Hula Hoop Demo

Sometimes I see the strangest things when I look out the window while at work. Today, I was talking with one of my co-workers and he happened to be standing so that I could see the “Sunburst” statue behind him. Some activity around the statue caught my eye. A group of people were hula hooping and dancing around. Another co-worker, Scott Smith, has a Flip Mino camcorder that he keeps with him for occasions like this one. I notified him about what was going on and came over to investigate. Scott recorded the following video of the event.

Apparently, the group was part of a Hula Hoop exercise program. It seems that they were demonstrating to raise awareness of their program and recruit new members.

Cloud Nine

09:09:09 09/09/09
It happens once every one hundred years and it is unlikely that I will be around for the next one so I decided to mark the occasion with a post. I hope you are all “dressed to the nines” while on “cloud nine” today.

*** Updated with obligatory Sesame Street reference ***
This post has been brought to you by the number “9″ and the letters “K” and “M”

More Bad Driving Habits

The other day, I was driving home from work towards the end of rush hour. A Silver BMW pulled onto I-94 just in front of me and proceeded to weave back and forth in his lane and drive really, really close to the car in front of him. It didn’t seem possible to me that he was driving drunk at 6pm. As he was in the center lane and I was in the right lane, I decided to pass him so that I was out of his way in case he caused an accident with his erratic driving. As I was passing, I looked over and discovered why he was driving that way. He was holding an iPhone at dashboard level next to the steering wheel. I could tell by the motion of his thumb on the screen that he was scrolling down. It appears to me that he was either surfing the net or reading his email… at 65 mph on a fairly busy freeway.

Texting and Driving Don’t Mix

Webster defines multitasking as:

the performance of multiple tasks at one time

In business, multitasking is considered to be a positive attribute. It allows you to work on many projects at the same and minimizes slack time between tasks. When driving a commuter train, however, multitasking is not a good thing. You should be focused only at the task at hand. This article, indicates that it is likely that the engineer of the commuter train that crashed in California was texting with a couple of teenagers that had befriended him. The article says that the train company, Metrolink, has banned its engineers from using cell phones on the job but there is no federal law against it.

Does there really need to be a federal law against texting while driving any vehicle? Common sense should take over in these cases. Come on, people. Driving any vehicle requires your undivided attention. When you are in control of tons of steel being hurled at extreme speeds near other similar objects, it is you obligation to be focused on that one task. Laws aren’t going to fix this. Unfortunately, many people ignore certain laws all the time. Parents, teach your kids some common sense when it comes to cell phones.

Halloween Express

… and now a pause for these commercial messages.

As I was driving into work this morning, I noticed that the Halloween Express building had been put up in the State Fair parking lot already. For those outside the Milwaukee metro area, this is a giant orange tent/building that looks like the top half of a jack-o-lantern. Inside they sell all things required for Halloween.

Looking at the calendar, I can see that there are 50 days until Halloween. Are there really people out there thinking “I better get my Halloween costume today, I only have a month and a half left”?

Supergirl

They were doing some construction on I-794 in downtown Milwaukee this morning. It was closed it to traffic so I decided to take city streets to get home. On 20th and State, I saw a guy walking down the sidewalk, talking on his cellphone, wearing a sparkly Supergirl costume complete with the cheerleader-type skirt. It took me six blocks to stop laughing.