(It’s Springtime! I mean, officially this time. We’ve been having good high school baseball weather here for the past week or two so I feel like we’ve already entered the new season. Just always nice to know that you made it through another winter.)
I am a regular reader of Men’s Health magazine. That probably comes as a shock to most people. Especially given that I look as if I have never seen a gym in my life. That is not true, though I definitely need to get back into my workout routine. And it definitely helped me lose the fifteen pounds of fat I shouldn’t have been carrying. Anyway, they published a stat in this month’s magazine that was very telling.
They ranked each city by the quality of drivers and Kansas City basically came in last. They received a failing grade while the Twin Cities received an A. That makes sense since to drive in Minnesota means you have to be able to handle snow and you just become a better driver as a result. (New York City also got an A, though I have a feeling that is because a) no one drives and b) those who do drive can’t exceed fifteen miles an hour so it is tough to get into a bad accident.) But it is kind of fitting to see KC being given a failing grade. I’ve never quite seen a city where people completely lose their ability to drive whenever the weather changes and even when it is nice out you can be cut off by a sixteen wheeler like I was today.
(Oh, and I just missed getting pulled over by the cops this morning. Have to appreciate 8 AM speed traps.)
Geek note: I have to mention the passing of someone who had a great influence on my life. The guy who invented Fortran (I think his name was Backus) passed away this week. For those of you who weren’t around prior to Windows, Fortran was a programming language and one of the first ones that I learned. It’s also the one that I am most proficient in, which because the best version was written in 1966 is quite possibly the least marketable skill that I have acquired in my life. I’ve been able to pass off my addiction to reality shows as “being attuned to pop culture” in job interviews. Knowing Fortran just means that I am old.
It was a great language to use though. Define your variables upfront, set up a ton of procedures, and write nested if-then statements to your hearts content. For someone like me (who was an effective but horribly inefficient programmer) it was powerful stuff. So, even though no one uses it anymore, there are a lot of us old computer guys who are going to pour out a forty in memory of the man who wrote the original code.
(Hey, computer geeks can be gangster)
One last note. As you can tell, I’ve been really struggling for topics this week. When I have entire posts about America’s Next Top Model, a show that really doesn’t need my in depth analysis, it basically means that I can’t think of anything even moderately interesting to write about. I do have a couple of pieces that I want to write but most of those are for the book, which I really, really need to work on. All of this is just a long way of saying that I am going to take tomorrow off from the blog. I figure that I am due one day off a quarter from my usual routine. I’ll be back on schedule next week with hopefully a refreshed mind. See you then.
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