The peace of mind of the long way

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I hate commuting.  I often lament that among the great things that happened during the pandemic was the dramatic reduction of traffic across the board, and when I was one of the poor unfortunate souls who had to begin returning to the office, commuting wasn’t so bad because there were still a whole lot of lucky schmucks who were still allowed to work remotely and didn’t add to the cars on the road.

Nowadays, traffic is right back to the same shitshow things were before the pandemic, and unlike the days when I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids, I can’t be an early bird, and willingly head out to the office at a nice early time in order to have a more peaceful commute.  No, I have to leave at a strict time, determined by how long it should take me to get to the office, and basically into the teeth of the morning rush hour.

Honestly, I actually have it kind of good, in terms of mileage.  My commute is basically 7-8 miles each way, no highway driving, but it still takes the better part of 30 minutes to traverse it, because of fucking traffic.

Worst of all is the final mile of my drive, where there are some mornings where that last mile takes as much time as all the other distance before it, just because of the sheer overpopulated massive of human existence that clogs up the roads, right in front of my god damn building.  Frankly, this daily malady of the final mile is largely in part why I’m so salty about commuting, and why the thought of driving into the office four days a week is always met with a sneer.

My office park is made up of several buildings and has about four entry points.  However, it’s also close enough to the interstates to where the main roads just outside of the complex are often completely clogged by hordes of assholes trying to subvert the highway, preventing people who are just trying to get into the complex from being able to get in, not without waiting through numerous lights and taking some creative detouring just to get to work.

But recently, I accidentally came across an alternate route, that perhaps it’s still too early to tell, but in the few times that I’ve used it, has been a refreshing breath of fresh air, and has alleviated a tremendous amount of commuting anxiety from my daily list of grievances.

One of the access points has a two lane left turn into the grounds, but everyone camps the right lane, because there’s a fairly immediate right turn upon turning in.  Anyone who is in the left lane is obviously a supervillain akin to Thanos who will definitively try to force their way into the right and cut in front of others like the galaxy’s biggest dick.

The other day, I got in the left lane, solely because I wanted to just make the light, and the time math dictated that it would be more efficient to make my left, camp in a parking lot for a minute while the mass of humanity that wanted to make their immediate right turns made their right turns, and then leisurely hop in the back of the line.  But I also had the wherewithal to give a quick glance to Google Maps, and I saw that even if I didn’t make the immediate right everyone was preparing to bully me out from making, the road would ultimately loop and eventually connect to a road that I needed to get on anyway, so I thought, hm, let’s just see where this takes us.

It’s slightly longer, maybe adds a minute or three to my overall drive, but so far, has shown to be sparsely used, no speed bumps to further stress out my 13-year old whip, and by virtue of taking this road instead of the routes that 95% of other commuters that work in my office park take, seems to get me out of the traffic light rhythm from all the other clusterfucks of entry points, so I’ve been able to leisurely cruise into the parking garage without any slow fucks trolling in front of me or any tryhard assholes tailgating behind me.

But most importantly, it has completely removed the mentally stressful need to fight and battle to get into the office complex, which is a tremendous weight lifted off my mind.  I’m often time the guy who will take back roads and alternate routes that might be longer, but if it keeps me moving and is less stressful, they’re worth it.  I’m just very pleased to have found an alternate route on my tedious commute to the office, and I’m hoping it continues to be the refreshing change of pace that will help calm down the stress of commuting for years to come.

The joy-not of driving the third car

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In another episode of overlooked dad things, I’ve mentioned before how in my household, I have the permanent short straw, well in most cases, but in the context of this post, when it comes to the cars we drive.

Technically, I have two cars in my name that I am paying for, and then we have mythical wife’s old car that is free and clear, but is also 13 years old, and comes with all of the anxious hangups that go along with driving around in a 13-year-old vehicle.

This post doesn’t exist if I actually got to daily drive one of the two cars I pay for, which means my daily commuter car is the third car in our household, which on paper really isn’t bad, as it is small and compact, making it ideal for my parking garage that has the smallest fucking parking spaces in existence and gets very good gas mileage, to which my daily commute of maybe 12-13 miles round trip means I’m filling up maybe once a month.

