Today.

Today was a really good day - good enough that I started up the motorcycle and rode in to work.

It was a great morning until some arzl on my right put on his signal, looked at me in his mirror and then proceeded to move over into space that I was already occupying.  Loud air horn got me a middle finger sign.

I did not shoot him.  No pistol, and anyhow I know that that isn't a really good educational tool for such behavior, although it does tend to put a stop to it (at least for that one arzl - there are always more....)  I thought a few unkind things things about his putative parentage, moved over, and went on my way - nothing will get my goat today, it is a lovely day, warm, the bike feels good, traffic is flowing and all is right with the world.

That lasted until I got to work and discovered that everything I had set up last week to run over the weekend failed to run.  Crap - now I gotta figure out why that has to be that way..

Along the way, I discovered that our efforts to capitalize on our help desk personnel by borrowing them from sister organizations was somewhat less than satisfactory - apparently sister org teaches them to rigidly follow a procedure and ignore the caller's statements about what is going on. I managed not to become impolite, but I got pretty terse before he agreed to do what I had asked him 15 minutes earlier to do.

Soon, however, I get to go outside on the roof, get my jacket out, put on my gloves and motorcycle home - and I do look forward to it.  Great weather at least for today.  Gotta get those last rides in.  On the weekend I need to get Big Suzi over to Jack to get checked out, and then think about getting her sold.  I really don't want all that badly to ride anything that heavy any more.

The year is winding down - less than 45 days before I start writing checks with the wrong year on them again - or until I would be doing that if I wrote checks any more, which I do not. Along the way, I noted some of my classmates have been married longer than I have (I was a late starter) and some are even older, but still alive.  All too many no longer live - a consequence of the aging process, I know, but the table at the last reunion with deceased's pictures was entirely too full to suit me - some good folks that are no longer have with us.

Tomorrow I gotta get serious about recovering something that has disappeared on me (again) - to see if I can convince it to come back to life.  It seems some stuff about which I had no knowledge depends on the stuff I can no longer pull down from elsewhere, so I gotta reverse-engineer what I can find and get it working again.  Life is never dull.

Things at the home of the newlywed daughter are going ell - Big Ronnie is back to work, Little Ronnie is doing well at school, and Jessica seems to be doing well.  Once in a while things do go better than one has a right to hope.  I'll talk more about that whole circumstance at a later date - but it has been interesting to watch it grow - and I am well pleased at this point.

Once in a while, my dreams take me to strange places - back to Germany, back to an earlier day and an old flame, back to school, etc.  The past week has been full of this - someone's trying to tell me something, but I cannot imagine what it is.  If I figure it out, I guess I'll just have to write about it. Meanwhile, I have phone calls to make to check on a few folks about whom I still care.

Over my lifetime so far, I've missed out on good things because of my own insecurities and perceived limitations, and screwed up in more ways than I could have imagined existed. For all of that, life is a good place, and the regrets I have, while many, are not great enough to make me do more than occasionally wish to hunt someone down an deliver an apology that I believe to be owed. It is always good to call some people that I've not seen in years and catch up - whatever I might happen to be I owe at least part to others that I have met, experiences we have shared, and answers to questions that I would never have been able to make by myself alone.  The most valuable things are often not really mine, but things shared with another.

I think it is time for me to pack it up and to go home. Y'all take care.

Monday Morning

It's that time again -Monday Morning - start of a new week, glorious to wake up and look up and not see roots....   Also the day when all the oh-crap-I-overslept folks are on the highway trying to make up time, but succeeding only in making others miserable.  I guess you might think I had a lousy commute this morning....

You would be right - it seems all the cop's-favorite-word-type people were out - running 80 in a 55 zone, less than half a car behind the poor sap ahead of them, changing across 4 lanes with nary a signal, and putting on makeup in the process. I must confess I used a hand signal I learned overseas (no, not the 'and an upright middle finger to you' sign, the sign that says 'you're an anal sphinctre of the first degree') several times on the way to work, but not really in any more than a halfhearted manner - the energy that outrage takes isn't all that well spent, and eventually the arzls go and ply their trade on someone else and leave me alone.

I was a little late this morning, and someone was occupying my parking place again, so I just went elsewhere and became part of the problem for a change instead of wasting a lot of time trying to educate the ineducable - I parked in someone else's space, but only because I was late.

