u/aSurlyBird

I'm just gonna rant about a story that happened today.

First: In a matter of 3 days, I've seen a collision at Wolsely and Chemong (I think yesterday or 2 days ago), a collision at Charlotte and Rubidge (today), and a collision at Parkhill and Reid (today). Poor driving seems much more common in the last few days with this hot weather.

But I wanna rant about this dummy who decided to block off an intersection to fix a problem with his tied down lumber.

Earlier when I had to divert around Reid/Parkhill collision I came out through Chesterfield to Wolsely to get back to Chemong. As I drove up to Wolsely, this guy (driving down Wolsely towards Chemong), in his SUV and aluminum trailer (with 12ft lumber sticking out the back), pulls over, but right in the middle of Chesterfield, blocking any access to Wolsely.

I approached cautiously, thinking he was trying to back into a driveway or something, but he just parked it and jumped out. I was kinda dumbfounded. I eventually honked at him to move, and he angrily waved me to drive around him... Ok buddy, so you want me to drive down the opposite lane of Chesterfield, and risk getting hit by oncoming vehicles, because you decided to block traffic? Why didn't you turn onto Chesterfield? Why didn't you pull to the curbside instead of blocking a whole fucking road? You want me to wait for you now? Or pull a dangerous maneuver to get around you?

By the way, I had 3+ vehicles behind me on Chesterfield that were also detouring around that Reid/Parkhill collision, so he didn't just block me, but others as well.

I decided to drive around him in the oncoming lane of Chesterfield to get to Wolsely - I drove under his overhanging board to risk not getting hit by a turning vehicle. As I drove by, he called me a dumbass and said to me "what, you want me to drop my lumber on the road?". No sir, I want you to get out of everyone's way and not impede traffic. But now you just revealed to me that you have no clue how to tie down your fucking lumber.

Not to mention this guy didn't have a red flag on the ends of his 12ft boards that were overhanging his shoddy 6ft aluminum trailer. Additionally, the guy had 2 earbuds in, which IMO, is dangerous while driving.

It's baffling to me that people like this exist - someone who can block traffic, not acknowledge that they blocked traffic, and get mad when people tell them... to not block traffic. Also why drive with earbuds (again - this is my opinion, I think it's dangerous).

And honestly, how does someone not know how to tie down lumber? That might be the worst part of this story. There were 2 12ft 2x6 boards on the 6ft trailer. Fuck bud, you wrap your tie down strap around them once, laterally across your trailer, about 3/4 of the way to the tailgate doors, and secure the strap. The boards aren't going anywhere unless you drive like a maniac. And yes, to those wondering, this guy had proper ratchet straps. He actually had 2 of them. Idk if he used both.... idk if he knew how to use them at all.

It's worth mentioning - had the guy actually given me a wave, like an apology for blocking me, or some sort of acknowledgement, I wouldn't be writing this post. Instead he jumped out of his vehicle, and didn't pay any attention to the fact he was blocking me and the cars behind me, until I honked at him. And his response to my honking was to be hostile and defensive instead of apologizing for impeding traffic. At any point, if he had shown some respect, I would have jumped out and helped him. Unfortunately he chose to be angry that he blocked me from driving.

A lady came by around 1:00 am and checked my car tires for chalk lines. I was parked on the street.

My friend thankfully saw her on the camera. We thought it was a police officer since she had a flashlight similar to a cop. But after watching the video we saw she just checked my tires then left. So I parked my car in the driveway.

I was curious though, so I walked down London and saw that she had ticketed the vehicles down London street. I checked these vehicles s after 2am, and I didn’t check when the tickets were issued. So I don’t know if she waited until 2 or issues the tickets earlier. She most likely issues them after she drove by my car, since we didn’t see her drive past the house again on the camera after seeing her at 1am.

Still. London is a quiet street. What purpose is there for issuing these tickets?

I live in the north end and our neighbours park on our street all the time. There hasn’t been a ticket issued on our street since the early 90s. Even the street sweeper came down and drove around a parked car - they didn’t even get a ticket.

What’s crazy is that this clearly isn’t a situation where the neighbour is calling in a vehicle because I was parked a block away from the ticketed cars on london. This lady just drove down London and issued tickets for no reason. No letter was sent to homeowners to move their vehicles tonight.

Why the hell is a parking enforcement officer coming down quiet streets at 1am to ticket vehicles that aren’t even impeding the city or the workers in any way? It’s a Friday night and no city construction workers should be working Saturday. Again - no warning letter for construction along London.

What a silly waste of money the city is spending to punish people who aren’t actually doing any harm to anyone.

Windows is running on my SSD. HDD is mainly for storage, and downloaded games that don't require my SSD.

My computer will lag out and Task Manager says 100% HDD usage. So I'm almost certain it's the HDD - Restarting computer helps. And no, I am not running background software that is accessing the HDD (or am i? I tried to look and couldnt find anything - all background processes are closed).

What are the steps I can take to potentially repair the drive? I have a lot of stuff downloaded on it, and would rather not wipe it if I can avoid it. I know that wiping it will fix my problem, but are there any other steps beforehand I could try?

Thanks!