However, like I said, it’s a 13-year-old car.  With the overwhelming majority of those years being not mine, which means there’s a lifetime of history and little things that I’m unaware of, service and maintenance that I don’t know how well has been maintained other than the time in which I began to oversee it.

Whereas it was a sturdy, peppy car when mythical wife was mythical girlfriend and we first got together, the car is now 13 years old, and definitely feels its age.  Lots of the mechanisms feel tired, the transmission feels slippery and I permanently drive it in manual shift mode to get around all the wonky gear spacing and super revs when sneezing on the gas pedal. 

I don’t have the power to overtake anyone that isn’t standing still and have to concede my position way more often than I sometimes care to, and I spend admittedly more time than I probably should, lamenting on the day in which I don’t have to be the one in the third car and might actually get to permanently drive my own car that I don’t have share and adjust every time I get into it.

If it’s idled too long, something overheats or otherwise happens where the revs take on a higher pitch.  The tires in the rear are balding and should really be replaced, and the car’s at its time of life in which it’s always a question on whether or not these are the last new tires for them or not.  And of course, there’s all sorts of rattles and creaks that even Batman couldn’t identify.

But the absolute worst part of the third car is the horrendous lines of sight for probably anyone over 5’2, because mythical wife had had the car before I drove it regularly and she has no idea what I’m talking about.

The photograph above is what I see when I’m at a stop light – which is not the stop light at all.  I have to crane my neck at an uncomfortable angle in order to see the stop light, which really fucking sucks when a light stays red forever, necessitating me to keep my head in an awkward position to ensure that I see it turn green and begin driving accordingly.

At 5’9, I am not as tall as I wish I were, but I wouldn’t classify myself as someone who could be referred to as tall.  And yet, even when the seat is as far back as I can and adjusted to be as low as it gets, I’m still in a position to where if I ‘m not the third or further back car in a line of cars, I probably can’t see a traffic light in front of me without craning my neck.  Which sucks doubly because I always want to be the first car in a line so that I can drive with nobody in front of me because the existence of other commuters is what ruins the otherwise enjoyable act of driving cars, so I’m often in a position to where I concede sitting behind others, or put myself to where I have to crane my neck in order to monitor the light.

It’s every time I have to sit at a light craning my neck that this post has materialized in my head.  It doesn’t happen all the time, and some commutes I’m lucky to where it doesn’t happen at all, but then there are some days and some intersections where I just don’t get so lucky, and I have to sit there looking and feeling absurd as I how I often feel about the whole notion that I’m the one who always seem to have to make all the sacrifices in life for the sake my family.

Dad Brog (#149): I am so over children’s sandboxes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the school year coming to a close, I can think of several things that I’m looking forward to not having to do anymore on account of my children.  At the top of the list is shaking out my kids’ shoes and watching a fistful of sand pour out of each shoe of each kid.  I do this over a trashcan because I used to do it in the garage but it was getting to a point where my garage floors were getting excessively sandy and grainy, and above all else, I’m tired of the feeling of sand sticking to my own feet when I’m indoors from the shit the kids track into the house.

I swear, I’m sure that if I were to collect all the sand that my kids bring home on their feet and in their shoes, I could probably fill an entire sack of play sand, and return it to The Home Depot.  Sure, that would be a tremendous amount of effort for about $6 in store credit, but the money is beside the point as much as it’s about the sheer amount of sand that my kids manage to bring home with them on a regular basis that I’m completely over, and looking forward to the end of the school year where I (hopefully) won’t have deal with this crap any further.

The word count of this post doesn’t accurately reflect my disdain for sand.  I thought I had a lot more piss and vinegar to spit out about my general annoyance about all the sand my kids track all over the place from playing in the sandbox at school, but that’s really all there is to it.  I’m over checking their shoes every morning before school and watching a metric ton of sand pour out, and it’s definitely top-2 in things that I’m looking forward to not having to do once school’s out.

And to think me being all old and adult now, I wouldn’t be able to relish in the joy of school being out like my own children and the kids we once were.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: the transparency is refreshing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FOX29: Bensalem teenager accepted into five Ivy League schools

I know I said I probably wasn’t going to be doing any more of these posts without just cause, but this one caught my attention due to the amount of transparency that was provided in the details, that I’m more likely to believe than I would have some of the other Ivy League #TRYHARDs.

