h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It still matters, because cars can/frequently do, roll back when moving off, and also you need space to manoeuvre and get out of the way if an ambulance is trying to get past. *Never* position yourself up the arse of the vehicle in front, whether stationary or not. Naughty Sho

It's also an intimidating, aggressive and impolite way of driving. Nobody wants to see your car and grimacing face filling their rear-view mirror. Nothing at all wrong with a couple of metres or more gap in stationary traffic.

When moving the "Two Second Rule" applies,.......

When the car in front has passed a selected spot, that you pick,

Then you say...."Only a Fool Breaks The Two Second Rule" by the time you reach that point,. then you are at the correct distance behind.

When parked,.....always park so that you can see the rear mud flaps of the car in front of you.

Then, if he breaks down, you have enough room to get round them.

(Just a couple of points I remember from the advanced driving test I did back in 1986.

Smudger.

The same thing goes when you're in a queue of stationary traffic - leave enough room between you and the car in front so that you can get out if that one breaks down. or in rare instances if you see someone about to rear-end you and you're able to get out of the way. There used to be a bloke who had a column each Saturday in the Independent (I think) who would explain such thing with a devised situation.

And everyone knows my previous post was in jest, right?

Probably As with moving traffic, if someone cuts in and fills your gap, you just fall back to create a new one. Rinse and repeat as necessary. That way, when the inevitable prang occurs, it wont be your fault, but the moron who spotted a chance to get ahead of you to arrive at their destination 0.00001 seconds earlier.

One of the best things I've ever done is not drive for the past 13 years

Which was about the length of time I did it professionally and came home like this every day

what is it with you lot? Did I say within a paper's breadth? I said they shouldn't leave 15 metres breaking space between them and a STATIONERY car at a RED TRAFFIC light so that the traffic behind them can't get onto a slip road. (thus: they are hindering traffic which is against all traffic regulations I've ever heard of)

Also: advanced driving and the basic driving test say handbrakes on at traffic lights. (although if I'm the last at a stopped queue of traffic I'll leave my brake lighs on for the idiots speeding up behind me)

and - that leads to my petty hate number 2 at traffic lights already hinted at by someone else up there: people who roll backwards when moving off because they didn't have their handbrake on.

Back to computers for the moment, I'm not sure this counts as a petty hate.

I rea-l-ly hate it when I'm composing something on the computer, an automatic update kicks in without announcement or a postponement protocol, the computer crashes and my entire composition is lost and I have to start over.

Curiously, internet security providers (providing anti-virus software) are the worst offenders this way, so obsessed with the urgency of their update that they never think that they may be disrupting routine online use by means of exceeding the computer's capacity with their update against actual work already underway.

I do what I can, wherever possible setting it up so that I'm informed and asked before any update is downloaded or installed, so that I have time to finish and save my work first.

Increasing cpu capacity a gigabyte or so can also help.

That's a petty hate of mine. And it's smaller sibling of programs that grab the screen focus randomly and leave you agreeing to some pop-up box you didn't even get a chance to see because you were typing elsewhere.

On automotive spacing, I get really nervous if can't see the other guy's wheels on the ground.

Petty hates; tailgater clusters, where the vehicles start bunching up dangerously close together, usually, because someone in front is driving well below the speed limit.

I'll pull over and let procession pass rather than let myself get trapped in a multi-vehicle pileup waiting to happen, like that.

I've seen it happen.

Thankfully, I was not involved.

PH: seeing job ads that look interesting, until you cut through the bull and it turns out what they're looking for is basically someone to spam for them.

Jeans manufacturers who don't wear their own products.

Don't wear them? Well, they can't - else they'd have done something about that little thingummy (what's its proper name?) on the zip slide, that gets caught in the fold at the bottom of your fly.

You mean that little handle that flops back and forth?

One of the things its called is a 'tang'.

I know a lot of people are enjoying the heat and the sunshine, but I'm not one of them. In fact, the heat has become my not-so-Petty Hate. Heat is bad for my health, added to which I've got some kind of heat rash on my fingers and I feel unwell generally. I've ended up spending most of the day in the coolest room in the house and I haven't been sleeping well.

I don't want another summer like last year, I'd just like the temperature to be a few degrees cooler. Roll on Autumn.

Flies that come into your house and then just go around the middle of the room. They're not quite nasty enough to be a proper hate, just annoying enough to be a petty one.

I prefer them, though, to the ones that just bang against the window, but evade all your efforts to get them *out* the window...

how long can a fly fly around before it has to settle somewhere (and get a newspaper on the head)?

>>You mean that little handle that flops back and forth?<<
But, ITIWBS, your 'tang' is that little handle that Doesn't flop back and forth when me flies are open - it just sticks there, mostly inaccessible.

- - -

The hand is quicker than the eye is
but somewhat slower than the fly is
(Richard Armour)

..must be jammed or broken...

PH: fair ground games - Throw a ball into a bucket three pounds a go, win a teddy..... or pay for a teddy while not managing to win anything... thats s pocket money well spent... not