Hi Ho, Hi Ho

I'm back to work. After low-key negotiations with an unnamed aerospace company, I'm back at work in the general field of aircraft collision avoidance systems and terrain awareness systems (why do we avoid collisions with other aircraft, but we're only expected to be 'aware' of the ground?).

It's my policy to not blog about work, since that seems to be a fairly efficient means of committing career suicide these days, and I don't need that sort of help.

But oh crap did the drive home yesterday suck! When did Phoenix turn into such a traffic nightmare? Or was it a one-day festival of crappy driving habits staged by the city just to get me back into the swing of things?

The hard part of my drive home is the business between 7th Avenue and I-17. I have to merge to the left four times, and in heavy traffic. One of those merges is fail-passive, meaning that if I fail to merge, I just drive on the shoulder till I can merge. But three are not fail-passive - if I don't merge successfully, I depart the freeway and head for (in order) 19th Avenue, Deer Valley, or Tucson. I'm not complaining about that. I'm a grown-up and I can handle merging on the freeway. But it's all the other BS that goes on in the merging lanes that scares me.

There are three threats. The first, and most serious, is the Professional in the Huge SUV. It's usually but not always a woman, and she's usually blabbing on her cell phone as she mashes the throttle on her Ford Excursion to the floor. The chief threat they pose to me is that they seem entirely oblivious of the existence of other people. They're too important, I guess, so they drive on the shoulders, they bull through merging situations, they go 85 MPH, they tailgate, and the whole time they're carrying on an animated conversation with God Knows Who about God Knows What (I imagine they're complaining about their housekeepers, but what do I know?).

(Closely related to the Professional in the SUV is the Realtor in the SUV, most common out in the sticks where I live. This is a guy in a Hummer who spends half his time yammering over the back of the seat, the other half of his time pawing at his maps and listings, and all of his time going way too fast and swerving violently from shoulder to shoulder. If they find themselves on dirt roads, they cry "Hot dog!" and go as fast as they can since God favors the person who makes the biggest cloud of dust. But then, just when their overly-fast driving reaches a zenith of insanity, they stop dead, half on and half off the road, and then you can see six, eight, sometimes as many as twenty people in the Hummer wildly pointing in various directions.)

The second, and about as serious, is the "Noncomformist Outdoorsman" in the Huge Pickup, usually but not always a Dodge. (Seriously, I heard that eighty-odd percent of the guys who buy Dodge pickups describe themselves as "noncomformist outdoorsmen".) These guys are also usually on their cell phones, but they're probably looking for oversized wheels or trying to order a Coors Party Ball. Unlike the Professionals in the SUVs, they're aware of the traffic around them; they just don't give a shit. Life has done them wrong in some way and they get back at it by being jerks in traffic. Unlike the Professional who doesn't let you merge because she just doesn't realize there are other people in the world, the Nonconformist Outdoorsman won't let you merge because thwarting you transfers some of your penis girth to him, and everything is a matter of subtle penis one-upmanship.

The third threat is people like me, who behave in a sane, patient and cooperative manner in traffic until the stress, the Professionals, and the Nonconformist Outdoorsmen cause us to explode violently, destroying our cars and killing seven other motorists in a tsunami of flaming gasoline and torn metal fragments. We're not IEDs, we're UEDs - Unintentional Explosive Devices.