Nerd Pride Radio

My wife took a taxi in DC once to meet me while I was traveling for work. One of the worst rides of her life. The driver sideswiped a couple cars on a narrow street on his way to drop her off an my hotel.

In Atlanta every road is a variation of peach tree and none of them follow any type of normal directionality. Perhaps you need to go Northwest for a while if you want to end up going East, ultimately. Just little things like that. While you're trying to figure out what's going on, you are stuck in a mile long stretch of single lane traffic bumper to bumper, which alternates between going 5 mph and 95, or you're on an eight lane 95 an hour freeway.

Akiva wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:44 am Related to that, it bugs me when people say it’s easy to drive in DC. Parts of it are. But a lot of it—including downtown—is a huge pain in the ass. And if you’re near the river, there’s about a 2/3 chance you’ll end up going to Virginia, whether you want to or not.

Did that and tried to get to 295, ended up in random nowheresville in Northeast DC with absolutely no clue where to go. That was the days when we don't have phones good enough...

People who let their dogs go off leash (100% illegal!) in the park. Yeah, your dog is an angel, so great. Guess what, mine isn't, and that's not his fault because he had to fight for survival in the wild for the first part of his young life, and there's only so much training can do to overcome his concern about the danger of a loose dog when I need protecting nearby. So you're out there romping around having a great time and meanwhile you've made problem for me and you don't even know it. You are also glad that I'm solving this problem because if I didn't it would become your problem real fast.

Phoebe wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:24 am People who let their dogs go off leash in the park. Yeah, your dog is an angel, so great. Guess what, mine isn't, and that's not his fault because he had to fight for survival in the wild for the first part of his young life, and there's only so much training can do to overcome his concern about the danger of a loose dog when I need protecting nearby. So you're out there romping around having a great time and meanwhile you've made problem for me and you don't even know it. You are also glad that I'm solving this problem because if I didn't it would become your problem real fast.

I agree with this, unless it's an off-leash park (which we have in Central Texas). I just wouldn't take my dog to an off-leash park- or at least I wouldn't take the one that doesn't play nice with stranger dogs.

Right! This is why I don't take my dog to a dog park, because his behavior in that situation isn't predictable enough. By contrast I have taken him to puppy play events with trainers present, since they know how to manage the meetings. Once he knows a dog and has decided that he's cool, everything is fine. But the decision process is known only to him!

Btw just noticed this thread is called PET peeves ahahhaaaaa

Back to human peeves:
Everything to do with the high school drop off lanes. The grade school has their s*** together and is the most efficient functioning system ever; the administration of that place should be put in charge of the global supply chain, nuclear disarmament, and protecting the oceans from the ills of climate change.

Back at the high school it's another story. Usually a grab bag of people casually blocking the lanes or trying to turn left from the right turn lane. Stuff like that. The school allows it to be a complete free for all with no rules whatsoever. At the pickup time they send out some ding dong in a golf cart who has no idea how to help the situation and inevitably makes it worse. Today the morning drop off involved a deeper level of assholerry wherein guy in his massive SUV blocked both drop off lanes for 5 minutes while apparently having some discussion with his kid, thus making dozens of people's kids late to school in the process. Finally the others figure it out and start to wind their way around him by appropriating a parking space as a lane. Just at the point I'm past him, his kid finally decides to get out and go to school, and this jerk pulls out at 90 mph and immediately attempts to wedge his SUV into the impassable space between my car and the parked one next to me. Are you even kidding right now? He's not kidding; he just keeps on driving until he's inches away from my car, trying to squeeze through as if there's a lane. There's not a lane, and if there were one it would be my lane, because I too am trying to turn right. Eventually this will develop into a lane, yes, but not by driving straight through my vehicle. No, you will have to wait for me to get up there and proceed into that lane ahead of you. He cannot handle this and keeps edging forward every time I'm edging forward, as if he's going to intimidate me to get out of the way. B**** my kid has already dented my beautiful car by opening the truck door straight into it, so if you want to ram your ass into it at these speeds you can GO RIGHT AHEAD and DO IT and pay for me to have all of it fixed at once, and I'll thank you in advance! We have to advance an entire block in this manner before we can turn right, and b**** has chosen the wrong person with whom to play chicken and he will not stop or back off. It is the crack of f****** dawn and I have had half a coffee and I will fight this person mano a mano if he keeps f****** with me, I don't care who he is. Finally we reach the place where we've passed the parked cars and it's time to turn right. I am a reasonably speedy driver on most days and I'm not going to make an exception just because someone's being a dick, so I turn right and take off down the road. Eventually I come across a person who is turning left, so I'm forced to slow down and wait. Same guy pulls up an inch from my bumper, no surprise. He puts his brights on because obviously this is going to make the car in front of me turn faster. At this point I put on my glove because if we're going to fight I want to protect my fist. I mentally envision being low in my squat and going at him like a badger. If he gets out of the car I'm f****** ready. I realize this is the lack of coffee talking and so instead I make a shrugging "what can you do" gesture in the rear view mirror to indicate that I cannot help being stopped right now, duh. Eventually the car in front turns. I take off again at my normal healthy clip, but dude needs to tailgate. Maybe he's pissed at his slowpoke kid, maybe he's late for work now, I don't know what his problem is, but if you need to tailgate me the problem is definitely with you because I don't often go slowly. I know what my husband would do in this situation. I contemplate - should I do it? I don't believe in doing this; an eye for an eye doesn't solve anybody's problems. But dude just cannot and will not stop, so I do it. We're approaching the stop sign anyway. He must have had a hard time because after that he stopped the tailgating and we didn't have to fight. The problem is this all happens at the high school drop off where I'm going to see him again tomorrow, because this is definitely how you should treat the parents of the other kids yours goes to school with. What do I have to do to make the principal of our grade school the overlord of the entire district?

I'm so glad our youngest is out of high school and we no longer have to deal with that kinda stuff.

Some man apparently tried to shoot up the tarjay store in West Omaha with a AR-15 and the police shot him dead. Is this good news because it was a tragedy averted, even though what the f*** trying to shoot up the target? Why are these men so angry? What the hell has happened to them? Somehow my grandparents managed to come up in this world with parents who beat the snot out of them and they sometimes didn't have shoes or proper food or whatever.. they lived stuffed into a room with 10 other kids and they didn't shoot up anything.

Your grandparents didn't grow up in a society that glorified all aspects of gun culture as signs of true patriotism.

They also participated in actual shooting in WWII that may have put all that into some perspective we are lacking at the moment?

I don't know if this is a pet peeve or more serious, but it's been a really long time since I had to deal with a garden variety mansplaining sexist dude, who would be the last person on earth to consider himself a sexist, in the workplace. He's very supportive of women, I am sure, as long as they're not trying to be the boss of him. I'm too old for this. I am the boss and we're not open for questions on that matter. But it surprises me how long it's been since I had to cope with this type of thing - the intervening period has been so peaceful! Markedly peaceful! Surprises me how much this type of thing disrupts the peace.