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After yesterday, I was surprised at how good I felt today. I got to sleep in by an extra half hour, which I realized, is neither a burden nor a boon. I’m still on the fence as to whether traffic is lighter when commuting for an 8:30 AM or 9 AM shift. Traffic seems to be worse on the Thruway for the latter shift, but seems to be worse on Route 9 for the earlier shift (likely because of traffic related to the schools which will dissipate by the end of June).

No matter what time you contend with the traffic, however, it’s obvious that next to no one engages in neither efficient nor courteous driving practices. Despite that, it became more apparent to me that I’m the one that’s more right for leaving adequate room and trying to find the average speed. Today I was passed by a Porsche weaving in and out of traffic. Eventually, they got trapped in the left lane by bumper to bumper traffic, whereas I rolled gently up beside them. I believe I braked all but five times today in total on the Thruway – and unlike last year, I don’t just shift gears to avoid braking, though I do shift when it’s appropriate to do so.

Like, for example, how my attitudes and behaviors shift when I arrive at work. As an aside, this morning I had the satisfaction of reporting to security that another employee had left their lights on in the parking lot – which I did yesterday, only to return to a dead battery. Anyway, though I’m beginning to find it enjoyable again to dress nicely and gain the sense of satisfaction that comes with working diligently, the moment I get out of work, I feel like I can take off the fake smile I strap on all day. Ass kissing was not part of my job description, but it’s definitely an expectation of the position. Despite numerous attempts to make suggestions on how to make not only my own, but the jobs of others, easier and more efficient, I’m frequently told that the way things are, are just the way things are.

Despite my dissatisfaction with being forced to accept the status quo, two rather interesting things happened today. The first was that I completed coding my HTTPS proxy. My employer’s firewall aggressively filters both ingoing and outbound traffic. Now, however, I’m able to surf the web anonymously. All of my traffic is loaded through another website. First, I authenticate myself to the website over HTTPS (secure HTTP, what is often used to secure e-commerce websites). Then, I’m prompted for the URL that I want to go to, and that URL is then transmitted via an encrypted ‘POST’ request (thus causing that data to become encrypted as well). The website I want to visit is returned to me via the same encrypted tunnel. Thus, my employer sees me visiting only a single website over and over, and has no choice but to accept that the traffic is encrypted. In fact, if they try to crack the encryption, they may be violating laws. Not that it matters, because 256 bit SSL is more than adequate to thwart even an experienced and well-financed hacker. Some readers may be asking why the entire web is not encrypted, then. The reason is simple: not everything needs to be encrypted. If I was visiting a website like CNN, I wouldn’t even bother trying to conceal the contents of my transaction because no one would complain that I was doing something improper. But what if I loaded Slashdot, for example? The corporate firewall filters Slashdot because it is related to hacking. Forget the fact that it’s the premier source of techno-scientific news – it’s liked by hackers, so it’s got to be bad. Regardless, as of today, I could surf the web pseudo-anonymously without worrying that my employer was spying on me. And that’s a good feeling, because if they are so obsessed with my personal life that they feel like they need my urine to gauge my character, they must at least monitor my internet usage (and believe me, they do, because they spent quite a bit of time during orientation explaining internet usage policies).

The second piece of good news today was that it didn’t matter that I wrote that proxy software. The reason was that the computer lab in which I work is getting Optimum Online installed. After all, how can we test software pretending that we’re in the outside world when we’re behind such a ridiculously overzealous firewall? So when this week is over I’ll be able to just plug into the Optimum Online connection and do things that shouldn’t be prohibited anyway. Like, for example, checking my personal email, as this is currently completely impossible because of the outbound firewall rules. Webmail is fine, so why not POP3? The argument that it stops worms from spreading is bunk – because an intelligent policy on software updates and server-side managed virus protection mitigate that possibility. So naturally, I’m quite excited that I’ll literally be one of five employees at my company (which employs thousands) that has unrestricted Internet access, with of course the exception of the IT people that could easily just exempt themselves from the firewall rules anyway.

So, at this point in today’s entry, I must take a step back and return to the original point of this article. I woke up this morning and just decided that I needed to do my own thing and do it as well as I possibly could. I drove the best I could to work. I did the right thing and went out of my way to let someone know their car battery was going to die. I worked hard, and ate well during lunch. Then I came home and ran as hard as I could despite the fact that it rained earlier. With hard work and a good attitude, I can’t fail.