So far this morning, nothing is broken.  I have some more data to rip apart for the guy that's working on a project for the boss, but most of that code is done and just needs a little messing with.

I unpacked a new version of Clarion this morning, and will be converting everything that is currently in production to the newest version as time permits.  I also have my own version of the .NET product, and need to get busy learning about it, as I think it could be useful in the future.

Over the weekend I did something to the leg I broke so it hurt a good deal on Sunday, but it is quiet again this morning.  I was going to motorcycle this morning, but because I was late I didn't bother.  Maybe tomorrow, if I get home tonight early enough to get it out and feed it.  Tomorrow evening the Moto Guzzi arrives, and I am really looking forward to that.

The Stammtisch is meeting tonight at a saloon called Ryan's Daughter in Baltimore, and I plan on attending - see if I have improved either my accent of vocabulary since the last meeting.  I am enjoying resurrecting my command of German, and it has been a lot of fun meeting other speakers of German, particularly those who were born there.  It is also interesting having to deal with regional dialects again, and I am assured that my own is among the worst!

I wish I could remember more of the Russian I once knew - I would look for a similar opportunity to exercise that language.  Maybe in my spare time after I retire....

I thought about some political rants for this morning but decided I don't want to go there - it just depresses me, and some days it  even overcomes my Prozac - and I don't need that today.

Late in October a cousin (first cousin once removed) is getting married in Las Vegas, and I am going to go. I had hoped hot to be going alone, but some days it just goes that way.  I haven't been to Las Vegas in more than 40 years (last time was when Jamie was born!) and the spectacle should be interesting, but the best part will be seeing some cousins I no longer get to see often enough because they have migrated to the West Coast - and I no longer travel for work.

Traveling on the job can spoil a person - when I have to start paying my own way, I realize just how damn expensive it can get!  I wish I had the time to drive or take the train, but as long as I have to work, that sort of travel takes too much leave time.  Maybe after I retire....

I got called away and forgot where I was, so I guess I ought to end this and wait for coherence to come back into my life.

I would sure like to know who reads this....  Leave a comment if there's a topic about which you might want to read my views - I'll try to avoid outright obscenity.

Y'all have a good day.

Motorcycle Vandalism, redux

Way back in October I babbled on about an incident in the garage where I work involving my motorcycle and a guy parked in my parking place, said guy finding himself blocked into that place. Rather than do what was required to find me, he muscled the steering until the lock was buggered. then left the motorcycle in front of another car.

It is all on video, and when it became apparent he was not going to be nice about it, I just filed a comprehensive insurance claim and had the report of his deliberate destruction of my property go on to Internal Investigations.

IID determined that since I had filed a claim with my insurance, it became a civil matter and did not merit any more investigation on the criminal matter of the deliberate and malicious destruction of my property. This irritated me greatly because it gave the guy a free pass on what ought to have been treated as a crime. I was advised to let it go and let the insurance companies wrangle.

Today I got a note from my insurance advising me that this guy was uninsured.

I was flabbergasted - Maryland is particularly crappy about insurance being required, and can make it really expensive if you don't play by the rules. Add to that the fact that the other guy was driving $85,000 worth of BMW, it boggles the mind to imagine that such a vehicle would be allowed out of the garage uninsured - not to mention that, lacking insurance, the vehicle was not legally tagged and should never have been on the road.

This guy is a cop - he ought to know better.

So Monday my boss will go back to IID and ask that the incident be reevaluated. I'm thinking that it is no wonder they guy was uncooperative, and that he has to have oatmeal for brains or a hidden limitles source of dollars, to be driving around an automobile so expensive without coverage.

I'm thinking that the local newspaper might love to know about this, but I'll wait a while before pursuing that venue. Meanwhile, though, once again I am irritated.

Oh yes, and along with that letter was one from my other insurance company telling me that they are still working to try and get my deductible back after a parking lot incident last February!! Apparently the Hartford Group doesn't like to play nice. AARP keeps telling me that they have insurance at a cost benefit to me - but it is Hartford, and somehow based on this experience I don't think I want to deal with that group under any circumstances.

I'm too old for this crap!

Regarding the first post wherein ignorant people are mentioned....

Finally I found out who vandalized my motorcycle. It was the owner of that large white BMW that I had blocked in, having been instructed by Building Security to do so.

I have it on video - bless surveillance cameras.

