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Friday, May 30, 2008

Why Do All Hospitals Seem to Suck at Everything?

Through the course my life, I've had a few family members in and out of various hospitals, the amazing thing about this, the food always sucks. Can anyone explain this one to me?

Sure, I can see why patient food would suck, they have to supply it for free to every patient they have, so it's understandable that they would want to save money. Now, if I'm going to go to their cafeteria, and pay 10 bucks for a Grilled Cheese, why would I want the bread to be stale and the cheese to be uncooked? I don't, but somehow, that's always how it ends up. Or I always have the option of going somewhere close like a McDonalds or something of that nature, but I can't bring it back into the room to spend time with my family member, because they don't allow food past 5 feet inside the door.

The best part is, hospitals will always be able to get away with this, if it was any corporation, you would see a company change it, and then bring in loads and loads of business, the problem, where ever you happen to be when you get hit by a truck, that's where they ambulance is taking you. At least in Phoenix, it's law that the driver is required to take you to the nearest hospital to your location, no matter how much you or your family members ask otherwise. Make sure to think of that next time you're choosing a house, if you have an accident there and need to be rushed by ambulance to a hospital, where are you going?

My girlfriends mother went to urgent care to have a rash looked at, they advised her that it was MRSA(Lovely little infection) that she contracted while at the hospital with her son, and that they would like to get an ambulance to take her to the hospital to get it treated, she politely declined, as the nearest hospital was Paradise Valley Hospital in PHX, and the place is a waste of space. (The doctors actually lost her when her family was looking for her a few years back, how do you LOSE a patient?). Thus driving her infected self to another hospital 10 miles away to John C Lincoln Hospital.

While I'm on the topic of hospital complaints, someone tell me why I should pay to park there? I show up, I'm in enough emotional distress as I have someone I care about in the hospital and you crazy people want me to pay $1-$5 a day for parking. Screw that noise.

So there ya have it folks, I'm sure everyone hates hospitals for one reason or another, my reason is not because sick people are there, it's because they suck in general.

How about you folks leave some comments? We're rolling in the traffic recently but no one wants to comment? 28 Stumbles on Mental handicap pt2 which equaled about 500 uniques, and no comments, seriously?

Oh and make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, it's a whole lot easier.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I'm Dating a Grammar Nazi

This is what I get for being attracted to smart women. The other day I was told by her that she can no longer read my blog, not because of the topics covered, but that she gets annoyed with me and the way I blog. My problem is not that I don't know what I'm doing, it's that I want to type like I'm thinking, and what you read is directly off of memory some times, so I occasionally doesn't follow any logical time flow and there are commas and periods where they should and should not go.

As most of my friends would tell you, most of my humor is not from what I joke about, but it's my delivery, and if you're sitting in your living room/office/mom's basement it's hard to read delivery unless the author tells you when to pause and where they add emphasis.

Sure, the typo is a pretty common item here on 02 Sense... but that's the fun part. I was asked, "How do you have typos if you use Firefox?! It has a built in spell checker!!" I shrug and go back to misspelling words.

Sure, spelling and grammar mistakes may seem juvenile, but that's my thing. I don't stand here and blog about fart jokes and bodily functions, I blog about the everyday occurrences of my life, and how better to see it through my eyes than to experience it the way I see it. So to all you who demand proper grammar and spelling on this blog, it's not going to happen, suck it up or take your readership elsewhere, for the rest of us...

Poopy.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Must be a Mental Handicap Part 2.

This is part two of the Mental Handicap series, see part one here.

I'm usually not one to turn my blogs into a gripe station, but this one needs to be aired. I'm sure most of you have had this experience in your life in one store or another. You find yourself sitting at home and realize you really need something, be it toilet paper, cat food, whatever. This forces you to make a quick run to the store to pick it up. Even though you use the express lane, you're there for 45 minutes.

I'm assuming not all of my readers are from a busy metropolitan city and cant directly relate to this, but hear me out.

I run into Wal-Mart at around 11:30pm to pick up some lunch meat and some cat litter. It's a Sunday night and I need to get back home and get to bed as I need to work the next morning. I run in, find the items I need and now it's around 11:45, I get to the express lane to check out so I can make a quick escape, when all of a sudden this woman slides her cart in front of me and begins to check out.

