I am not an @$$hole if:

• You choose to drive 10mph under the speed limit in the passing lane
• You sway back and forth on the exit ramp and nearly smash my front end when you decide you want to go straight, not left
• You ride along side me in the passing lane just close enough to keep me from merging, yet do not pass me, causing me to have to slow down and then get behind you and ride your tail because you are reverting back to point number one.
• You choose to wait until the very last second to merge and I won’t let you in. There are signs for 2 miles warning you that your lane is about to close. Hell, one even says MERGE HERE!!!
• I am suddenly riding your bumper because I was already in the lane and you chose not to use your side mirror before merging in front of me.
• I pass you on the right hand side because you are doing any of the above (other than merging, duh!)
• I wave good-bye to you when I finally get around you and back up to speed.
• I stare at you & shake my head when you finally decide to get out of my way.
• I brake suddenly when you are so close to me that I can no longer see your headlights in my rear-view mirror. Trust me, I prefer 80 – 85mph, if you are that close, I obviously cannot go any faster at that point. If I could, you would not be ABLE to ride that close to me.

ALL of these things happened to me today on my short 42 mile drive into work. Keep in mind, I am at work by 6:10 am and as I said, I drive 42 miles so I am sure you can tell I am not driving in “rush hour’ traffic.

I drive defensively, but if the collective ‘you’ were not driving as if you had never taken a driving test, It would not look like I am driving like an @$$hole.

Have a good day!

This post is dedicated to the SUV that broke at least 5 of the above points within the last 2 miles of my journey. YaJAGOFF!!

We have come to Connecticut for the wedding of my Father’s step daughter. This was the first time our boys have flown.

We arrived in Hartford on time and made our way to the baggage claim then off to the car rental. That is where the fun began.

We have done all of our reservations electronically this trip so we have no ‘paper’ tickets etc. This proved to be a problem when renting the car because they needed a copy of our itinerary in order to release the vehicle.

I had handed him a hand written confirmation number from the airlines, but he ignored that (at first).

I began to ‘try’ to find our information online using my BlackBerry which ended pretty quickly. The man finally said that we could call the airline and get the confirmation number for our flight… Oh my did Kimmie let him have it… remember above when I said (at first)???

Then came the self serve pick your own car. The kids want this one… the wife “don’t care”… the nice young punks call dibs on the one the kids want… we look for another… I get angry and march into the building… the man says any car out there is available if the keys are in it… so we take the one the kids want…

‘Daddy, I gotta go pee’ – yup… we are driving on I-91 S with two lanes of cars on either side of us when we hear the dreaded phrase. When our youngest finally calls out with the ‘I gotta go pee’ statement, we normally have about 3 minutes to get him somewhere. Somewhere ended up being the side of the highway between the front and rear passenger door…

We made it to the hotel and checked in. It sure does not look like it was described. We are expecting a common living area and two separate bedrooms. We get two bedrooms a long narrow hall and a bathroom. No big we can deal. Then, neither TV remote works, two lights are burned out, the iron does not work, and we get the privilege of a 6am wakeup call via room construction being performed in the room above…

Donovan has had a total of 4 meltdowns so far. One ending up with him wearing his sparkling cider from the toast.

Nick just wants to go to WalMart across from the hotel.

Kim and I are trying to figure out how to visit as many people as we can in our one free day…

Aside from that the wedding was beautiful, the weather has been pretty decent, and the boys have enjoyed their time with Ja Ja n Sue.

That was the first two days…

‘Till next time
- Joby

This nice young man decided to change his mind while I was behind him.

Now my nice new (to me) car is not so nice…

Before:

After:

I bought the car Monday evening… today is Friday…

UGH!!!

- Joby

Until yesterday…

I was planning to go to a suprise party for some friends of ours. It was to celebrate their 25th anniversary. They are awesome together and I really wanted to show my love and support for them.

About an hour before party my BlackBerry plays me the ‘Someone wants something right NOW’ song. I had the laptop sitting beside my chair so I logged on.

The ticket contained over 100 names of people who were lucky enough to be coming back to work. Each one would be needing access to a myriad of applications, databases, etc… The list contained their first and last names, but ZERO user ids.

I spent over 3 hours looking up each user and collecting their ids. Some of them had as many as three ids to enable.

I formulated my list and processed with some JCL and Natural code to get a spreadsheet of what all each user was to have access to.