This isn’t a story about how a #TRYHARD got the Ivy Sweep and got into all eight of the Ivies, but instead a story about how a kid had (supposedly) applied to seven of the Ivies, and gotten into five of them.  Two were waitlists, but the fact of the matter is that there were zero rejections among them all, which on paper sounds like a tremendous coup.

Now I don’t necessarily believe why someone would apply to just seven Ivies and leave one off, and in the case of this #TRYHARD, the one left out Ivy is Princeton, which means they’re lying and they applied to all eight, or for whatever specific reason, they have reason to beef with, and not apply to Princeton.

However the point remains that although she’s waitlisted to Harvard, she did get into Yale, which means even an Asian parent could find some solace in that monumental win, and on top of that, still got accepted into Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Penn, which are just the cherries on top for parental bragging rights.

Either way, the reason I felt some compulsion to write about this story is the fact that it hasn’t been outright fluffed to the point where they proclaimed that they got into five out of five Ivies, and actually have disclosed that they didn’t get into some of them.  A waitlist isn’t necessarily a rejection, but I’ve always been under the impression that it’s basically like 66% a no, since these are schools that are waiting on other #TRYHARDs to make a choice, and if they get bypassed, then they hit the waitlist and pull from there. 

And seeing as how with the Ivies, it’s probably nothing but other #TRYHARDs in all the pools of acceptances, waitlists and rejections, along with their absurdly low acceptance rates, I’m going to go ahead and say that those waitlists are basically no.  But seeing as how this #TRYHARD has already declared leaning towards Yale, it’s not like it really matters that she’s getting the axe from Harvard and Dartmouth, and might as well keep on saying fuck Princeton.

Astoria, Oregon and the birthday bucket list trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I could easily say that probably for half my life, I’ve always wanted to visit Astoria, Oregon, most prominently known as the prime filming location for one of my all-time favorite films ever, The Goonies.  But seeing as how I live in the southeastern United States, and Astoria is about as far northwestern as they come save for the state of Washington, such has always been somewhat of a logistical challenge.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that frankly among the people in my life, nobody else has been interested in making this trip.  Mythical wife, nobody in my family, or any of my friends, really has had any desire to go to Oregon, much less Astoria, the small coastal town that’s 90 minutes away from Portland, the closest major airport to get there.  I almost managed to talk several of my friends into it a long time ago when a brother of mine got married in Olympia, Washington, but most of us got so smashed at the reception that we were too hung over to make the daytrip the following day.

So I decided that for my birthday this year, I was going to stop hoping other people would try and wow me with things that I don’t even know would do the job, and to just do something for myself, instead of having another birthday where I end up feeling droll and melancholy when the day winds down.  I decided to make the trip I’ve wanted to make basically my entire adult life, by myself.  I wouldn’t have to inconvenience anyone to make a trip they’re not fully in on with me, and I wouldn’t have to feel bad about any traveling companions’ feelings or preferences that might alter my own.

Months ago, I began my planning, and started making bookings in Oregon; where I was staying, a rental car, and booking an actual flight instead of trying to play the standby game for a trip that I really had my heart set on.  Originally, I had the idea of making the trip on my actual birthday weekend, but it just so happened that my birthday collided with Wrestlemania, and of all the things that could make me want to postpone, that was adequate enough. 

It was kind of surreal when my actual birthday came and went, and I was suddenly closing in on the trip that was definitely a bucket list trip for me.  It was finally happening, I was finally going to get to go to Astoria, and do the whole Goonies thing; see the Walsh home, which I had innately watched throughout the years go from being owned by a tyrant who hated Goonies fans, tarping up the whole place, to being flipped to a Goonies fan, who not only welcomed the fandom, has apparently made it a mission to restore the house to its 1985 camera-ready 80’s-tastic aesthetic. 

Go to the Astoria County Jail which is now the Oregon Film Museum, see the ORV that was always parked out front, and make the journey down to Cannon Beach, to see Haystack Rock, where the opening and closing scenes of the film took place.  And of course, while I’d be there, do some other, non-Goonies/film things like see the Astoria Column, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and seek out new food and try local beers.

