Pie Man's Flaura and Fauna of the Roads #2

Look, continuation, how amazing.

#2 The Middle Lain drivers.

Pootling is a made up word, by me. It describes the motorist you often see on an empty motorway, tootling along the middle lane at 50mph or less. A close relative of the outer lane moral guardian.

I often use the term pootler because its more generous, it suggest a gentle incompetence, perhaps a little of the grumpy old "this isn't a race you know" mentality. However it only describes one of the two sub-species of the middle lane driver.

Pootlers are usually in the middle lane because they genuinely don't really understand motorways, they may still be believing the myth that the lanes have different speeds assigned, and that the middle is 50-60, they may just be completely clueless and so stick to the middle as it seems like a compromise. Pootlers are pretty hard to identify, they drive a variety of cars and are a variety of ages.

Hogs are the other breed, they know fine well they shouldn't be in the middle lane, but they somehow believe that the inside lane is for slow moving pensioners and girls, and not for them. Yes they can only cope doing 50, or sometimes they are doing 70, but there is still an vast stretch of unused tarmac to their left. Of course they won't admit pride as to their poor lane management, no, they'll make excuses, like they were preparing to overtake a slower car over the horizon, they know that in 30 miles the road becomes 2 lanes, and this is their correct one. Either way it isn't, its just because they can't quite stomach going to the inside unless its for slip road purposes. These hogs quite often become outside lane menaces on dual carriageways. usually identified as male, aged anywhere from 17-55 and will be driving a small hatchback with all the trimmings (Cooling tower exhaust, stereo, extra lights like a mobile disco, picnic table spoiler and mandatory fog lights regardless of visibility) older versions will be driving some sort of repmobiel, Vectra or Mondeo through to BMW and even some of the smaller Mercs.

So, why is this a problem, there's an outside lane, you cans till overtake. This is true, however, say there is someone doing 50 in the middle lane, no traffic to their left. Someone approaches at 60 and needs to overtake on the outside, causing someone travelling at 70 to slow down. Ideally with three lanes, and everyone playing by the rules, the outside lane should only be 70+ (not counting heavy traffic) instead this starts to give us the odd situation where the outside lane is full and the inside almost empty, as everyone tries to overtake the one person sitting in the middle.

So, how do you deal. Well, first thing, Never Undertake. Its dangerous, and you remove an opportunity for them to realise the error of their ways and pull in. Don't tailgate either, again dangerous and calling them a middle lane hog won't help the insurance claim. No, what I do, where possible, is overtake on the outside, then pull right back into the inside, maintaining the higher speed. This often works on the confused pootler, who realises that it is Ok to do 50 in the inside lane if someone is doing 70 in it. The hog, well shouldn't be on the road really, and no amount of instruction or guilt will move that bullish head.

The Majesty of Rock

I noticed recently that AC/DC's Back in Black is joint second best selling album in the world, joint with the Bodyguard soundtrack and beaten by Thriller. In the same band of over 40 million copies sold are Saturday Night Fever, The Best of the Eagles and The Dark side of the moon By Pink Floyd.

And you know what, while in the over 30million there are some of the newer pop acts, Shania Twain and Backstreet boys, we have to go pretty far down to get more of the big pop acts. I predict that more of the classic rock albums such as U2's The Joshua Tree, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Guns'n'Roses appetite for destruction will continue to climb where their pop companions will stay. Why is this. Because of those albums (And aside from the Joshua Tree) I bought all of those years after release. You see while Backstreet boy's Millennium gained 30million sales in the years around its release, in nearly 30 years time will people still be buying it? Saturday Night Fever perhaps, the bodyguard soundtrack, a possibility, but if me and my contemporaries are anything to go by, and the kids I see around, people will be buying copies of Back in Black, Led Zeppelin's IV and The White album by the Beatles for decades to come.

This is of course the lasting power of really good Rock, and the interest of the fans, that they pass their enthusiasm on. Interestingly enough my wife was sorting through our Mutual CD collection and she commented on the Number of Iron maiden Albums I owned. I replied that I had them all, and that in around 3 decades of recording they have produced a large volume of material. My wife is a huge Take That fan, but aside from them producing fewer albums, she has never really liked an artist to try and get all their stuff. Rockers are a different breed though, and the music is of a quality that in years to come I hope my kids will buy their own copies, or download, or mentally plug in to AC/DC's Back in Black.

Long Live Rock and Roll.

Rolling Home

The pie man has, temporarily, become a road commuter.

