CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Thanksgiving 2009

WARNING: This blog post, like a good Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, is long — over-filling and, while enter­tain­ing — could leave you ready to pass out.  Pace yourself.

———–

Well, this year, Kathy’s brother moved to Blaine, in the North­ern part of the state, just by the bor­der — so being the pos­ses­sors of a new home, they played the trump card and every­one went there (for the record, it’s a lovely home).

Well, Blaine is far away, and on the other side of the water.  That’s a bit of a non-starter for ferry traf­fic, so we planned ahead.  I took the car into the office on Wednes­day, and traded off park­ing cards with Chris so I could leave the car there overnight.  Kathy, in prepa­ra­tion for this, packed our car with clothes, since our plan was to head from Blaine down to her folks on Whid­bey Island for the week­end.  So on a quiet after­noon on Wednes­day, I dropped of the car full of clothes and caught the 4:40 home.  Piece of cake.

Hap­pily, a by-product of not host­ing Thanks­giv­ing is that you don’t have to cook any­thing — so Kathy cheer­ily tossed of a quick mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat), but was oth­er­wise unburdened.

Since we raise chick­ens, we must always deal with the rooster.  Nor­mally, we have some neigh­bor kids come over, feed the chick­ens, and close the door to the chicken house at night so the neigh­bors won’t go nuts from the noise; unfor­tu­nately, this year we weren’t able to find any chicken sit­ters, so we needed to take our rooster, named Eagle, along with us.

So, late Wednes­day night, we’re pretty much kicked back, ready to go.  I tend to have insom­nia, so I stayed up a lit­tle late (around 3AM).  Wasn’t ter­ri­ble, just sat around read­ing.  No wor­ries.  I left a note for Kathy that I’d gone to bed late, and all was well.

Thanks­giv­ing day morn­ing — hnh… it’s kinda quiet.  That’s odd.  I’ll sleep a bit more, no big deal, Kathy’s up — all is well.  My clock prob­a­bly says some­thing, but I don’t want to raise my head to see…

Kathy comes in, “Honey, it’s 9:40, you should get up — we need to make the 10:25 ferry.”

Umm… what?  That’s like 45 min­utes from now … arg.  Ok — brain to eyes, open please.

So, I get out of bed (a process that takes about 5 min­utes on its own) and head into the fam­ily room to chat with Kathy.

“Honey, I’m not see­ing us mak­ing the 10:25 — we usu­ally need an hour to get up and ready, no?“
“Oh,”, she said, “I thought that was enough time.  Oh well — we can take the 11:30… can’t we try for the 10:25?”

Star­ing bleakly into my cup of tea, I cal­cu­late whether I can mad-dash the shower, cloth­ing, break­fast tea, and make it a quarter-mile to the ferry in about 30 min­utes.  Expec­tant eyes are watch­ing me.  Drat.

“Umm… ok — well — let me try to get going here — I’ll … sure … let’s give it a try.”

So I head to the shower and we go into “mad dash” morn­ing mode.

You see, we already have a method­ol­ogy in our lives.  Liv­ing so close to a ferry has its perks.  One of those is that you can play the Indi­ana Jones game of get­ting onto the boat under the wire.  In the last three years, we’ve boiled it down to a sci­ence.  Usu­ally, it’s just about get­ting me to the ferry on time, so it involves me show­er­ing and get­ting dressed (no shoes) while Kathy packs my bag and brings the car around front.  I then race to grab shoes and socks, pop my feet into slip­pers and leap into the car untucked and unshod, at which point Kathy peels out down the dri­ve­way.  I always get the seat­belt on before we hit the actual road, and then go about throw­ing on my socks and shoes while she heads the quarter-mile to the ferry.  By the time we reach there, I’m wear­ing shoes, bag in hand, kiss and a wave — and I’m off down the gang­plank at high-speed to make the boat.

Usu­ally, we trig­ger that process either by me yelling, “Honey, I’m run­ning!” — which is code for “uh oh, short on ferry time” … or, after so many years, we just know.

