Month: August 2007

Some nice fruits and vegetables

We finally made it down to the U St. farmers market on Saturday.  It happens every Saturday, 9am-1pm, at 14th and U St NW.  I was quite pleased with the visit.  We got some really nice vegetables that the wife turned into brunch shortly thereafter, and I got some great apples.  I don’t remember what type they are – nothing I’d ever heard of.  But they’re very good.  I just ate one this morning.

I’d like to do more shopping at markets like that.  I don’t know how local the actual farmers are, but certainly more local than almost all the produce you find in the grocery store.  There’s a big debate among hippies as to whether to buy organic or local.  Obviously both is best, but if you have to choose one, it’s not clear which is the better choice.  I tend to think that local produce is better, since it uses fewer resources in transit.  But I’m open to other arguments.

Those heartless, inflexible bastards

I got another ticket today.  Right on top of the note I left explaining the situation.  I understand that the parking enforcement people are doing their job.  But if I can get a ticket for failure to register my car because they’ve noticed it parked there for a while with non-DC tags, why can’t they also notice that it’s been registered for a few months, they’ve suddenly changed the rules for parking without telling anyone, and cut me a break?

Apparently paying attention from day to day only works when you’re trying to bleed the taxpayers.  This is now six tickets in DC, including one before I moved here that was my fault (I misread a sign that was pretty clear, I’m not really sure what my problem was).  Do you know how many parking tickets I’ve gotten in the entire rest of the planet?  One.  I went to Blacksburg to pick up my brother from Virginia Tech and got a ticket on campus.  I parked illegally, figuring I wouldn’t be there long.

So, on one hand, we have twelve-plus years of driving and parking in Maryland and Virginia.  One ticket.  In less than two years of parking in DC, I have six.  It is abundantly clear who is at fault here.

I don’t park illegally.  I don’t double park, I don’t block hydrants, I don’t park in front of driveways.  But six tickets.  It’s mind-boggling.

I’m going to ask the wife to help me contest these two tickets, and I’m going to send a copy to our councilmember.  He’s all about the ineffectual but flashy solutions to problems.  Maybe he’ll give me a “get out of parking tickets free” card or something without addressing the underlying problem that this city needs to figure out a new way to combat parking and revenue issues.

Well, were Zone 1 now

I just got back from the DMV.  Once again, I have nothing but good things to say about the DMV at 95 M St. SW.  Polite, quick, effective – it’s one of the nicest DMVs I’ve used, and I’ve used them in Maryland, Virginia, and DC.

Anyway, we are Zone 1.  According to one of my upstairs neighbors, they did it earlier this month, because she just got a new car and they gave her a Zone 1 sticker.  Apparently this same thing happened to the woman who helped me at the DMV, although it was before she worked there, and she couldn’t get out of the ticket.  I’m still going to give it a shot.  And I’ll give it a shot on the ticket I’ll probably get today before I get home with my new sticker.

I have no idea why we weren’t notified.  I mean, who checks the parking signs on the street where they live?  I checked when we moved in, and now I know what they all say, and I don’t check any more.

I’m still pretty mad.  But I should probably do some work or something.  I think they’re paying me.

Parking update

The DMV tells me that it only takes 15 signatures to get a street zoned, so maybe it actually happened.  You’d think maybe they’d notify the residents.  But, the woman I spoke with couldn’t tell me whether our street had actually been zoned, or if the signs were just wrong.  She transferred me to someone who could, but no one answered.  I have the number, though, so I’m going to call back.

Cant I just park in front of my house?

I spoke too soon. In late July, I sent this letter to contest a parking ticket. I thought I had achieved victory when they forgave the ticket.

It turns out that I just won round one. Round two has now begun.

Yesterday, I looked out the window and noticed a parking ticket on the Disaster Magnet. Since my car was parked a few spaces away, I went to check mine.

Sure enough, there was the ticket. $30 for “P003 RESIDENTIAL PARKING”. Do you know what they’ve done? Sometime over the last week or so, they replaced all the parking signs on our street. They now state that a zone 1 sticker is required. No one notified me that there were new parking restrictions. I don’t know if the city is legally obligated to tell me, but they should be. Now, the DC DOT website still lists our block as un-zoned. I don’t know whether it just hasn’t been updated, or if they put up the wrong sign. In any event, at 9AM on the button I’m calling the DMV to find out what’s going on. I left a note on my car to hopefully prevent another ticket. I politely stated that I live on the block, I became aware of the new parking restriction last night, and I’m going to the DMV today. I have no idea if it will help.

