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

15th June 1999 18:06 BST
This is my first journal entry and, as suggested by the powers that be at H2G2, I'm going to use it to sound off about something that bugged me today.

I had to drive to an interview this morning. During the drive several things bugged me.

1) Why do people use their cars for journeys of less than half a mile? I got stuck behind some old biddy doing less than 30mph in a 40mph zone. (I assume the driver was female; it might have been a very short man.) The driver pulled up at the village hall less than half a mile from the start point. There was nothing about the car to indicate that the driver was disabled, so I'm assuming a reasonable level of health and fitness here.
Because of this driver's dithering I got stuck behind a truck.

2) Why is there no apparent rhyme or reason to the placing of speed limits? I had to drive along a long stretch (several miles) of 40mph zone, where the road conditions would have allowed 50 or even 60mph. Part of the stretch of road went through a village, where a 30mph limit would have been more appropriate.

3) Why are some drivers so inconsiderate? (One of the great questions of life, the universe and everything, this!) Today I was cut up by two drivers, one of whom proceeded to dawdle along the road at well below the speed limit. Another driver passed me in a very dangerous place.

Ideally I would like to work from home, or work about 2 miles from home. I am a software engineer with many years experience and live in Headless Cross, Redditch, England. Any offers?

Unfortunately, I can't offer you a job, but I do agree with you about the state of the nation's drivers!

Another thing that really bugs me is that nobody seems to indicate going round roundabouts anymore - either that or they indicate completely wrongly (common example: people who want to go straight on at a roundabout frequently start off by indicating right)

I'm glad I'm not the only perfect driver

AndyF

I used to walk to work - quite long distances at one time. What really pissed me off about drivers was the lack of use of indicators, not just at roundabouts but just about everywhere else as well. I know (from speaking to my husband) that if you take the Advanced Driving Test, it's OK not to indicate if there are no other road users about. But this is ONLY if there are no other road users about, and the Highway Code classes pedestrians as road users. Unfortunately, to most drivers we don't seem to exist!

Mind you, I've often noticed that people forget to think like drivers (i.e., what is the driver of that car likely to be doing) when they are out of their cars, and forget about other road users when they are in their cars.

Oh well, I suppose you and I will just have to keep driving perfectly, trying to raise the standard!

I have just read your journal entry about work. I to am as software engineer who lives about two miles from work, Hunt End to Moons Moat. I however, can and often do work from home, which is great usually, but the school holidays make it a pain.

Just out of interest, what do you write, and what languages do you use...

Over the years I've written a bit of most things - telecoms software, user interfaces, aviation software, truck ABS systems. The languages I've used are pretty varied - various flavours of assembler, C, C++, Coral 66, Pascal, Smalltalk. I have used FORTRAN, but I'm reluctant to admit to that one.

Who do you work for? As I said in my journal entry, I'd love to work from home. The only company I know of in the Moons Moat area is GRAU, a truck ABS company, and I'm damned if I'll work for them again.

BTW How do you reckon Hunt End to Moons Moat as 2 miles. When I worked at Grau (Moon's Moat South) it was 4 or 5 miles from Headless Cross, depending on the route.

To Cheerful Dragon

It sounds like you have been about a bit, in a programming sense, of course. Respect.

Hunt End to North Moon's Moat is probably 4-5 miles using the usual methods of transport. You probably haven't come across the small worm hole located behind the tennis courts at St Augustines school yet. It cuts the journey time down by half. The trouble is that to date I have frightened a few people filling their cars with petrol at the Garage near Safeways (where the worm hole's other end is). However, it is the only way to travel.

If you know of any worm holes (except for the ones that worms have), please do tell.

Don't Panic Much !

Woody

I'm amazed this forum isn't full of people ranting about the standard of driving in their part of the world!

Speaking as a superior class of road user (hubris is a crime, I know), I see so many examples of thoughtless driving it sometimes staggers me. On the other hand, I have also done some amazingly dumb things on the road and been so embarresed (sp?) that I really wanted to ride after the other person and apologise!

Still, to quote a Delhi taxi driver 'six times I have crashed and not one time have I been killed'. A philosopy to consider, no?

H&K
Z

There is now a gadget that you can fix to your rear screen that flashes the messages 'Sorry', 'Thanks' or 'Help' according to your situation (or rather, which button you press) - useful for 'embarassing' situations or 'cock-ups'. The control panel mounts on the dashboard and the gadget can be powered by cigarette-lighter (I think). It costs about £40, but I don't know where you can get one from.

It's not a new idea. Some one thought of something similar in the '60's.

A nice idea, but not as useful as the one fitted to all motorcycles for getting out of embarassing situations - a three second nought to sixty time...

I thought I saw somewhere in the highway code that it was ill-eagle to have a changeable display on board. I'll have a look.

H&K
Z

This isn't actually about this journal entry, but you made an interesting comment in the discussion about bringing back Doctor Who. What interested me in particular was what you said about the companions - that you didn't care for bringing back the "helpless female" but wasn't sure if an intelligent, independent one would work in the format. I think it would be interesting to try. I don't think the companion in the TV movie worked because, frankly, the whole project was a victim of Very Bad Writing. I got the feeling that nobody on the project had ever even seen an episode of DW, let alone understood the essence of it. But I think that as long as the Doctor was given the proper respect by the writers - because there is a fine line between bumbling genius and just plain bumbling - that it would work. I think that, by focusing on the Doctor's gifts for turning the attention off of his mistakes via very well-practised indignation ... it would be possible.

Forgive me for thinking at you, but DW is just such a fascinating concept, full of unplumbed possibilities. I love the character ... all of him ... and the TARDIS. What a truly wonderful machine. I wonder what Who fan wouldn't give her right arm for one of those. Can you imagine? "Honey, I'll put my Type 40 up against your Mustang any day of the week. Yesterday, if you like."

