Tag: complaint

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.

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.

Any Oriole fan could have told you this

Do you have a favorite sports team? Have they spent the last five years or so kicking you in the teeth and expecting you to like it? If so, you might be an Orioles fan. Ever since Cal Ripken saved baseball after the strike, it’s been nothing but a string of bad moves. I had thought earlier in the season that bringing in Aubrey Huff was the worst thing they’d done, but that’s because Jaret Wright has spent so little time in uniform that I forgot about him.

So, the Orioles gave up a promising young pitcher who is now working in the Yankees minor leagues. What did we get in return? We got a guy with one good season (15-8, 3.28, 159 K’s in 2004), only 60 career wins, and a history of injury problems.

Not only that, but we took an aging, overrated starter off the Yankee payroll, and replaced him with a young reliever. It’s like Angelos is a Yankee fan.

And what have we gotten out of Wright? Three starts. Twelve hits, nine walks, and eight earned runs in 10 innings while losing all three games. Wright should be ashamed of himself. There’s not a human being on earth who couldn’t lose all three of his or her starts this season. He should return his paychecks.

What’s especially discouraging is the Orioles have been showing some heart lately. I watched the game the other night when Bedard and Dice-K battled for seven, then the Red Sox went up 5-1, then the Orioles actually came back and won. They came back again against the Sox last night, and they’ve tied it late against the Yankees tonight (Game’s still going, tied 6-6 in the ninth. Although Bradford may be blowing it as we speak, hitting Cabrera in the middle of the back then giving up a double. Shoot. I didn’t even finish typing that sentence before Jeter knocked in the winning run. Still, they put up a fight.).

In conclusion, Peter Angelos is a jerk.

I hate computers

I booted up Windows today for the first time in a while. Firefox is not working in Ubuntu. I mean, it is, sort of, but it hangs constantly, and it’s driving me insane. I imagine I broke something, but it’s a little strange that it only seems to be a problem in Firefox.

I’m hoping it’s just a problem with Wubi running on this piece of junk computer. I want a new computer with a full Ubuntu install.

Update:  I booted back into Ubuntu and started up Open Office, which is notoriously resource-hungry, figuring that I could determine if it were simply a Firefox problem.  It’s not.  Open Office never opened.  I waited a few minutes and then killed it.  I think I need to find a career that doesn’t involve computers.  I seem to break every one I touch.

No more four car trains at rush hour!

Don’t get me wrong, four car trains are great if they save a little energy at off-peak times.  But how can you use them on the Yellow line at rush hour?  The Yellow line, unlike the Orange line, actually has seats available most of the time.  But not this morning.  This morning, I was waiting as usual at Mount Vernon Square where the Green line dropped me, at my usual spot.  My usual spot is near the back end of the train, because that’s where the Columbia Heights escalator drops me, and I’ve never really had a need to move.  The end cars are usually empty compared to the rest of them.

This morning, the WMATA powers-that-be decided that they’d just skimp a little and send a four car train.  I have no idea why.  It’s quite possible they had a really good reason, but I frankly don’t care.  This means that everyone standing in front of where they expected cars five and six to be has to run down the platform and get onto the last car.  This makes it somewhat crowded.  The fourth car was full by the time a few people pushed on at Archives, but it didn’t get really bad until 300 clowns going to the Pentagon jumped on at L’Enfant Plaza.

I’ve been riding the Green and Yellow line since the end of March, and this is the first time been jammed into a train like this.  Yes, I realize I shouldn’t complain.  But when there is plenty of room on the train for five months, and then suddenly one day I have a sweaty Marine pressed into my back and a large shoulder bag pressed into my groin, someone is wearing really bad cologne, and people are making dumb “stuck in an elevator” jokes, then WMATA has failed.  Perhaps they were too busy playing with their new maps to notice.

But I notice.  And fear not, WMATA, I will continue to notice, and to complain.

Also, a note to people who pile on to an already full train at rush hour – there will be another train in six minutes or less.  Seriously.  You can wait.  You’re just going to work.

Is it just me?

Or is it hot outside? It’s not so bad now, but when I got home from work, there was a hot breeze blowing that made me want to move to San Fransisco.

It’s good to be back home, though. Vacation was nice, but the cat missed me.

And, if I ever get a reasonable internet connection at work, I’ll try to get back in the habit of posting regularly.  I know I’ve been a bad, bad blogger lately.

Starbucks is fired

It’s bad enough that Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. I could get around that by ordering, on my wife’s recommendation, the mild instead of the regular. And I can get by the milkshakes passed off as coffee by just making fun of the people who order them (A good general rule – if it takes more than 5 words to order your coffee, not including “please” and “thank you”, you’re drinking a milkshake). I even got past the first price increase that sent the largest coffee over $2 when you include tax. But now the medium coffee is $2.02, less than six months after the last price increase.

I’m done. No more Starbucks coffee. Tomorrow I’ll bring in a coffee mug and start drinking free work coffee.

On an unrelated note, I’m testing out a WordPress tag plugin.  I don’t really know what it does, but this is the first post that has tags on it.  Maybe nothing will be visible to you.  Anyway, we’ll see.