Proof that at least four out of five drivers are completely inconsiderate, I wait trapped behind cars that won’t move up to let me into the open lane ahead of me, since no one queues properly using the two lanes that are provided. If you live in Rockland County, you know that this is at the interchange of Route 59 and Route 304 in Nanuet, NY. If you make a left turn at this intersection, the left lane tapers off, and leads to Route 304 southbound. The right lane connects to three parking lots: the first to a Mobil gas station, the second towards the McDonalds & Pathmark shopping center, and the third to Mavis Discount Tire, at which point the lane continues straight and becomes Church Street. Literally every drive believes that they must queue up ready to be in the right lane in order to continue to Church Street. Even people close to me often say, “If you’re in that lane, nobody lets you in!” Seriously, how likely is it that everyone of the cars in front of me here would cut me off if I went into the left lane and calmly made the turn along side them – without making it seem that I was trying to cut them off. No one has to let you in – because at least one of the ten cars in the rightmost turn lane in this picture is headed towards one of those three shopping areas. It happens every time. At the very worst, you end up having to slowly cruise as those cars pass you headed towards Church Street, and you end up at the back. But I say so what – would you rather wait again for the light to cycle? That light takes over 90 seconds to completely cycle. For some reason, I’d rather make the turn and wait for the other drivers to go. If you’re ever there, try the left lane, it’s actually pretty convenient. Just don’t race the drivers in the right lane, or you certainly won’t be let in. I’d say 19 out of 20 times traffic permits a quick switch and lets you flow through though. Like I said, just give it a shot. If you don’t like it, you can always just hold everyone else up like this idiots pictured here.

When I arrived home from school last week, I was determined to do two things. The first was to be able to completely run around Rockland Lake (a three mile loop) by the end of May. The next was to pass my pre-employment drug screening.

At first, the former seemed like a loftier goal than the latter. I hadn’t run in a systematic fashion since maybe once or twice over winter break. My primary source of exercise at school is rollerblading, which I admittedly use to both feel energized and to work up a sweat. So, when I did get home, I called Slava and asked if he’d be interested in running. He’s always good company, so naturally, when he said that he’d run with me, I got excited. Amazingly, although I couldn’t make it around the lake (which I anticipated), he couldn’t either. Mind you, he was involved with track during high school. I guess time off-task can really make that much of a difference! We ran as much as we could, but still had to take two or three breaks. The next morning, I was incredibly sore all over, but it felt great.

The latter goal, passing the drug screen, was slightly more complicated. My employer (who, I’ve learned, should remain nameless to prevent even the slightest possibility of retaliation) initially told me that I wouldn’t have to repeat my paperwork processes (such as an I9 and W2 tax form), and specifically mentioned that I wouldn’t have to take a drug screen. So, when I got a call the first day I was home that mentioned my “new hire packet containing information on direct deposit and my drug screening”, I became a little bit concerned. Now, ironically, the reason I was concerned was that I wasn’t doing hard drugs. If I had been doing cocaine, heroin, barbiturates, or any derivative thereof, I would have known that by simply abstaining as little as two days prior, I would have been able to pass a standard NIDA-5 urinalysis.

The problem was that I had smoked pot after my finals. That simple act will affect the contents of my urine weeks from now. Surely, my job performance couldn’t really be affected by something I did weeks prior. Why is it no longer acceptable to judge a person on objective performance criteria? Drug screens are justified by employers to supposedly increase workplace safety and productivity. After all, a drug-free workforce is absent and sick less frequently, amongst other things claimed by the drug testing industry – the $700 million per year drug testing industry.