Due to my impending child situation I am shunning my usual 1hr 30 mins each way train journey in favour of a 1hr (Give or take) car drive. This is largely to allow me a quick return home should my young be in danger of spawning.

So, here are my first impressions of car vs train on a regular commute.

I actually prefer the train. In sheer practicality, the car is the winner, it gets me home around 3o mins faster and allows me about 15 mins more sleep in the mornings. I am also technically travelling for the full hour not waiting at platforms. Overall I should really be bigging up the car. After all, its my own box, I don't need to cope with someone trying to take up more than their share of the seat next to me, I can listen to whatever i want on the stereo without headphones and control the temperature as much as an elderly Renault Clio will allow. Some may ask, why would I give this up to sit on crowded trains with all the irritating fellow members of the human race?

There are several reasons why I prefer the train. While the trip is longer the amount of effort I actually have to make is minimal, I can read the Metro, or a book while doing my hour and a half commute. In the car, I'm driving. In fact I'm driving even when I'm stuck in the inevitable queues that form when driving on the M8 through Glasgow to motherwell, surely one of the most poorly designed stretches of motorway in Britain. And this is the crux of the matter. On a train all the idiot fellow commuters are soft human lumps like me. We are all in the same can, and occasionally you see great acts of kindness and decency that almost give you hope as a species. On the road the same idiots (obviously not the exact same idiots) have been given a death box to practice their idiocy in, so instead of their selfishness and stupidity merely being an annoyance, it is now endangering my life. Ok I exaggerate a little but really, even with the bottlenecks speed changes and the like a Motorway should only grind to a halt if it is actually closed. The reason it stops is because of poor driving, such as the following examples.

1. Phantom Jam. This is a recorded phenomenon. It is caused by breaking, not any breaking, but tailgaters breaking. See if someone is not leaving a decent space, they ted to be a bit punchy on their breaks when the car in front starts to slow down (Sometimes wheather it breaks or not) This usually means they loose more speed than they should have trying to match the car in front, this causes a domino effect that can bring traffic behind to a standstill.

2. Lane Skipping. Often caused by phantom jams, but happens anywhere where all lanes are slow moving traffic queues. You always have captain impatient who is sure the other stream of traffic is moving faster, so he'll switch lanes. In slow traffic this means stopping his lane and the one he's trying to get into in order to change. With one car its an embuggerance, but there is never just one. This is why lanes seem to take turns in changing speed. If everyone stuck to their lane in a traffic queue it would flow, slowly but flow, but because we have idiots jumping for the greener grass on the other side of the fence that lane has more cars, and slows down, while the lane beside has fewer, and so appears to be going faster, so what do they do, change again. Next time you're stuck on the M8 look for a distinctive vehicle, a van or something. You'll pass it, it will pass you, you'll pass it again. Basically you both get to the end of the jam at roughly the same time.

3. Queue jumpers. The M8 is really bad for this, due to its poor design around charing Cross, incidentally its main black spot, it has ample opportunity form people to try and skip the queue as the motorway temporarily expands to three lanes. Now, for the first stretch it is technically a 3 lane motorway, however in reality it is just a slip road, Eastbound leading to cathedral, and westbound to charing cross, if you needed to overtake in normal traffic, fair enough, but when the traffic is one big queue all you're doing is jumping, and causing more holdups as you try and squeeze back in to the traffic further up. Westbound I've actually seen the cars in the slip road held up by some selfish moron who has waited until just before where the road splits to attempt to merge back in. He's stationary beeping at the understandably irritated drivers who don't want him to profit form queue jumping, and the drivers behind him wish he'd take it like a man and go through charing cross, admitting that he couldn't beat the traffic this time.

See, morons but with way more power.

Cost wise, at base its a tough calculation. My work pays for half my train fares, but assuming they didn't.

Travel from Home to Motherwell costs (Using Monthly passes) around £150 per month, calling a month 4 weeks that's £38 per week approx.

The tank on the smaller car costs around £40 to fill up and gives me around 350 miles. Round trip for work is 66 miles a day meaning I should technically have to fill up once a week. So this actually looks like it's only £2 more expensive per week to knock over an hour from my total round trip commute. Ok it adds up to £104 per year, but then that's over 52hrs of my time, or over 2 days not spent travelling. Only problem with this sort of calculation is that it doesn't take into account the true cost of the car.

If we go with one car, the Big one, costs more to fill but gets more from it, it also needs road tax, which with a 2 litre Diesel engine is only going to increase. It also need insured, and I cannot guarantee exclusive use because there will come a point where my wife gets sick of taking our soon to be born baby on the bus. Still disregarding those factors, adding in Road tax, Insurance and servicing, we're talking adding around £500 per year, now including that in my travel costs is arguable, as we'd be keeping the car anyway. But keeping the small car it is at least £300 per year assuming the elderly car doesn't break.