So here, this Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing, we just knew.  I called out to Kathy while I was get­ting ready.

“Honey, with only 15 min­utes left, you should take the kids now — I’ll race out after you — we might make it.  If we don’t, we’ll just wait for the next one.”

So Kathy raced around the house, grabbed kids, threw jack­ets on them, tucked the mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat) under her arm, stuffed the rooster into a cat car­rier and headed off to the boat.  Mean­while, my brain is ask­ing me — “Hey, weren’t we asleep about 10 min­utes ago?  Why am I in the shower?”

Quick shower, cloth­ing and shoes (we’re lit­er­ally run­ning this time, mind you — no car) … and I’m out the door.

As I head up the road, some friends wave from their car — full of chip­per and joy.

Grunt and smile is about all I can offer in return.

A few more mad paces and I make it to the ferry ter­mi­nal, where Kathy and the kids are stand­ing wait­ing for me.  We head onto the boat and “phew!” — sit down (pant pant pant).

A few min­utes later, or less, the ferry takes off… a process that does not please Eagle (the rooster).

I guess there’s not much nat­ural occur­rence of the floor start­ing to vibrate dra­mat­i­cally and then move in the world of a chicken.  He started cluck­ing quite tersely — much to the amuse­ment of the peo­ple around us.

“Is that a chicken?  I thought it was your ring­tone — ha!” … and so on.  Yep, we’re the Meads and we’re trav­el­ing on Thanks­giv­ing — of course we have a chicken in a cat car­rier — doesn’t everyone?

I threw my coat over Eagle, which calmed him down and the rest of the trip was rel­a­tively unevent­ful.  Get­ting to the other side, we headed for a taxi — run­ning the gaunt­let of un-insured motorists who want to drive us for less (“my friend, my friend…”) — get­ting to a yel­low cab and telling him to take us to the Westin Building.

“Is that a chicken?“
“Yes, yes it is.“
“Ha.  Ok.”

I noticed him sur­rep­ti­tiously putting away what seemed to be a holy book — so I asked him what it was.  He care­fully admit­ted it was the Qu’ran.  I told him we’re Chris­tians and we had a highly sig­nif­i­cant mean­ing­less talk as we drove down 4th Avenue right through the mid­dle of a car acci­dent (every­one seemed to be ok, but the cars were trashed — I shouted out the win­dow and they all said they’d called 911 already) — we dis­cussed being reli­gious peo­ple in gen­eral … well, actu­ally, I dis­cussed it.  My Mus­lim friend wasn’t really the talk­a­tive sort.

Finally, we rolled up on the Westin Build­ing — the fam­ily (with rooster and mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat)) piled out of the car, and I leaned in to give him a tip.  I had it on my heart, so I said, “Inshal­lah, God Bless you.”  He finally smiled a big smile and said thank you.  I told him I hope for Peace some­time for every­body and waved goodbye.

So, from there, we got in the car, threw the rooster in the back, and headed on our way.  The kids read books, played games on my iPhone and their DSs, while I read my Kin­dle.  We’re a dig­i­tal family.

At exit 274, we saw a sign that said “Cana­dian Bor­der — 3/4 miles”.  Well — since the kids have been to so many places on earth (includ­ing Africa, Europe, and South Amer­ica), they’ve often com­mented that they’d like to just get to Canada and add that to their list.

Since din­ner started at 4pm, we opted to just head on up there — get through, turn around and get to din­ner — we had about half an hour or so — no prob­lem.  Fun!

We rolled up to the very not-happy woman in the booth and handed over our driver’s licenses — she asked what we were doing.  We explained that we were just headed in for a minute and then turn­ing around.  That didn’t seem to be a plea­sur­able thought for her.

You see — the last time I went through the bor­der was a long time ago — and the thought police hadn’t taken over the bor­der yet.  You could just drive up — show you’re an Amer­i­can — and get through.  Nowa­days, the same geniuses that bring you the Amer­i­can air­port sys­tem have taken over this bor­der.  So Ms. Happy pointed us to “park­ing slot 5″ where “some­one would help us further.”

