Anyone who’s been to the Bridgeport Connecticut DMV office knows the jokes and horror stories about DMV offices aren’t exaggerate or made up. Standing in line for an hour only to find you’re in the wrong line because the signage sucks. Unhelpful, bitter and evil employees. A parking lot with enough spaces for thirty cars already full of the twenty employee’s cars. The office being in the middle of a residential area meant there was almost no parking on the street and the line of cars waiting for inspection often blocked the side road (and sometimes wrapped to the next block) so you couldn’t even circle the place hoping some lucky soul was able to escape and give up their parking place.

Down here in FL you can either go to the DMV itself or go to one of the Brevard County Tax Collectors offices to take care of your needs… well, you could, but then they closed every DMV office in the county, then I found out the tax office, which had been just four miles down the road was moved more than triple the distance away in some new sub-division I’d never been to.

I called the tax office to make an appointment. They don’t take appointments for renewing your license. The post card they sent me telling me I had to show up said they did but I was told that was specifically for DMV offices of which there are none. Oh, and that also means the tacked on fee for doing your DMV business at the county tax office is unavoidable. Fair, huh?

Gathered, go… got. The tax office opens at 8:30 AM so I figured “Show up a few minutes early and I’ll be first in line!” Yeah, that worked out. I walked in the door and there were just a couple people in the lobby area waiting for the gates to be rolled up… and thirty or more people lined up down the hall that I missed at first glance. Ugh! Now, my back and hips are in such bad shape that standing in place is even more painful than walking around. I got to the end of the line and couldn’t even see the tax office entry anymore! I was just about to say to hell with it and try another time when this nice guy in line in front of me started chatting and it distracted me enough that the time went by quickly. Thanks anonymous stranger! You made things easier.

Then I heard the giant chain doors roll up and the murmur of conversation dropped as the office opened. I dreaded this moment. I knew, just KNEW it was going to be like waiting in line at Disney; take two steps, wait, take two steps, wait… and then it began.

The Best DMV Visit, EVER. The doors rolled up and the line straightened out and started moving and kept moving. We rounded the corner all thirty plus of us just kept walking. I have NO idea where all those people went. Maybe some went to Carousel (extra points for getting the reference there) maybe some were fed to the dragons, I really don’t know.

It was a minute, perhaps two from the time the doors opened until I got to the entrance. Standing there was a nice lady and a box. On the box were a list of options of why you were there each next to a button. The nice lady would explain to the people who were thick which button to press. I figured it out all on my own, thanks. I pressed my button and out popped a numbered ticket. Number 808… Wait, EIGHT HUNDRED AND EIGHT?! But there were only thirty people in front of me, forty max!

Then the next best moment happened. There were chairs. Lots and lots of chairs and some, thankfully, were even armless (us fat people hate narrow chairs with arms). I sat down and noticed they were Now Serving #802… 803… 804… I hadn’t been sitting in my comfortable chair for five minutes when the loudspeaker (which you could actually understand!) called my number. Five minutes!

I walked over to the window I’d been directed to and another comfy chair and met Alice the lady who was going to help me. Not only was she going to help me she was going to joke with me and smile. Someone working at a DMV/Tax Office SMILED at me! She went through my paperwork. It was all in order. I walked around the corner and spent a half minute passing the eye exam and walked back. She took my picture and asked if I was or wanted to register to vote, I wanted to. The time it took to her to fill out that paperwork and for me to write out a check (for some odd reason they won’t take Visa in person and all my debit and credit cards are Visa branded) was almost exactly the time it took for my license to be printed. She handed it to me, told me to have a nice day and I left. I was in and out of there in less than twenty minutes!

Best DMV visit, ever.

Basically, it’s not letting corporate America put one over on you or letting yourself sit and stew in your displeasure with a product. If it’s broken, spoiled, stale or doesn’t live up to the hype… SPEAK UP! Be heard. Don’t throw your money away especially in this day and age.

If you’re not happy, tell them. At the very least you should expect an apology for your experience.

And now on with our story… We’ve got some glasses/mugs that are rather tall, pint plus sized. Regular straws aren’t tall enough. In the past we’d bought 10″ tall Diamond brand straws at the local supermarket. They’re remodeling the store and dumping a lot of old products. One of those they ceased carrying was the straws we liked.