The bad part about this is that although it's a 20 items or less lane, this woman has a whole cart full of food and clothes, basically, the works. As she is piling her stuff onto the little counter usually reserved for people like me who have 2 or 3 things, the cashier is just looking at her dumbfounded because she doesn't have one of the black conveyors that are usually used for this transaction, so this woman is piling items on top of items in order to empty her cart.

After about 15 minutes of this, all the items are finally scanned and the woman now has to look for her card. This is another 10 minute process because "I know it's here somewhere." Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the line has formed to now 7 people, including some annoyed, already drunk frat guys who are wanting to purchase their 2 bottles of Smirnoff and some orange juice, a crackhead homeless guy who just wants to buy a candy bar, and myself. She, seeing this, turns around to apologize to me, not because she just wasted 20 minutes piling her stuff on the counter, but with a giggle, that she can't find her card.

Finally, I get to buy my stuff and I'm out the door within 5 minutes from that time. All this for a loaf of bread, 2 deli meats, and cat litter.

I swear, I could make this blog all about the stupid people I encounter in my every day life, but there's enough of those out there.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

A Graduation to Remember

For almost anyone, your highschool graduation is a day you will never forget. For me it was a few years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. For my little brother who just graduated on the 22nd, he had a little bit extra to go with his.

Lets start out by saying May in Phoenix is supposed to be hot, we prepare for these things, as do our guests. According to Wikipedia, the average high temperature for Phoenix in May is 104. And anyone who read my post earlier this week about being over the top, it was 107 on Monday. Now, the glory in all this, we have family that came in town from literally all corners of the US, Washington, Maine, and Georgia.

As the day arrives it becomes very overcast and it starts to cool off. "The bastard," I think to myself, when I graduated it was 114, and he gets a nice 80. As the night starts to roll around it starts to get cooler and cooler, and then the wind kicked in. At 7:00pm, when the ceremony was set to start it was 44 with windchill. As I sit there in shorts and freezing my ass off, the ceremony starts. Luckily the speakers realized everyone was generally uncomfortable and cut some out of their speeches and the person reading the names sounded like an auctioneer, the poor principal who was taking pictures with the grads was going from side to side non-stop for about an hour because they had just over 400 graduates.

On a side note, hearing the principal improvise his speech to add in a bit about the weather was pretty funny. As he is talking about how far all the graduates have come since day 1 as Freshman to the point they are at now, and all they have in front of them, he makes the comment, "All I hope is that when you all grow up and start your careers, you will be able to move somewhere warm." Clever.

The best part of the night is when they got to about the "s" part of the class and the stage started to fall apart because of the wind. It was a 4 piece wood backdrop that had a painting on it and parts 2 and 3 collapsed in 2 directions, 1 forward toward the podium, the other backwards onto the sound equipment.

Even before the final word was given, caps were thrown and people were running to go. We don't work well in cold here folks.

StumbleUpon Update:
For those interested about some updates on my ScrewU StumbleUpon post, here's the stats for today:

stumbleupon.com 38

So it is improving day by day, but this is also helped by the fact as I post more, more sites are entering the SU database.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

ScrewU StumbleUpon!

Ask any blogger about Stumbleupon's ability to generate traffic, and many people will tell you some almost unreal stories. Ladies and Gentleman, I'd like to give StumbleUpon the middle finger. Sure, many of you will say, "well Troy, you're posts just don't appeal to stumblers, so it doesn't generate stumbles." Well that's all fine and well if I didn't get consistently over 20 thumbs up per page.

Don't get me wrong, I love stumbleupon for browsing the web, I have almost 5000 thumbs under my belt, and who knows how many pages I've browsed without giving a thumbs up. But it just doesnt seem to work well for me as a blogger.

My most recent post, "Phoenix: We're over the top", at last count, had 25 people who gave it a thumbs up on stumbleupon. You would think this would generate some traffic, well everyone, I give you my Analytics stats for that page for today:

stumbleupon.com
14 13 00:00:04

That's right everyone, that page received 14 page views from stumblers today.

I'm going to have this page submitted to SU, and I know it's against Stumbleupon success rule #1 to bash stumbleupon on stumbleupon, but I'm willing to bet Digg will generate more traffic than Stumbleupon. So if you honestly believe that SU can generate the kind of traffic people say it does, go ahead and give some of my pages thumbs up. Maybe it's because my stumblers are weak, it's possible.

Next person to tell me they love stumbleupon because it generated over 1000 uniques to their blog in 1 day gets punched in the fleshy part of the throat. Don't tempt me, I'll do it.

