Last night I got my very first ticket. Not for speeding or running a stop sign or even squealing my tires (because a Yaris is totally a sign of a wild and crazy driver) but because I’m an idiot.
First, I’m an idiot for not carrying current proof of insurance – the card in my wallet expired in December and I never swapped it out for the new one. Second, I’m an idiot for forgetting to renew my registration in February. In my defense, I never received the little card in the mail that tells me how much I owe, but it’s not like I haven’t had to renew it every single year since I turned 16.
Things that infuriate me about this:
- I could pull up current insurance information right on my phone. The state trooper could (and did) pull it up on the laptop in his car. But neither of those are acceptable as proof of coverage.
- After I got home, I found my current insurance cards inside the console of my car. As in, right under my elbow the whole time.
- As far as I can tell, both offenses are prepayable in my state, but the officer chose to make me to go to court instead. A month from now.
- I will walk into court, provide proof of insurance and proof that I renewed my registration (which will be done this morning, less than 12 hours from the time I got the ticket), and the whole thing will be dismissed. But I still have to pay $143 in court costs just because the cop said so.
This is no one’s fault but mine, but that doesn’t keep me from being pissed off about it. Then again, I’d rather be cited 6 weeks after my tags expired than 6 months, so I guess it could be worse.
In Other Random News
My dogs drive me crazy. They spend all day every day on the back of the couch, looking out the window and barking at traffic. The top cushions on my couch are completely destroyed – they’re all squashed and deformed, and no force on Earth will ever make them look normal again. I don’t even like sitting on that couch because it’s so uncomfortable. Oh, and Moxie has discovered birds and she hates them. She spends her time either barking her head off at the birds or glaring at them like this:
A friend of mine just got her dog back from six weeks of behavior boot camp and I seriously wonder how much it would cost to send all four of mine. I’m not too picky about how they act, but it would be nice not to have my eardrums shattered 24 hours a day.
I spent last week in server hell. Last Tuesday I got an email from the server farm in Dallas where my hosting servers are located. One of them was showing signs of early hardware failure and the tech recommended a move to a new physical server. In my head this was a good idea, especially since it gave me the chance to throw in some upgrades, but it was a big fat fail.
Everything went wrong. Everything. I expected about 8-10 hours to migrate all the files, plus time for DNS to update. So I notified all my hosting customers and got to work at 10pm on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, I had resorted to manually moving each account after multiple backup failures. By Thursday afternoon, I was chugging 5-hour energy shots and bursting into tears periodically. I finally took the server offline around 1am on Friday to finish up the move without interference, and I’ll be damned if three customers didn’t email me to ask why their sites were down. Don’t these people sleep?!?!
Friday morning, after being awake for 2 1/2 days straight, I crashed for five blissful hours once all the sites were finally functional again. I woke up to approximately 7 billion calls and messages alerting me to the fact that people were having trouble sending and receiving emails. Why? Because all the server IPs were blacklisted, thanks to whoever used them last. So I got to spend most of the weekend switching IPs and answering a whole new avalanche of panicked messages.
this seems appropriate
As I’m writing this at 3am, all seems calm on the server front. **knocks on wood** Sites are up, email is functional, speeds are awesome… But I’m almost afraid to sleep because I just know some kind of disaster will be waiting for me when I wake up. Also, I just remembered I’m scheduled for a Pap smear this afternoon. I know all of you wanted to know that, so you’re welcome. If my life gets any more awesome I’m not sure what I’ll do.
What random things did you do this weekend? Anything exciting?
Sounds like a not so fun past couple of days. Hope this week is better 🙂
YOur first ticket? Wow. Crazy. By the time I was what I think your age is, I’d already been to jail! Haha! So hey, you’re dong okay. It’s ridiculous he didn’t give you a warning, especially since it was your first offense, but hey, sometimes cops are dicks.
I’ll say what my dad always says… tickets are like going to the dentist. It sucks, you don’t want anything to do with it, but it will happen (hopefully with a lot less of a frequency than cleanings!). Thankfully that will be dismissed and will only cost you so much. That’s definitely good. Hope your week makes up for all the crummy hours spent server fighting. (And yes, I’ve seen cops give warnings for 20m+ speeding infractions, rarely for expired registrations… for some reason, they never forgive those).
Ugh! That stinks. I got a ticket for driving with an expired plate when I was in my boyfriend (now husband’s) car. It cost me the ENTIRE day’s wages. I was so upset. They were only pulling people over as an excuse to check for DUIs, too, which was even more upsetting because I’d just spent 12 hours working my butt off in a fast food joint. I actually got pulled over TWICE on the way home, once in Lafayette and once in West Lafayette.
