verneasimov-blog

[verneasimov-blog]

In the distant future....

Earth is on the brink of collapse. Fascism is on the rise yet again. The oceans are dying. The northern hemisphere is subject to multiple brutal heat waves year round. The southern hemisphere is cooking as the ozone layer barely regenerates; Asian countries secretly use banned ozone-destroying chemicals.

THE YEAR IS... 2019. FUCK

[verneasimov-blog]

future monkeys

you ever think of how people in like 2300 will think of us. like “omg they were such apes back then” the same way we think of people from 1600. shakespeare didnt have uber fucking idiot

[verneasimov-blog]

A thought about my city and subdivisions

It’s 2:30am but my hatred for subdivisions is ever present. Here’s a simple map of my city.

The absolute horror that is my city layout is that all of the really cool interesting stuff is stuffed into one single area, aka the red blob with yellow scribbles. This is where all the specialty stores like crafts, clothing, electronics, etc. are. If you live in the top right, you get a Wal-Mart, some fast food, and Lowe’s. So in order to buy anything outside of groceries, lawn mowers, and pretty much burgers, you have to travel to the exact opposite side of town. To make matters worse, the central business district (red with blue scribbles) is strictly for a high quality hospital system and your midwest city downtown shops vibe stuff. The other red stuff is scattered stuff that pretty much doesn’t matter.

Now the real horror. Every green circle is your windy treeless hellscape of a subdivision. It’s literally like half of the city’s land space but much less densely populated than the stuff between the right blobs. The blue blob manages to combine affordable apartments in a subdivision layout. It is literally the worst designed layout, too. It takes more time to cross the blue blob than it does to make the dreadful trip from one corner to the other.

The best way to cross town is either the highway or a absurdly long six-lane road that’s basically a road for the rich people.

My city is struggles with layout problems because city planning has changed a lot in 150 years. This part however brings joy. This like a layout straight outta a City: Skylines guide. You got your purple main roads with your feeder blue roads and straight line roads (unmarked) between. It’s so easy to navigate and this is the most vegetated place in the city. Fuck city planners who thing travelling 300ft in 15 minutes is ok.

[verneasimov-blog]

Sometimes the stupid people are your co-workers

What I’m about to say sounds silly but keep in mind on thing: my work has spent millions of dollars on installing a workflow program called Cityworks. It basically automates all the day-to-day stuff like giving out routine work and, you know, keeping track of hundreds of thousands of assets. It connects to a lot of other programs like AVLs.

We use AVL to create a GIS map so that our snow plows know where to go during snow events. The AVL program creates a simple, pretty map that tells you more than you really need to know. This AVL program has about as complicated as Internet Explorer.

The silly part: one day one my bosses asks me to open this AVL program and print out a sheet of paper. Then, I had to walk it across the street to another building my work owns and tell him what’s on the map.

...In 2019. It took me more time to figure out how to print it without cutting parts of the map off than it would have taken him to learn how to use AVL from the ground up.

Computers were invented when this guy was like 18 and he has somehow managed to avoid learning any knowledge on how to operate one of them. He is also as old the main engineer in my work who has essentially single-handedly modernized my entire city’s workflow using GIS, fucking robots, handheld computers that get measurements on points up to 1/100 of an inch, etc.

Some people are just dumb.

[verneasimov-blog]

The public is stupid especially when they see flashing lights

It’s a common fact that everyone sucks at driving. It’s a little known fact that the amount of suck is greatly amplified when a driver encounters lights designed specifically to be unmistakably informative. The recent news about officers being hit by cars in traffic reminds me of simple stories of drivers completely tossing logic out the window.

My job sometimes involves parking in the middle of the road for extended periods of time. Any road. Anywhere. Busy intersection? Parked there. Since we’re not completely stupid and have a weird desire to keep living, we do everything in our power to tell people what we’re doing by putting flashing lights, signs, and cones all over the goddamn place. If we’re in a really busy road, we’re parking multiple heavy trucks to block lanes and whipping out traffic control. But really most of the time we can safely turns some lights on, park, exit the vehicle and put down some cones. This is a story about how none of that means anything to a very special group of drivers.

One day we’re tasked with doing something called MACP which is just an acronym saying we’re getting precise measurements of manholes. Where are manholes usually? In the middle of a road. So we pull up on a manhole we’re measuring so the entire sewer can be replaced this summer. We have two trucks for extra safety. The rear truck has an arrow board: a gigantic flashing directional arrow that is extremely difficult to misunderstand. It tells you to get the fuck out of the way. On top of that we have those annoying double-flashing strobes. If that wasn’t enough, we put our hazard lights on. All of this before we even step out. There have been orange diamond signs saying “SURVEY CREWS AHEAD” out here for months. And on top of that, we’re not allowed to do anything like this without wearing hi-vis lime green ANSI 2 approved clothing.

We step out and immediately run to the cones in the bed of our trucks. As we’re putting down cones to make a safe area around the manhole, we notice a car has just been sitting there for a solid minute. This is a four-lane road with two lanes per direction. This guy is just sitting behind us with no traffic in the other lane. He’s visibly frustrated. I literally can’t understate how many obvious signs there were that we’re not fucking moving. We’re not even in the goddamn vehicle. It took this guy a solid two minutes to realize we’re not going to move so he does what he was supposed to and changes lanes, still upset. 

I would love to say that this was the stupidest thing I’ve seen in traffic but I have stories for days...

[verneasimov-blog]

Y'all ever just think about the gif with the monkey being extremely amused at a magic trick and the face they make? It's the same face we make when we see a monkey making a neat face when they see a magic trick. The very same face when we see a neat shiny rock on some shiny metal ring. We're still the monkey thinking "heehoo peanut" but we're just really good at making peanuts. Our peanuts are just really exceptional peanuts like spaceships or sizzling fajitas.

Humans: exceptional monkeys.