Rhymefest: Devil’s Pie

So I’m sitting in traffic on I-5 around Northgate (notorious for being backed up during rush hour, no matter which direction you’re going), and a song comes on that totally cheers me up.  What song would that be, you ask?  Why, Devil’s Pie by Rhymefest.  And why exactly did it cheer me up?  Because the entire track is based on samples of The Strokes’ Last Night.  You really have to give it a listen, I love it.

No Wonder We Don’t Have A Monorail

From the Seattle P.I. article entitled Audit finds ways for DOT to save $4.5 million a year:

The audit recommends a new, agencywide system it said could save up to $2.4 million annually.

It said the agency’s review of payments to contractors is “inconsistent” and recommends centralizing that system to save up to $1.4 million a year.

The audit cited the department’s lack of expertise and said it inconsistently processes information changes in its personnel offices. Standardizing practices and centralizing functions could save more than $552,000 annually, according to the audit.

It called the agency’s cash-receipt processing “inefficient” and inconsistent. The audit recommended using a bank lock-box for payments to the agency statewide and said that could save nearly $127,000 a year.

So, basically, the people in charge of our DOT are a bunch of incompetent fools who waste money on the most mundane things?  My title is “Data Entry Specialist”.  They’re wasting money on the most basic of jobs.  Maybe they should bring me in to save them some money.  I mean, seriously.  We do accounting at my office, and it’s not hard at all.  And in no way (even on a smaller scale) do we waste anywhere close to a comparable amount of money.

Seahawks on Monday Night Football

For those of you that don’t know (a.k.a. those who don’t follow sports in Seattle), the Seattle Seahawks are playing tonight against the San Francisco 49ers at 5:30 pm PST tonight on ESPN. What does this mean? Well, first off, we might actually win. And second, it means if you’re driving towards SoDo tonight between 4:30 and 6:30 or away from SoDo around the time the game is over, you just might be screwed.

I’m lucky enough to be leaving work at 3:30 instead of 4:30 to avoid that headache.

As far as the game goes, the Las Vegas line has Seattle winning by 10, and my favorite sports stat website has them winning by 14.

The Beginning

Who am I? This is my blog, not yours, am I right? So shouldn’t I be asking the questions? Like, who are you? And why are you here? Get back to me on that, and then maybe we’ll talk about asking me questions.

This little blog is meant to be a small dose of my life, whether it be a picture I have taken, a quote or a word I may have heard, or a story that played out in my life. It will be updated intermittently (that whole “daily” thing is just a cute name, don’t be so damn literal), and whether I have one reader or one million, nothing is going to change. It will be what I want, how I want it.

There you have it, talk amongst yourselves.

I guess I should leave a real post though, right? I preview of what may come? Sounds good to me:

I was able to get this weekend off of work so that I could come home for my mom and sister’s birthdays (my mother’s is on the 14th and my sister’s is on the 20th). My girlfriend, Kate, and I came down from Seattle yesterday on the 7:30 Amtrak train destined for Portland. When we got arrived and unloaded ourselves from the train, I called my sister to find out their status on picking us up. Well, as luck may have it, they were stuck in beautiful gridlock in I-84 a few miles away. There were no updates from ODOT (shocking) and nothing on the radio, so they had no idea why there was so much traffic.

Well, this morning we found out why. A huge fucking sewer pipe rolled off of a flatbed truck and cracked the concrete railing of the Marquam Bridge, closing I-5 south for a total of six hours. Simply crazy stuff. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, just a few (empty) cars in the parking lot below and the 24-year old truck driver’s pride (and maybe his job security). And since we had no plans other than eventually getting back home to grab my dad and eat some dinner, everything was just peachy. But I must say, we need some better traffic engineers in this ol’ state (and I say ‘we’ loosely, according to my new driver’s license and my future tax returns I am now a Washington resident); as I’m sure we were not the only car on the road completely puzzled as to why Portland was in traffic hell for the day.