The Sweet

About to take my final for my computer class. Reading A Moveable Feast and listening the Sweet - Hit Singles A's and B's.

I cannot wait to finish this quarter up so I can enjoy the nice days we've been having. I have to go to UNO this week which will be a nice bike ride. My computer's been dumb and had to restore it, but my anti-virus deal isn't fully working.

Why are people so addicted to apps? It's because of marketing. I've never seen (or noticed) people reacting with such frenzy to have ALL technological inventions no matter how inane they may be.

GPS ideally are a good idea, but I've navigated around the country in cars and a semi-truck via maps and logic. Sure, some places get hard such as downtown areas in big cities or places in the northeast, but it's nothing good common sense can cure. It's just another useless distraction.

When I first moved to Los Angeles I had a job mystery shopping all throughout the Valley, Glendale/Pasadena area and up the coast to and from Paso Robles, not too mention going to San Francisco several times. I did all those via a Thomas Guide (map book), no problem. You get cross streets, check for one ways, what streets are before your turn, different landmarks to ease that situation, two ways of approach in case you miss the turn, or check out the layout to see how to back track in case you miss the turn. It seems like a lot but it's not. It's everything I take in when viewing a map.

Some other logical things are avoiding left turns, especially if there's no turn lane. If it's a busy street, whether legal or not, it's not a good idea. New Jersey seems to be the only place that realized that people are dumb and, at least on the Pennsylvania border side, they have those u-turn/left turn loopy things.

If there's anything these GD-GPS things are good for is the advance notice they give you like "left turn - one mile ahead" will teach people what they should know well in advance, plan your driving route. I don't go anywhere without knowing where it is, what side of the street it is, etc. Or at least I try. Sometimes you cannot avoid heading into that situation. But I'm still not going to stop or slow in a 35-50 mph street to make a sudden left turn. I'll keep going and turn around. And I'm not going to drive 15 mph in said situation to not miss it.

I wish I could take a test with the OPD to pass all the driving safety courses and legally authorize me to pull over, ticket, and/or tell people how dumb they are or why what they did makes no sense at all and then slash their tires and leave.

One last thing, there's a main road here called Sorensen Parkway. It's 40 mph and when turning south on 72nd it's 40 mph. There's a huge shopping plaza to the right that spans about a half mile. There's a two lane left turn there. Three times in the past week I was in the left turn lane so when I get on 72nd I can stay in the left lane for the several miles I have to drive to avoid the stopping and going with people turning into driveways and other streets. Basically to safely regulate traffic. So upon turning onto 72nd, the cars (ALL WITH NO TURN SIGNALS!) slow to about five mph to turn into the first driveway into the shopping center.

Not only is that dumb, dangerous, and knowing that you are making a right turn upon turning onto 72nd you should've been in the right turning lane to start with as that goes with common logic of driving, but this shopping plaza's a half mile long at least. You have four or five other driveways to safely do this.