Oh crap.  This was a huge mistake.

We rolled into “park­ing slot 5″, prepar­ing to explain that we only wanted to get to Canada for a sec–

“Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, please?“
We handed over our driver’s licenses.
“Do you have pass­ports?“
“Umm — no?  You see — we only wanted to –“
“How old are the chil­dren?“
“8 and 12.“
“Do they have iden­ti­fi­ca­tion?“
“No, mein f… I mean — no.” (no, I didn’t really say that)
“Please step out of the car and go into that build­ing to Counter B, they’ll ‘help’ you there.“
“Umm — it’s Thanks­giv­ing — we only wanted to go into Canada so our kids could say they’d been there.  How long will this take?“
“It’ll take as long as it takes.”

And that, my friend is:

a) why you work on a bor­der on hol­i­days
b) why it’s time for the joke to be over in Wash­ing­ton DC
c) why I was now sum­mar­ily ticked off

Some­where around this time, I real­ized we had live­stock in the car… that’s not good, is it?

We walked into the nice shiny build­ing.  I acti­vated ever per­sonal manip­u­la­tion tool in my arse­nal… start­ing with the “dis­tance com­plain­ing.”  This would be the one where you walk in — grous­ing and grum­bling (and using tac­tic #2, being large) — and make it clear that you’re dis­pleased about some­thing.

Then we approached “Counter B” — and I pulled out card #3 — prox­im­ity charm.  What?  Was I that guy grous­ing 20 feet away?  No — of course not, I’m this guy in front of you who’s nice and sheep­ish — would you like me to go 20 feet away again?  Of course not — let’s work together.  There were two peo­ple behind the counter — a young man and a pretty young woman.  I only men­tion that she was pretty because — well — I think the guy was workin’ it.

“Hi!”, said I, “We’re stu­pid!  We wanted to go to Canada  but we don’t have pass­ports!“
“Oh”, said the young man, “… why are you headed to Canada?“
“We’re doing it so our kids can check a box is all…“
“Oh — I thought you said they didn’t have Pass­ports?“
“What?  Oh — no — they don’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at all … it was just a fig­ure of speech.  Clearly this wasn’t a good idea at all.  We were doing it for fun.  We just wanted to be in Canada.  Also — you should know — we have a rooster in the car.”

Insert “buddy, I’m a fam­ily man, I’ve got my leg stuck in this thing — can you help a brother out” smile here.

The young man grinned and looked at some­thing on the screen.  The young woman started reach­ing around behind him to another part of the counter.

“Well,”, said he, “tech­ni­cally, you’re in Canada.”  The girl pro­duced two lit­tle keep­sake Cana­dian Flags and handed them to the kids.
“Really?  Seri­ously?  We’re here?  You hear that kids — we made it.  We’re in Canada, basi­cally.  Congratulations!”

They both looked up and smiled at me with the “Yep, you’re stu­pid, but we can tell you’re nei­ther a ter­ror­ist, nor an idiot” smiles.

“You should go and sit over there for a minute, we’ll call you back.”

We went and sat down in the chairs  and had a chance to admire Canada.  It looks pretty mil­i­taris­tic, actu­ally — very bureau­cratic — not quite what I’d expected to see since my last visit… but at least there was Cana­dian television.

Watch­ing the TV, we learned that Cana­di­ans have a prob­lem with a thing called “skin tags” … which are those nasty lit­tle strings of flesh that dan­gle from you like spaghetti moles.  It seems that it’s legal to sell Dr. Scholl’s Skin Tag Remover in Canada — it also seems that being com­pletely grossed out is also legal in Canada.

The nice cou­ple waved us over.

“Ok.  You’re going to have to leave Canada.”, they said, smil­ing and hand­ing us back our licenses.
“Alright!“
“When you get in your car, head out to the U-turn on the left and you’ll come to a gate — from there you’ll be headed back to the states.“
“Thank you!  Happy Thanks­giv­ing!  God Bless!”

So we headed back to the car, got to the u-turn, and the young cou­ple was stand­ing there by the gate.  We drove up, they waved at us, we headed on and even­tu­ally through the gate.

