Tag: rants

Random Restroom Rants

The restrooms where I work have automatic sinks. In theory, motion detectors determine that your hands are below the faucet and turn on the water, then shut the water off when you pull your hands away. In practice, you tend to wave your hand around trying to get its attention, give up and move to the next sink over…at which point the first sink starts running. I keep meaning to draw up a 4-panel cartoon to illustrate this, but I’m not sure my limited drawing skills are up to the task.

I have actually washed my hands, gone over to the towel dispenser, dried my hands, opened the door, and walked out…with the sink still running (and no way to turn it off).

These sinks have been made worse in recent weeks. You see, someone decided they needed to turn up the water pressure. The faucets are angled slightly outward. Placing your hands under the faucets provides a surface for the water to bounce off of, and it splashes forward… over the edge of the sink… landing just below the belt.

Then, of course, there’s dealing with people who don’t wash their hands. It’s easy enough to use an extra paper towel on the handle, but what do you do when there are no paper towels? The place I went for lunch today had an air dryer, complete with the usual blurb about how much more environmentally sound and sanitary air dryers are compared to paper towels (which I think is mainly there to give you something to read while you wait for it to actually dry your hands), but the restroom door opens inward, with a handle on the inside. I walked in and there was a guy standing next to the sink, as near as I can tell waiting for someone to open the door so he wouldn’t have to touch the handle!

Old Town, New Town

Ever since I found out there was actually an area called “Old Town Irvine,” I’ve found the idea somewhere between funny, pretentious, and oxymoronic. Looking at nearby cities, we have Old Town Orange, a collection of streets with shop buildings dating back to the late 1800s or early 1900s, centered around an actual traffic circle. The place could have been the model for Disneyland’s Main Street. There’s Old Town Tustin, another collection of streets with shops going back to the late 1800s or early 1900s, with contemporary houses nearby for good measure.

Then, there’s Old Town Irvine, a couple of barns that have been converted into restaurants and a motel. Why? Because there effectively is no Old Town Irvine — it sprang whole from a designer’s master plan in the late 1960s. Most people assume UCI is named after the city, but it actually predates the city of Irvine. Both were named after the Irvine Ranch (or possibly the Irvine Company or the Irvine family — all three are tied together) on which they were built. Maybe 50 years from now there really will be an “old town” — and it’ll probably be Northwood or Woodbridge or something. But the name will already have been trademarked by the shopping center, so they won’t be able to use it.

Don’t touch that tract, you don’t know where it’s been!

I already find it disturbing that someone decided it was a good idea to leave a religious tract—really, an ad for a particular church—in a public restroom stall. (Imagine the circumstances under which someone will read it. Or better yet, don’t.) I find it more disturbing that the church it advertises is located in Temecula, at least 60 miles away, in another county, on the other side of a small mountain range, and a minimum one-hour drive in good traffic. But most of all, I find it disturbing that it’s the second time it’s happened.

I suppose if there are people in the building who commute from Riverside, they’d be closer, but still…a bathroom stall? If you’re going to advertise in a public restroom, the least you can do is use a sign, or a one-sided postcard—something people won’t have to touch to get the details.

Politics, press, and lip service

Was listening to the White House press conference on the way to work. Someone said “Mr. President, you may not have had a chance to hear this, but it appears Yasser Arafat has passed away. What are your thoughts?”

Now, this turns out to be inaccurate, but at the time my reaction was a mix of “Holy $#!7” and “Maybe the Israeli/Palestinian peace process can get somewhere now.” It’s sad, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Arafat is perhaps the Palestinians’ biggest obstacle to peace, and they don’t see it. (Although now that I think about it, an interesting parallel can be made over here: no matter how clear it is that Bush is likely to keep us at war, people still voted for him in droves.) Perhaps Arafat being ill and out of the region will help other Palestinian leaders work towards a peace settlement. At least W has figured out by now that resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is important. If he’d caught onto that at the beginning of his first term, instead of virtually abandoning the region, things might be a lot less messy today.

Meanwhile, Bush has again promised to be a “uniter, not a divider,” (as if that held last time) and is calling for the support of Kerry voters. Peter David put it this way: “I assure you I will give Bush as much of a chance as the GOP gave Clinton.” Here’s a hint: there are reasons we voted against you. Look into them, attempt to compromise, and maybe you’ll get people supporting some of your policies. Ignore them and you’ll just see more anger.

Depending on how they are handled, I can get behind things like fighting the AIDS epidemic, reigniting the space program, even simplifying the tax code. But there’s no way I’ll support your overwhelmingly conservative social agenda, there’s no way I’ll support poorly-planned unilateral preemptive strikes based on flawed intelligence, and there’s no way I’ll support financing the nation on the credit card model. People are worried enough about individual Americans living in debt up to their eyeballs, but it goes all the way to the top. (Fiscal responsibility? Sure, I’d like to see some.)

Checklist

LiveJournal back up? Check.
Phone line back up? Check.
DSL connection stable? Check.
Fixed Ticketmaster order? Mostly.
Pick up PowerBook? ….

Well, I figured UPS would drop by in the early afternoon, so my original plan was to come home for lunch and hope they showed up while I was here. When the phone crapped out and I needed to schedule an SBC tech to come out, I figured 1-5 was a good idea for the same reason. Of course, UPS got here at 11:30, long before I did. So now I’m trying to arrange to pick it up, but because it’s still in the truck, I have to wait until 8:00 before I can get it.

I’m beginning to think I should have just signed for it, only I didn’t want to leave a $1600 computer sitting outside the front door. I suppose I could still just go in at lunch tomorrow.

Back to Ticketmaster: Aimee Mann concert in Anaheim on June 12. Somehow ended up with tickets to her concert in Atlanta on June 16. Last night they told me my order had gotten switched with someone else’s, but today they said I had confirmed it that way on the website. I suppose it’s possible, since I was rushing through the order the night before the wedding, but still… Atlanta? Anyway, even though they say no refunds or exchanges, they will make exceptions in extreme circumstances (like tickets to the right show on the wrong side of the country!), so I have 10 days to send the wrong tickets back.

Anyway, now that the phone line’s working again, it’s time to head back to work.

Current Mood: 😡frustrated

Giving Blood

In the past several years, I’ve gotten mosquito bites in exactly two places:

1. The Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu. The first day we were in Hawaii, it seemed like I was bitten by every mosquito in the park. The rest of the bugs on the island must have decided I’d been tapped out, because no new bites appeared all week. Of course, the ones I had stayed with me for about a month.

2. Outside alenxa’s parents’ house. Repeatedly.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t spend a lot of time standing around in shorts outside at night. (With three cats in the house, I basically can’t stay inside for more than a few minutes without breaking out the Benadryl.) Or maybe they really do have more mosquitoes there than we do. But lately it seems that every time we go over there, I come back with bug bites. That. Won’t. Stop. Itching.

You know, this might actually be a use for emergency pants. Or just bug repellent.