The OC Disorder

So the other day I was driving around my home town and all of a sudden it hit me…

I REALLY HATE A LOT ABOUT ORANGE COUNTY!!!

Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of redeeming values to Orange County, which is probably why I haven’t abandoned ship quite yet, but as I was sitting at a four-way-stop and almost witnessed four different accidents because of rude or just plain dumb Orange County drivers I got mad. Real Mad. And I started thinking about of the things like dumb drivers that I hate.

Well I decided to start a sort of “series” where I rant about these things and I will try to remember and update you with the things that have caught my attention.

So without further delay here is the first of many THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (Orange County):

#1 Insane Soccer Moms:

Now maybe this is more of a problem out here where I live in Yorba Linda, but I’m pretty sure we’ve all had the pleasure of witnessing or coming across one of these lovely ladies menacing around in their mini vans, SUVs, or ridiculously lifted trucks wreaking havoc on and off the road just so that they can get little Jimmy and Suzie to soccer practice, tae kwon do, etc.

I’m sure these ladies have a pretty hard life trying to make their children happy, but I’d rather not be disrespected or almost killed on a daily basis by them. I’m also a fond believer of adults acting like adults in situations where there may be a conflict.

You might be reading this thinking “Sean… aren’t you being a little dramatic about these women?”

To which my answer would be…  No. You are stupid and I am of course far superior and right when it comes to this subject matter.

Don’t believe me that these women suck? Well how about these little gems I found:

Lady Calls 911 Over Wrong Burger King Order (Laguna Niguel)

Woman A can’t park her SUV and Woman B confronts her about it. (Google Building, Irvine)

It’s sad to think that these women are raising the future of the world, our country, and this county…

Looks like the Mayans were right… the world is going to end very very soon.

 Taking a look at this image and the routes of the proposed CA high-speed rail system, it doesn’t take long to figure out why building it would be a good move. Unlike many older states in the east with a blanket of small towns, California’s massive population of nearly 37 million is crammed into three major population centers, connected by a steady stream of cities like Fresno (pop: 400,000) and Bakersfield (pop: 300,000) through the San Joaqin valley. Any kindergartner could connect the dots.

Virtually every medium or large city in the state can be linked by a single north-south route with one shorter branch at each end. This is especially important given that many cities in the central valley and inland empire will experience the biggest population booms in the coming decades (remember the Bakersfield massacre in The Running Man?) It’s no surprise that officials in these cities, which have few convenient options for air travel, have thrown support behind 1A.

In a state where flying anywhere involves more time waiting around a terminal than actually being on a plane, taking high-speed trains is the next natural step.

The Rays are going to the World Series. Wow. Way to go. What a feat. They certainly deserve it.

I propose that they owe this new found success to the Angels.

No…just hear me out. They are a stellar team, and may have even beaten Anaheim, had we got past the ALDS, but there are larger forces at work.

We all know that baseball is a sport of tradition, streaks, and jinxes – and when those are ended, all shit breaks loose. Here we now come to my proof:

The Angels had never won a postseason game against Boston (or at least the last 11). They did this year. Streak broken. Boston then lost all their postseason mojo and failed to progress further than the ALCS.

What more do you need? So celebrate with your Florida brethren and enjoy there victories as your own.

-M

Microsoft quickly decided to drop the inexplicable Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates ad campaign. The whole campaign was to make the company, the brunt of Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads, more “hip.”  Instead, Microsoft has just proved themselves to be outdated idiots by paying Seinfeld $10 million to talk about shoes and butt wiggling with Bill Gates, the Grand Master of Nerds.

Here are some not-so-serious (or are they?) suggestions to Microsoft as how to market themselves as hip…

1.  Add Funkytown.  Funkytown is a universally hip song.  A remnant of the disco era, it has stood the test of time.  Put it in your ads, add some cool animation, and voila, M$ is hip!  It worked for the Aveda Energy company.

2.  Cut Bill Gates.  Show Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft.  Ballmer is a machine.  A crazy, bald machine.  He knows how to sell Windows.

3.  Don’t try to be hip. Windows, Word, and Excel were never hip…ever.  Why start now?

4.  Adopt Linux. Hey, if you’re trying to be like Mac, then do what they did.  OS X is based off of Unix and made it actually user-friendly.  Linux already works on PCs, so why don’t you do what you do best?  Steal another OS and make it your own.

5.  “What’s the deal?” If you’re going to pay millions for Jerry Seinfeld, at least pay him to do his schtick.  Wouldn’t it be hilarious to see Jerry in front of a brick wall ranting about operating systems?  Or ranting about OS X?  “What’s the deal with Macs?  I can’t run my favorite games on it!  Steve Jobs won’t let me shoot Nazis on his computers!  What’s the deal?”  I’m pretty sure he would write better material than that.

Space.com has a video showing a drop-test of the Orion capsule’s parachute systems which certainly leaves something to be desired. For those who aren’t familiar, Orion is the replacement for the Space Shuttle that NASA is currently working on as part of Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration”, intended to return us to the Moon and (theoretically) go to Mars.

Orion Parachute Test

The Apollo-like design was chosen for what many believe is an inherently safer design than the shuttle, mainly due to the simplicity of a small capsule versus the shuttle’s glider design that relies on hundreds of ceramic heat resistant tiles for atmospheric re-entry. While that may certainly be true, the video serves as a good reminder that the best heat shield on the planet won’t save you from a parachute that fails.

A Dallas County Commissioner apparently has problems with the scientific term “black hole” because he feels that it’s racist. During a meeting about traffic tickets, another commissioner described the bureaucracy as a black hole because paperwork was always disappearing.

The offended commissioner quickly responded that his colleague meant to say the office was a “white hole”. The judge demanded an apology from the black hole commentator for his racially insensitive analogy.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge the offended commissioner. Maybe he wasn’t really offended and meant to say that the office, like a theoretical white hole, spewed out a lot more paperwork than was missing.

Then again, the same Commissioner also has problems with “angel food cake” and “devil’s food cake” as well.

Here is the offended/doesn’t-know-what-a-black-hole-is Commissioner.

I stumbled upon a video of a space shuttle booster thing, from the perspective of the booster, falling back to Earth. The video cuts and jumps ahead to the splash down near the end, but I found the rest of the video pretty interesting. I had always wondered what the actual process of falling back to Earth looked like.

LA Times road sage Steve Hymon is reporting that Amtrak ridership has increased significantly since last year.

Ridership in California is up 4.9% since October (the beginning of Amtrak’s fiscal year) and went up 5.8% in May on the Surfliner –- the line that runs from San Luis Obispo to San Diego through Los Angeles and Orange counties, said Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham.

Reportedly, some trains are so crowded in the morning that they are now standing room only, unless you spring the extra dough for a business-class seat.  Amtrak has said that they may be able to bring some additional trains into service after refurbishment.

It will be interesting to see how ridership increases during the summer which is traditionally the biggest travel season, especially for Amtrak. Steve estimates that at around $35 one way, a ticket from LA to San Diego now costs as much as driving in a car with 20-25 mpg, though my estimates put it around more like 15-20 mpg. Still, depending on traffic, the train, at around 2.5 hours, may very well get you there faster.

I think it’s also interesting to note that as time progresses, trains have become more popular mostly because travel by car is ever-increasingly expensive and ever-decreasingly quick, a good indicator that having a society dependant on cars and highways probably isn’t sustainable.  Hopefully in the future, improvements to train service, primarily the California High Speed Rail, will expediate that switch even more.  I know I’ll be taking the train the next time I go to SD (they even have 3 light rail lines to move you around once you arrive).