Me

So this morning, my wife got a flat tire. We exchanged cars, and she continued on her way to work in my pickup. I went to the tire store, they told me the hole was irreparable, so I told them to replace the front tires while I went next door for breakfast. $300 later, I went to her work to again exchange cars. I needed my truck to run an errand to Home Depot to haul some supplies home.

I found that the teacher’s lot is blocked by traffic cones, presumably to keep students from parking there. I moved ONE cone to get into the lot and exchange cars, with the intent of putting the cone back where it come from on my way out. I parked her car, and as I was getting out, I was met by the head of school security, whose first words were: “You are going to put that cone back, right?”

Me: “Well, yes. I was going to get it on my way out. I am swapping cars with my wife.”

He then went on about how much time it takes to set up the cones each day, and how I am making his job harder. Note that at no point did he seem to care that I was a person unknown to him on school campus during the day.

I was VERY polite, and I told him that I was intending on doing so. Even though I was tempted to run over 6 or 8 of those cones on the way out, I did not.

Why do security people have to be assholes? It’s like you give people a bit of authority, and they let it go directly to their heads. This is what people talk about when they talk about de-escalation. It isn’t about negotiating with knife wielding maniacs, it is about not TRYING to throw the weight of your authority around. It is about basic human decency.

There is an old saying about “An armed society is a polite society.” The truth behind that saying is caused by a balance of power. If both people involved in an interaction are on equal terms, they tend to be more polite. It is only when one feels that he has more power than they other that he feels the need to flaunt that power.

My guess here is that, if he had suspected that I was armed, he either would have been VERY nice to me, or would have run scared in order to put the school on lockdown, even though I presented no threat to him. I don’t need to push other people around in order to validate my own inadequacies.

As I said in an earlier post, we were in New Orleans on the weekend of the 11th of April. While we were there, I lost the ability to connect to my house’s electronic monitors. Then at around 8 pm, a neighbor called to tell us that the house was dark. So we called my in-laws and asked them to stop by.

The UPS that powers some of the devices in the house, including my router, was off. My FIL restarted it, rebooted everything that was connected to it, and everything appeared to be working.

Today was my first day off that I could look into it. Reviewing security footage, it appears like my house was struck by lightning for the third time in the past four years. We were hit in July of 2018, which cost us a security camera, a weather station, and a couple of arc plugs. Then I was hit in July of 2019, which cost me my personal weather station, the video driver for the surveillance camera DVR, a cable TV box, and a wireless HDMI transmitter. My neighbor had a hole blown in his roof.

It seems like weather related damage is the bane of this house’s existence. In 2017, I lost a UPS and some electronic devices during Hurricane Irma, and last year, we had a minor electrical fire that necessitated about $1,000 in repairs.

So far, it looks like the strike from last week cost me very little- but it is annoying. The hygrometer on my weather station has been stuck at 99 percent humidity since the strike. That station is less than a year old and under warranty. I just have to decide if it is worth a trip on to the roof.

The weather station is vulnerable because it is on top of a mast that is mounted on the roof- highest point on the house, you know. I am really considering some lightning rods.

Incidentally, we have had more than 7 inches of rain in the past 10 days. There were 4 inches last weekend, we have had another 3 inches plus since Friday, and it is still raining.

My new job sees me working 12 hours a day, so blogging has suffered a bit. I am still getting used to my 7am-7pm shift.

Anyhow, back to blogging.

As of 1600 today, I am no longer a teacher. I start my new job on Monday morning.

This is the sort of thing that creates friction between my wife and I. She is from New York state, not the city. People from NYC have this sort of attitude:

“The main problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida,” said Jason Mudrick, “New York has the smartest, most driven people, the best culture, the best restaurants and the best theaters. Anyone moving to Florida to save a little money loses out on all of that.”

I express the opinion that New Yorkers are arrogant douchebags, then she gets insulted. I just get tired of the “everyone who isn’t from NYC is an ignorant, uneducated redneck” kind of attitude. Upstate people are fine, but NYC people are horrible.

Remember when I said that I fell from a moving golf cart, and how my leg had swollen to double its normal size? This is what it looks like this morning: