cobysev

As a former IT professional, I keep my computers running 24/7 because it’s less stress on the hardware in the long run.

With that said, I leave Steam running as well, so my games get regular updates. Nothing more annoying than trying to play a game and finding out I need to wait for it to patch first.

Also, I know Steam schedules updates, but every time I sit down at my computer, I check for game updates and just manually push any that are there.

Maybe it’s just PTSD from my IT professional days, but I don’t like to leave patches hanging. It’s kind of a long story, but over 20 years ago, a virus knocked out the computer networks on every US military base in the Pacific region of the world, except mine. Because I was the guy in charge of pushing updates and I had circumvented procedure to push a patch early. My base was the only unaffected one, and thanks to me, we stayed online and kept things running while every other base scrambled to recover.

Ever since then, an unpatched program or computer gives me an eye tick.

I do miss the convenience of the buzz cut. Quick 5-minute shower, pass over my head with a towel, and I’m dry and ready for the day. No styling required.

With long hair, I need to do a thorough shampoo scrub, towel dry as best as I can, comb it, then potentially dampen and re-comb when it starts to dry and floof in certain cowlick areas. Or just put product in my hair to hold it down.

Having longer hair has added probably 10-15 minutes to my prep time every day. Not to mention, worrying about fixing it every time there’s the slightest breeze. I miss being able to open my car windows or sunroof and not have my hair get messy and tangled. And I don’t like wearing hats, so I don’t have that to keep my hair contained.

But… while I’m still relatively young and decent looking, I’ll suffer a bit longer. My hair is thinning and the buzz cut shows off my balding areas, so growing it out helps me to cover them up a little and look more youthful. Once I get old, bald, and ugly enough, I’ll probably revert back to the buzz cut for the convenience. Same reason a lot of women cut their hair short as they get older; less hair to deal with.

I will say, my hair is soft and perfectly straight, but every hair that turns white becomes rough, scraggly, and twisted. At this rate, I may end up switching back to the buzz cut soon if my hair keeps turning white.

When I was a kid, I just had a mop of hair on my head that I did nothing with except maybe comb it to untangle after a shower. I looked exactly like Bastian from The NeverEnding Story (1984). You could hold up a photo of me as a kid and that actor, Barret Oliver, and you couldn’t tell which was which. Every time I went to the barber, my mother just requested they trim it a bit. Or she would do it herself at home.

Sometime in 8th grade, I requested a buzz cut, just to change things up. I requested a #2 on the sides and a #4 on top, while keeping the bangs a bit longer than the rest. It was cool to get your tips frosted when I was a kid, but I was never brave enough to do it. But I kept my bangs long in that style anyway.

When I was in the military, I usually requested a #1 on the back and sides, #2 or #4 on top, leave the front bangs area just a smidge longer than the rest, and taper the neck.

Note: In the US military, your hair can’t touch your ears at all. So most military people will also have the hair trimmed away from their ears. I was fortunate in that no hair grows within a half-inch of my ears, so as long as I kept it buzzed, I didn’t need to request a trim around the ears.

As long as I knew my wife, she always requested I grow my hair out. But I kept telling her I was in the military and couldn’t have long hair. About 6 years into our marriage, she showed me a picture of Chris Evans in his Captain America role and said, “See? He’s in the military and his hair isn’t buzzed short. Grow it like this!”

Unfortunately, my hairline was already starting to recede a bit by that point and my bangs were super thin, so I couldn’t grow my hair exactly like his. But I grew out the top, parted it on my right side, and sort of combed it up and back to blend my thinning hairline into the rest of my hair. Then I put a bunch of product in my hair to hold it in place.

Your hair isn’t allowed to be messy in the military, and I have a problem with cowlicks when my hair is short. My hair grows straight out of my head, so it’s always poofy. If it’s cut short, it’s not gonna sit flat against my head. So I needed lots of product to basically glue it in place while it was combed and parted.

So my new barber request was #1 on the back and sides (all the way up to the side part on the right), taper the neck, and just a light trim on top. Then put a bunch of styling cream in it to hold. I found a brand called “Mitch construction paste” (and later, I switched to a new one called “Blind Barber”) that held firmly, but didn’t turn my hair all crispy and hard. I could still run my fingers through my hair, and if it started to get messy, I could just wet and re-style it.

Then I retired from the military 4 years ago and decided I needed to get away from a military-style haircut. It was my last chance to enjoy longer hair before I potentially went bald.

I had a helluva hard time growing out my hair; every time it’d get shaggy, my military discipline would kick in and I’d run to the barber to clean it up, which just cut me back into a military-style haircut again.

Eventually, I decided the only fix was to shave it all off and start fresh. It took me about 6 months to re-grow my hair from completely bald, but it’s finally grown out and no longer looking like I’m in the military. I basically went back to the “Bastian” hairstyle, but I kept it parted on the right side and comb the bangs back and over.

Nowadays, I just ask the barber to trim my hair and taper the back. Super simple. I comb and style it myself, so I don’t need anything fancy at the barber. I don’t use product anymore, because I don’t need to keep my hair in immaculate condition. If it’s a bit messy, it just looks more like a civilian hairstyle.

But without product, my hair is extra poofy. I almost have an Einstein look going on. My dad’s hair was like that at the end of his life, so I wouldn’t be surprised if my hair also continues to get crazier as I age.

Americans are too literal, irresponsible, and frankly narcissistic to follow something like that. We see a posted speed limit, that’s the speed we’re going to drive. Or we’ll go faster if we think we can handle it (and get away with it). We try to use the literal law to prove our position in court, so “careful and considerate” is too generic of a phrase to uphold legally.

I lived in Germany for a couple years and I was surprised at how responsible drivers were there. Everyone stuck to the slow lane unless they wanted to drive super fast. The autobahns had no posted speed limit, but it was understood that if you got into an accident over 130 KPH, you were 100% responsible and insurance wouldn’t cover anything. So people just… drove more responsibly! Americans are too self-centered to behave that way.

I especially liked how Germans would flash their brights if they were going much faster in the fast lane and everyone would just automatically pull over to the slow lane. No fuss, no drama. I do that in America and it just causes road rage. Americans don’t like brights being flashed at them. As a matter of fact, in my home state of Minnesota, it’s illegal to flash your brights at another car for any reason.

Depending on where you are in the US, there are similar signs here too. Usually just posting a minimum speed limit, not a truck-specific one though. But they’re not standard across the entire US, so the rule of the lowest common denominator applies.

And the reason most places in the US don’t standardize is because we have too much traffic in populated areas. Despite forcing semi trucks to stick to the slower lanes, some will move to the fast lanes either to pass other slow trucks, or just to make up some lost time on their route. Which keeps all traffic at safe truck-driving speeds anyway.

In a capitalist society, time is money and truck drivers can’t afford to be late. A lot of delivery services won’t pay the drivers if they show up late, which encourages a lot of poor practices on the public roads.

Yes, it’s a system that needs to be changed as well, but without standard unions across the country, businesses can pull shady practices and you can either suck it up and deal with it, or quit and find a new profession. The latter being next to impossible to do with the economy the way it is right now.

Also, another reason the US doesn’t standardize is because our country is so extremely massive. Most people don’t realize just how huge the US is. Some of our individual states are as big as many European countries. And states have their own rights and laws separate from the federal government. So getting everyone to agree to update public road laws across the entire United States is difficult. A lot of our laws were agreed upon a long time ago and there just haven’t been much updates since. So modernizing road laws is a challenge, even with a good administration in charge of the federal government. And we don’t have one of those right now.

I see people outside the US asking why Americans don’t just protest for better laws, rights, regulations, etc. I mean, we do, but getting us to protest in any meaningful way is like convincing citizens across the entire EU to organize and protest for a single cause. It’s next to impossible to organize a protest of that scale, but we’d need that because of how large our country is. There could be a protest in Oregon, but people in California next door might say it’s an Oregon issue and not directly affecting them. Getting everyone on board for a singular issue is extremely difficult when we’re spaced so far apart. A problem on one side of the country might as well be happening on the other side of the planet as far as most Americans are concerned.

And the more our lives are tied to our pithy income, the harder it is to break away long enough for a meaningful protest. A majority of American’s lives would fall apart if they spent a week without working, but the rich 1%ers could go months without breaking a sweat. Outlasting those in power is next to impossible with the way our society is right now.

Couple that with that the fact that we’re isolated from the rest of the world and most Americans grow up in that echo chamber about how we’re the “greatest country in the world” and you get a lot of passive citizens who don’t address issues until they are directly affecting them. Which is too late by that point. America is just in a bad place geographically and politically to organize its citizens for better reform.

Sorry that this devolved into political discourse, but that’s kind of the root behind a lot of our unchanging and ineffective laws right now.

1. Why does everyone drive 10-15 miles above the speed limit?

Because speed limits are designed for the largest, clunkiest vehicles on the road (semi trucks, specifically). If they can’t handle the road at a certain speed, then the speed limit is dropped to a level that can be comfortably driven by them.

This means that the average car can drive comfortably 10-15 MPH faster than the posted limit. And a lot of drivers feel that desire to drive faster.

Also, I don’t know if it’s still a thing, but in my childhood (roughly the '90s), cops wouldn’t pull you over for speeding unless you were going at least 10 MPH over the limit. The reason being, the speed detector equipment they used had about a 10 MPH margin of error. If they pulled you over for driving 7 MPH over the limit, you could argue in court that their equipment was faulty and you were being unfairly assessed. You could sew seeds of doubt and get the traffic ticket stricken down. So cops just didn’t bother unless you could be positively identified, without a doubt, as speeding.