So let's see, I will track the success of my blog with SU vs Digg vs Entrecard and we'll see who comes out on top. I'm going to start experimenting with reddit, so who knows, reddit might own all...

Monday, May 19, 2008

In Phoenix, We're over the top...


So yeah, today was the first 100 degree day of the year here in Phoenix. Most places on the first day, it's usually 100 or 101, no, not here in Phoenix, we like to go big, so we rocked a lovely 107. I'm sure it hit 110 in some locations, but Yahoo only gives me Sky Harbor's official reading, so that will have to do. The best part about it had to be the 10 mph winds that go with it, so you walk outside to that wonderful feeling of someone blowing a hair dryer behind your neck. So it got me thinking, what else do we do in Phoenix that's a little over the top?

1. Fife Symington III

Governer of Arizona from 1991-1997. What makes him so over the top? we lets see.. He was convicted of Bank fraud in 1997 which forced him to resign a year early due to state law barring felons from holding office. Then later that year stated he witnessed the mass UFO siting known as "Phoenix Lights" and did a panel on it with Larry King speaking about UFO's.

2. Our Sports Arenas

Check this out, we have an indoor football stadium, with natural grass. How does one pull that off? Retractable turf baby. Oh yeah, and we spent about $455 Million on one of the worst football franchises in history, go us. Oh right, that baseball team that won the World Series against the almighty Yankees in their first few years of existance? They had the first retractable roof ballparks.

3. John Sidney McCain III

Oldest mofo to run for president(and actually have a shot at winning) . Even Ross Perot's old ass cant even compare to the longevity of Sen. McCain. Anyone heard of Al Gore in the polical sphere recently? No, he gave up and is persuing global warming after being beaten by W. After getting his ass handed to him in 2000 against Bush in which he was accused of having a child out of wedlock, being insane, and being a homosexual, guess who won the Republican nomination in 2008?

4. SR 153

Of all the useful highways we have here, we decide that we need some useless ones. I give you State Route 153. A 2 mile stretch of road that does nothing but drive past Sky Harbor Airport and then become a street again like nothing ever happened. Like stated in my previous post about Driving in Phoenix, no one really knows what its purpose is, but we spent money to build it anyway damnit!

5. Sky Harbor Airport

You read that correctly, our airport is over the top. Not in the same sense as our ballparks in that they are way expensive, just how crazy it is. City officials expect the airport to serve over 42 million people in 2008. And check this out, a few years back we had record breaking heat that grounded flights because of fears the runway was not long enough to allow planes enough time to gather speed in order to take-off because the air was so thin.

Friday, May 16, 2008

New Tradition: Memorial Day Tree!

I'll be honest, I still have our Christmas Tree from last year in our backyard. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, maybe it's because I have a strong fondness for it, or possibly what I went through to get it?

So yeah, it's still chilling out there, quite dead, but nonetheless, still there. So we've made a joke out of the poor decaying tree.

  • January - New Years Tree, it was still in the house at this point.
  • February - Valentines Tree, it was moved to the back yard.
  • March - Easter Tree, its out in the back yard, staying alive fairly well still because of the rain we usually get around this time.
  • April - Unnamed, we're too busy to do anything with it tree, yeah, April was a little hectic, so it was just kind of sitting out there, at this point it's still in its base and standing up right outside the kitchen sliding glass door.
  • May - Ahh, here we are, beautiful Memorial Day tree, unfortunately at this point the tree has fallen over because we've had some pretty crazy wind around these parts. But amazingly, it still has all of it's needles, you would think they would have fallen off and spread around the yard by now, nope.

So who's down? From this point forward, Christmas Trees must be kept year round. You buy the tree in 2008 for Christmas, keep it until you get the tree for 2009, and then toss it when normal people will be getting rid of their 2009 trees, and start the cycle again.

It will be the 02 Sense Christmas tradition!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How to Drive in Phoenix

This came to me as a chain email from a coworker, so I cant take credit for its humor, but I figured it was too good not to share. Many of you who read the blog can see that Phoenix and I, we have a love/hate relationship, and maybe that's why this is so funny, but I'll paste below.

How To Drive In Phoenix

1. You must first learn to pronounce the city name, it is: FEE-NICKS.
There are other names to learn such Ahwatukee (Ah-wa-too-kee) but that
will be included in the advanced course.

2. The morning rush hour is from 5:00 am to noon. The evening rush hour
is from noon to 7:00 pm. Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday morning.

