Rants
Commuting Observations
I always have to assume this means the child isn’t bright, since they’re obviously running quickly in the picture…
I’m fortunate that I don’t have a particularly long commute to work, but since it’s through a mostly rural area, I have the pleasure of dealing with school buses along the way. It’s amazing that in the short few weeks since school has been in session, I’ve developed active likes and dislikes for some of the families and children along the way… all while never meeting them, but just based on how they interact with the school bus pick up. There’s quite a variety out there and I’ve named a few of the bad apples…
Spaced Cadets – This is a family with three kids. They are never out and ready, and apparently the outside door of the house has an airlock with a timed-release feature as they never come out together. They generally exit the home one at a time and as they are ambling (no rush) to the bus, there is generally a 20’+ spacing between them. Though I can’t see this, the bus driver must have to follow this protocol too and not let another child on until the previous one is seated, since the delay extends beyond just getting to the bus.
Atlas’s Daughter – This poor child stands about 4′ tall, looks to weigh about 60 lb and comes trudging out with a 3′ tall backpack, that from the way she’s carrying it, must weigh 150 lb. She appears to be carrying the weight of the world as she trudges out from the house each morning. Again, she doesn’t start her trek to the road unto the bus arrives, but I at least feel a little sorry for her. If that pack every pulls her over, she’ll be flaying on her back like Randy from A Christmas Story.
Basketball Jones – This young man must be brilliant, since as opposed to Atlas’s Daughter, he carries no books to school. On the positive side, he is generally out by the road, practicing to palm the ball. But then, when the bus arrives with its built-in audience, he has to dribble his way across the road… maybe throwing in an out-of-control spin move, nearly losing the ball several times along the way.
Dead Heads – There are a couple of houses where the bus stops… for an inordinately long period of time, only to move on. The houses are dark. In the case of one, there doesn’t even appear to be curtains in the windows which truly turn a dark-eyed stare to the street. I’m left wondering if there is ever any follow-up on this. While it’s probable that someone overslept or decided to drive the kids to school, there’s always the possibility that a serial killer paid a visit and the whole family is dead… or worse, they’re being held and tortured with their only hope being that the bus driver reports the absence of their children…
While unfortunately, the above get on my nerves and seem to be all too prevalent, there are still others that are more courteous. Some are waiting near the road, either with their parents or on their own, ready to walk briskly or even run to get to the bus as quickly as possible. There is one young man that appears to have invisible Hellhounds on his tail, because he runs headlong for the bus as if his life depends on it. I like him!!! I want to stop and give him $5 at the end of the week! Ha!
If it’s raining or later this year when the weather is frigid, I understand waiting in the house until the last minute. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to change much of the above behavior. The dawdlers continue to dawdle and the polite and respectful ones are there on time and move to the bus with purpose.
I hate to drop a rant without any constructive solutions. I realize that the children with the poor manners are the product of their parents, so the grief should go upstream… and probably would do no good. But on the houses where no children appear, can the school come up with a sign to put in the window to let the bus driver move on? Maybe a series… One for sickness. One for laziness (went back to bed). One for alternate transportation. Put them on a flip ring and supply a suction cup hook to hang them on the window.
There! Got that off my chest and provided a partial solution. Oh, and one last thing… THANK YOU to the bus drivers that wave the traffic on around when there’s a line behind them. Your thoughtfulness is greatly appreciated. I don’t think I could do your job without ending up as the serial killer listed above!
“Slow Children” sign borrowed from www.seton.com
“Book Bag Girl” gif from www.pinterest.com
“Friendly School Bus Driver pic borrowed from www.mlaker.com
Shcool (sic) Choice?
There’s something sadly funny about an article discussing the quality of schools that misspells school in the title! Geez! That’s a bold face headline for crying out loud! I don’t know if the mistake is from the original article or the reprinting in the Pilot News, but either way I think it’s a bit embarrassing. Spellcheck anyone?
I seem to be in the minority of people bothered by these things. The other day a tweeted a sign I saw. (here) I had to say something to the manager. Their first response seemed to be irritation at me. <sigh> At least they did take it down. It was one of four that had personnel spelled incorrectly.
I am not above a spelling, typo or grammar error. Look and you’ll probably find one on our site somewhere. Sometimes my fingers get ahead of my brain. I’m still struggling to implement the spacing rule that I learned last year… I guess I expect more from a newspaper where there’s an editor reviewing things though. At least the mistakes in the bold print should jump out at them…
Voter Responsibility
I haven’t posted a good rant in a while, so…
The “Brexit” vote has me thinking about voter responsibility. I honestly only knew about Brexit peripherally until about a week before the vote. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it for a couple of reasons: 1) I had no say, and 2) I didn’t really see that it was going to affect me much. A 20/20 hindsight look at the turmoil in the stock market and how that affects my 401(k) negates #2, but in reality, #1 was still valid. No matter how much concern I had placed on it, I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. I can’t even name one British citizen I know that I could have gone up to and said, “Look here Old Chap, you need to do the right thing because this decision is going to affect the whole world!” Not that I even thought that. I had pretty much trusted those in the know to have factored either result into the markets and that the outcome would be a blip outside of Great Britain.
Build Your Future Indiana
Lest anyone think I know when to stop beating a dead horse, I thought I would share some pictures from the Build Your Future Indiana guide. It’s sponsored by Associated Buildings and Contractors of Indiana/Kentucky and as a Board Member, I received a copy at a meeting last week. The guide promotes construction as a career in Indiana. (I plan to share my copy with Jerry Chavez at MCEDC the next time I see him.) It gives job descriptions and base wages for careers in various construction trades.
One of the things that currently is a problem in Indiana is finding construction workers. We need to encourage young people that the construction industry is a viable career and educate them that it is a career with potential, but one that requires mental as well as physical skills.
So about that poor horse… I’ve reprinted the rear cover of the guide to the right. Notice the Wind Turbines in the background? Seems that when I go to most other areas of the State, they’re proud of Indiana’s alternative energy initiatives. But not Marshall County… Even though we have people that work in the wind conversion industry living in our county and manufacturing parts for the industry in our county.
Most pages in the guide have three trades per page. The Wind Turbine Maintenance Tech gets his own page and apparently around $46k per year. Sounds like it could be a sweet gig!
Okay, I’ve beat the poor beast enough. As if I hadn’t beat him enough here and here and here. Feel free to search for “turbine” in the search box on the right if you want more. Try “Extended Territorial Boundary” if you want to see me get really wound up!. No guaranties that I won’t run across something else that warrants a rant about this, but the poor horse could be an extra on The Walking Dead at this point…
DST – Another Washington Boondoggle
Image borrowed from www.hudsonhorizons.com
So here we are starting another round of Daylight Savings Time Hell. I can walk around the house and move all the clocks forward by an hour, but my internal clock doesn’t reset that easily. I’ll be grumpy in the morning for the next couple of weeks.
In a previous post here, I discuss learning that most countries don’t participate in the DST sham. So why should it surprise me that Washington would jump on the band wagon for this program? It even has a typical, false advertising name like so much Washington legislation. Daylight Savings Time… There are no savings with this… It’s just a compressed version of Robbing Peter To Pay Paul that is a signature of so much that comes out of Washington. Can you say Affordable Care Act? What about the Social Security Lockbox that doesn’t exist to save the money currently being put into the program. Like I said… I’m grumpy…