I'll stay on the train.

Bring the Fun

We're still early into the new US TV, so early that series like Lost and BSG are yet to start. However, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, there is a far greater variety of SF on offer. This post is about how some series are having more fun.

The Fun benchmark has recently been reset with ABC Family's superlative effort The Middleman. While I'm not sure of its actual success it has had some very positive critical reaction. For those not in the know this series barely avoided being buried completely, and has largely been promoted through word of mouth. It concerns the life of struggling artist Wendy "Dubby" Watson, who gets hired by a mysterious agency to train as an assistant to the Mysterious Middleman, with the help of grumpy robot Ida they fight all manner of bizarre evil, from alien boybands and gangs of lucho libre wrestlers to trout craving zombies and Gangster Gorillas. Its loaded with references to other series, comics, films etc and has a sharp bonkers sense of humour, from insisting on using TV's Stock scream at least once per episode (SO much so that I chuckle every time i hear it in other series) to the bizarre location and time references at the start of each scene. It is a Joy and while only 12 episodes long is well worth your bandwidth (Or your money if you happen to run a TV network).

Now, not Even Pushing Daises (Season 2 coming soon) is as daft and pure fun as middleman, but there are a few other series which at least have more of a sense of humour. We will be getting Both Chuck and Reaper back at some point along with Season 2 of Pushing Daises. (Ok I could be wrong about reaper) but it is nice to see they avoided the axe that looked certain after the writers strike.

Finally, and another new series, only 3 episodes in, is the new, re-vamped Knight Rider.

The pilot of this was promising, although did commit the cardinal sin of having the car being out of use for a fair chunk of its length. The series has made some tweaks, Most striking are KITT's transforming abilities, in the pilot he changed colour and had a near imperceptible high speed mode. Taking criticism for not being able to distinguish modes he has been given the ability to transform into a truck (Ford, Nacth) and a "Battle Mode" which I like the idea of a little more than some elements of the execution. Other additions are a larger supporting cast and a fixed base with repair and technicians, as well as the Hercules plane we saw in the pilot. So impressions. For the most part the series is good, episodic fun action TV. Essentially each week, much like the original series, Michael Knight (Changed from Mike Traceur in the pilot) and KITT are sent on missions by the Knight Foundation, or Knight Research as it is now. Missions inevitably involve Action, so fast driving, gunfights and spy type malarkey. In fact this series is higher on its Bond type antics than its predecessor, so they infiltrate buildings, use gadgets and do undercover work. There also is usually an excuse to look at women in Bikinis. There are underlying sub-plots, such as Mike's relationship with Sarah, KITT's ability to learn and act on his own, and his secret black ops past which even he can't remember. In truth it's been enjoyable so far, and will be fine in my book if it sticks to its fun action series, rather than getting bogged down with arc plots.

In fact Both Knight Rider and Middleman would not look out of place in the Saturday late afternoon/teatime slot that Hercules the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess occupied in the late '90s, or indeed as Knight Rider and its contemporaries occupied in the 80s. And this is a good thing as the current SF crop isn't always that family friendly or indeed nice to new watchers, and so a couple of decent action fun series could be just what the doctor ordered, particular in the coming year when he won't be about as much.

CUT!

The world is unfair. So, War Machine is heading up Iron Man, and I miss the issue. But worse, doing my sums when his solo series returns, I'll have a kid to worry about. Why couldn't this have been done 5 years ago when I had fewer responsibilities.

Still, with any luck I may still track down the issue in question, and will hopefully catch the rest, and be able to continue collecting as my child grows up. However it has brought to me how willing i am to cut comics now.

5 Years ago it was different, I was buying loads of the damn things, with a larger disposable income I was able to pick up something on a whim or follow a big event through all its tie ins. Now, a monthly has to fight for its place, and when something new appears, everything I'm collecting is in danger of being shunted.

I actually consider this a good thing. If a comic isn't holding my interest what message am I sending still collecting it. while i am only one man it should at least drop hints to the powers that be that their output is substandard. In fact Brand new day could have been called a failure of fans had put their money where their mouth was and not bought it, or as was also suggested, bought Spider-Girl and Spider-Man loves Mary Jane instead. Indeed, I've dropped Punisher War Journal because, well frankly, It wasn't very good, I dropped the Transformers and Battlestar Galactica titles because of inconsistency in issues even making the stands let alone being on time.

