Insane Drivers

School’s back in…which means traffic has magnified tenfold on the roads in the morning.  Unfortunately, this only brings the insanity of MS drivers front and center.   Case in point:

In my 10 minute wait to get through one intersection onto I-55, this morning I witnessed three cars all trying to merge from two lanes into one.  That actually reads like a math word problem.  Guess what, it doesn’t add up.  All three were women driving their big SUVs.  Here’s the play by play:

While vehicle 1 wasn’t slowing down to let vehicle 2 in, vehicle 3 was trying to get around vehicle 2 by going on the shoulder of the road before the orange barrels started.  Ah, but vehicle 2 would have none of this…so vehicle 2 actually swerved over into the middle of the two lanes from preventing vehicle 3 from getting around it.  That made vehicle 3 slam on the brakes, narrowly missing vehicle 2, causing vehicles 4 through 10 behind it to come to a standstill.  All the while, vehicle 1 was slowing down so vehicle 2 couldn’t get around it. 

But the story has a happy ending.  All three vehicles (including myself) had to come to a full stop in order to merge onto the interstate. Eventually vehicles 1, 2, and 3 ended up behind each other and successfully merged on to I-55 away from Madison.    But then once on the highway, vehicle 3 cut in front of a 18-wheeler truck (not the smartest of moves…those trucks don’t just stop on a dime) in the left lane in an attempt to pass vehicles 1 and 2.  Too bad that strategy didn’t work either…the left lane ended up slower because of a flatbed truck hauling a bulldozer.  It was poetic justice that vehicles 1, 2, and I all passed vehicle 3 creeping along in the left lane.

Just when I thought that was enough driving excitement for one day…I got to witness more insane driving.

For those who don’t travel down I-55 South, the Natchez Trace has an entrance ramp onto the interstate.  Unfortunately, there is only a few hundred feet before the lane ends for the motorists to merge into the interstate’s right lane. To make matters worse, there’s only a few hundred feet more for a car coming off the Trace to get into the I-55 South lanes to get to downtown Jackson.  

This morning, a Miata sportscar was coming off the Trace and merging onto the interstate. The driver seems oblivious to the fact that a Ford pickup truck was in the right merge lane and wasn’t moving over (even though he could).  The Miata put on its blinker and moved into the right lane, effectively cutting off the truck.  The Miata then drifted over to the left lane next to the truck to get to the I-55 lane. 

I suppose the pickup driver had too much coffee this morning and didn’t take kindly to being cut off.  So, the truck whipped halfway into the left lane, coming within inches of sideswiping the Miata  and continued driving like that for several hundred feet to teach the Miata driver a lesson. The truck driver made a few hand gestures to the Miata driver, whipped back over into the right lane and drove off. 

I decided to give that truck driver a wide berth from that point on.

But what I found ironic was that the truck had an American flag sticker and a yellow ribbon of “support our troops” on the tailgate.  You’d think a sentimentalist like that might actually want our country to pull together, put differences aside and act as a united country. Instead, he was all about getting even and scaring the crap out of someone just to prove his point. 

Part of me wishes the truck had swiped the Miata and the police were called in to write up the report. I can hear it now from the pickup truck driver: “He made me to do it!” 

To quote Forrest Gump: “stupid is as stupid does.”

Van Halen tour with Diamond Dave

Everything old is new again.  It was announced yesterday that David Lee Roth is returning as lead singer for a new tour of the reformed Van Halen.  Here’s the official annoucement from the group.

Ah yes…the original members: David Lee, Eddie, Alex, and Woflgang.  Wait a minute, Wolfgang? What happened to Michael Anthony, the original bassist?  Seems he prefers Sammy Hagar to Eddie Van Halen, so Michael’s out.  The new bassist is Eddie’s son.  We’ll see if fans embrace him.

Given that tickets for “The Police” were in the thousand dollar range, it will be interesting to see how much ticket prices are for this tour. 

So do you think they’re doing the tour just for the cash? Hmmm….

Camcorder hell

My latest project has been trying to convert footage from my Sony hard drive camcorder onto my Imac for editing.  I didn’t do enough homework when I bought the bottom-of-the-line Sony.  If I had, I would have found that the camcorder doesn’t import files to the Apple as a drag and drop like it does on my Windows PC.  It also doesn’t have a Firewire output.

After fiddling about long enough, I was able to get video onto the Mac. Woo hoo! But…there was no audio.  Nowhere. Gone.  Silent video.

After scouring the bulletin boards for help into the wee hours of the morning, I did find a post where someone gave the steps on how to import for audio and video from this particular Sony model.  By 7am this morning, all 15 gigs of raw camcorder footage had been copied to the Mac desktop.  Now I have to import every single file (330 of them) into a free downloaded program called Streamclip, which will convert the files into several different formats.  I’m converting mine to Quicktime. But, you have to spent extra money to buy the MPEG2 upgrade in order for the audio to be imported and play back correctly. THEN, I can import these QT files into Imovie or Final Cut for editing.  Bring on the Red Bull!

But hey, on my Windows PC, drag and drop and everything plays fine.  How sad is it when Windows works more smoothly than Mac?  Ouch.

All of this investigating has me looking at a replacement camcorder.  Should I go to miniDV tape, since  it’s not compressed MPEG2, ergo it is better video quality than HDD and mini-DVD?  But isn’t DV tape a dying format? Do I upgrade to high def?  3 CCDs vs. 1 CCD?  Viewfinder or no viewfinder?  New or Ebay?  Do I find a Sony that plays with Mac, or switch to a Panasonic or Canon model?

I guess it will boil down to what my wife tells me we can afford…which may be to shut the hell up and like my Sony because we aren’t buying another one.