Stupid

I hate driving in Utah. Normally its the other drivers that make me insane, but sometimes its the people in charge of the roads. For example, anyone that's ever been a passenger in my car driving north out of Salt Lake has heard my rant about how freeways should never have lanes that end in merges, especially left lanes (I think the only lane terminations should be exit only's so that even if you find yourself in a lane that ends, you're not 'forced' to cut off someone else in order to avoid driving off the road). Today's kudos go to the Utah State Highway Patrol. So, first, this happened:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com (or read about it here)

You just gotta love winter driving (read: some people shouldn't have a driver's license in general, let alone in adverse conditions). So anyway, they set up this detour that everyone gets to take:

View Larger Map
Notice that lefty at the north end that you have to take to get back to I-15. That's the only really significant light along the whole detour. As I followed the detour, I saw patrol cars all over the place, keeping order, stopping cars so that locals could turn out of this ridiculously bad traffic jam, generally being useful... until that one left turn. There's only one left turn lane for 11 miles of 2 lane traffic and we all know how short the green is on those. No officers anywhere near that intersection. No efforts to see that they've created a huge backup of traffic, that might have been relieved with a little attention. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got back to the freeway was already full of cars who had arrived after the detour was lifted. Way to waste my life UDOT.

Four For Friday

Everyone should go over to the BeliBlog and do the Four For Friday.

Q1 - Names: Here in the U.S., the parents of a three-year-old boy have branded a supermarket "intolerant" after it refused to decorate their son's birthday cake with his name: Adolf Hitler Campbell. The couple, from New Jersey, asked ShopRite staff to decorate little Adolf's cake with his name, which he shares with the deceased Nazi dictator, and were outraged after staff refused to on the grounds that it was inappropriate. Do you think the supermarket's bakery staff made the right decision or does every little boy deserve to have his name on their birthday cake regardless of what their name is?

Q2 - Grumble: What are your top five beefs?

Q3 - Layaway: As everyone knows, it's shopping season once again, but we all know times are a little tough this year. A new ABC News poll this week found that many Americans are feeling the financial strain, resulting in a lot of us spending a lot less on holiday gifts. So perhaps it's not a big surprise that we would see the resurgence of a more conservative way to shop... the layaway. If you could put one item on layaway for up to five years that you absolutely intended to incrementally pay for in full, what would you choose to put on layaway?

Q4 - Memories: How will you remember 2008?

My answers are over there, and yours should be too

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For anyone who has looked at my blog before today, you'll notice the colors are new. And I've learned that I really don't get hex, or like hex, or want to learn any more about it. So, anyone out there good at hex colors? I'm soliciting help here, cause the templates aren't ever quite the right feel. If you've got a decent color scheme you'd recommend and can give me the hex codes for all the colors, you can be my new best friend.

Wahoo!

The whole med school application process has been a minor nightmare for me, but this third round has some good things going for me. This morning I finalized the date for my fourth interview in January. So I have Jan 12th in Harrogate, TN at Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine, Jan 15th in Fort Lauderdale, FL at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Jan 22nd in Kirksville, MO at Kirksville School of Osteopathic Medicine, and Jan 26th in Toledo, OH at The University of Toledo.

Gene Autry, Take It Away

(That's 'Back In The Saddle Again' for those not in the know)

So I went on my first post-D date last night. Interesting.

I met this girl over at some friends' apartment a couple weeks ago. She lived in the same complex and had come over to get some sheet music from one of the guys. She wound up hanging out with the crowd for a while and showed a pretty quick wit, so when the opportunity arose, I asked her out.

OK, so I should really learn to think twice about some of the girls I ask out. I knew she was younger than me, but I really wouldn't have guessed a decade. For those who know the math, yes, that does make her 17. I found out this lovely bit of information during the intermission of the Nutcracker. I think I'll just call this a practice date and move on so I don't wind up like this guy:

My Phone And My Beard Have Started A Blood Fued

So I really like having a beard, mostly because I really hate shaving; its annoying.

Well, it turns out having a beard hasn't saved me all facial annoyances. My phone is the Juke and it looks like this:

It turns out that the wheel in the center there is really good at grabbing on to my whiskers. Anything over 2 days growth gets caught in there, so I now end all my calls by playing "odd or even" against my phone.

Still Can't Believe I Saw This

So went to the Aquabats concert on Saturday. The opening band was about what you'd expect from an opening band, but them something absolutely horrible happened. This:

came on stage. Its a little difficult to see, but that's one of the characters from the kids show Yo Gabba Gabba. Now I know that MC Bat Commander was the creator of the show, but give me a break. Putting a show that even a five year old knows to be less intelligent than himself on stage in front of a bunch of twenty-somethings who want to mosh and skank just shows how far off their grove the Aquabats have gotten. And I think I lost my faith in humanity when a large portion of the crowd actually sang along to the Yo Gabba Gabba songs that make even Barney seem erudite and a downright vocabularian.