I didn't grow up with the Doctor, but as I have seen how the industry is over using special effects to the detriment of the stories they tell, it makes me love the old, clunky stuff that much more. The DW writers didn't have the effects to use as a crutch so they knew they'd better do a bang-up job on the characters - or at least the central one- in order to suspend that disbelief.

Ooops. There I go again.

I did grow up with DW. When I was about 5, the swirly light effects during the opening credits used to scare me. The first Doctor I remember is Jon Pertwee, and I reckon that he and Tom Baker were the best. Things started to go downhill after Peter Davidson, especially when they started to dress the female assistants in a way that would 'attract the fathers'.

I agree that the storyline is the most important thing. The film-makers made a bad move in killing off 'The Master'. He was the Doctor's Moriarty, and fans always loved a good Master as much as they loved the Doctor. The original Master was played by Roger Delgado, who died in a car accident. Roger really looked the part - aquiline nose, goatee beard, 'devil's eyebrows'. There was always a crowd around when DW was filming 'on location' (or as on location as you can get in Britain!). Once, when they were filming a scene with the Master, they wanted the crowd to boo him. The crowd wouldn't, 'cos they liked him so much!

I guess that nowadays they could do better monsters and special effects, but there's too much danger of these drowning out the most important things - the Doctor and the story.

A horridly blatant example springs to mind - Star Wars Episode I anyone?

I always enjoyed watching DW, it rarely scared me, I was so interested in what was going to happen next. Hmm, thinking harder, I was a bit scared of some of it, but it was so much more important to find out how they got out of trouble or if they were going to get into more!

H&K
Z

No, no, no ... please, Master, don't make me watch Episode I! I'll whitewash your TARDIS ... I'll blackwash your TARDIS ... anything but that ...

Sorry. Just having an Ainley/Delgado moment there.

I guess I was a bit old when I got to DW to be frightened by the lumbering robots, although the Master did send a chill or two down the old spine occasionally. Bless him. That is, unless the old imagination is invoked and I consider what it would be like, on some remote planet, having to come up with a way to actually deal with Daleks or Cybermen or whomever. The situations are pretty scary, so not everyone has to be a Hannibal Lecter crawling out of your television screen and into your living room. No thanks. I'd much rather meet the monsters on their turf ... not my living room. I think a Cyberman would be very confused in my living room anyway.

Hola Cheerful Dragon!

I stopped by your journal via some jokes I saw, and I was amazed to find that we appear to think alike on so many things! Weight loss, inconsiderate drivers (AARRGGHH!!!!!!), clothes... oh, and I was scared at DW

Hope the diets going ok, I envy you your obvious will power

Penny
xxx

I've lost 18lb, which means I've put aside £180 to spend on new clothes. Snag is, I've also got a lot of clothes put aside for when I get my weight down, so the only thing I'll *need* to spend money on is new underwear. And you can get an awful lot of that for £500!

Thanks for the good wishes!

I, too, got sidetracked here from somewhere else, and all I can say to you is: I AGREE.

Bad drivers: move here. There is a whole country full of them (Germany). They're re-introducing roundabouts here, but nobody seems to know how to use them. I'm convinced that if I indicate left they'll think I'm going the wrong way round it (think on, we drive on the wrong side here ) And would somebody please please tell me what the internationally recognised hand signal for this comment is: "please stop trying to drive into the boot of my golf you dastardly big BMW driver with your lights flashing and indicators winking, as you can see I'm driving down this 2 lane Autobahn at 150kmh, overtaking a convoy of 20 nose to tail big lorries and if you think I'm weaving in and out of them and leaving my 2 little kids motherless just for you you can think again you great big fat arrogant sausage noshing person" That would really help me.

DW: the Cybermen scared the pants off me, but the worst were the daleks (still get shivers) and those shop dummies with the plastic daffodils which squirted cling-film over your mouth & nose.... and I want a tardis. Please Father Christmas Please.

Diets: well done. I had started a diet and was going well when.... well put it this way. Over the next 7 months or so I'll put on a bit (not too much I hope - if past experience is anything to go by it will be about 10lbs) and my boobs will expand exponentially. After that I'll try again. If the will to live hasn't been sucked out of me!

Do you also have problems with drivers in multi level carparks? Usually old(!!!!) men (it would have to be!) who crawl up the ramps, stop at the top of each one and have a long look around for a space. They then crawl on to the next one . If they would only keep driving up at a reasonable pace they would usually find plenty of spaces up the top. Now you have got me going. Sorry!

Hi Maz! Thanks for posting.

I agree with you about drivers in multi-storey car parks, although in my experience it's just as likely to be women as old men.

You've got me wondering about one thing, though. This journal entry was written on 15th June 1999 - almost exactly 4 years ago. The previous 'last posted' was 14th August 2000 - about 3 years ago. Is this the longest interval between postings? I guess I'll have to 'Ask the H2G2 community'!

I have just joined Hootoo a couple of weeks ago and saw "Cheerful Dragon". Seeing I collect Dragons and am an Anne Mccaffery fan I just had to look you up. Maybe we have set an "interval record"!

Sounds like it. It seems I'm one of the 'oldest' hootooers in terms of life on this site - I joined when it was first created back in 1999 and have been here continuously ever since.

I also collect dragons, but I'm fussy about which ones I buy or ask for as presents. The dragon has to appeal to me at some level. It can't just be *any* dragon. I have a fair sized collection of those green 'Pocket Dragons'. All of them reflect some aspect of my personality, or remind me of a friend or family member. Oh, and I love the 'dragon' books by Anne McCaffrey.