So I’m writing this while sitting in the terminal at PDX waiting for my redeye flight back to Atlanta, and I can say that by and large, the trip was a great success.  I got to do and see all the things that I had wanted to see, and although the weather was a bit on the nippy side while I was here, I planned for it adequately enough and it did not have much bearing on my experience.  I saw pretty much all of Astoria, which isn’t saying a tremendous amount as it is not a very large town by any stretch of the imagination, and there were times where I was like, well what now? because I had accomplished all of the few things I had wanted to accomplish, so I found solace in coffee, beer, relaxation in my hotel room with an entertaining book.

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#TRYHARDSZN2025: This is point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of doing this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what it is with this #SZN, because we’ll going through stretches where there’s no news (at least that I can find) of any #TRYHARDs flaunting their college acceptances, and then a weekend will pass, and then bam, there’s suddenly multiple #TRYHARDs that have emerged and the news outlets will have said that these have been reported since two weeks ago and I’m like wtf.

Anyway, because we’re at the point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of writing about these #TRYHARDs unless they’re truly exceptional, these next #TRYHARDs have the unfortunate distinction to being lumped into an aggregate post, because frankly none of them are particularly exceptional compared to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN, and I don’t feel like dedicating an entire post to each and every one of them.

WIFR: Louisiana teen accepted into 75 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Nothing out of the ordinary here.  No SAT scores listed, no GPA listed, no extracurriculars listed.  Just a 27 on the ACT which is impressive, but just 75 school acceptances, and just $1M in scholarships is pretty low in comparison to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN.  That’s basically a $13K per acceptance average, which wouldn’t even be a year at community college, given the escalating prices of tuition and school expenses.

Naturally, she’s going with the HBCU that in all likelihood has given her a free ride, but hey free education is always a win, so who really cares what I think anyway.

MSN: Austin, Texas teen accepted into 22 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Compared to the aforementioned girl from Louisiana, $1Mish out of just 22 acceptances is a far high average, at $45.5K per acceptance, but in the #TRYHARD game it’s not just about the average, as much as it is the sheer volume of acceptances, which makes this one kid very much average in the grand spectrum of the game.

But the article is interesting in that it not only discloses that he got into 22 schools, it said out of 24 applications, so the #TRYHARD actually did suffer a little bit of rejection.  However, for as high-character as this kid seemed as far as grades, extracurriculars and altruistic side-hustles, seems like a low bar to have only applied to just 24.  I feel like if this guy truly #TRYHARDed and applied to 155 schools, he’d probably have gotten into like 140 of them, and amassed $6M in scholarships.

And for such low ambition, boy is but an aggregate footnote in the #SZN.

NBC41: Georgia teen accepted into 110 colleges, earning $5.2M in scholarship money

I think it’s safe to say that no matter what comes from the rest of #TRYHARDSZN2025, there’s no place where the game is played harder anywhere in the country as it is in Georgia.  It’s not even just a Southside Atlanta thing either, because we’ve had several documented #TRYHARDs from various other Georgia towns like this one, where they’re shooting for the moon and applying to every school under the sun, and succeeding.

110 colleges and $5.2M isn’t the biggest haul of the #SZN, but it’s also nowhere near the smallest, and it absolutely obliterates every  #TRYHARD that’s been found outside of the state.  She would probably be agitated if she ever found out about the girl in Georgia that cleared 155 and one in every state, but that’s what she gets for not #TRYHARDing enough.

What’s interesting is the factoid that of her 110 acceptances, it’s revealed that 86 of them offered scholarships, meaning 24 schools just simply said yes but no relo.  That being said, that clears up her average scholarship value at $60.5K per, which isn’t bad at all.  I’m going to assume that of the 24 schools that accepted with no offer, they’re probably the Power-5 conference schools that were the moonshots, and of the 86 that offered up some coin, these are the more average-tier schools, and seeing as how she’s already committed to Mercer, seems to be a fairly accurate assessment.

But hey, nursing.  The country definitely needs more of them, and as most of us are very well aware, nurses are really the real nuts and bolts that hold the entire medical profession afloat.

TapIntoPatterson: New Jersey teen accepted into multiple Ivy League schools; but not all of them

Okay, my sub-thing this #SZN is calling bullshit on all the extra #TRYHARDs who don’t just shoot for the moon, but shoot for Milky Way, by aiming for nothing short of the Ivy Leagues.  So this kid, gets into Harvard and Yale, as well as Princeton, Columbia and Penn, all on full-rides no less.  But what about Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth?