Then user by user I processed their email accounts. Gave them back their VPN. Turned on their Mainframe accounts… etc

By now I am 6 hours into this ticket and pretty frustrated.

Getting ready to process the final step, I get a message from the Mainframe stating that it will be in outage for 2 hours starting NOW.

WTF???

So I go to Facebook and put up a status about how/why I am angry and a co-worker calls me ‘Weak’… what ??? I am weak for being pissed cause some people were too lazy to submit this list sooner? I am week because the list should have contained user id’s so I could do my job quickly and not spend an entire Saturday afternoon – Midnight giving these lucky people back what they need to work?

Please, you cannot tell me that no-one knew that these folks were coming back to work on Sunday before Saturday afternoon… BULLSH!T !!!

I finished the process when the Mainframe came back online.

What will today hold?

We shall see, but I am still pretty pissed…

Joby

We were driving from the funeral home to the cemetery. We all had the little ‘funeral flags’ on our cars. We all had our headlights on, and were driving in a relatively tight pack.

As we passed the casino we stayed in the left hand lane when the road split into two lanes. This, I believe was to remind other drivers that we were in a funeral procession and we were not to be split up when the lane merged back into one.

I noticed a fast moving car approaching in my right hand mirror. I was stunned to see a silver Honda aggressively passing the entire procession on the right hand side, barely making it passed us as the road narrowed back into one lane.

This made me angry, but not nearly as livid as what I am about to tell you.

As my car was approaching the merge point I saw yet another car barreling along in the right hand lane. The driver had absolutely no time to pass the entire procession, but she was willing to give it a go.

I pulled over to my right to let her know she was not going to get passed me. My sister in law who was driving the car behind me tried to do the same, but the lady had slowed down and forced herself into the procession.

She then begins to tailgate my sister in law, yelling at her and waving her arms indicating she should drive faster.

WTF???

She wants the grieving family in the middle of transporting their loved one to his final place of rest to speed up so she can get to wherever it is she wants to go?

Heck no joe, my sister in law (I love this) break checks the bitch and slows down showing her that her disrespect was not appreciated.

She eventually pulled off in a trailer park before we arrived at the cemetery.  Was she rushing to the hospital? No. Was she going to a fire? No. She was going home, or to a friends house. Either way, she was/is not very bright.

On our way from the cemetery to the church, I was able to get her license plate number and give it to a friend who has connections with the local authorities.

I will be happy to make it available here to if anyone is interested.

Next step, letter’s to the editor in all the local papers???

- Joby

About two weeks ago, I went to H&R Block. They were offering an advance against your upcoming taxes. We needed just a little help for Christmas. Last year we received our taxes on the Emerald Debit Card. This advance would be added directly to that card.

Advance granted – Wife determines what gifts and for whom – we plan accordingly… All should be in-line right?

Well not so much.

4 days ago, she decides to check her written balance against the balance listed online. SUPRISE! There is a pending charge to Comcast for $100.00.

The phone calls ensue.

OMGosh! I am used to automated systems… “Press 1 if your irritated” – “Press 2 if your pissed” – “Press 3 before throwing your phone out the &^$% window” – BUT I have never experienced one like I did with H&R Block.

I was informed that although the person on the other end was ‘live’ they would be speaking to me with the assistance of a computer. The auto-responses to my questions/statements/demands were priceless. Think of ‘HAL’ from 2001/2010 or better yet the computer from War Games “Shall we plaaay a Gayyymmee?”

Anyway I digress…

I demand they take the charge from the card as it was not authorized. I explained to them that I had already spoken to Comcast and the charge was not ‘pending’ in my que, nor was it already applied to my balance. In short the $100.00 was not being used to pay MY COMCAST BILL!!!!

The computer spits out some blah blah about my needing to fax a statement in order to get the refund. I “went off” I told the ‘person’ that was not acceptable. Suddenly the computer voice was that of a young Asian woman. Very well versed in the English language. Why did I have to speak to a damn computer when she was perfectly capable? Just one more aggrivation…

Bottom line people… I love H&R Block. I do not however enjoy their fraud protection policy. We have faxed them twice about the issue and have yet to hear as much as an appology.

Looks like the person who got their Comcast paid this month is going to be much happier than my 8yr old who was going to get a Wii, but not now…At least he did not know it was coming.

Enjoy your free cable dooshbag!

- Joby