I didn’t want to waste the time and effort and put the wear on the car to chase all over the county checking out the ‘where to find our products’ list Diamond had on their web page so I scoured the internet. Did you know tall straws are hard to find? I know it now! Unfortunately Diamond brands do not sell their products from their own web page.

Straws I found were either straight, we wanted the bendy kind, only sold by the carton or outrageously priced. I even found stainless steel straws ,can you imagine what could grow in those if you didn’t clean them carefully?

I wrote to Diamond telling them I couldn’t find their product at the store we’d always bought them at nor could I find them anywhere on the internet. Then I finally stumbled across some slightly shorter, but usable, straws on Amazon, 125 for $2, two freaking dollars! I ordered two bags so we’d have plenty on hand.

Karl Z. a regional sales manager (should that be capitalized?) at Diamond wrote back two weeks later, long after I’d stopped expecting a response. He apologized for the trouble we had finding their product and said if I’d send him my address he would “…see that some of these straws come out to you directly- our compliments.”

I sent him my address and my thanks not really expecting more than a pack or two of their straws (they come 100 to a box) and I wasn’t expecting any immediate action since it had taken weeks to get an initial response out of them.

Sometimes these companies just blow my mind. Anyone need some straws?

I have a couple Hotmail accounts that I’ll check back to back every day. When I log out of one I get dumped to an MSN landing page. In the past and for the most part I ignored the landing page entirely and popped right back into Snotmail. BUT, occasionally, some story would catch my eye. Usually something about breasts or cheerleaders or cheerleader’s breasts or… cars. Whenever I clicked one of those MSN links to read the story it would launch Messenger, Microsoft’s online chat and spam tool. Not ONLY would it launch Messenger it would modify my registry because it thought I WANTED Messenger loading at startup. Wasn’t that NICE of Microsoft?

But now? Now when I get dropped to the MSN page it is greyed out and I get an overlay window keeping me from seeing those marginally interesting news stories at all. This window tells me ‘Congratulation your new Bing Bar is ready to use.’ Aren’t you excited? I’m excited! I didn’t even know I had an OLD Bing Bar but now I’ve got a brand new shiny one all ready and waiting for me to click the button… Then it tells me ‘This software may also download and install some updates automatically.’ and right there, I don’t click. I won’t click. And no, I’m STILL not going to switch to Chrome or Firefox or dump Windows and get Linux. I’m content. Microsoft, by trying to force me to install Bing Bar (whatever the hell that is) is protecting me from launching Messenger and having my registry modified. Aren’t they sweet?

Oh, yeah, around Christmas time they also pushed me to a landing page with presents and holiday greetings for everyone and a happy Bing Ding Bar holiday for all… I still wouldn’t click on it. Nope, not me.

First and most annoying… Your servers were broken. You had technical issues. You KNEW you had technical issues but when I reported that in every group I’d checked that no multipart binary posts were complete you responded by accusing me of illegal activity, with no proof, and refused to further follow up on the ticket. You finally admitted to and fixed the problem eight hours later.

You cripple the speed, and that’s fine, you offered Bright House subscribers this hosting at no charge. It’d just be nice if you actually gave the speed you offered and didn’t half and quarter the already minimal speed at peak hours.

You FURTHER cripple popular and heavy use newsgroups. Seriously, two minutes to pull FIVE headers? Did you think no one would notice that? five thousand headers arrive in another group in 30 seconds, we’re not that dumb!

You won’t add groups you ALREADY offer to this server’s feed. Plus it took you idiots five email exchanges to even understand my request.

When I asked if you had a crossposting limit you replied “Yes.” When I asked what the limit was you acted like you were protecting the codes to launch the missiles. Twice you said you didn’t release that information (yes, I could have trial & errored it but it was more fun to see how anal you guys would get) another two times you simply said it was “A reasonable number.” When I finally got this stupidity escalated to a supervisor his immediate response was “10.” Was it that freaking hard or did all the idiots in tech support not want to admit they didn’t know?

In your snottiest tone you’ve told me several times if I want better support, more features and groups I need to subscribe to your paid news service. Yeah, like I’m going to pay for incompetence and bad attitudes, I get that for free. Thanks!

