annoying driver profile #1

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I don’t have these written down or anything, but I’m pretty sure that there are multiple habits that other drivers on the road have that I can’t stand. (In other words, this could develop into a recurring theme.) Here is the first installment.

Have you ever seen a State Trooper or some other cop on the road and slowed down? I don’t; I’m driving the speed limit. Now, this is not intended to put down those who speed. I’ve accepted this as a fact of life, even if I don’t do it myself. No, my ire here is reserved for a special brand of speeder.

I, of course, am referring to the speeder who, when he/she sees the aforementioned cop car, slows down to 10 miles an hour below the limit.

Have you ever been stuck behind one of these people? Do they not realize that they are perfectly within their right to drive the speed limit, even if it means passing the cop?

I wonder what’s going through the mind of someone who does this. “Hey! If I drive really slowly by the cop, maybe he’ll think I’m a really safe driver! Maybe he’s giving out rewards to anyone who goes under the speed limit! Maybe he’ll even pull me over and take away that ticket that I got in ’92, cause this evens it out!”

Actually, this would be an interesting scene to me:

Driver: Is there a problem, officer?
Officer: (No-nonsense voice) License and registration, please.
Driver: Sure.
(Officer takes both and walks back to his car.)
Driver (pleading to himself) C’mon, please, please…
(Officer walks back to driver’s car.)
Officer: Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?
Driver: Because…I was driving under the speed limit?
Officer: That’s correct. Do you know how slow you were going?
Driver: Maybe… (grimaces) 65?
Officer: Try 60 in a 70.
Driver: (Elated) Really?
Officer: (Now smiling) Yessir…you know what this means, don’t you?
Driver: I sure do!
Officer: You had 4 previous speeding tickets at $75 a piece. Here’s a check from the government for $324.
Driver: (In awe) Interest too?
Officer: That’s right. (Tips hat) Now you have a good day.
Driver: Thanks, officer! I will!

No…this scene will never happen. Instead, whoever this person is will mosey by the cop, forcing me to slow down too. They’ll wait till the cop is out of view, and then speed back up to whatever they were doing before.

And I’ll inwardly caterwaul.

the God of the ocean

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Passage: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them’–” Ecclesiastes 12:1

“I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean…”
From I Hope You Dance

Tomorrow night, about this time, I’ll be looking at the ocean. That has become one of my true spiritual touchpoints over the years that I’ve been at the BCM.

Whenever I look at the ocean, I’m reminded of how expansive it is, and how small I am. I’m reminded that God Himself, so much bigger than the ocean, put it in its place, and me in mine.

Then I truly remember my Creator. And I marvel in His creation. He’s made this ocean, which has been sending waves toward the sands all these years. He made the land that the waves crash upon. He made the stars by the light of which I’m taking in this wonderful view.

He knows the number of drops of water in the ocean, the number of grains of sand on the shore, the number of stars in the sky, and the number of hairs on my head.

And I remember that he’s not only my Creator; he’s my Savior and my Lord as well.

I usually end up singing something. It doesn’t really matter what. I’m just singing a song of praise to my Lord with a pure heart, as Psalm 47:6 says to do.

I guess my point in saying this is a reminder for all of us not to forget that we’re not the be-all and end-all of this world. There is One who is higher than the world, for He created the world. And while we are so much smaller than Him or His creation, He loves us more than we could ever know.

That’s something I remember every time I visit the ocean at night. I remember the God of the ocean, and know that he is the Lord of my life.

the fragmented web

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A few days ago, I downloaded a copy of Netscape 4, just to see how my main page looked in it. It was a sight, and I don’t mean a good one.

Things were out of place. The type wasn’t the right size. The page just didn’t look right.

Now, I’m not a great web designer by any means, and I haven’t logged the hours doing it that others have. I’ve just heard horror stories of designers that toil hours on end designing graphics with “invisible” spacers so that they get positioned just so. I’ve heard of all means of workarounds that they had to implement just so that people could all view the page roughly the same way.

But I could identify with them just a little more when I took a look at my site using Netscape 4.

There are a lot of ways that you can make it so that everyone can view the page the same way. You can write multiple pages and have it so that the browser the user’s using is determined and the appropriate page is shown. Or you can just make your page appeal to the lowest common denominator. Nothing fancy; just plain text, maybe a Perl script, maybe a couple of gif images.

The question is this, though: is this what we should be limited to?

The answer to this question, in my opinion, is housed in a much bigger question. What is the Web about? Information? Entertainment? Commerce, or art, or something entirely different?

I would say that the answer is all of these things. And that is where the problem lies.

The tools that were originally made to build the web weren’t sufficient for all of these things. After all, who would have imagined back in 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, that it would be the scene of a multibillion-dollar global market?

And now that the tools are there, we’ve got problems with browsers. There are many flavors of Netscape and Internet Explorer. Each of these has different levels of support for certain standards. But beyond that, there are text browers, like Lynx (which people do use). There are browsers for those who are visually impaired.

And absolutely none of them support all of the standards fully. The big ones: HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.0, and CSS-1 are pretty well-done in the latest versions. But they’re only in the latest versions.

So what do we do? Do we code to standards? (I do…this site uses XHTML 1.0 and CSS-1.) But when we do that, people who use older browsers don’t see the page very well. Some people will even have their browsers crash if they view a page that’s been coded to standards if certain commands are used.

Do we write multiple versions of the pages? Professional web designers don’t like this idea at all, because it’s redundancy.

Do we use Flash? Flash is a great tool, when used right, and there are wonderful web sites coded entirely in Flash. But people who can’t see can’t use Flash at all.

