Now the roads get dangerous and expensive

I received three nasty surprises yesterday. The first came in the form of black ice all across the freeway. I took it slow, but a pickup in front of me did not and started fishtailing as it got onto the on-ramp to state road 509, and that on-ramp seems to regularly eat cars and drivers that don't anticipate it's tight curve. That driver got control back, but a half-mile up we came across a patrol car helping an SUV that had obviously failed to keep control. The roads were very slippery up until the SR518 intersection, at which point enough warm cars and tires had passed over the road to melt the most dangerous stuff.

The second nasty surprise came when I reached the office. The City of Seattle has been moving from per-spot parking meters to computerized, one-per-street meters. The automated kiosks, despite requiring rolls of receipt-printing paper, apparently take much less maintenance, can take credit cards, and are much easier to clear of cash-- which means that the city is now putting them everywhere. Including all over lower Queen Anne. No more free parking near the office. Dammit. The best lot near the office is $6/day. I do want to meet the guy I've parked next to twice this week: his bumper sticker reads Got Yaoi?.

The third nasty surprise came when I got home. "You have been randomly selected to server as a Juror. By order of the court, you are summoned to appear on Feb 21st, 2007 at 8:00am." Gotta quash that one real fast. This is the third time in the past ten years. This is what I get for being a good citizen and voting reliably. Bleah.

My wrists and hands have really been bugging me this week, but I've been wearing my wrist brace and concentrating on my posture, and the tendinitis seems to be under control this day. I have to remember not to hammer at the keys, though. That's a really bad habit that asserts itself when I'm not paying attention. I tried, I really did, to use one of those super-ergo Kinesis keyboards, but I have too many Emacs-based keystroke habits (some extended to the window manager and other apps, like Firefox and Thunderbird) that require a strong familiarity with the position of the ALT and CTRL keys, so I couldn't use it without a ton of reorientation. I use IBM "Think" brand keyboards both at my workstation and on my laptop, so the layouts are more or less the same there.

From A Decade Past, Jury Duty

( From May 2, 1997: Jury Duty )

Don't Turn Around (Uh oh!) Der Commissar's In Town!

Comrades, listen closely!

(NYTimes Jan 30, 2007): In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities.

Is Commissar the right word? Apparatchik?