The guy claimed he could not have hurt anything by doing what he did, then complained at me for leaning my motorcycle on his car, scratching the bumper. Apparently he expected me to offer to soothe his pain before he got stuck with my bill - probably making his high enough that it would be a wash.

I was already not happy, and his attempt to push me made me less happy. He's on medical leave and will be back eventually, at which time we'll talk about it - he thinks. What actually will happen is that my comprehensive claim, having been files, will take care of my motorcycle, and my complaint about malicious destruction of property, complete with video of the destroyer wreaking his destruction will go to Internal Affairs.

I know how his bumper got scratched - in the process of muscling my motorcycle away from his bumper, he scratched it himself. Generally it isn't my style simply to scratch something - had I wanted to make a statement I'd've parked the motorcycle on his hood.

I'm still pretty irritated about it, since right now a lot of my money is going to get things fixed, I spent a day last week just tending to this jerk's messes, and he appears to think that his ownership of an $85,000 automobile, his position as a homicide cop, and his 25 years of longevity with the department give him permission to destroy others' property out of ignorance and try to foist the responsibility off on others. I think that the IID investigation is going to do some damage to his career, but that is no longer his problem - his recalcitrance left me no option but to let the report go and have him charged with a crime.

Damn shame it came to that - but there it is.

Happy Monday - don't forget to vote.

More on damaged vehicles

With regard to a certain BMW large sedan driver that works where I work - previous post gives details....

I just learned that this little bit of foolishness has to be reported to Internal Affairs for their investigation. That is going to make life a lot harder on the BMW owner. See me grinning....

The very first page....

Well, I'm new at this, and tend to stream-of-consciousness writing, so you should consider yourself forewarned. As an information technology professional, I understand several languages, can curse fluently in several more, and have a regrettable tendency to say what I think, or what I thought I was thinking, since the blog is always after the fact of the thought.

This morning, I'm more than a little bit ticked off. Last Friday, when I arrived at work, my parking place was occupied by a large refrigerator which BMW 4-door sedan, at least a 6-series, probably a 7- or 8-series. Now, I work for a large police department, and wondered immediately who could afford such a vehicle (although I must confess to having been a bit envious...) that would work here - but there was no parking permission tag in the vehicle, so I did what is normally done around here - I parked my vehicle in front of his, blocking his exit capability. This is what Building Security always tells us to do when someone has occupied a reserved place.

Friday, I was on my motorcycle, so I parked it across the front bumper of this vehicle, very close, and went to work, secure in the knowledge that someone would call when the driver of the BMW needed to leave and have me move it.

When I went out around 8 PM, I was surprised to find my motorcycle blocking the vehicle next to my spot. I had left it with the steering locked deliberately so it could not be moved without either the key, or enough people to pick up 800 pounds of dead weight to move it. I soon learned that what had happened to arrange the move was far less thoughtful, malicious and dangerous.

Whoever was parked in my place had decided to avoid the embarrassment of finding out who owned the motorcycle and whose space was being occupied, and instead forced the locked steering far enough that the motorcycle could be moved. In the process, the locking mechanism was damaged to the point that the steering could not be unlocked, rendering it impossible to use the motorcycle to get home - so I had to find another way home and inconvenience several people in the process, also missing dinner with family and a meeting. As if that wasn't good enough, I had to have the motorcycle picked up and transported to a repair shop on Saturday Morning - rendering it impossible to do what I had had planned for Saturday morning, and costing me $174.00 that I had not planned to spend.

Sometime today I'll learn how much internal damage was done to the steering mechanism of the motorcycle, and how much it will cost to have that repaired to make it safe to operate again.

Meanwhile, Sunday was one of the best days this month for motorcycling - and I was stuck at home!

What is it about the ownership of such an enviable vehicle that confers upon its owner the right to disregard rules of civilized behavior, the right to damage property of others and cause danger to others? I am normally not inclined to stereotype, but have noticed that the owners of big BMW and Mercedes automobiles tend to think they are better than others, that traffic rules and rules of civilized behavior are for other people?

Yes, I am pissed off.

Yes I did file a police report about malicious destruction of property. However, I am a civilian employee of this agency, and I suspect that the BMW owner is a sworn officer. Right away I am at a disadvantage, since cops know that they are superior to normal people.

As a motorcyclist for more than 50 years, it really bugs me that someone could be so cavalier as to do something like this, and so ignorant as to believe that no harm was done.

Grrr!