ferrousland.com - diary archives
Monday, July 10, 2000
a plate & a fine - 10:06 PM
do you remember ages ago how i mentioned that we sent our motherboard back to the computer shop because it was playing up? well, that was more than a month ago now!! i can't believe it's been there that long. i don't know what we would have done if we didn't have the spare motherboard. as it was, when the original one went back to the shop under warranty, the spare one wasn't even functioning properly. actually, it wasn't the spare motherboard that was the problem, it was the video card that was attached to it. it would cause a complete lock up about six times a day. we took it back to where we got it from & swapped it over for another one on the spot & it's given us no trouble at all since that day. i can't imagine what we would have done without the spare one. i wouldn't have been able to do any paid web development work & my site would have suffered greatly. it would have meant no updates in over a month!!! that would have been the death of it. all three of my regular vistors would have given up on me & gone elsewhere. 
i finally got to bed last night - hmm, i mean this morning - at 6am. that's the latest (earliest?) i've stayed up in a long time. shroom does it on a fairly regular basis, at least on the weekends. he's lucky though because he doesn't seem to have any troubles getting to sleep or staying asleep in the daytime.
a few days ago i got a fine in the mail. a speed camera took a photo of the number plates of my old car going fifteen kilometres over the speed limit. now i say the camera got a picture of the plates of my previous car because it wasn't actually my old car!! about a year ago i noticed that the front number plate on my old gemini had gone missing. i thought it had fallen off on the road somewhere, but it turns out that it was stolen. i de-registered that car about six months ago, returned the remaining number plate & thought nothing more about it .. until of course i got this fine in the mail with a pretty colour photo of some burgandy coloured car with my old number plate on the back of it!! the police had actually contacted me about two weeks before this arrived in the mail to ask about the plates & i told them just what i told you. you'd think that since they knew that it wasn't my car the fine wouldn't be sent to me but no, i guess they're not that organised. anyway, so i had to write on this thing to say that it's not my car, blah, blah, blah .. which is inconvenient enough, but i also have to get a jp (justice of the peace) to sign it for me before i can mail it off. now think about it, i get some guy (or girl) who doesn't know me from a bar of soap to sign this bit of paper to say that what i'm saying is true. i could be making the whole lot up & the jp wouldn't know the difference or probably even care! seems stupid to me.
anyway, that's not the end of the story. it's all ready to go, in a stamped, addressed envelope so i went to the shops to find out if there was a jp there. after finding out that there's one near where i live, i got back into the car & went home only to find, as i'm parking in the driveway, that i've dropped the damn letter! i went back to the shops & after a bit of running around, it turns out that i'd dropped it in the car park, a guy had picked it up, taken it to the post office & mailed it for me. ordinarily i would be thankful for such a kind thing, but i haven't had it signed by a jp yet so it wasn't ready to go!! i have never had to get mail out of a post box before but i have heard that once it's in there, officially it's no longer your property, so you can't get it back. lucky for me the local shops are pretty small & the guy who runs the post office (it's a one man show) recognised me & recalled the guy coming in five minutes earlier to mail it. he actually opened up the post box for me & got it out which is completely illegal but i'm very thankful for it. imagine the rigmarol i would have had to go through to get it back. what a royal pain in the arse this whole number plate thing has been!
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