There’s something that’s bothered me for a long, long time, and it’s changed my behavior a little.

     If I walk up to a door to open it, I glance around to see if anyone else is close.  If they are, I hold it open for them.  It’s a simple thing, that most people don’t do at all any more.

     Some people are semi-thankful, but can’t really be bothered to do much more than nod or half-grunt a, “Thanks,” before continuing to walk blindly around not paying attention to anyone else around them.

     Occasionally, you get one of the uber-Feminists who will rip you a new butt for holding her door open.  She’s perfectly capable of doing it herself, and what a chauvanistic piece of — *BONK!* — as the door hits her in the face, because she’s too busy complaining to note that you let it go and walked away… at which point, you’re demoted to misogynist, and… *rolls eyes*  I always wonder how those types react when they see me hold the door for the guy at the next door…

     Unfortunately, most people these days are asshats and don’t care that I hold the door for them, at all.  Why, no!  I should be privileged for having held their door!  I’m not a antisocial (I’m really not), but stuff like that is exactly why I think the vast majority of people should get bent.

     Needless to say, it is due to the above three classes of people that I don’t stop, hold the door, and wait for people to go through ahead of me.  Bloody hell, half of the population are so brash and rude that they will jump right on through while I’m holding open for my lady, who I really wanted to walk in with…
     Thus, I’m very good about holding it behind me.  And, if I accidentally drop it as someone’s coming, I even go so far as to apologize to them.
     Weird, eh?

     But today, as I walked up to the door to a store, I noticed an elderly woman with a very young teenager approaching.  Ignoring my usual instincts, I stopped, grabbed the door, held it open, and said, “After you!” as I ushered them inside.
     The two looked me right in the eyes, and with large, genuine smiles, said, “Oh, thank you!” in unison.
     Genuine thanks?!  That’s so rare!  I couldn’t help but say something, and when I opened my mouth, “My pleasure!” came tumbling out.
     Again, more smiles.  As they walked on into the store arm-in-arm, they leaned and whispered to one another, patted the others’ arms as they went.

     Simply amazing.

     Nostalgic, even, remember how people used to act when you did some random act of kindness…

There are two types of people who write checks at the counter these days:

• Construction workers who have gigantic checks often in gigantic books
• Old ladies with gigantic purses

I will allow for the former, but the later is making me crazy. This is 2007! Why are you still writing checks? Men don’t write checks because we don’t carry around a piece of luggage to hold the damned things. And we don’t enjoy writing in cursive. I think this may be part of the issue. Women enjoy writing in cursive.

And I think it may be a class of people who have more time than anything. That’s the only explanation for not just the ungodly slow check writing process, but also for the makes-me-want-to-strangle-them act of waiting until they get a total to pull out the billy club of a wallet and start actually putting pen to paper! They live in a world where time is not an issue. A land that time forgot.

I know this rant will have no impact because the Luddites that still write checks are not on the freakin’ internet reading blogs. If they have a computer, it is collecting dust in the other room after they got online and clicked where they should not have and now when they turn it on they immediately get 25 porn pop-ups.

I swear, last time I was behind one of these old ladies I nearly grabbed her checkbook and ripped it to shreds and screamed “use the freakin’ card they sent you slow ass bitch!”

Do you have a floppy drive? No? When was the last time you used a floppy? My daughter used floppies on occasion to get work from home to school, but now she is using a thumb drive. Most of us see a floppy disk as a leftover from the computer days of yesteryear. And in computer days, yesteryear comes pretty quick.

So, with the floppy quickly becoming as remote as the 5.25 inch floppy, or cassette loader to us, why is a floppy the icon for “Saving” on so many pieces of software? And will it continue on until the only floppies are in museums?

This is already happening in another common, but overlooked place: you car dashboard. Do you have an ashtray in your car? Lighter? No? But I bet you have a cell phone charger and it has a plug on it that is the size of a cucumber. Why? Because it fits the cigarette lighter hole that is still there even though no one uses a cigarette lighter in the car or even has an ashtray! That big ol’ hole will likely remain in your dash for decades. In 50 years, no one on Earth will smoke and we’ll have hover craft to zip around in running on cold fusion and there will still be a huge hole in the dash we plug our devices into and no one will know why.