Timewaster's Guide Archive

So I grabbed the mail just now, and in it was a rather official-looking thing from the city court.  Hmm, I thought.  Maybe it's another receipt for the traffic ticket I paid.  See, I got pulled over on May 7th, for expired registration.   Got my ticket, which said I had to take it to the court and pay after at least 10 days but no more than 20 days.  

So we got the registration renewed on the car, (which is another story) and on day 11 of the ticket time I went and paid the ticket.  All is well.

Until I open up the thing from the court today, which is a notice saying that my payment is delinquent, and that if I don't pay by June 20th, they'll put out a warrant for my arrest.  Fu-un.

So I call up the court, and go through a nice recorded system to get an operator who I explain this to.  "I'm not showing it's been paid," she says, when I read the case number off the notice.  "Maybe I misunderstood what I needed to do," I say.  "I thought all I needed was to go into the court and up to the desk and pay for the ticket."
"Yes, that's all you need to do."
"But that's exactly what I did," I tell her.  "I have my receipt right here."
"Oh," she says, and asks me for the number on the reciept.

"Hmm," she tells me after a minute of computer-searching.  "You only got one ticket that day, right? You didn't get pulled over twice."  "No, it was just once."  (I think I'd remember getting pulled over twice, as traumatic an experience getting pulled over is for someone who never gets in trouble.)  "Well, it looks like it got entered in twice."

Then she says she'll take care of it for me, and I shouldn't worry.  "So they're not going to issue a warrant for my arrest?" I ask, feeling slightly stupid.  "No, they won't," she assures me, in a tone of voice that suggests she thinks my question was stupid too.

She can think it's stupid all she wants.  I don't want an arrest on my record because some stupid computer made up a traffic violation for me.  Try explaining to a future boss that you got arrested once for a traffic ticket that you already paid and see how quickly they believe you.  I mean, I love computers.  But I don't trust 'em.

Even my days off can't be boring.  

Since I'm in a good ranting mood tonight...

I know that I have a relatively low tolerance for idiots, but I can't stand it when people use phrases online that they can't spell.

For example, I just saw a post on another board, in an otherwise fine post, where a fellow was talking about this girl he met and how he "peaked her interest".

Or a while back when someone on my livejournal talked about a person having their hair "nicely quaffed."

/me twitches.

I guess what bugs me about it is that they know what it means, contextually, but it's fairly obvious they don't see it in print on a regular basis.  And how can you not know the difference between 'piqued' and 'peaked' and between 'quaffed' and 'coiffed'.

Gah, read a book, people.

I never even got around to taking the folklore class at BYU, but I found this website yesterday and have spent all day reading it.  I feel deeply imbedded in this ultimate manifestation of my fantasy-geekiness.

But man, this site is great- it's so well organized and HUGE.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html

Do any of you know more about the Aarne-Thompson classification system, and/or know of anything interesting that I could read on it?  

http://www.systemtoolbox.com/towelday/

Ok, so who's going to be celebrating Towel Day?  Anyone?

So this was brought on by several things, one of which was the 'Roleplaying Superstitions' thread in under the RPG section.  But this isn't about roleplaying, and I can see it quickly spiraling into something non-related to Magic, so I put it here.  The other thing that brought this on was opening Magic packs at the prerelease today.

Ok.  So one night I was at Game Den to pick up J.T. and some kids were buying D&D mini packs just before he closed.  One of them didn't get a rare he wanted and started telling his friend (who had picked out the pack for him) that it was his fault, and that he should have had J.T. pick which pack he bought because J.T. always picked him really good rares.

This lead to them discussing how having someone else pick your packs, (of D&D or Magic, whatever) could seriously affect what cards/minis you got.  I kind of laughed, but I also thought... well what if it's like quantum theory, and the cards in any given pack aren't determined until someone opens the package and looks at them.  So any varient in how that happens could change what cards are in a pack, including who picks the pack, who opens it (and therefore observes it), and where and when you open it.

So, is it superstition or quantum theory?

Someone stole our car stereo.

While I was in the mall for 10 minutes dropping off dinner for my husband.

And it's really my own fault for not grabbing the faceplate this time.

*sigh*

I think I'll go play in traffic now.

Ok, I don't know if you've done a review of this.  I did a search, but there doesn't seem to be an archives list for the webcomic reviews.  (WHY isn't there one?)

I read Ctl-Alt-Del pretty regularly, and I want to know the story behind the Chef Brian strips that randomly appear.  I like them, more than the regular strips actually, but I feel like I'm not quite *getting* it.

My mom had our kitty put to sleep this afternoon, because she was just too sick and had stopped eating.  She was a little over 18.