So, as of now, I thought I'd list titles that are living on borrowed time. Obviously they don't include Limited series.

The Shoogly Nail list is as follows

Captain America - Probably not that shaky to be honest, but it is starting a new arc and so anything could happen
Iron Man: Director of SHIELD - Its never really found its feet. Now the War Machine Arc is good and It will definitely at least get its next story, but from then, we'll see. Shame as the Annual last year was excellent and in fact a good example of how that title should be done.
New Avengers - Always Mighty's poorer cousin but Bendis's baby. This will be hit hard by the fallout from SI so Ill give it a chance.
Mighty Avengers - This was actually the better one, shame it was beset by delays which mean its never really had a chance to bed in. The whole Avengers franchise should be fluid until SI is over, I just hope we still have The initiative.
Punisher - The new guy isn't bad, but Garth Ennis leaves big shoes. Will give him this story and perhaps the next.

So, be warned Marvel, your promise of another Avengers title and anything that looks good could hasten the demise of these, and there are some which could yet make this list.

An Appeal to the US Voter

Dear US voters,

I know none of you read this blog, since I know only one person reads this (Hi) but I'm making an appeal to you anyway.

To us in Britain, your election seems to have been going on for years. I know those were the candidate selections, and it still baffles me that you have a system where people in the same party sling muck at each other, only to then have to support whoever was the victor. But different strokes and all that, after all we don't technically elect any of our heads of state.

Still, should you care, please, for the love of gods don't vote republican. Its not that I have too many issues with John McCain, its the party in general (Lets face it, they've made a balls of things so far) and more specifically Sarah Palin. She scares me, a lot. Not because I have a problem with women in power, quite the opposite, in fact if the democrats had gone a different way I'd have thought a Clinton/Obama ticket could do great things (More on that a little later). No, a woman who makes GW Bush look like a progressive liberal being one heart attack away from running the most powerful country in the world, have you any idea how dangerous that is?

And what is wrong with Obama, Is it because his middle name is Hussein? Is it because for some reason you seem to have got it into your heads that he is a Muslim? Or is it, in the words of Ali G, because he is black? And if the answer to any of these questions is yes, What the hell is wrong with your people. If I got to pick a leader, I'd pick the person most suited to the job, regardless of race, colour, creed, faith or shoe size. Hey, Sarah Palin hunts. We share the same hobbies, and that's your reason to vote for someone, should I vote Tory because one time leadership challenger John Redwood was a Trekkie? In fact should I ignore all the parties views on different subjects and vote for someone purely on their taste in TV and if they play City of Heroes. I can see it now. Yes, I find David Cameron smug and annoying and could never bring myself to vote for his party, but we did a safeguard mission last night and he was a really good tank.

Now despite the fact that it probably means Tory rule, I'm happy that people in the UK probably won't vote Labour next election, in fact unless Boris does something spectacularly dumb the Tories have it in the bag. SO why would you still vote republican after the kicking they've given your country, because John McCain got shot down a lot, because Sarah Palin is a family obsessed nut redneck like yourself. For once vote with your damn head, you might grow as a person.

Love and Hugs

Pie Man

A mini rant on Fog Lights

It was a wet morning today on my drive in, and I have one message for motorists, and no it isn't slow down you maniacs, you'll kill us all.

It is Turn off your God Damn fog lights, note the name, they are not Rain Lights, not Night lights, they are there for fog and like your car insurance, you are not being conned if you don't even use it.

And for those who say the front fogs make the car look cool,

1. Get the hell off my road, a red scanner on the front makes any car look cool but its not allowed, if you want to look cool buy something better than a bloody Rover.

2. It doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look like an idiot who doesn't know what his foglights are for.

In fact, I propose front foglights only be given to people who can prove they can use them responsibly. Or the police pull over anyone driving with foglights on in an inappropriate situation, sure sign they'll be a dangerous driver.

Pie Man's Work Lexicon #1 - Short Range Accounting

A little idea, given an optimistic number so as, like flora and fauna of roads I may continue it beyond #1.

Short Range Accounting - Where huge costs and inconvenience are incurred for short term savings.

An example of this comes from when my work was more clerical based. Our department clearly had too few staff for the volume of work. Sometimes this was covered by Temps and sometimes by Overtime. However how this happened was absurd. So we'd be working a few OT shifts here and there and the call would come from on high "Your overtime bill is too High, all OT is banned" very well, says my boss, how does the work get done "Hire a Temp" replies boss. A few months down the line "Our temps costs are too high, dismiss all temps" comes from on high, once again my boss asks how work will be done, "Overtime" replies boss. A few months pass and once again "Your overtime bill is too high...."