I have to admit that I broke down in tears the second time and begged not to get ANOTHER ticket since I’d already lost all my wages that day to the first one. The second police office was, thankfully, sympathetic. I was still wearing my awful fast food T-shirt, too, so it was pretty obvious I wasn’t lying.
Welcome to the world of Information Technology… I work as a consultant doing similar things BUT soon you will learn that you can outsource all your tasks to India for pennies per day and they will take care of everything…. sadly managing IT today in the U.S. means managing people in India but I have health insurance which is worth a lot these days.
HS
I know this post shouldn’t have made me laugh, but your dogs sound like my parents’ yorkies (yappy little effers that I love so dearly) and I also just got a reminder phone call from my doc to go in soon. Yippee!
I lived a pretty boring life this weekend. Drank too much coffee, saw a couple friends, got a haircut. Oh, and for what it’s worth, my site was fine for most of your server issues. I appreciated your emails but was basically never disrupted. 🙂
So, uhh, I think I was supposed to put the new insurance sticker on one of our vehicles. I need to remember to check this tonight :-S
Hmm sounds like a fun time (if I was younger) come to think of it I think I have a ticket laying around for expired tags. Thing is I was good and registered, just to lazy to put the tags on. This ticket was from a meter maid so I have to pay the fine.
Weekend was working on the greenhouse, photo shoots/orders and finishing taxes (almost)
No Pap smear for me but do have a chiro appointment today 🙂
Get some sleep and some you time!
This post had me grinning all the way to the end. I work in IT during the day, and have experienced VERY similar situations with servers and whatnot. I can totally relate to the frustrations of manually having to transfer everything over to a new server, and how everything seems to go wrong when you least expect it. Cracked me up! Hopefully this week makes up for the last and you get a little extra time to rest in there!
That officer sounds like an ass. You don’t need to go to court for that. What a way to pull some extra money out of you. Sorry to hear about the server swap issue. That sucks as I have been through it before, but you have hosting customers, so that is even worse. Glad to hear that you made it through.
Youch! What a nightmare. You need the Dog Whisperer 😀
I’m so sorry you had such a sucky weekend, Andrea. I’m a cat person, so can’t give you any advice about your dogs. As for the ticket, grrrrrrrr…. The Jon Stewart gif says it all!
All of those things sound terrible. I’m not sure what’s worse, really! I hope your appointment goes well. Last year, I had to go back because they couldn’t get a reading or whatever. Double whammy!
Dear Andrea,
Sometimes i envy you. Now it is not one of those times.
Sincerely, Alicia
Lol i had a fun time on friday at the dmv waiting 1 hour and half but i went to a party with my friends called friendship bash that was pretty fun. Saturday was my best friend’s bday so we went out clubbing. Fun but im feeling every bit of my 26 year old body! Sunday consisted of it raining and me staying home and watching gloriously tv.
I’ve always wondered why you can’t provide proof of insurance, or your license for that matter, electronically. For what it is worth, I’m very appreciative of all of the work you did on the servers and my site has been running better than ever since the migration!
Ugg sorry to hear about the ticket and the server (and the MD appointment). What a week, huh? My dog (and cats) do the couch “trick” the back of the couch cushions are so smushed I’ve given up on trying to fix them.
Hi Andrea
We have a miniature daschund who has chosen to make the neighbour chihuahuas into arch-nemesi (is that plural?). She runs out there and tells them to F off for ten minutes at a time in a barking frenzy several times a day. They do the same back. I’m sure the whole community hates us.
Outside that, the weekend was good. It won’t stop snowing here. Ever. Spring is such bullsh*t.
Have a better week
Lindsey
My weekend was amazing! I went to Relay for Life after raising $525. It was a really great event, but from 3:30-5am, I have zero memory. That was until the sprinklers went off on the field we were staying on. I was i one of the few tents that didn’t get wet, but it was still wasn’t good. Other than that, it was a great weekend!
I hate tickets. I’ve only had one, when I was 19, and I am still pissed about it. I was going 65 mph in what I thought was a 70 mph area since it had been for YEARS, but it was changed to a 55 mph zone the day before. Yep, still bitter. And I am so sorry for all of the server switching problems! Get some sleep. It’ll be okay.
My weekend consisted of watching Netflix, hosting a potluck, and catching up with the blog a little…nothing gigantic.
I let my registration go three months past my birthday this year…..oops….I usually send for it in the mail but since I had moved I never got it. Luckily I didn’t get pulled over for driving with expired tags.
Glad you got all of your issues straightened out. Hope this week is much better for you!
Ugh..I hope your week has gotten better! Take that nap, damnit! 🙂
It is saddening but sometimes we have to learn our lesson the hard way. At the very least, it is your first ticket and I am pretty sure the cost of your car insurance will not be affected with this incident.