Category: Annoyances

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Go ahead. Just try parking there.

The office building where I work shares a parking garage with two other office buildings, two hotels, and an airport parking service. It can get crowded, and the spaces are so narrow and tightly packed that it’s a safe bet any given row will have two or three “open” spaces that won’t actually fit anything but a Smart car or a motorcycle, because the cars on either side are just a little bit too close to each other.

Or sometimes they’re parked at an angle into the next space, or flat-out taking up two spaces. That’s when I wish I could call them out by, I don’t know, slapping a sticker on the car that says “I’m an asshole who doesn’t know how to park.” Or starting youcantpark.tumblr.com — oh wait, someone’s done that.

It’s infuriating, especially on days like this past Friday, when I drove up and down the entire structure for half an hour looking for a spot. It took so long that my Prius shut off the electric motor due to low battery…and then turned it back on later, because all the driving on the gas motor had charged it up again.

I finally stopped at the end of a row, when two men got into a van in the last space and turned on the engine. Next to it was one of those technically-open-but-not-really spots. Behind me was another car whose driver had been following me down from the top floor, checking and discarding the same too-narrow spaces along the way. We sat there, waiting, while they sat with the engine on and the doors closed. Eventually I put my car in park, went back to talk to the guy waiting behind me, went up to talk to the guys who insisted they just needed a few more minutes before they could leave (really? they couldn’t back out, let two cars park, and find a place by the side of the aisle to let other cars by?), and just as I was about to pull over to the side so he could go around, they started backing out. I pulled into the second spot, leaving the last one clear for the car behind me.

FINALLY!

But why had it been necessary? I had passed probably 30 spaces that I could have parked in, if only the people who’d parked on either side had put in a little more effort. Obviously, people are jerks, right? They chose to park badly…but they didn’t make that choices in a vacuum.

  • Narrow spaces make it tricky to begin with.
  • Small errors compound as a row fills in.
  • On a bad day, it gets really frustrating to find a space you can use, and when you finally do, chances are you just want to get it over with and get the hell out. On the off chance that you found two spaces next to each other, you’re not necessarily going to be thinking about whether you’ve left room for someone next to you.

Sure, people have made a lot of individual choices to park in ways that make spaces unusable…but this isn’t a problem in most parking lots. The design of the garage encourages people to park badly. I suspect that re-striping this lot to have fewer spaces per row would actually allow more cars to park here. Maybe splitting up the width of one space along the entire aisle would be enough to lessen the impact of small errors — and frustration — that often leaves them with two or three useless spaces each. That’s a net gain of one or two cars per aisle, which doesn’t sound like much, but at 2 sides × 8 lanes × 7 floors, that’s an extra hundred or so cars that could fit, with less frustration on the part of the drivers. That sounds like a win to me.

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It’s clear that many people online don’t understand the concept of dosage or concentration when it comes to substances of any sort (food, drugs, additives, environmental factors, chemicals*, radioactive isotopes): Something can be harmless or even beneficial in small amounts, but dangerous in large amounts.

Trivial examples:

  • You need salt for neural function, but if you drink sea water you’ll get sick.
  • Vinegar is dilute acetic acid. It’s useful for cooking and great on salads. Highly-concentrated acetic acid is corrosive.

Think of it like turning the steering wheel on your car (or the handlebars on your bike, if you prefer):

  • Turn it too far, and you go off the road, lose control, spin out, or otherwise crash.
  • Turn it just right, and you change lanes, avoid an obstacle, or go down a different road.

Also, most things will have multiple effects, some positive and some negative. (Consider aspirin: pain relief, fever reducer, blood thinner, but high doses can cause ulcers.) The balance of how strong each effect is will change with dosage, so you might have a strong positive and mild negative at one dosage, and a mild positive and strong negative effect at a higher one, and at an even higher dose even the positive effects would become negative as described above.

So the next time you see a warning about how hazardous something is in high concentrations…think about whether that has anything to do with the level at which people are actually exposed to it in the typical case.

*Remember: Everything is made of chemicals, including raw organically grown food.

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The recent approval by the EU of King.com’s trademark on the words of their own title “Candy Crush Saga” for use in game and app titles, and the resulting flurry of infringement allegations, is of particular interest to me. Not as a CCSaga player, although I am one. (Level 491, used to comment on my levelup posts with helpful advice for other players, have accidentally spent real money but never won a level by using purchased powerups.) Not because I think it’s ridiculous, although I do. Not because I’m outraged about one more case of the big guy going after the little guy (“All Candy Casino Slots – Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land” excepted and notwithstanding), although I am. Not because I think CCSaga has used underhanded tricks to winkle money out of its players, or because I dislike the deliberate manipulation of addiction mechanisms by game developers, or because I resent the social gaming model for making participation as much a responsibility to your friends as a pastime for yourself. All relevant and true, but the real reason I’m following this story is that I’ve been involved with King.com since before CCSaga existed. I know where it came from, I’ve been watching its evolution, and I’m interested to see what this episode does for (or to) the company as a whole. Continue reading →

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What is it about the holiday season that makes people forget how to drive, especially in parking lots? The other day, while I was trying to back out of a parking space at the grocery store, two cars independently barreled down the wrong way in a crowded one-way aisle. A third tried, but another driver’s honk made them realize they were asking for a head-on collision.

I actually shouted, “My three-year old can read those signs!”

OK, that isn’t entirely true. He’s not three yet.

But that kid can read the heck out of a “Do Not Enter” sign.

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Usually when I get an envelope labeled “Important information about your account” it turns out to be a set of balance transfer checks, sent hoping I’ll use them to put more money on my credit card. It’s about my account, sure, but neither important nor information.

This one takes the cake, though:

Important information about your account! (Just kidding.)

It claims to be “Important information about your Verizon Internet service,” implying…but carefully not actually claiming that it’s from Verizon. It turns out to be an ad for Time Warner Cable. I suppose it is information, since it does tell you about TWC’s service, but it doesn’t actually say anything about Verizon’s service…and it certainly doesn’t say anything about my service plan, which it does claim to be about.

The fact that it’s addressed to “Current Resident” makes me wonder whether they would have sent me the same mailing even if I had their service.