1 April 1999: Thoughts on Driving

Thursday, 1 April 1999:

Thoughts on Driving

So, did you know that lime iMacs run faster than the other colors?

Yesterday my stress level basically peaked, as I decided to try a new route into work, and it quickly turned into a really bad route. Pretty much any route anywhere in the valley which involves the words "Stevens Creek Boulevard" is a really bad route, unless you're actually starting or ending your journey there. Stevens Creek has completely unsynchronized lights and is just a horrific road to drive along - which is probably the point, since otherwise everyone would use it as a major artery to get places.

I also discovered that a check from Epic relating to my departure from there had been FedExed to be three weeks ago, and been signed for, but I'd never seen it. Fortunately, there was a happy ending to this one: The envelope had been sitting in the administrative office at the temp housing for all this time, and just had never been delivered to me, I don't know why. So I grabbed it and deposited it. Whew!

In the evening I drove up to Subrata's, a guy I met through John who hosts gaming sessions nearly every Wednesday, and some weekends. Settlers and Robo Rally are the usual fodder for these sessions, so I was glad to finally have my stuff so I could bring my copy of Settlers and we could play two games. (By the way, Subrata usually wins these games, and he won both of the games we played tonight. On the other hand, Subrata's such a neat and nice guy that you can't really begrudge him...)

The drive to Subrata's was a little annoying, as I thought I'd figured out a new, faster way to get to 280, but instead it unexpectedly ran through (you guessed it) Stevens Creek Boulevard. Sigh. Subrata suggested a completely different route for next time, which sounds like a pretty good idea. I'll try it next week.

So, did you hear that New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner referred to pitcher Hideki Irabu as "a fat toad"? Et tu, not-so-svelte one?

This week I've mainly been eating lunch with a couple of long-time Apple (and ex-NeXT) folks who are taking the class with me. Nice guys, but the conversation quickly heads in directions regarding Apple/NeXT technology and directions and background that is largely over my head. Well, over my head in that I don't have a lot to contribute to it, although it's educational. It's kind of an uncomfortable situation to be in, though; after years of being "the guy who knows stuff" to once again be "the guy who don't know jack".

In some ways, the hardest part of scaling the learning curve is the emotional toll of having to keep plugging away at it, and knowing you're at the bottom of the ladder, even if you are going up. It's exhausting, and it takes a while to reach the payoff.

After work I went to a couple of furniture stores to see what they had. I saw a couple of nice entertainment centers worth keeping in mind, but didn't see any of the cheap bookcases I'd like to get. And both of them were traditional, rather than contemporary, in style. So I'll keep looking.

I did hit REI, though, and bought myself some comfier socks for hiking in, as well as a new backpack, so I'm all ready to go again. I might finally get together with my friend Rob this weekend and maybe hike with him, although he may be busy. I haven't heard much from John this week; I think he's in heads-down work mode.

And tonight I either grabbed the wrong tapes, or else Court TV spent a few weeks re-re-running the earliest episodes of Homicide, since it seems like I missed the whole fifth season sequence where Pembleton, well, hits a pretty major wall. I think probably I grabbed the wrong tapes, although I'm not sure where the right tapes would be. Hmf. Anyway, the episode I finally came back in on was the second part of a hostage situation at a school. It was a really intense episode, better than nearly anything in the fourth season, with great character moments with Pembleton, Bayliss, Munch, Brodie, Howard, and Giardello.

(Actually, checking the episode guide, it seems I missed the last five season four episodes, which must have coincided with when I moved over to my new place. So I'm not sure why those two tapes had the episodes they did. Shrug.)

Spent some more time organizing stuff. Actually I mostly emptied a couple more boxes, piled some stuff in the corner, and have strewn all sorts of crap around my study. Gotta clean it up in the next few days; it's a real mess right now.

Driving around today, I realized how different it is to be a driver in the valley than it was to be a pedestrian. When I interviewed at Apple, I was mostly on foot, and I was keenly aware of the shopping mall next to the hotel, the distance it took to walk to Apple, and the distance it took to walk beyond Apple to the Starbucks I went to on a couple of mornings. I was aware of the twisty sidewalks, and the wooden, plant-surrounded structures in the median of De Anza Blvd.

In my car, around my new apartment, I'm aware of the vacant lot and under-construction condos across the street, and I'm aware that I'm in a mostly residential neighborhood, but I'm not familiar with a lot more than the landmarks in the area. I realized today that I hardly noticed the wooden structures on De Anza anymore, because I just zip by them in the car and they're not 'useful' to me as a driver. As a pedestrian, I guess I had long enough as I walked by to get a good look at them.

It was a pretty eerie thought. Being a full-time pedestrian would be hard given how spread out everything is, but it was also kind of nice to have my world limited in that way for a weekend.

Yesterday I received mail about "The Great Gas-Out", an effort to get millions of people to not buy gas for one day to protest high gas prices.

Thing is, I don't think high gas prices are something to protest, because I think they're really just a symptom of a real problem: Americans take gas for granted and buy an awful lot of it, and have basically set up our cities and even our culture to be reliant on cars and cheap gas. It seems to me that a much better thing to do would be for all these people objecting to high gas prices to:

Buy smaller cars;
Buy more fuel-efficient cars;
Use alternative forms of transportation more;
Lobby their legislators to provide more and better forms of alternative transportation, and
Arrange their lives so they don't need to - or want to - drive as often.

John recently observed that it would be cool if gas went up to $4.00 a gallon, since then we'd see all those people driving sport utility vehicles or other large vehicles spending $80.00 or more to fill up their cars. (John and I both drive Honda Civics, which get better gas mileage and have smaller tanks. So we're biased. I've also deliberately chosen an apartment which is in reasonable biking distance of work.)

This also brings up one of my major driving peeves: Vans, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles. Other than being large, wasteful hunks of metal, these vehicles annoy the shit out of me because they block my view on the street (unlike most cars, where I can see through their windows), and their headlights are nicely positions to shine right through my rear window and blind me when they reflect off my middle or side mirror.

Basically, I'd like to see legislation which prohibits anyone from driving one of these vehicles unless they have a trip-by-trip demonstrable need to do so. For instance, hauling large objects would be a demonstrable need for a pickup truck. Transporting a family would be a reasonable use of a van. It's hard to think of a good reason why anyone would need to drive an SUV, unless maybe they're heading for some off-road driving. But, running errands without the family would mean you can't use the van; you have to use something else (or buy a fricking station wagon, instead!) I'm sure there are other good reasons to use these vehicles, but I'd be pretty happy if we could get, say, 70% of them off the road with this law.

I'm not usually prejudiced like this, but it really is a pet peeve of mine these days: People guzzling large amounts of gasoline so they can needlessly drive their big honking vehicles to and from work. That's the real problem, not gasoline prices that rise by 50% (ooh, a whole fifty cents a gallon!). I'd be happy to see gas prices go up to six bucks a gallon.

I'll just bike more.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)