short takes
Nov. 27th, 2002 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioAttention Pittsburgh drivers: It's snow. You saw it last year. You dealt with it last year. Remember?
It took almost three times as long as usual for me to get home yesterday, and that was before the snow started sticking to the roads. I also passed three minor accidents. Whee.
I don't object to cautious drivers. I do object to the ones who do stupid things like block intersections (making it worse for everyone) or occupy two lanes or -- I am not making this up -- try to back up the length of a block on a one-way street instead of going around.
Friday on the way home from work Dani's car was grazed by a bus. It took out the driver-side mirror but did no other apparent damage. Saturn wouldn't talk to Dani until Monday, so he's been driving around with the thing taped together so he won't lose any pieces (some of which are connected by wires).
On Monday he called and they asked him if the plastic casing is black or the same color as his car (which is, technically, blackberry -- it looks black except in sunlight, when it shows as dark purple). It's painted, so he has to wait for them to order the part. Black he could have had right away. Now usually guys complain that it's a "girl thing" to insist that such things match, but you know, I would have taken the black. We don't get that many sunny days in Pittsburgh anyway; who'd notice? :-)
Apparently bus drivers get into enough accidents that this is down to a routine. Dani said the driver got out, took out a shrink-wrapped camera, broke the seal, took two pictures (one of the mirror and one of Dani's license plate), handed over a sheet of paper with the driver's basic information, and left. This was a tour bus, not PAT, by the way, so there's no way Dani is ever going to collect anything from these guys.
We got a weird series of wrong-number calls last night. The first one went something like this:
Me: Hello?
Him: slurred mumble
Me: Hello?
Him: mumble whozis?
Me: Whom are you trying to call?
Him: click
Two minutes later the phone rang. We repeated "hello?" and the slurred mumbling before he hung up. (The guy sounded either drunk or sleepy.)
Two minutes later the phone rang. I decided the machine could get this one.
And it was a different caller with a wrong number, this one not at all slurred but speaking with a heavy Russian accent. He did not identify the person he was trying to reach in his message.
That second guy called back twice more (an hour later, and two minutes after that). Finally he seemed to get the message that he had a wrong number, because he stopped calling. But it was strange, especially as there were two apparently-independent callers in such a short timespan.
It took almost three times as long as usual for me to get home yesterday, and that was before the snow started sticking to the roads. I also passed three minor accidents. Whee.
I don't object to cautious drivers. I do object to the ones who do stupid things like block intersections (making it worse for everyone) or occupy two lanes or -- I am not making this up -- try to back up the length of a block on a one-way street instead of going around.
Friday on the way home from work Dani's car was grazed by a bus. It took out the driver-side mirror but did no other apparent damage. Saturn wouldn't talk to Dani until Monday, so he's been driving around with the thing taped together so he won't lose any pieces (some of which are connected by wires).
On Monday he called and they asked him if the plastic casing is black or the same color as his car (which is, technically, blackberry -- it looks black except in sunlight, when it shows as dark purple). It's painted, so he has to wait for them to order the part. Black he could have had right away. Now usually guys complain that it's a "girl thing" to insist that such things match, but you know, I would have taken the black. We don't get that many sunny days in Pittsburgh anyway; who'd notice? :-)
Apparently bus drivers get into enough accidents that this is down to a routine. Dani said the driver got out, took out a shrink-wrapped camera, broke the seal, took two pictures (one of the mirror and one of Dani's license plate), handed over a sheet of paper with the driver's basic information, and left. This was a tour bus, not PAT, by the way, so there's no way Dani is ever going to collect anything from these guys.
We got a weird series of wrong-number calls last night. The first one went something like this:
Me: Hello?
Him: slurred mumble
Me: Hello?
Him: mumble whozis?
Me: Whom are you trying to call?
Him: click
Two minutes later the phone rang. We repeated "hello?" and the slurred mumbling before he hung up. (The guy sounded either drunk or sleepy.)
Two minutes later the phone rang. I decided the machine could get this one.
And it was a different caller with a wrong number, this one not at all slurred but speaking with a heavy Russian accent. He did not identify the person he was trying to reach in his message.
That second guy called back twice more (an hour later, and two minutes after that). Finally he seemed to get the message that he had a wrong number, because he stopped calling. But it was strange, especially as there were two apparently-independent callers in such a short timespan.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-27 08:06 am (UTC)I'm going to refute this as my step father owns a bus company, and most of the companies run on the same principles. You have a better chance to settle with a tourbus than you do with PAT. Really. Just submit the claim to the tourbus companies insurance, and go from there.
I will happily eat my words if you don't get a quick settlement.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-27 10:57 am (UTC)(Well, I have elected representatives. Dani's got to do something about that someday.)
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-27 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-27 11:24 am (UTC)It's not likely to exceed his deductible, so his insurance company might not care (but he may as well submit it and try). He also seems to be assuming that he's automatically out the amount of his deductible so it's not worth doing paperwork, but my understanding is that the deductible is for things that either are your fault or are the fault of unknown people. In this case, I think he'd eventually get all his money back. (At least, the time I was hit by someone when it was clearly the other person's fault, I did eventually get my deductible. It took a while, though.)
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-27 11:15 am (UTC)I can also ask my Step-Father about it over dinner tomorrow and let you know if he has any insight when we see you Friday.