My eleventh (11th!) prescription, Gabapentin, seems to be a bit of a miracle worker. Due to complications from diabetes I suffer from diabetic neuropathy, pain and damage along the nerve channels which can occur anywhere but is particularly troublesome in my feet and hands. I can’t feel the majority of my left foot and about 10% of my right is numb.

I don’t know if you’ve ever suffered from nerve pain but let me try to describe some of it. The worst feels like someone slowly pushing, not stabbing, but forcefully, glacially inserting ice picks into my feet. Usually in two or three places at once but sometimes just one and other times it can be more there was also often a sensation of extreme temperature both hot and cold with the ice pick type pain. There’s also a pins and needles sensation an order of magnitude worse than the worst time your leg ever fell asleep.
I also get, mostly in my fingers, a sensation not unlike the whole fingertip being slowly (slow seems to be a presiding factor in this type of pain) crushed in a bench vise or by a pair of slip-joint pliers.

I started taking Gabapentin three weeks ago and it’s amazing. Almost all of my nerve pain has been suppressed. Instead of fifty to a hundred events a day I only have two or three. There’s been a couple days where I haven’t had more than a few hazy twinges and I still haven’t worked up to the full dosage the doctor wanted me to get to.

Now if the doctor could find something equally as good for the arthritis, joint and back pain I’d be in heaven.

Being a long-haired hippie biker lunatic they didn’t want me touching food for this pot-luck luncheon, yes, that’s right, they charged us an arm and a freaking leg to go to this ’school’ and WE had to provide our own food for a Chris…excuse me, Holiday party. They probably figured I’d bring pot brownies or meth punch or just infect the dip with hippie germs. So I and my fellow classmate Chris who was also too freaky to be trusted with consumables (there’s a whole ‘nother story there!) were tasked with putting together some appropriate Chris… Holiday (damn it!) music for our listening and dining pleasure.

Chris and I sat down one chilly… who am I kidding, it’s Florida, it was probably in the mid-70’s, winter afternoon and using a program who’s name started with N(apster) (SHH!) began downloa… PURCHASING LEGALLY a collection of light, appropriate holiday (ahh, better) music.

We downloa… OBTAINED LEGALLY a dozen or so songs and since it was getting late and Chris didn’t like being anywhere that wasn’t his dining room table (seriously, there’s a whole story there) we decided to just sample the songs by listening to the first minute or so of each to see if the quality was good.

We came across this one song ‘Sainte Nuit’ with no band name and the guy who was singing had an AMAZING, )seriously amazing, this is no freaking joke this guy can SING) voice singing what appeared to be ‘Silent Night’ in French.

They would not and never would believe that it wasn’t done as a joke. Some people have no sense of humor anyhow. Seriously, we didn’t know!

But now? Now this is the coolest CHRISTMAS song I’ve got, even cooler than Bob Rivers doing his parody of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’, ‘I am Santa Claus’. Even my mom likes ‘Sainte Nuit’!

I have also learned one important rule of using ball-head mounts; “ALWAYS hold the camera when you loosen the ball-head locking mount.” I came close to smashing my new camera on the leg of the tripod. It was frightening.

Wait, what? More than half an ounce more for the same price? Can anyone explain this? It’s obvious they have a machine capable of consistently weighing bags of crackers at 6.6 ounces so why do you get more when you buy smaller yet otherwise identical Baby Goldfish.

It reminds me of a time, many years back, when I was working overnight shifts at 7-11 and noticed that Rold Gold had a new style of pretzels out, Rold Gold - Sport. It advertized “X% LESS Calories than our regular pretzels!” on the bag and had a cute little action sport graphic under their logo. They were also either .50 or .75 more expensive than the regular Rold Gold Pretzels which were right next to them. Being bored and working in a store that often didn’t see three customers after the bar crowd went home to pass out I investigated! For a while I was stumped. The ingredients were the same. All the percentages of this and that were the same… then I saw it. THE BAG WEIGHED LESS. There were less calories in the bag because there was less product in the bag! I thought it was absolutely brilliant scammery. Here’s the same product advertized as a ‘Sport’ version with less calories and they’re just selling you LESS for more! I guess there were enough gullible people out there because we only carried them that one time and I never saw them again. I can’t even find a reference to them on Google now.

Okay… so it isn’t really all THAT similar but the Goldfish pricing does boggle my brain a bit and it was a good excuse to dredge up an old and amusing memory. Ah well…