Well, if it’s simply a matter of improving attendance, why not reprimand or release employees that fail to meet minimum attendance requirements? Or, at the very least, put it at the discretion of the manager. A better policy might dictate that if a manager suspects that an employee’s performance is being adversely affected by their drug use, or if the employee is suspected to arrive to work under the influence of drugs, that it be recorded and action be appropriately taken. But how can it be reasoned that my workplace will be any safer just because they reject me for hire on the premise that I smoked pot at some point historically? If it’s the case that on-the-job performance really is adversely affected by pot smoking that may have taken place weeks ago, couldn’t the case be made that adverse affects could linger months, or even years after the initial ingestion? In that event, should people who smoked pot in the 1960s not be hired because they may have smoked a joint during the summer of love? Cocaine and heroin use, mind you, are detectable only for up to two days. Harmless metabolites of pot trapped in fat cells can be detected in urine for up to twelve weeks in a heavy smoker. For a heavy crack cocaine addict, the same could not be said. A crack user would have a much easier time passing a drug test than someone that had smoked pot even once.

On the job drug testing is a joke – unless you’re involved in an industry like trucking, where you’re a complete idiot if you do drugs on the job. Also, I’ll concede that there are some positions where a drug free workforce is desirable. A police officer, after all, should be subject to random testing for illegal substances. If they enforce the law, they most certainly should be subject to it. Are they, though? Or do cops in our country frequently make drug busts only to pinch their seizures and take a small quantity home? It’s just one of the many things that are completely backwards about drug policy in our country.

For the record, with determination and perseverance, I was able to run the full three miles around the lake today. If I can work that hard, and realize my goals, why would any employer not want me? We’ll see what happens with the drug screen, and an update will come soon.

I’ve been seeing this tag a lot around Rockland County. This particular tag was on a van in the parking lot behind Posa Posa in Nanuet. I noticed it first on Tweed Boulevard, which of course is my favorite road, one that I feel compelled to protect and preserve. Another tag on Tweed that sticks out in my mind is AIR – mainly because the vandal used a decal technique to hit up a diamond shaped warning marker near the intersection of Tweed Boulevard and Clausland Mountain Road. If you know who is responsible for these tags, and you tell me, I promise I will not publish it here or reveal your identity. It’s just a matter of curiosity.

On the matter of graffiti though, if you’ve been seeing green pot leaf stencils all over Rockland, the Ramapo police have apprehended a suspect. The suspect is a minor and their identity has not been released. It’s really a shame, because it’s one of the only tags that I’ve ever actually appreciated rather than merely bashing on principle. Good work, anonymous vandal, you certainly made me smile and likely made all kinds of uptight conservatives in our area cringe.

I haven’t posted on Fark, or my own website for that matter, in quite a while. I figured that since threads about driving and highway design are some of my favorite that I’d throw in what I know.

In states where there is no explicit “keep right” law, it boils down to common courtesy, as has already been said. Part of courtesy is cooperation from parties driving both above and below the speed limit. The road belongs to all of us and is something to be shared, not something to be won, and I think that we all can agree that judging from this thread — many drivers disagree on how to coexist on the roads. Some would like to move faster and some would like to move slower, but realistically neither is more correct; drivers from both sides need to just have more of a “let it be” attitude.

This brings me to the next point, regarding stop-and-go traffic. Comments were already made in this thread by I’m_a_moran regarding this type of traffic and how it can be modeled with waves. They are correct to say that leaving a reasonable gap, and observing a safe following distance ultimately improves traffic flow for drivers behind you. The cause for these improvements is that a) by driving at the overall average speed of traffic, you drive neither significantly slower nor faster than stop-and-go traffic would permit anyway, and b) by continuing to move and not be forced to stop, if a temporary bottleneck or other cause of traffic is reached, people allowing adequate following distance that choose to cooperate can temporarily share a single lane by merging together seamlessly and parting after the temporary blockage has eased. Consider a zipper as a model of this concept being idealized.

Allowing for a safe (and generous) following distance does not, in fact, cause the traffic problems; it’s actually quite the opposite. In the UK, for example, there are roads with dynamic speed limits (and the speed limits in the UK are often automatically enforced, mind you) — the idea being that drivers adjusting to an appropriate average speed in traffic ultimately improve flow for others. The driver that waits to allow space to form in front of them does wait, yes but as the wave of braking forms behind them, there is a “crack the whip” effect that travels through the road until either there are no vehicles left to brake or until space between vehicles is adequate enough to allow vehicles to comfortably coast to a slower speed (and thus join in the slow down, which often is inevitable and merely a result of congestion). As far as that little bit of roadway that appears to be idle and wasted, it’s really not. Its emptiness is only transient, and furthermore the few seconds that is it empty for will be followed, hopefully, by scores of other drivers calmly rolling over it at a constant reasonable speed, rather than the traditional 0mph one moment, and 30mph the next. What it really boils down to is: would you rather drive somewhere going 30mph for half the time, and be completely stopped for the other half the time, or would you rather drive 15mph the entire way? I suppose there are some people that would say they’d prefer the former, but its certainly far less stressful to the highway, the vehicle, and the driver by the latter.

