AgentCooper.NET

Ok, so I understand folks get a bit delusional when they lose a close loved one, but the actions of Josh Hancock’s father is completely not comprehensible. If you don’t know who Josh Hancock is, he was a relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals who died last month after running his SUV into the back of a tow truck. His father is demanding justice and by that he’s filing civil suit and seeking damages in his son’s death. Typical of any father who you feel someone is liable in the death, however I have an issue when the factors in the death include his son speeding, talking on the cell phone, not wearing a seat belt, plowing into another vehicle, oh yeah… and having a blood alcohol level of nearly twice the legal limit. I have to wonder who you even sue in this scenario though there’s no need as Mr. Hancock answered this for me.

• The owner AND manager of the restaurant that served him the drinks that made him intoxicated. They’re apparently negligent by handing drinks to Josh for the 3 ½ hours he was there. Did he not order, purchase, or ask for these drinks?
• The towing company who is apparently negligent by having their truck in the way of Josh’s SUV.
• The tow truck driver who was assisting the stalled vehicle driver apparently is negligent by failing to put out flares and call the police after only being on the scene for ~5 minutes.
• The owner of the disabled vehicle for negligence by allowing his vehicle to become stalled on the highway and failing to move out of the way of oncoming traffic. BTW, that vehicle that became stalled when it spun out after being cut off by another vehicle – who’s the victim here???

This whole lawsuit infuriates me. I don’t mean to be insensitive but Josh made some bad decisions and his fate was decided – my deepest respects are with him. I do however have an issue with his father; I’m surprised he’s not suing the cell phone company by providing the means for Josh to talk on the phone while driving.

I find it absolutely absurd that frivolous lawsuits such as this are allowed though I guess that’s one of the “benefits” of being a free country – we’re able to place blame on anyone and everyone except ourselves.

I had no real point to this post, I just wanted to vent…

I was at McCormick’s Fish House earlier during their happy hour and while I was there Mac & Jacks was having a promotion giving out raffle tickets to those drinking their brew. Eventually the raffle drawing comes about and I don’t win a thing as their giving out pint glasses, T-shirts and such. Eventually the grand prize – two box seats and a cab voucher to the Mariner’s game – which I end up winning. At first I didn’t know what to think… shit, I actually won something?!?!

Anyways, they came over with the prize (tickets) and I *immediately* plopped them down in front of the couple sitting next to me (of whom I didn’t know). Wow, to see someone else’s eyes *light up* so quickly and wonderfully was just simply amazing. Prior to this we had never spoken which seemed to shock them even more so. Think of it from their shoes, here’s a complete stranger of which we don’t know and have never spoken to and he just gave us premium tickets to the ball game.

I mention that though I’m not going to the game that I’m also in no need of the tickets and that it’s my pleasure to provide them with the opportunity. Another gentleman approaches and states “Working on filling up the karma jar, eh?” a remark that I ended up just smiling to.

Ironically the couple who I had given the tickets to ended up picking up my entire tab (it wasn’t much but a wonderful gesture nonetheless) and ended up bringing meaning to the saying “what comes around goes around; apparently the karma guy wasn’t too far off base.

Walking home I find myself smiling thinking about what I had done, something that I felt was a reward within itself.

Tonight was pub night #3, which marked the occasion of the first pub night on the Eastside – Issaquah Brewhouse (Rogue Ales). It had special meaning for me given it was “so far away” and how it may impact my new kick of not driving; for those who don’t know, I haven’t driven my car since January 21st. Luckily enough there happened to be a bus route that goes the ~18 miles – direct. It literrally dropped my off a half block from the pub and the return trip I only had to catch it across the street.

Now I know I won’t always be this lucky but it definitely grounds me more in my comfort zone of not needing a car. Iin fact, I paid off the balance on the car loan this week in anticipation of selling it… more to come on this soon.

Ok, so I haven’t blogged in awhile – all I can say is I’ve been busy…

Anyways, I was setting up an online account last night with one of my banks and I was shocked at the fact that it wouldn’t allow me to use special characters in my password (i.e. !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *). I knew some didn’t allow this but after stepping back and looking at the situation I realized 38% of my financial institutions do not allow me to have a *real* strong password – they limit you to using [a-z], [A-Z], or [0-9]. I guess to them Carl1979 is considered strong enough and they don’t believe there’s any justification for me to have a password such as 6OE92k21$.

The offending banks:
• Washington Mutual – 6th largest bank in the United States!
• HSBC – 4th largest bank in the world!
• Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – 7th largest bank in the world!

Now I don’t know about you, but I find it concerning that I can have a more secure password on my MySpace profile than I can with the top banks in the world.

So I was going through airport security in Memphis yesterday and as I was doing the “routine” (shoes off, laptop out, pockets emptied) one of the security folks noticed my wallet in one of my bins and asked me to remove the cash – a request that perplexed me a bit.

I can see that they don’t want to be responsible if my cash “walks off” but at the same time who’s going to take it? The only folks that would have the opportunity would be the TSA folks themselves and personally I would like to think that if we’re entrusting them to keep air travel safe and free of terrorism then surely I should be able to trust them with $70 in cash going through an enclosed x-ray machine… if not, there’s a bigger problem.

I also suppose there is the possibility of me being selected for further screening and becoming separated from my belongings though I would argue should not occur as anyone who is selected for additional screening should have their belongings accompany them. But even if this scenario was to occur, how stupid would someone have to be to lift a wallet in front of security while on camera? Also, if this really did happen the least of my worries would be the cash and more on my identification and credit cards.

I guess I’ll just have to continue to be perplexed and assume the TSA is just protecting me from my own money…