So, let’s summarize my tickets since I moved here. The first I paid. It was for violating a temporary ‘No Parking’ sign. I thought I was past the area where parking was restricted, but there’s apparently some rule that you must be a certain distance away from the posted sign that isn’t printed on the sign. Maybe I could have contested it, I don’t know. My second was the $100 ticket for failure to register that I got while I had a temporary permit from the police. That one is still being contested. I think we’re going to call soon to see the status because we haven’t heard anything. The third was $30 for not having a residential permit, which we contested and won. And now this one, the fourth. All of these tickets, mind you, are for parking within 100 feet of my front door.

I hear rumors that the DC government brings in a huge portion of its revenue from parking tickets. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m starting to feel a little persecuted. We have tons of people living in Maryland and Virginia who drive past Metro into the city for work. Shift the tax burden to them! Shift the burden to the giant beaurocracy of the federal government! Shift it anywhere but your residents, who already pay extremely high tax rates.

Anyway, I will keep you updated. I don’t think I’ve adequately expressed how infuriating this is. It’s going to make me even madder if my suspicions prove true – that this is a sign mistake, not a change in parking rules. I was told by the DMV that it requires approval from a ridiculous percentage of the residents of a street to zone an un-zoned street, and no one knocked on my door.

If I ran for mayor with a platform of, “Let the Marylanders and Virginians pay the parking tickets”, do you think I’d win? I’d vote for me.

Thanks for the reminder – give blood

DCist: Morning Roundup: Answering ANSWER Edition

Summer blood shortage worse than usual (click here to find donation opportunities).

The wife and I talked about this a little while ago and haven’t done anything about it. Maybe after our houseguests (arriving today and Friday, I think) are gone, we’ll actually go give blood. Neither of us is really thrilled with the prospect. I gave blood once, during a high school blood drive. I didn’t feel faint, I didn’t pass out, but the nurse nearly took out the needle. I’ve never liked thinking about what goes on underneath my skin. It all seems too complicated, and if I think about it, it might stop working. So I like to pretend that I’m solid skin all the way through.

It’s not the blood that bothers me. I don’t get freaked out at the sight of blood. But while giving blood, I was shaking a bit. I sucked it up and finished, though. And I should do it again. I don’t remember my blood type, and I don’t think it’s one of the rare or really versatile ones, but I’m sure someone can use it.

Anyway, I’m going to give blood.  You should, too.  You really don’t need ALL the blood you have.  There’s bound to be someone who needs it more.

Put the full text in your blog feed and Ill read it

Techdirt: Why Full Text Feeds Actually Increase Page Views (The Freakonomics Explanation)

Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it’s that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what’s being said — which makes it much, much, much more likely that they’ll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing — and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well.

I hate partial text feeds. It’s very true that I am much less likely to read an article if I have to click through. And with so much content on the internet, much of it pretty decent, there’s a good chance that I can find something else just as good as what you wrote.

I ‘m looking through my RSS reader, and there are hardly any feeds that I read regularly that don’t do full text.  Uniwatch doesn’t, and I frequently forget to read it.  The Hardball Times doesn’t, and I only read articles there where the subject line is intriguing.  Almost every site I read every day, including the above-linked Techdirt, has a full feed.

And look – here I am, blogging about something that they wrote at Techdirt, proving their point.

Curse you, four car train

Seriously, I’ve had it with the four car trains. Someone at WMATA needs to get it through their head that you can’t send a four car train ANYWHERE during peak commuting times. I didn’t even have space to read the Economist. How am I supposed to be informed if I can’t read on the Metro?

I don’t know if it’s a money thing. I suspect it is. It probably won’t really work to raise prices. They’re already pretty high. A tax to shift the burden to people who don’t actually ride Metro would be nice. If people want to drive in the city, that’s fine, but they’re going to subsidize those of us who avoid it as much as possible.

Anyway, it’s a crummy way to start the day.