3 Part post - Kia Engineering!Fail / SD the Free-est State?? / Turtle cyberpets (FEED THEMS!)

[micaturtle]

Ooooh! A three part post!! On things COMPLETELY unrelated to each other!

Part 1
Piss off, Kia. My Kia Rio has an ANNOYING "feature" where if you lock the doors using the keyless thingy, and then use the key to open the trunk, the car alarm goes off. WTF?? Argh. Because EVERYONE knows that if you someone is using the keys to open the trunk of a locked car, THEY MUST BE A CAR THIEF!! Argh.

Okay, I thought maybe it was an overlooked little thing, BUT NO. THEY TALK ABOUT IT IN THE USER MANUAL! SEE?



JEEZ! In the stages of planning/designing this, I think the conversation went like this:
Engineer 1 - Oops! The alarm goes off when you open the trunk! Crap, I don't wanna have to fix that!
Engineer 2 - Ah, don't sweat it dude. We'll just stick a little blurb in the user's manual and tell everyone it's a "feature".
Engineer 1 - Awesome! Then we can go smoke a bowl! Plus, everyone knows that anyone trying to get into the trunk of a locked car is up to no good anyway. No way that they would be someone with their hands full of things to put into said trunk.
Engineer 2 - Exactly! What was that you said about smoking a bowl? I was going to design a button to open the trunk onto the remote start and fix the front fog lights so they stopped falling off whenever you looked at them funny, but your plan sounds a lot more fun!

There, writing that little thingy amused me and now I'm not as annoyed at being embarrassed by the Mikey Mobile making a racket when I tried to put something in the trunk this afternoon.

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Part 2
http://mercatus.org/freedom-50-states-2011

WTF?? South Dakota is the second "free-est" state?? SOUTH DAKOTA??? Whatever! They must have somehow overlooked the fact that we've tried to OUTLAW abortion like 3 times, and that we've tried to get something passed to outlaw gay marriage? *facepalm*

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Part 3
I KNOW that everyone's got this lil Turtle pet thingy, but I wanted to make one :D

Comments

[micaturtle.livejournal.com]

thats insane. So gay marriage is actually OUTLAWED in your state? Gah. That makes me grumble (and worry about moving there) Is your state a more republican or more democratic state?

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I thought you knew; it's been illegal. That's not a recent law. We're the South: gay marriage is illegal in every state in the region. Actually, we're the only state in the South without a constitutional amendment against it.

On moving here: only nine states plus DC in the US allow gay marriage. Actually, according to this site http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=16430 (last update May 2011), South Dakota has a law against same-sex marriages and a constitutional amendment defining marriage. We just have the law.

We do allow same-sex domestic partnerships, but there's only one county in the state that does domestic partnerships; there's no state law on it and most areas don't have them.

Periodically, the Republicans introduce a bill to add an anti-same-sex-marriage clause to the state constitution. It tends to die in committee, although if I remember correctly, the last time it was introduced it made it to a vote in the House before they killed it. It's expected they'll try again this year. (It's also thought, unlike in previous years, that they might actually have enough votes to pass it, since some of the Democrats will vote for it. Although likely the governor will veto, so with the equality union's current hey-that's-silly-we-already-have-a-law-go-back-to-working-on-the-budget campaign against it, it's a fair possibility that it will still be killed before it makes it to voters. If it does get to us - although roughly three quarters of the state's population is against gay marriage, less than half of voters support a constitutional ban.)

Currently the Republicans control the general assembly, but the governor is a Democrat. In years past, the Democrats have controlled the general assembly, although the state has been fairly close to equally Republican or Democrat (in terms of voters who register as either; we have quite a lot of independent voters, and the Libertarians are pretty sturdy for a third party) during my political lifetime (that is, since I could both vote and was present for elections). If you're unfamiliar with the Libertarians - they are pro-gay-marriage, and their major political stance is that personal freedoms are good and the government needs to stop regulating them away.

FYI, these are seriously our state's political priorities: 1. budget, 2. job creation, 3. budget, 4. school system, 5. budget, 6. what do you mean "6"? Where's our budget? No, we don't like that one, give more money to the schools and where's those jobs you promised?