Peevish

I'm feeling a bit peevish this morning.

#1  In Massachusetts, the law states that pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way, and autos must stop to let the walkers finish crossing.  I do not have any problem with this law.

The right of way does not apply to people standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross.  And it does not empower idiots to step into a crosswalk when there is a car approaching at 35 miles per hour, forcing the driver of said car to jam on the brakes.  

#2 Breakdown Lane Travel.  On many roads in this state, travel is allowed in the breakdown lane during certain periods.  I'm not sure what the poor souls who actually have broken-down are supposed to do, but there have been cases where they have been killed by motorists tearing down the breakdown lane at 60 or 70 mph.

  I have a simple solution to this problem.  Amend the law to limit the speed in the breakdown lane to not exceed 30 mph.  That would alleviate the bottleneck situation, would keep cars from speeding past you in the right-most lane, not to mention that it would diminish the likelihood of a crash with a disabled vehicle legitimately occupying the breakdown lane.

#3 Why am I paying for a land line?   20 times a day the phone rings and caller id says "Unavailable" or some other label that does not identify the caller.  If I don't recognize the name, I do not pick up. but it is still annoying.  Many are robocalls that leave a message on the answering machine, and I have to delete them.  Verizon should offer an option to block calls from going to the answering machine, also I am the do-not-call list, which seems to be a joke as I am getting calls from known scammers and spammers.  Verizon is not looking out for me, and I resent it.

#4  I have a big screen TV.  Why do Netflix disks insist on showing movies in letterbox format ( the previews are full-screen, so don't tell me that it's the TV's fault.  I hate when I see the message that "That option is not available" when I want to skip ahead so I don't need to view the anti piracy messages in six languages.