Drivers interested in becoming “lubricators” to the flow of traffic can do more than just allow for a safe following distance.

First, go with the flow! Regarding speed limits and flow, drivers are better off following the flow of traffic. If nine out of ten cars around you are driving faster than the speed limit, its better to move with them than against them, and vice versa for slow moving traffic.

Next, be eager to say “go ahead!” When another vehicle is trying to change lanes, exit, merge, or perform any other maneuver that requires cooperation from other drivers, be the driver that allows them to perform their maneuver. The caveat to this is that occasionally, drivers dont expect you to be courteous and actually get confused by being let in. If the other driver doesnt understand your gesture after a second or two, its not your fault, just move on. To effectively permit lane changing and merging in an optimal fashion, you should only accelerate slightly or coast. Accelerating or braking abruptly obviously runs counter to every other suggestion made here.

Also, avoiding braking (primarily by avoiding tailgating and allowing an ample following distance) should be your goal. Obviously, this doesnt mean that if youre about to slam into the person in front of you that you should do that (or jerk the wheel to the side to change lanes at the last second). The idea here is that you should try to find the average speed at which traffic is flowing, and then drive at that speed. When you see a serious slow down far ahead of you, just start coasting, and dont worry that some people behind you will pass you. They ultimately will end up stopping just as you do, but in your case, the cars behind you that do realize what youre doing will also roll to a gentle stop (or perhaps wont have to stop at all if you time it right). Another unintended positive side effect of this is that your vehicle will wear at a slower rate. For example, I drive a 1993 Mitsubishi Diamante, and my tires have lasted as long as 60,000 or 70,000 miles from a combination of easy driving and proper tire care (for comparison, the average is about 45,000).

Finally, dont compete with other drivers, and especially dont try to punish them. Everyone knows thats far more dangerous than driving too quickly or too slowly. No insignificant amount of headway on a highway is worth causing an accident over.

There are also scores of other things that drivers could do, but the ones that Ive listed are what came to mind first. Just remember: most of the time, its not a big deal when someone is moving a bit slower or faster than you. There are both drivers that drive dangerously fast and slow, and these drivers are targeted by law enforcement more frequently than the average driver. Our systems for mitigating the risks caused by such drivers are admittedly not perfect. The things that we can each make better, however, are our attitudes.

Can’t we all just get along?

Related links:
Traffic Wave Experiments
Lifes Little Questions: Why Does Traffic Jam?
Microsimulation of Road Traffic
TrafficWare Software, makers of Synchro and SimTraffic

Two serious accidents occurred within hours of each other yesterday less than 1000 yards away from each other around exit 12 on Interstate 87 near the Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY. In the first, an 11 year old boy was killed and his family seriously injured when another vehicle crossed the median and crashed into their vehicle. The driver and passenger in the other vehicle suffered non-life threatening injuries. The cause of the second accident, pictured here, has still not been determined.

We’re back! Some regular readers may have noticed that the site was down for a few days. We’re on a new server! You can thank iPowerweb for being so obstinate and unhelpful for the delay.

I will no longer patron iPowerweb when this billing cycle is over.

The site also will be returning to the format it existed in last summer. This site will be a photo blog again very soon. Hooray! A big pat on the back to myself for getting the site up and running again.

Six semesters ago, I came to RPI as a starry-eyed high school graduate. I was looking to study civil engineering, specifically pertaining to highway design. I practically had the MUTCD memorized, so it seemed like a logical idea. I had spoken to my future roommate online once before we got there. But he knew what it meant to be l33t, and told me that he was a fan of rocking the ganj, so I thought that things were just going to be rosy and that I was going to have a ball at college.

