BRW: Who Drives The Bus You Are On?

Today was a typical day, wake up, get ready and head out to the park-and-ride lot to go to school. What wasn't so typical about my morning was the way the guy drove the bus. Normally it is smooth with extra long distances given to stoplights turning red.

This morning? Three times I was misplaced from my seat due to a sudden stop. If people are falling out of their seats, you probably weren't paying attention to the traffic lights. Not to mention, shouldn't it be your priority to provide a safe mode of transportation to your passengers?

Seems like it should be an obvious answer, but unfortunately there are only three bus drivers that are any good, and two of them are ladies. They are nice, and appreciate when you thank them when disembarking. These are the people that make using the inconvenient park-and-ride lot not such a terrible part of the morning commute.

I normally don't pay attention to the driving techniques of the bus drivers, but this was unmistakably bad driving and it just made me wonder what the hiring process is for university drivers. It seems like you would have to be pretty qualified to drive around a bunch of students all day, but it doesn't seem like they interview of look for qualified applicants. But who knows, maybe transportation is part of the school's budget that is being cut back on.

I know this isn't that exciting, but this week was a very rainy and so a lot of the normal things that I might be able to see were hindered by the weather. And the rain really tore up the fatherhood billboard and now it has been replaced with some add for a local grocery store. But I am hoping that there will be something more interesting in the weeks to come, before I start dipping into my reserve material for Bus Ride Weekly.

Saunas Spotted On Campus

No the headline doesn't lie. There are saunas on my college campus. All you have to do is go into a business building classroom. I have a 10:30 class in one, and although I usually get a decent amount of sleep the night before, the awkwardly warm temperature in the room resembles that of a warm bed in the morning — the kind you don't want to get out of .

It is sad because the class is not boring at all, instead the entire group of students spends more time fighting off the yawns and losing the battle with their eyelids, rather than being able to pay attention to the lectures.

I guess this is blog worthy because I feel bad for the teacher. On average, two people (one person is always the same guy) fall asleep in the class, being overcome by the friendly, sleep inviting warmth. I see the look on the prof's face when she sees him doze off, but what can you do when the heat is that overwhelming.

On the other hand, other classrooms are refrigerator and freezer-like. All the rain that we got the last couple of days seemed to amplify the drastic differences in temperature. Not to mention, excess rain water seeped into the underground storage for heating pipes and caused large amounts of steam to rise out from the drains and manhole covers. Also making the central heating system work overtime to keep the water pumping through those pipes warmer than the cooling rain water hitting the pipes.

All this adds up to our campus being too old and the administration having to cut funding to replace heating and air conditioning units. Which means, when the warmer months roll around, the heaters will still be on, and they will be switched over to A/C just in time for the heaters to be turned back on.

BRW: When A Man Loves A Billboard

There are great advertising campaigns, making you laugh as you drive by, maybe go to the company Web site to learn more about their advertised product. But lately companies have been trying another method, trying to motivate people to become better people.

The folks at the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse and their website fatherhood.org have just that in mind, reminding parents, especially fathers, that your kids appreciate it more when you spend time to be a parent. They have made, in my opinion one of the funniest TV commercials in a while, and it sends a great message. Watch this.



And this type of advertising is working, it sends the message and people get a laugh out of it. But the companies other form of advertising that I have seen is billboard use, and quite frankly, I think they should have used a different photo for their billboard in down-town San Jose on 7th street.

(I need to take a picture of this so you can see it.)

The image shows a father chasing his "son" in a spirited game of tag or something. When I first saw it, I thought that the man was chasing a young boy and he is fleeing in horror. The look on the boys face is priceless. He looks terrified that this man is chasing after him.

I just think that if anyone in the advertising department took a second look at the photo this strange, awkward photo could have been replaced with better suited photo, like them walking hand in hand. But I guess you can look at it any way and make it a case for being predatory, especially when the main focus is supposed to be an older man interacting with a child.

I'm Back, I Swear!

My absence from the blogging world is inexcusable. I finish my school semester and took a longer break blogging than I did away from educational institutions. But I have my feet planted and I am pushing through my last semester.

Last semester I was super busy, but I came up with a sort of weekly idea due to the monotonous schedule I had put myself into. On two of the four days I drive to campus I have to park in an overflow lot. And I found that a lot of funny tidbits about my day came from riding on the bus between that lot and campus. So I will be sort of doing a "Bus Ride Weekly" where I highlight some sort of hilarity I see on my five minute red-light infested travel to campus. Either on the bus or outside its windows.

I have a few things backlogged that I conveniently jotted down on my phone that I will use until I start hunting for more material, but I am thinking that this will be an "every Thursday" kind of thing, as I am done with the school week and have the most time to blog. But I am going to try every day to share something about what is going on in my world, especially highlighting the procrastination. But don't get your hopes up, I am already reading ahead for classes. I know, not my style, but we will see where things go.

Along with my bus ride weekly, I will try to take more picture of the things I see through the day and provide them with funny context as much situations present themselves.

So from now on, expect more from your procrastinator, I somewhat promise not to slack off. I just have to get into the whole rhythm of blogging again. Just a note, I don't have a weekly column anymore, so I will try to write a more drawn out post about something I am thinking about once a week, so look for those.

Oh yeah, I put the comic strip in there, because I thought it was a stroke of genius.