Some people say that we should stick to the lowest common denominator. But this restricts our ability to use the web for commerce and art.

Others say that we should use the standards that we have, and believe that if people can be convinced to upgrade their browsers, we can use them effectively. But some people don’t have that option.

What a tangled, fragmented web we’ve woven…how do we untangle ourselves?

Yossarian should have it so good

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I have one of the best coaster makers in the world. And it only cost me a couple hundred bucks.

Today’s adventure begins, amazingly enough, today. I have been realizing that my CD burner wasn’t getting much use lately. To justify its initial purchase by reducing its variable cost per CD burned (man, that MBA education’s getting good use), I decided to make a “compilation compilation” CD. This term refers to my favorite songs off of what are known as “compilation” CDs, all put onto one CD all their own.

Now, recently, I had been getting irritated at RealJukebox. It’s free and all that, but there’s a lot of problems that I just can’t overlook:

  • It’s a real memory hog.
  • On my computer it’s got a crash rate of approximately every 3.2 minutes.
  • In addition, no matter how many boxes I uncheck during the installation process, no matter how often I change the preferences to not make it my default CD player, it reclaims CD-playing abilities.

Sigh. So I deleted it.

Anyway, I picked out the songs that I wanted, and recorded them as WAV sound files using the “Easy CD Creator” software that came with the CD burner. What the “Easy CD Creator” people don’t want you to know is that “Easy CD Creator” doesn’t seem to think that if skips happen during the recording process to a WAV, the user might like to know about this and recopy the song. Oh, no…the program just happily copies the files to the hard drive.

So I get all of the files copied to the hard drive, and start recording the CD. I even put it through “testing” phase (read: wasting another 10 minutes in the name of ensuring the success of the copying process). 20 minutes later, my CD is ready.

I note that in my haste, I misspelled compilation in the title. Twice. My CD is now known as “The Compliation Complilation” to Windows CD Player. No biggie, I say to myself…I’ll be the only one to see that. So I make the jewel case covers and everything (changing the title there), and I pop the CD in the drive.

Two minutes, 32 seconds into the first song, the CD skips.

Now I’m somewhat irritated. So I go and listen to the original WAV file that I copied earlier, and I find out what I told you earlier…those two WAV files were copied badly, but “Easy CD Creator” didn’t think that was important. I guess it would have been too difficult to prompt the user to copy the song over. And “Hard CD Creator” just isn’t as catchy a title.

This is when I remember our friend RealJukebox. For all its flaws, I remember that it does a great job of recording WAV files. I jump online and grab a copy of RealJukebox, all the while listening to my now destined-to-be-under-a-glass CD for problems with other songs. Good thing too…song seven is also messed up.

Eventually the RealJukebox installer is downloaded. I go through the install process, unchecking all of the boxes, telling it I do not want it to be my default CD player, etc. Finally, that whole process is complete. Time to try again.

I get the two CDs that I need to get the songs off of, and copy them using RealJukebox. I listen to them this time, just to make sure. Everything’s perfect. I close out RealJukebox.

I now go back to “Easy CD Creator” and set it up to use the two new WAV files when burning this copy. I don’t bother to test this time, and everything turns out fine again. I get the CD out and label it.

Ready to hear my now perfect CD, I close all programs and put the CD back in the player. And what pops open as my default CD player?

That’s right, friends…RealJukebox.

This turn of events elicits a caterwaul from yours truly.

So now, of course, I’m stuck with a piece of software that doesn’t do one thing that I need it to do, but is great otherwise, and a piece of software that I hate, but have to use to accomplish that one thing.

And one new coaster.

the power of teaching

Yesterday, I taught someone how to make a web page. Today, I helped my campus minister set up Outlook on his computer to check multiple e-mail accounts.

Big deal, you say. And yeah, it might be. But something really hit me when I was doing those things. I discovered, again, how much I really like to teach people how to do things. It really makes me feel good about myself when I can help someone learn how to do something, and when they feel good as a result of having done it.

In the classic golf journal, The Little Red Book, Harvey Penick tells of one of his favorite pupils of all time. She was a young lady who just wanted to learn how to play golf well enough to enjoy the game with her husband. The problem was that she could never get any loft on the ball at all. He worked with her and worked with her. And finally, she hit her first shot into the air. She was elated that she had been able to finally hit a true golf shot. She eventually reached her goal, and started playing with her husband regularly.

Penick’s point in all of this was that it’s the simple joys of teaching that make teaching worthwhile, like seeing someone succeed and begin to understand (and maybe even enjoy) something that you love to do. In Penick’s case, it was golf; he was perhaps the best golf teacher of all time. In my case, I love helping people with web design and computers in general. I don’t necesarily have to get paid to do it (in fact, both of the situations I mentioned I did for free); payment can be made with an understanding nod, a “thank you”, or genuine interest in what I’ve shown them.

That’s the power of teaching. It’s something that makes both the teacher and the student feel good.

“interstate or 82” revisited

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If you’ve been here before, you’ve no doubt read the great “interstate or 82 debate”. If not, read it now! Hurry! Then come back up here.

This bears adding to the debate, because it lends credence to my theory that 82 is, indeed, faster than the all-interstate route. Recently, due to the result of some long-ongoing road construction, the highway was rerouted around Brent and most of Centreville, avoiding all of the red lights and stops contained therein save one. This reduces the time spent in the Brent/Centreville area from 10-15 minutes to somewhere around 5-7. This makes the entire trip on 82 even quicker! MUWAH-HAH-HAH!

Sorry. Must have been something in my throat there…