I have a hard time believing anyone in this position is so selective of which Ivy League school they want to go to, that they don’t apply to all of them, and I feel like I have to call bullshit on any of these uber #TRYHARDs when they brag about getting into a select number of Ivy League schools, but not all of them, but pretending like they only applied to just the ones they got accepted into.

Don’t get me wrong, the backstory on this particular #TRYHARD is pretty impressive, and it seems apparent that he’s qualified for all of the schools he got into, but I just don’t buy that he only applied to only the five Ivies that he got accepted into, and it’s extremely easy for him, his family, or the news to twist the truth just a little bit to make him sound more impressive than he already is.  Everyone has a little bit of ego at some point, and there’s something less shiny than disclosing that he was “accepted into five of eight Ivies,” versus “accepted into five Ivy League schools.”

The funny thing though, is that this #TRYHARD’s desired academic path is all about robotics, engineering and mathematics.  I’m sure he could pursue such educational paths at any of the Ivy League schools, but when the day is over, this kid’s real optimal school is probably MIT.  Frankly, he should be taking into consideration what the kid from Texas did, and use his Ivy League acceptances as leverage to possibly get MIT to sweeten the pot for him, before also pulling an nWo and revealing his MIT shirt on selection day.

Maybe he already is.

But because he didn’t get into ALL the Ivies like the Texas #TRYHARD did, he’s relegated to shared aggregate acknowledgment in the brog.

And I think I might be done for the #SZN, barring some truly exceptional #TRYHARDing.  But never say never, because there’s little end to the lengths some of these #TRYHARDs #TRYHARD.

Things White People Like: Cars that are kind of like Broncos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I’ve written several times about white peoples’ fascinations with the revived Ford Broncos, but over the last year or so, I couldn’t help but notice how many car manufacturers have slowly been creating their own vehicles to try to tap into that same market, of “white guys who are tired of how there are minorities that have the audacity to buy Jeeps, so they’ve all transitioned over to Ford Broncos, except now they once saw a black guy driving one, so they’ve been searching for something else.”

What finally spurred me to actually write about this after all this time that this general topic has been swirling around in my brain from time to time, is that this particular morning, I pulled up behind one of these Bronco clones, thinking that I was pulling up on a Land Rover  Defender or maybe a Hummer EV.  But then I saw the Lexus badge, and my brow scrunched and I was like, seriously, Lexus is in on this shit now too?

Sure, it didn’t help that the car had an aftermarket lift kit, and didn’t look exactly like the Lexus shown to the right, but the fact that someone would go through the trouble and finances to make their “luxury” Lexus look more rugged and, like a Bronco, by adding a lift kid and wide wheels was fascinating enough, and sure enough when I passed by him, it was a guy that basically looked like Adam Scott, which is to say a pretty generic looking white guy, no disrespect to Adam Scott I love Parks & Rec and Severance

The point remains is that Lexus is on the game now too, and now I can recall numerous vehicles that fall into the category of being Ford Bronco wannabes, targeting white people, and they are most definitely biting on the bait.

Sure, when I actually line them up like I have in this image, they don’t really look as identical as they seem to look when you see them one at a time in the wild, but the point remains is that they’ve all been inspired by the success of the Ford Bronco, and are all trying to get a slice of the pie.  Which is fascinating in the sense that Ford as a brand doesn’t really have a great reputation, seeing as how their cars are basically manufactured from recycled Rubbermaid parts and the cheapest metals they can find, but all these luxury makers are crawling all over each other in order to emulate a general shitbox, but with their own pretentious spins on them.

The Lexus RX550, the Land Rover Discovery, the Hummer EV, and the Rivian whatever, all have that general same look and feel as a Bronco, except that they’re probably $20K+ more than a Bronco.  And the only real bragging right a driver of a clone really gets is the insinuation that they have money because they plopped $20K+ more on their whip than they could have had a Bronco for, but then again, fewer things say white people more than flexing finances, even if it’s not always necessarily an intelligent choice.

It’s just so funny though, because the Bronco is a rip off of a Jeep, which is basically the greatest vehicle in the world at off-roading, but it’s beyond obvious that anyone in a Bronco, much less any of their egregiously more expensive poser-clones, the closest thing they’ll ever see to being off-road is when they go to a farm in the fall for pumpkin picking.

But then again, white people.