For the first few weeks, I had quite a good time. I don’t really remember going to class much, and I don’t even remember networking with other kids or being socially active. Actually, I don’t remember much of what I was doing because I was somewhat of a shut-in. My roommate and I both were, to that point were peas in a pod. We both discovered that we had the same knack for being “social enough” to get desired results without actually being social. This way of thinking affected every part of our lives. Everything with the people around us was a negotiation, or a challenge to be conquered. I remember one specific instance where we went to a party (of sorts) where there were about twelve people. We grouped back up outside after hanging out inside for a while. Without ever having openly communicated it, somehow we read off each other that we were going to just mess with them and take their lighters. When we got outside, we had four lighters between the two of us. It was that kind of innate ability to communicate non-verbally, and then after that to be skilled enough to carry out our plan, that made us partners in crime.

It didn’t take long for everything to go wrong, though. As they say, there is no honor among thieves. Perhaps two wrongs don’t make a right. Whatever the cause, the lesson to be learned is that if you build an interpersonal relationship on exploitation and deceit, you shouldn’t be surprised if you are exploited or deceived.

You get what you give, in any situation. I firmly believe that I know what is right and wrong. When I make a bad choice, I admit it, confront it, regret it, learn from it, and get over it. Is that something that’s not commonly practiced by my peers? Everyone seems so concerned with their egos that they might be able to admit an error, but never confront the consequences of their error. People make mistakes all the time, but no one mistake is any less important to learn from than the next. Every mistake is a mistake for a reason, and without confronting that reason, there’s no point in admitting the mistake in the first place.

The best part about failure is what you learn from it.

To allow failure to discourage you is counterproductive. No matter what people around you say, don’t let it get you down. When it comes down to it, this world is a wonderfully large place. If everyone in the world knows you, and 99% of them hate you, then you still have 63.8 million friends. So forget the people that want nothing but to discourage you, because as the saying goes, they’re merely drops in the bucket. For that matter, we all are insignificant in that regard. Life transcends the conflicts, failures, and tragedies that we individually experience on this earth.

You can cry while the sky is blue, and you can be laid into your grave on a bright spring day when the flowers begin to bloom. You can die in a collision during a Sunday drive, or die from an infection you got when going to donate blood. The world is not a perfect place, for sure, and nor is it predictable. Given the constraints of the system, we have no choice but to accept them and adapt to them.

Every process in the universe is bound by the second law of thermodynamics. Every last bit of mass, energy, and momentum in the universe wants to equilibrate, but this won’t happen for billions of years. Complex molecules and stores of high energy break down into less complex molecules and expend the energy they have into their surroundings. Life is the one exception to the second law of thermodynamics in that regard, but only when looking at the system from a microscopic perspective. The earth is not a closed system, because it takes in energy primarily from the sun. The energy from the sun was enough to cause simple molecules to actually become more complex, and those complex molecules gave way to the enzymes that ultimately gave way to life. Life, however, fulfills the prophecy of the second law of thermodynamics by actually increasing the rate at which mass, energy, and momentum are exchanged with their surroundings. The water cycle alone, which is a byproduct of the energy imported from the sun, plays probably the largest role in shifting entropy when considering how all biological processes rely on it.

The water cycle will be here much longer than any of us will. No single blade of grass will hold a water droplet on its cusp forever. Yet some people will die as obstinate as the day they were born. If everything around us evolves and fulfills the universe’s destiny by accepting, causing, and craving change, then how is it possible that people could honestly believe that the past is the best source from which to learn how to shape the future? Every last process in the world requires adaptation to remain effective in the long term.

Don’t think about life in the short term, day-to-day context that our culture seems to force us into. When you make choices, think about what that choice could do later. When you’re asked if you’d like soup or salad, ask yourself what you really want. Start there, and take that willingness to think to other parts of life. Think about what could happen if you go out to that bar and get drunk. Think about how what you do will affect people, and don’t assume that everyone else is capable of just cutting themselves off from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I really could care less whether or not the people around me like me or not, but I care enough to not want to dislike them back for an arbitrary reason. I don’t have time to be concerned with everything, because there is too much else in life to enjoy.

I enjoy the things in life that are beautiful; life is beautiful. I also enjoy hoping that things will get better. If you buy futures in humanity, don’t sell them short.