3. The minimum acceptable speed on most freeways is 85 mph. On Loop
101, your speed is expected to at least match the highway number.
Anything less is considered "wussy".

4. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Phoenix has its own
version of traffic rules. For example, cars/trucks with the loudest
muffler go first at a four-way stop; the trucks with the biggest tires
go second. However, in the East Valley, SUV-driving, cell phone-talking
moms ALWAYS have the right of way.

5. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended,
cussed out, and possibly shot.

6. Never honk at anyone. Ever. Seriously. It's another offense that can
get you shot.

7. Road construction is permanent and continuous in Phoenix. Detour
barrels and barricades are moved around for your entertainment pleasure
during the middle of the night to make the next day's driving a bit more
exciting.

8. Watch carefully for road hazards such as drunks, skunks, dogs,
barrels, cones, cows, horses, cats, mattresses, shredded tires,
squirrels, rabbits, crows, vultures, javelinas, roadrunners, and the
coyotes feeding on any of these items.

9. *Maricopa Freeway, Papago Freeway and the "10" are the same road
unless it's the part of the 17 that's also called the Maricopa Freeway.
*SR 202 is the same road as The Red Mountain FWY unless it's east
of the 101 and then it comes the SanTan, then it ends, and then becomes
the SanTan again.
*SR 143 is a street AND a freeway at the same time. Either way,
it's the Hohokam Expressway.
*No one really knows what purpose SR 153 has exactly.
*SR 51 has been called both the Squaw Peak Freeway and Piestewa
Freeway. Depends who's talking to you. US 60 on the east side is the
Superstition Freeway. On the west side it's a diagonal road with lots of
traffic lights that's best avoided altogether.
*Sometimes you'll hear things on the traffic reports that refer to
"the innerloop". No one (besides traffic reporters) ever called anything
in Phoenix by that name. Matter of fact, I'm not sure where that is
exactly.
*Dunlap and Olive are the same street. Bell and Frank Lloyd Wright
are the same street as well.
*Jefferson becomes Washington, but they are not the same street.
*SR 101 is the Pima FWY east of I-17, which is the Back Canyon FWY
(south of the 101, north of the 101 it is Veterans Memorial HWY) unless
you are south of the 202 then the 101 becomes the Price FWY.
*SR 101 west of I-17 (at all times) is the Agua Fria FWY.
*No one is quite sure where Bethany's Home is.
*Lastly, Thunderbird Rd. becomes Cactus Rd. but, Cactus Rd, doesn't
become Thunderbird Rd. because it dead ends at a mountain.

10. If someone actually has their turn signal on, wave them to the
shoulder immediately to let them know it has been "accidentally
activated".

11. If you are in the left lane and only driving 70 in a 55-65 mph
zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be "flipped off"
accordingly. If you return the flip, you'll be shot.

12. For summer driving, it is advisable to wear potholders on your
hands.

13. It's a sport to make a yellow light from at least 500 feet away.

14. And finally, enjoy the beautiful landscape along the side of the
freeway. You won't see that in any other city in the state (conspirators
are sure Phoenix as stolen all of the money!)


Nine is my personal favorite, any gripes about your city?

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I Had a Gun Pointed at Me!

So, armed robbery isn't a popular crime here in Phoenix, but somehow I almost got myself shot. Now before everyone jumps to conclusions about how I was waiting for a bus, or I was standing in line at a bank being robbed, I want to quell that myth now.


I was shopping for a Christmas Tree....


Yeah, so imagine this, as you can see from a previous post, I live kind of out there in regards to Phoenix, still technically Phoenix, but not really close to anything, this includes Christmas Tree Lots. So we go to drive into town to see what we can find and eventually we find a place, nice North Phoenix, almost Scottsdale, nice place. Well, as we're walking in, being the dumb ass I am, I accidentally kicked over the soda in the center console of the car (as I was riding in back.) So we stop our walk and I start to clean it up.

So we start to walk in and I think to myself "Holy Shit, is that Rick D'Amico? Holy shit, that IS Rick D'Amico", which isn't as impressive as the following story, but hey, I met a local celebrity. Then again I went to High school with his daughter, so that's not a surprise.

