[rant]
Well its no longer winter in Wisconsin, so that means road construction season is in full force. Our road is currently reduced to gravel with a maze of sewer parts and huge mounds of dirt and more gravel. Normally I wouldn’t really care but a few things about this project really piss me off. I can deal with the inconvenience of parking on a different road and walking a little ways, that’s no biggie. What pisses me off is if you drive around our neighborhood, well all of Oshkosh really, there are dozens of roads that are nothing but potholes. There’s no more than a square foot of concrete in-tact for blocks on these roads. They’ve obviously been ignored for decades. They don’t get plowed or swept, they’re an eyesore. Honestly, I wish I was exaggerating. Despite all these other roads in dire condition, they chose to re-do our road and sewer, which was in decent condition until they ripped it up last week. There were one or two potholes per block and I really had no complaints.

The worst part about this, is that home owners are stuck with the bill. Excuse me, but what the hell are property taxes for if they’re not paying for road construction? I haven’t even looked too closely at the bill yet, because frankly, I can’t pay it with all the medical bills I’m trying to cover. It’s in the ballpark of $2000 though. Oh, and if we don’t pay up front, they charge 8% interest. So we’re paying quite a bit for work we didn’t ask for or need, and being charged a ridiculous interest rate to boot. THANKS.

Amidst a global economic crisis, the unemployment rate is at an all time high since the great depression. So explain to me why there are construction workers picketing on my sidewalk. That baffles me. They’re complaining about having to work weekends (which pisses me off too), working long ~12 hour days, and being under-staffed for the work. Why our city is choosing to over-work construction workers instead of hiring more is beyond me. All I know is that all of this nonsense means our road is probably going to be ripped up for longer than it should be. Not cool.
[/rant]

Ok, I’ll try not to make a habit of ranting but I just had to get that out. Hope you all have a fun construction season!

 Eric is a software engineer and father of two, who's hobbies include video games, open source software, and just being a geek. Read more from this author