I got to think­ing about that — and I think, though I can’t be sure — that they con­sulted and decided to just “throw us back” — ergo their “per­son­al­ized escort” to the return gate.  I doubt you see them com­ing from behind the desk often — so there was some soul still exist­ing at the border.

Mind you — we’ve raced to the ferry on foot, con­sulted with Mus­lims about Peace, acci­den­tally attempted to smug­gle live­stock and undoc­u­mented chil­dren across the Cana­dian bor­der — and we’re not even at Thanks­giv­ing yet.  This is what it means to be a Mead (some­where in there, we also pur­chased a bunch of teas and lattes, along with a “Grandmother’s Turkey Sand­wich” in order to have more than $15 worth of pur­chases so we could get the free CD from Star­bucks (see pre­vi­ous post regard­ing my feel­ing about the songs on that CD)).

Finally — we made it to the din­ner.  It was nice.

At one point, we trans­ferred Eagle from his cat car­rier into a larger box — he seemed to be grate­ful for that — the box went into the back of Kathy’s dad’s car.

Later, we all headed off to Kathy’s folks’ house, stoned out of our minds on turkey and gravy.  Kathy’s sis­ter and mom were in one car and headed off to Belling­ham in order to get cof­fee — we on the other hand, motored through and attempted to get more cof­fee from Star­bucks via a sign by the high­way.  We rolled up on the store and it was closed.  I amused the kids by going through the dri­vethru any­way and beg­ging the dead micro­phone to give me cof­fee.  I then rolled up to the win­dow and repeated my order.  The kids thought that was funny and laughed when I pleaded with the silent building.

Finally, we got to the house.  When Kathy’s Dad got home, we put the rooster (with box) in the garage and said good­night to him.  Then we were greeted by Kathy’s par­ents’ dog, Lucy.  She’s a giant puppy labradoo­dle that needs lov­ing and likes to put her teeth on peo­ple.  I spent a lot of time that week­end teach­ing her some obe­di­ence.  I think the fam­ily was close to giv­ing up on her — she’s a lit­tle high-strung … but I took a lit­tle time and taught her how to fetch (hav­ing been taught myself by one of the greats, Taz — the won­der dog).

So we played fetch a lot — the ladies made candy (we weren’t allowed to have any)…

That’s when the white fer­ret showed up…

Lucy had been shout­ing and yelling and we all thought it was her “reg­u­lar nature.”  But Den­nis (Kathy’s dad) went out there and saw a fer­ret — so he asked me to come help catch it.  We grabbed some gloves, I opened the door to the garage, and in ran the fer­ret — right to my feet, beg­ging to be picked up.  It was pretty cute, for a ferret.

Kathy’s mom was hav­ing none of it — so, as every­one does on tra­di­tional Thanks­giv­ings — we put the fer­ret in the cat car­rier that had pre­vi­ously been hold­ing the inter­na­tion­ally fugi­tive rooster and stowed them both in the garage.  Ahhh — just like Grandma used to do.

The next day, Kathy took the rooster out to the farm so he could have a “day with the ladies” (another Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day tra­di­tion, after all), and I headed into the local neigh­bor­hood with the kids on shifts to see if we could find who owned the fer­ret (whom we’d named “Critter”).

We stopped at many doors — ask­ing “are you miss­ing a pet?”  Most peo­ple responded no, though a few were col­or­ful.  One lady told me that she wasn’t miss­ing a pet, but that there was a frog loose some­where in her house (belonged to her kid).  Another lady asked her younger daugh­ter whether she knew who had fer­rets in the neigh­bor­hood — the kid said there were two houses — so we headed that way.

The first house, which had a very nice brass sign next to the door that said “Go Away” — was actu­ally pop­u­lated by a “funky/hip” young fam­ily who did have fer­rets, but (hang on — let me check … nope) weren’t miss­ing any.  The (father?) offered to take the fer­ret if we couldn’t find a home, which was helpful.

