Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Hm, I’ve dedicated more of this blog to old people driving than I ever intended, so I might as well present this:

89-Year-Old Man Busted for Driving While Naked

Ew.

John Welday, 89, was arrested and charged with public indecency after being caught by police cruising in the buff for the third time, WTVO-TV reports.

The third time. THIRD TIME. Had he been drunk the first time, he’d probably already be serving life in prison. Had he been speaking on a cell phone, he probably would have received two life sentences.

Not only was Welday driving while naked, he was carting around more than 100 pictures of himself sporting nothing but his birthday suit.

Police Chief Barry Carpenter of Martins Ferry, Ohio, said there is nothing illegal about the pictures, but he is worried Welday may have been leaving the photos in public places.

“We find concern with it when he is traveling past a park where children are known to frequent,” Welday said.

I have an idea! Whether it’s ever proved that he left any naked pictures in public places, and whether it’s ever proved that he gave those pictures to children or exposed himself, have a judge declare him a sex offender anyway. Make his last few years a living hell. All accused or suspected sex offenders should suffer because of the seriousness of the charge and not the nature of the evidence, right?

I patiently wait for someone from the AARP, or a similar asshat, to defend the right of old people to drive naked.

I’ve just begun studying for my CCNP certification, and within the first two chapters I’ve already found a practice exam question that’s indecipherable to humans (although not necessarily to Cisco employees):

The “correct” answer is B: b, c, d. As far as I’ve ever been aware, the OSI model has seven layers that are numerically labeled. The “correct” answer obviously does not refer to the numerical OSI layers. There is no Layer A, Layer B, and so forth, and even if there were, the question would be misleading because it would not specify that a, b, c, etc. are layers instead of other test answers.

Perhaps the answer refers to the other selections of the multiple choice question. But wait, that can’t be the case either, because here it’s a self-referencing answer, and then it’s an answer that references another answer which references four other answers, including itself and the original redundant answer, but actually names two valid OSI layers (Layers 3 and 4), both of which are correct, but not the complete answer.

What. The. Fuck. Does anyone proofread this stuff before it’s sold?

The correct answer to the question is Layer 2, Layer 3, and Layer 4. That is not a possibility because each answer for the question in the test is a radio button, so only one can be selected. And neither B nor C includes all three of those.

Posted today at Think Secret:

Mac OS X 10.4.9, as a minor update to Tiger, is primarily designed to iron out existing kinks in the OS rather than delivering any more substantial improvements or feature changes. The update could be the last software revision to the OS until Leopard if the company’s previous version-naming conventions hold.

What naming convention would that be?

Cheetah concluded at 10.0.4.
Puma concluded at 10.1.5.
Jaguar concluded at 10.2.8.
Panther concluded at 10.3.9.

The only naming convention here is that each major and sub-version of Mac OS X is numbered in ascending numerical order. However, what Think Secret means to imply is that a version ending in .9 is the last version of a major release, and that’s complete BS. The fact that Apple has seeded 10.4.9 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s finished updating Tiger. A version number like, say, I dunno, 10.4.10 is entirely logical, consistent, and within the realm of possibility. Asserting that .9 may be the last update, and basing that assertion on an imagined naming convention where there are no sub-version numbers higher than 9, is laughable and stupid.

If indeed 10.4.9 is the last update to Tiger, it will be because of the release of Leopard, not because Apple ran out of version numbers.

Here we are, some more news about old people and their awful driving. This particular article comes from Fox News and is entitled States Under Pressure to Restrict Older Drivers.

SHILOH, Ill. — After an 84-year-old driver plowed through an elementary school lunchroom this week, killing an 8-year-old boy, his mother pressed lawmakers to bar the elderly from getting behind the wheel.

“We very much support a mandatory limit on the driving age for seniors,” Amanda Wesling wrote in a missive directed at driver Grace Keim, who authorities say was en route to a driving class at a senior citizen’s center Monday when she struck Ryan Wesling.

I don’t necessarily support a mandatory age where a person’s license should be taken away, however, I do support testing at regular intervals for individuals at an advanced age equally as arbitrary as the drinking age, or the age of adulthood. Hmm, 55 is senior citizen age, right? How about everyone has to take a driving test every two years after the age of 55, and then every year after the age of 70. Sounds fair.

While many states have enacted or are considering tougher testing for older drivers, they’re weighing those changes against the rights of millions of older people to have the independence a license allows.

The rights of millions of older people to drive? Excuse me? Every damn holiday, I am reminded by some self-important, drunk-on-power, righteous hump from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, via a local newscast, that driving is a privilege and that drinking and driving and getting caught will subject you to Ohio’s unconstitutional OVI ordeal. (Thank God we have the state to babysit us.) What’s the sudden right old people have to drive that the rest of us don’t?

“The issue is not age; it has to do with the person’s physical and mental limitations, and that goes beyond age,” said Beverly Moore of Illinois’ AARP.

It does go beyond age, but age is certainly a major congtributing factor. The greater your age, the more likely you are to experience serious mental and physical limitations that impair your driving. In fact, a 70 year-old driver may be as dangerous as a drunk driver. I’d say that’s pretty serious. The damn highway patrol needs to do its job and crack down on these dangerous old people the same way they obsess over drunk drivers and cell phone users. How about some rights-violating DOA (Driving Over Age) checkpoints strategically set up to catch these killers?

Older drivers, she says, still tend to be more cautious behind the wheel, and family members can be involved in helping decide when a driver should give up the keys.
…
Studies have shown that vision, reaction time and other driving skills can diminish as drivers age.

They’re not “cautious”, they’re reacting more slowly - and more dangerously.

Drivers 85 and older are about as likely to be involved in a fatal crash as those ages 16 to 19, but they’re more likely to die than others in car crashes because their bodies are frailer, according to the institute.

I hope the fact that old people are as likely to cost the insurance companies money as teenagers is reflected in their insurance premiums each month. Somehow I doubt it. Wait, they’re more frail, so they’re more injured, or dead, so they probably cost the insurance companies more per accident for the same number of accidents. How much are those premiums again?

While sympathetic to Ryan’s family, 67-year-old Joan Juergens considers his death “totally a freak occurrence” that shouldn’t require stiffening Illinois’ licensing requirements for older drivers.

“I don’t think you can broadbrush one age group and say it can’t drive anymore. It’s unfair,” Juergens said.

No, but you can certainly broadbrush anyone who uses a cell phone, or anyone who has two beers in an evening and curtail their driving. That’s certainly fair.

Any person, no matter what their age or what the circumstance, who cannot properly control a vehicle and who cannot keep up with the flow of traffic is dangerous. Period. The law and those who enforce it choose to select certain targets based on sympathy or lack thereof, not any kind of objective reasoning. Evidence supports that fact that old drivers are a hazard on the road, so don’t insult my intelligence by telling me they have a “right” to drive, or that they’re more “cautious”. State your case for what it is: You feel sorry for them, and you don’t have time to drive around your 80 year-old mother. And if you’re a politician, you know old people vote, and if you take away their licenses, your sorry ass is out of a job. A little intellectual honesty goes a long way, and lack of facts or reason, especially in Ohio, doesn’t mean you won’t get your way.

Here’s another language thing that bothers me. Read this headline:

Student Tasered After Punching Florida Deputy

A taser is a device that tases someone. Therefore, when someone is the object of this device’s use, they are tased, not tasered.

C’mon journalism professionals, think a little bit. If I can get it right, so can you.