn’t see it. But I dropped a quarter in there, and when I reached in to get it, there was the pen. So now I have two Space Pens, which isn’t a bad thing.