We headed off to the last house on the last street of the neigh­bor­hood (I was very grate­ful to have kids with me, so I wasn’t some creepy dude walk­ing up to doors and ask­ing “are you miss­ing a fer­ret?”) … and a lit­tle girl answered.

“Are you miss­ing a fer­ret?“
“Yes!”, she said as her father appeared at the door.
“Oh great — what color is it?“
“Umm… black — with a lit­tle bit of white?“
“Oh.  Not white?“
“Nope.“
“Oh.  Ok — this isn’t your ferret.”

So, pre­sum­ably, the neigh­bor­hood is crawl­ing with rov­ing gangs of fer­rets — prob­a­bly look­ing for ille­gal alien chick­ens to roust and sell on the black market.

We did even­tu­ally find the ferret’s home — it was across the street.  There was a man vis­it­ing his “ex-girlfriend” and, as he put it “some­one” opened the door to smoke — and the fer­ret got out.  It’s name was Wiley.  I think he was happy to retrieve it.  Per­haps hop­ing to “de-ex” the girl­friend by return­ing her lost fer­ret? (another Thanks­giv­ing tradition).

Well — after an unevent­ful day of read­ing about ultra-runners on my Kin­dle (they run 100 mile trails for fun, it would seem), we all finally piled back into the car and made it home with­out much fur­ther incident.

Another Thanks­giv­ing full of dishes that can’t be beat and Hol­i­day traditions.

Can’t wait until Christmas.

Malcolm (mgmead),

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled "WARNING: Goof-Off destroys Magic Mouse surface," because it contained the following:

Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints

We are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.

Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa We encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use. 

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As part of submitting feedback, please read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy linked to the feedback page. 

Kind regards,

Apple Discussions staff

++++++++++

A copy of your message:

So, I purchased this little "odor eater" shaped mouse and took it home. I would have purchased the wireless Mighty Mouse, but that's been discontinued for this failure.

The packaging involves a large piece of tape on the bottom, which - by all accounts, leaves a big blob of sticky mess all over the bottom of the mouse, thick, and goopy, not the kind of thing you can "rub off" with your finger.

Since I have experience removing thick, sticky tape residue from Apple products (I bought an iMac that had the notorious stickum all over its metal bezel on unpacking), I went and grabbed the Goof-Off bottle.

In the process of cleaning that off, my wife (who was helping) got a little on the acrylic top, thus removing the surface gloss completely, forever.

This all happened before I'd ever used it.

1 - don't clean the goop with a goop remover ... I guess you should just put on a black turtleneck and sneer at it for a while and the stickum will just slink off for being uncool?

2 - think five times before buying this thing. If you have large hands (i.e. you are a man), this is a puny mouse, all reports are that the "gestures" are difficult and unpleasant, and this thing costs a boatload of money

Pathetic. ... oh, I'm sorry ... I meant "cool" -- I'm a Mac. 

This message is sent from a send-only email account. Any replies sent to this address are deleted automatically by the system.

Slow walkers, bad drivers

So, as I find myself sit­ting parked at a green light behind a North­west dri­ver, I thought I’d take the free time I have to blog about the experience.

While I do admit I am prej­u­diced towards that spe­cial clan of peo­ple who get into cars for the sake of trav­el­ing to a des­ti­na­tion faster, I must say that I might also have a few gen­eral obser­va­tions to share for all you peo­ple in this area who move your lips while you drive or walk.  I will call them Malcolm’s Rules for Mov­ing, in the hopes that you will take them seri­ously and learn them.  They apply to either dri­ving or walk­ing — but some­times may apply to both:

Rule #1: you will not miss a hole big enough to fit your car
If you are park­ing, please avoid dri­ving slower than a grandma push­ing a cart­load of cat­food.  I know that you are likely attempt­ing to ensure that you will be able to see the mys­te­ri­ously hid­den park­ing space, for fear that per­haps rac­ing by at 4 miles an hour instead of 2 might have that 10 foot x 6 foot hole whiz by too fast.  You will not miss it.