So here we are, just about to walk into this place and we hear a big commotion coming from the inside, and we see 2 dudes grab the cash machine and take off running. As they are looking back to make sure no one is following them, they're sitting there waving a pistol around in the air. Luckily, working retail and having it ingrained into my mind not to chase the thieves, I stood there, like a good little puppy. The funniest part of all this was watching the register tape go trailing around the corner, kinda like when you leave the restroom and you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

Ok, so I personally didn't get robbed, but had I not seen the gun (like my oblivious roommate) I may have chased after the guys and gotten myself shot. Seriously, who robs a Christmas Tree lot?!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I Think My Mother's a Scientologist


I'm sure anyone who has spent more than 3 hours browsing the web in the last 4 months has heard about the "Anonymous" protests against Scientology. Being the Digg and Stumbleupon fiend that I am, I know all the dates for these protests. Now check this;

Ever since I moved out of my parents house a few years back, we've been getting together roughly every month or so, more recently than over, coincidence? lets take a look.

February 10th - Hmm, a week after The Superbowl, but somehow I was at my parents that day, likely because they had friends in town they wanted me to meet or something.

March 15th - The ides of March, also, my Aunt's birthday brunch, putting me there from 11a - 2p.

April 12th - Unfortuneately I cannot blame this one on my mother, this one is because I had a friend in the hospital.

May 10th - Mother's day lunch w/ family. Now, here's where things get interesting, mothers day is the 11th... Mom, is there something you need to tell us?

Now I'm sure all these dates are pure coincidence, but it makes for interesting speculation. I'm not one to go out and protest them anyway, since I don't know anyone in there, and I haven't really read up on their "crimes" anyway. Oh and it was 92 outside yesterday anyway.

I'm willing to bet that even if there were ulterior motives behind her actions, it's not because she's a Scientologist trying to keep protesters away, I'd bet that she's heard of the protests as well, and wants to keep her little baby boy out of harms way and away from those nasty "Cyber Terrorists" or "Fair Game"ing Scientologists.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Know Your Surroundings!

So I'm driving home today from picking up dinner and as I'm driving down the freeway, a pickup goes flying past me at what I assume is somewhere in the 80-90 range. Usually I'll shake my fist and shout obscenities at this idiot, but today I noticed a glowing white beacon of hope, a Highway Patrol officer. This idiot sees the officer and slams on his breaks bringing himself down to the required 65.

Most stories will end there with everyone driving on their merry way home, but captain moronic decides he wants to be even dumber. The patrol officer saw the driver when he was driving towards him and makes silent chase, no lights, no siren, just following. In this situation, I would drive cautiously home, doing 50-60 to avoid any problems. Here's where it gets good.

The officer was tailgating the driver pretty close, I'm sure if they were parked, you wouldnt be able to walk between them, after about a mile of this, bonehead driver starts getting uncomfortable and changes lanes, guess who follows? He then changes lanes again, officer follows. Our genius driver decides his best course of action would be to speed up, pass the driver in the lane to the right of him, and then change lanes. After doing this, the driver in the middle lane knows what's going on, slows down, and allows the officer to change lanes with our lovable moron.

The officer decides that this was enough, on come the lights and to the side of the freeway they go. Moral of the Story ladies and gents? If you have a guilty concience, don't show it by avoiding arrest. That $110 is now likely coming with some overnight jail time.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

3 Bed/2.5 Bath/No Pizza

There are certain things that should be required to disclose when you purchase or lease a house. Things like murders, Indian burial grounds, lack of pizza delivery, things of that nature. Most people assume that as long as you are in the area of a city as large as Phoenix, you would be able to have pizza delivered to your house, not this house!

No, we don't have a vicious dog that will attack everyone so the pizza guy stays away, we're just lucky enough to live in the 3 square miles of northern phoenix that does not have a pizza place around. Check this out, it is a map of the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area, north of Loop 101, with Domino's Pizza locations marked.



As you can see, the locations are quite wide-spread to allow maximum pizza delivery location, now check this out, this is the same picture, only with their delivery route's boxed.




Ok, so I understand Phoenix is a big ass city and we cant expect 1 store to cover 20 miles, but would it kill a driver to possibly drive an extra mile or so to deliver a pizza? It would be moronic to put a Dominos along Carefree HWY/I-17 Junction to service possibly 400 people at best, but cmon, we order pizza for the convenience, if I need to drive to get my pizza, it really loses it's luster. And the best part, this isn't just Domino's, all pizza places like to build right next to eachother, so I guess the driver can work for 3 different places in the same night or something, so no pizza delivery, whatsoever!