pretendamazing

Yeah, the title is a bit unfair. I think that the blame rests with Toyota, but I can’t prove it.

A while back, I was working on my work laptop at home. apt-get installed GForge for some reason, which installed Mailman. Mailman didn’t cleanly install, and thus wouldn’t uninstall. GForge broke my Apache config, so I tried to uninstall it and saw that it failed due to Mailman. I (somehow) tricked the system into removing GForge, but Mailman and a very broken Apache remained.

Seeing as how I’m doing web stuff, it’s really nice to have a local web server.

I took the system home for the weekend to work on it. OpenSolaris isn’t ready for mainstream use yet, FreeBSD and I have disagreements as to whether or not ports and packages should co-exist properly, and Ubuntu Server failed to work. I finally went back to Ubuntu Workstation and spent many hours reconfiguring it.

I finished at 1:30 Monday morning. I left, drove to work to drop the laptop off, and headed home.

For some reason, I didn’t turn on S. Dakota Ave. I kept going to Minnesota Ave. I stop, I check both ways, I go. Halfway around the turn, I see a bright light. First instinct was that there was an emergency vehicle behind me, so I finished turning the corner with intent to pull over after finishing. Then I saw two more, quick bright lights. All three were white.

As it turns out, there’s a “photo enforcement camera” on that corner. I figured this out when I drove back around and saw the signs again; there’s a barrage of signs there that no single one stands out. What I saw the second time, from a combination of being in another lane and squinting to get every little bit of light that was there focused on a small section of my eye, was another sign: No Turn on Red.

There’s a slight problem here. The sign is very high up. While street lights are printed using some reflective material, this only works with, you know, A LIGHT SOURCE. Unless I were to point my headlights at the sky (that’s safe, right?), they don’t shine on it. The nearest street light doesn’t. The various traffic lights don’t. There was so little illumination that I couldn’t read, if I could even see, the sign.

I got home, talked to a friend (he suggested fighting it based on the fact that the ACLU is/did suing/sue the state of Minnesota (coincidence?) for them based on the fact that they take no pictures of the driver and thus you cannot prove that $person was committing a crime), and went to bed at 3:45. Up at 5:45, at work by 7:00 or 7:15. I left early at 16:30 that day. I got over 10 hours of sleep.

There were a couple of things that I thought may have been huge factors in this. It was 2:00, and thus very dark. I had been staring at a computer for nearly 17 hours straight.

Those may not have been as important as I thought. A week or so later, a friend was talking to me about them. While I haven’t verified these facts, here’s what he says:

1. The yellow light on that intersection is significantly shorter than anywhere else in town, letting the camera catch more violations as nobody expects the yellow to be so short.
2. The camera isn’t even operated or owned by the city. It belongs to a private company that shares a portion of the revenue with the city.

Sounds to me like, despite what the website says, it’s there for income. This friend managed to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING while he was here. He went to the corner, turned right, then saw lights. He, too, could not see the light. He said his blinkers did illuminate the light a bit, but the positioning and angling of lights varies from car to car (we both have fairly new cars; mine’s an ’09 lease, in fact).

So yeah, that all sucks. What could possibly make it worse?

Let’s see…

I know! Let’s not send it to the owner of the car.

They sent it to Toyota. Toyota sat on it.

The notice from Sioux Falls mentions that it’s due July 13^th. Does anybody see a problem here? Oh, yeah, that’s right. 13 comes before 15, which comes before 16, which comes before 18. I didn’t even get it until 5 days after it was due.

The notice from Toyota says that after 14 days, late fees may be applied. 3 + 14 = 17. So, as of yesterday, I might have late fees on it. Thanks for getting it to me ahead of time, Toyota!

Even more disconcerting are the statements printed on the notice from the city:

• After 13 July, the city may file a lawsuit against me
• After 13 July, I am not able to contest that the violation occurred

In this case, the second isn’t an issue. For how many people is it an issue, though?

The message from Toyota and the first statement from the city, however, are issues. I’ve had a lot of trouble simply paying bills this summer. Part of my reason for biking 18 miles to/from work (and thus getting up at 5:45 each day) is that paying for gas to get between work and home each day would be an issue. Late fees and a lawsuit I cannot handle.

Today was going good. I biked home quickly, I made my arms hurt, I was going to make a smoothie and maybe wander over to Jazzfest for a bit. That envelope ruined my day.

I now have an envelope containing the “Payment Coupon,” a check, and a letter explaining the above. It’s stamped and ready to go and will be done in the Outgoing Mail near my mailbox moments after I publish this post. It will get picked up tomorrow and delivered Monday or Tuesday. 8 or 9 days late. Sweet. It’s going to be SO MUCH FUN if they give me late fees or sue me.

Oh, and I scanned EVERYTHING. I have proof of everything above in case I need it.

np: Angry Anthem from the album “Friend or FOE?” by The Forces of Evil