[I have two the­o­ries for why this occurs; the first is because the peo­ple who do this are descended from hunters, who need to sneak up on their prey before blow­ing a hole through it, and thus have inher­ited some genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to “stalk­ing” that park­ing space.  The other the­ory is that per­haps they feel that the only way to be sure there actu­ally is a car in the space is to read the license plate — and since most of them license plates don’t spell out no real words — they get con­fused. –Ed.]

Rule #2: As we merge, you do not “win” by cut­ting in front of me… we all lose
Here’s a drill — take your left foot and put it out in front of you.  Now, care­fully, take your right foot and swing it out beyond your left foot.  Got it?  Good.  Now … one more time, swing your left foot past your right foot — care­ful, don’t get lost in that.  Here on Earth, we call that walk­ing.  It’s also called alter­na­tion.  That’s not a spe­cial place for peo­ple who change their dogs, it’s a word that means, first this side, then that side, then this side again! If you can WALK, you can alter­nate merge.  That would be the one where I go, then you go, then I go, then you go.  You see, if my left foot tries to “win” by pass­ing my right foot, I fall down.  That’s called a traf­fic jam.

Rule #3: I am nei­ther a mur­derer, nor a sui­ci­dal psy­chopath, carry on
When you and I approach an inter­sec­tion, I will actu­ally apply the rules of the road con­sis­tently, pri­mar­ily because I too, want to live.  Yes, I know that you have had at least fif­teen other near-death expe­ri­ences of peo­ple sud­denly rac­ing their cars into your side door while chant­ing to music by AC/DC — but I am not any of those peo­ple — I sim­ply would like you to get through the inter­sec­tion swiftly.  Please do not slow down to a crawl because I am near you, please do not sud­denly drive as if I am ready to kill us all.  Just go through the inter­sec­tion smartly (that means fast, but safe).  I promise not to mur­der you with my car.

Rule #4: Blinky light means “here I come“
If your glove box holds any­thing besides empty smoke car­tons and expired reg­is­tra­tion slips — it will likely have a man­ual in there.  This book is the strange device that they dis­trib­ute with new cars that explains how to use them in a rudi­men­tary way.  Please turn to page 38, which is enti­tled The Dash­board and Steer­ing Wheel.  You’ll notice in this sec­tion that there is a draw­ing of a steer­ing wheel — after your mouth has stopped mov­ing, you’ll also notice that the draw­ing is iden­ti­cal to your steer­ing wheel.  See that thing marked “#12″?  What’s it called?  That’s right — it’s called the turn indi­ca­tor.  It is not a turn requester.

When you use that device, it indi­cates that you are prepar­ing to turn in front of me, or merge into my lane.  I will see it, because when you use it, blinky lights go off out­side your car (no, you can’t see it in action while you are dri­ving — they are made by the same peo­ple who turn the light off in the fridge).  When you use this turn indi­ca­tor I will not mur­der you, please come into my lane smartly (that still means fast, but safe).  Do not use the next mile to do so — smartly would indi­cate doing so within a count of 10 or less.

Now, when I use the turn indi­ca­tor, I am telling you that I am com­ing into your lane — I am not request­ing your per­mis­sion to come in, nor am I related to your boss, ex-wife, neigh­bor, the gov­ern­ment, or the lit­tle aliens that live behind your toaster, so you do not need to pun­ish me — I sim­ply am telling you that it’s hap­pen­ing, and it’s hap­pen­ing now; please do not attempt to prove your con­trol and prowess by “dis­al­low­ing” me access to the road that I, like you, have pur­chased through the state.  I promise that when I have com­pleted my lane change, I will not secretly cackle at my supe­ri­or­ity over you because I am ahead of you.

Rule #5: When walk­ing, there are peo­ple behind you, and some­times even to your sides
I am aware that alter­na­tion requires con­cen­tra­tion, and as such, while you walk you aren’t able to spend much of what’s left of your brain stem keep­ing aware of your sur­round­ings — but, I need you to rec­og­nize that it’s very pos­si­ble, espe­cially in crowded places, that there are other peo­ple around.

