Introduction

The phrase "Minnesota Nice" has been around for so long that Wikipedia has an article about it. However, as someone who has lived here since being born in St. Paul in 1968, I would be the first to agree with the article that "Minnesota nice is not as prevalent as it once was", especially with regard to anything involving motor vehicles. In the Twin Cities, many drivers are borderline psychotic. No, scratch that – the "borderline" portion. The following incidents have happened within just the past six months:

  1. On a return trip from visiting family out of town, when my wife was driving and keeping pace with heavy – for a weekend evening – traffic, in the right lane she was passed by a psychotic driver on the shoulder, underneath the S. 46th St. bridge across I-35W, and then nearly run into by the crazy s.o.b. when he cut in front of her.

  2. Just a couple months ago, when I went to my car parked in the corporate parking lot, I saw a big dent in my driver side front fender which had definitely not been there when I parked it that morning, and no one had left so much as a note explaining what the heck happened and giving contact information to try to do the right thing to make things right. Thank goodness for Juergen's Dent Kraft, who did an excellent job restoring it at minimal cost – though still entirely out of my pocket.

  3. Compact Dodge RamFor a more minor irritance that just shows thoughtlessness, selfishness, and incompetence, many Minnesota drivers seem to have a parking disability, especially if there is any snow. Apparently, as soon as there is any snow, even if a mere dusting that does not obscure lot markings, the lots automatically increase in width, so that cars can alternate between parking between the lines and parking exactly 3/4 of a car width from the next car, minimizing the number of available spaces. Add to that people who routinely parked oversized vehicles in compact spaces, and it is such a joy trying to find a space sometimes – especially considering when these incidents occur in pay lots.

  4. Just yesterday afternoon, I honk my horn at a couple of morons who have their two cars parked side by side on a busy on-ramp onto I-35W, totally blocking it, and they give me the finger.
OK, most of these do relate to driving, but there are other irritations: members allegedly working in a group on a team project who do nothing while everyone else works extremely hard and then finally shows up the night before the presentation (ah, the joys of grad school....); the gas company tearing up my lawn to insert new lines and doing only a token gesture at re-seeding the torn-up section, which then gets trampled upon by people dropping their kids off at the school across the street (while, going back to parking behavior, others park their sport-utes so close to the driveway it's impossible to see past them when baking out; or, more than once, partially blocking the driveway).


Anyway, this is just me taking an opportunity to vent a bit; a slightly lower-key version of the famous speech from "Network". It gives me a chance to vent and be a bit Minnesota not-so-nice. But, I will try also to look for and document acts of kindness and thoughtfulness, to try to keep this from becoming too negative, and look for things of interest to me and, I hope, the reader. I hope to find some funny things to share, as well as items related especially to software and photography; I invite the reader to check out photos at my flickr site.

Enough for now; time to look for the bright side of life....

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