I don’t know if the accuracy of their equipment has improved since then, but the mentality back in the day was that you had some leeway with how fast you were driving, leading to people driving faster than the limit in most places.

2. Why don’t we raise the speed limit if that’s how fast everyone wants to go?

Because it risks all vehicles - including semis, RVs, delivery trucks, etc. - driving too fast for their large, heavy, awkward bodies to handle. Then they become a hazard on the road. You ever see a semi tip over because it took a corner too fast? If you’re in a car next to it, you’re pretty much toast.

It’s like queueing in line. Sure, it would be faster to crowd toward the front, but you’re pushing people out of the way; people who may have been there first and deserve a turn before you. And depending on how aggressively they’re crowded out, it may become hazardous for some people.

In the interest of fairness, everyone queues and respects the line, so the system stays safe and orderly. Same with speed limits. Everyone is expected to stick to the limit so ALL traffic on roads are safe and orderly. But sometimes, people are people and will do whatever they want, even at the expense of their fellow human beings.

3. Why is traffic enforcement given to very expensive and ineffective police instead of cheaper and more automated traffic cameras?

This is a discussion that’s been going on for decades now. I know traffic cams are set up in some European countries and work pretty well, but here in America, historically, we’ve had a thing against being recorded publicly. Traffic cams haven’t taken off here because the idea of a small camera recording data about our cars without our knowledge freaks us out.

Heck, we had to create entrapment laws to prevent cops from hiding while checking speed limits. If you watch old cop movies, they’ll sit behind billboards and catch speeders who fly by. That’s illegal in the US nowadays; cops have to be out in the open and visible if they’re going to watch traffic for speeding. It gives a fair chance for drivers to check their speed and adjust before the cop records them speeding and gives them a ticket.

But most people will miss a camera in the wild. There’s no chance to argue a speeding incident in the moment. You get a ticket in the mail a few days later, then need to think back to that day and try to remember where you were and what speed you were going. You can fight it in court, but good luck having any evidence to counter a camera, unless you were recording the interior of your vehicle that day.

With all that said, Flock cameras sprouted practically overnight here in the US and have set off distopian levels of surveillance paranoia. Especially since their setup was so fast that no laws or safety measures have been respected in their usage and the system is already being abused to watch and track people in unprofessional capacities. We kind of skipped the whole traffic cam issue and went straight to 1984 levels of public surveillance. So we’ll see how that plays out over the next few years.

4. Why do we refuse to ever use ANY traffic calming measures?

What kind of traffic calming measures do you have in mind? You mentioned the flashing speed limit signs, but that’s not going to stop some people. Speeders are gonna speed. It’s just human nature. The system we have is ineffective in a grand scale, but it works as a mental deterrent for most people. The fear of being pulled over by a cop for speeding keeps a lot of drivers in line.

I once drove in the small African country of Djibouti, where the government had to post signs every mile to remind drivers which side of the road they should be driving on. Driving education was available, but most people just hopped in a car and took off; no license or training. There were accidents every couple miles. Trucks flipped over and abandoned on almost every sharp corner. Potholes so big you might lose a car in them.

The system in America isn’t perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than it could be. You’re never going to stop people from speeding, even if we did set up cameras everywhere.

My final thought on the whole matter is that speeding tickets should be based on a percentage of annual income. Say, 5% or so. Because a flat rate for speeding is just a punishment for poor people. Rich folks can afford to pay a fine with what amounts to pocket change for them, so there’s no incentive for them to correct the behavior. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it was Steve Jobs who refused to get a driver’s license or plates for his car or something? Every time he got pulled over, he just paid the fine and continued on with what he was doing. Meanwhile, someone living paycheck to paycheck is going to have their life ruined by a fine. If you ask me, making fines a flat percentage rate is the first step to curbing bad driving practices. Punish people fairly across the board.

For a lot of (immature) guys, dating is a game with roles to play, in order to get laid. One thing that some guys do is pretend to want a serious relationship to draw in women willing to commit on the first or second date.

It’s a terrible thing to do, but some guys will go to any lengths to convince a lady to go to bed with them. Finding decent men in the sea of childish boys can be a challenge, but playing it slow and respectful will help to separate the two. A real man will respect your requests and autonomy, not challenge them or give passive-aggressive responses.

The fact that he tuned out as soon as you told him to take it easy speaks volumes about the kind of guy he is. He’s definitely looking for a quick lay and when that was off the table, he lost interest. You should consider it a good thing that he decided to call it off. He’s not wasting any more of your time with incompatible goals in mind.