There is an obvious solution to this problem that was mooted by my boss of the time, Hire more full time staff. This was dismissed on grounds of cost.

Short range accountancy is practiced by poor managers and over-zealous accountants who are too focused on the costs of their specific sphere of influence or costs over the short term to worry about such things as long term costs, other people's budgets or practicality. Its a practice that people should be stamping out, but in the world of performance statistics and "Goals" these figures mean more than actual useful work. In short by people who have no interest in the Big picture unless it means they can sack someone or not hire someone by referring to "The Big Picture"

This can also extend to equipment. Most companies will use the cheapest kit available, because it looks good. "Why yes, we are paying 80 pence less per widget using these new ones." Of course these new widgets are 3 times less effective and wear out 4 times as fast, meaning your yearly widget costs are higher and costs of widget installation and failure are increased as well, but it can't be the cheap widgets. I'd penalise the staff, they're doing something wrong.

A Load of Bankers

Well, financial meltdown is Here. And it looks like the honest taxpayer will have to foot the bill.

Question time last night was interesting (of what I saw at any rate) and had a good speech by Chuck "Lib Dems when they were popular" Kennedy where he basically said "Yes, it sucks that we have to bail out the banks. (Oh Lib-Dems, you fools, your lust for power robbed you of your chance at opposition. Compare him and Nick Clegg, pah, but that's a different rant) It really bugs me that, in order to keep money moving and everything else running we have to bail out millionaires who have cocked the whole thing up" and I agree with him mostly on this.

However, what I cannot forgive is how badly this has been handled by the current government. I've heard many reasons about how we got into this state but here's my unqualified and unfocused rant of the major factors.

All was going well, perhaps too well, sadly banks from the very top to the very bottom thought that the astronomical rise in house prices and mortgages combined with low interest rates couldn't end. Some may have known but largely the housing crash came from believing their own line of BS. Problems were showing when houses became so expensive that first time buyers dried up. See housing is like a chain, sort of. If you own a house, and want a better one, you have to also sell your house. Problem is that people start expecting more, as do estate agents etc. end of the day the first link, namely the first time buyer, couldn't get on, and so sales stall (I do realise its more complicated than this) sadly many of the banks, particularly the ex-building societies like Halifax, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, relied quite heavily on mortgages. This slowdown adversely affected their prices.

However this was not all, there were also these City Traders, bankers etc, who swore blind that if left free of regulation they wouldn't do legal, but underhand things that may ruin the economy for short term gain. They of course did, as the type of person who becomes a stock trader is usually a vicious killing machine in a suit with a very flimsy ethical code and as a result needs to be watched like a hawk as to them, ruining an economy is collateral damage.

However, the real damage, at least in the UK, which I believe could have lessened the effects over here, was to bail out Northern Rock. It sent the wrong message, it told every CEO of banks, and city trader that they could take the big punts on other peoples money, because the Government would cover their behinds. I'd have let Northern rock go bankrupt, made sure all savings were protected, but let it go and have its assets bought by whoever wants them. Then used its fall as a reason to regulate the financial sector more heavilly. The shock that there was no safety net may have been enough to save HBOS or Bradford and bingly.

Of course if we're bringing in new legislation, then I'd like a few other caveats in, because its is frankly disgusting that the CEO of HBOS, the captain of the sunk ship, will be claiming his £2 million bonus. In the grand dictatorship of Pie Man, the pot with his Bonus, salary etc, and those of senior board members, would be fair game should your bank go belly up. That would mean that the bill for protecting savings and paying off frontline staff would come from that, then the assets and finally the tax payer.

Finally, one more Culprit. Us, for forgetting that this happened before and can happen again, for believing that there is any sort of Risk free investment. Seriously, I'm an HBOS shareholder, if I'd really wanted the cash from those shares, I'd have sold them. High. Someone was saying that their shares had dropped from £14 a share to less than £2 and that this had impacted on their nesteg. Well yes, but that's what shares do. They go up and down, and can become worthless.

Similarly the thing people kept saying during the property boom was "You never loose money on property" which is plum bollocks. You can pay too much for a property. What you won't loose out on is if you buy a home. Because if you have a home you can live in it, and keep living in it until the market reaches a stage where you cans ell it on and hopefully have enough put by to buy a better one when required. Yes, its common sense, unless you can play the market or run a bank, there are no fast bucks. The less you look for them the more stable you'll be.