electric relaxation

As near as I can tell, the point of this blog stuff is to rant about dumb shit that nobody else gives a crap about except you. With that in mind, here’s a perfect candidate: the AirBART ticket vending machines at the Oakland airport.

The current status of these machines is as follows:

• They don’t take plastic (they were clearly designed to take credit/debit cards, but all the slots are taped over with little handwritten signs saying that the machines don’t accept cards).
• They don’t give you a discount.
• They don’t give you change.
• They’re f—ing useless, since if you aren’t going to get change, a discount, or the option to use a card, you can just pay the damn driver directly (and various signs exist to inform you of this option).

Apparently those little fold out wedge things that hold the gas pump down so you don’t have to are called “nozzle hold open latches”. I’ve always been fascinated by these devices, having spent several years pumping gas in the Great White North where they’re both far more useful and far less common than in California. Actually, they’re not entirely missing, they’re just not available at self-service pumps. My theory on the matter was that it was an incentive for you to go with the more expensive full-service option.

Anyway, I’m visiting my folks in Albany, and pumping gas in 21-degree (F) weather without the benefit of a hold open latch prompted me to wonder why Albany was missing them as well. I ran my well-crafted theory past my father, who informed me that it was a load of crap, and that the real reason New York pumps didn’t have the latches was some bogus fire code restrictions.

However, with the aid of the Intarweb I have managed to salvage my reputation, or at least confuse the issue enough to satiate my thirst for inanity. According to a state website, there is no such restriction specified in the fire code.

So what’s the real reason? Who cares. I totally lost interest like half an hour ago.

Purple, purple. Personally, I find that the raw appeal of this ridiculous patois has diminished substantially in recent months; this Yay Crunk Hop ish is starting to get that cheesed out aura of a style that has become embarassingly self-aware, and E-40 yapping about the Hyphee Movement certainly isn’t helping.

Nonetheless, some of it is so entirely fatuous as to be quite timeless.

And I’m slightly less of a nerd than Kentaro for posting about this. But anyway, it turns out VLC lets you set keybindings that are at least as good as the ones in Mplayer. That, and this streaming crap that I’ll never use but continue pretending to almost care about, are enough to tilt the balance. At least on OS X.

This is why I love the interweb. It never fails to provide me with answers to the burning questions in my life; in this case, the question being “how much is it going to cost me to be able to burn Jairamen off the line?”

Too bad the MR2 is so damn ugly.

New domain name. For those who don’t recognize the reference, it’s widely considered a modern classic , a great among greats.

Car: 1981 Plymouth Sapparo
Price: $50

THe car is fifty bucks has new fuel pump,new fuel filer, has ran forever!!!
but it started leaking tranny fluid and I’m sick of it!!! I want it gone.
xxx-xxx-xxxx needs tags,and battery