This means that when you seek to do some­thing like stop, turn, or whip around com­pletely — it would be good to turn your head, just slightly to see if there is some­one walk­ing behind you, or next to you.  This is espe­cially impor­tant at cross-walks, which are usu­ally ded­i­cated to walk­ing, not stop­ping.  How­ever, if you are in a cross-walk and need to stop, pre­sume that the peo­ple behind you exist, and move to the side.

Here’s are a few point­ers to help with this dif­fi­cult con­cept.  First, if you hear foot­steps, or cough­ing, or breath­ing — there is a per­son behind you who is likely going to need to leap out of the way if you stop sud­denly with­out warn­ing (please note, while your car has lights, you do not).  Sec­ond, if you turn your head slightly, and the sky goes dark behind you, it’s because I am walk­ing behind you and am block­ing out the sun as I tower over you — that’s a good indi­ca­tor that you should likely either not stop, or step aside when you do, because if we col­lide, I will likely not notice it hap­pened.  Third, if you do need to stop — it might be a good idea to put a few steps into the process, instead of halt­ing like a pole-axed deer in the head­lights of an oncom­ing train.  If you slow just a bit, the per­son behind you will take that cue and walk around you.  Together, we can make a difference.

Rule #6: stroll in the woods, not on the street
I am aware that you have many things on your mind (left, right, left…), and I’m also aware that uni­corns are beau­ti­ful and rain­bows have six col­ors in them … but those sorts of thoughts are for week­ends, hol­i­days, that camp­ing trip, and maybe your own back yard … not the mid­dle of a side­walk dur­ing lunch hour.

Yes, it’s true that he has the dreami­est eyes you’ve ever seen, or that pup­pies are espe­cially cute when they’re together — but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you to slow down your stroll, and mean­der diag­o­nally across the side­walk while peo­ple with pur­pose attempt to get some­place.  If you need to have a lit­tle “me” time, do so in a park or away from the cen­ter of town.

Rule #7: Cor­re­lary: shiny things don’t gen­er­ate pre­dictabil­ity
Here’s the con­cept, which is really a cor­re­lary to Rules 5 and 6 (that means it’s related to them).  Let’s say that you’re walk­ing along with some sort of pur­pose on a crowded street, thus indi­cat­ing there are peo­ple around.  Let’s say that those peo­ple are walk­ing with pur­pose, thus indi­cat­ing that it’s a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to a down­town block dur­ing lunch hour.  In such a sit­u­a­tion — it’s is almost imper­a­tive that if you see some­thing shiny, you announce your inten­tion to turn towards it by slow­ing down.

Please, if you are walk­ing either with pur­pose or not, and you see a sale across the street all of the sud­den, please don’t sim­ply swerve your body out across my path, I may col­lide with you, and you will likely get hurt.  Just because the excit­ing thing has pierced your con­scious­ness does not mean it will leap out and warn me that you are doing a Crazy Ivan in front of me.  Please, do not make me run you over with my body… it’s ugly.

Rule #8: when in front, respond now
This is a dif­fi­cult con­cept, and I’ve even con­sid­ered mak­ing an ani­mated bill­board to teach it — but con­sider this.  If you have 5 legos, in a row, and your job is to move them a foot away, you will do so much faster if you move them all together.  If, instead, you move the first one, and then the next one, and then the next one — it will take twice as long or longer.

Now, as I fin­ish my blog because my turn is com­ing up at the green, no yel­low, now red light — let me be per­fectly clear.  The car in front must shoot off the line as soon as the light goes green — in advanced cities (like NY, LA, SF, and Chicago), the sec­ond car will move almost simul­ta­ne­ously, giv­ing a moments hes­i­ta­tion to cre­ate a safe gap between itself and the other car.  By that time, cars 3 and 4 are in motion and car five is wak­ing up to get through.  In this way, up to 10 cars can pass through lights that allow 3 in these parts.

Well, my light is get­ting ready to change (I can tell that because the lights in the other direc­tion are turn­ing yel­low), so I’m sub­mit­ting my post and I’m on my way.  Let’s make this a great big group project!  Share your own rules!  Green means go!