Quick Trip to The Massachusetts Registry

Posted on November 8, 2013November 8, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Mass Pass, Easy Pass, Fast Pass….all names for the High speed , don’t stop, toll lane. You all know the one, it’s supposed to be more efficient, no need for humans and you can’t avoid paying the toll with this system.

On my last vacation in Florida I ran afoul of the Sun Pass lane.

I was in a rental and didn’t have a transponder. My GPS was repeating keep right, keep right so I was hugging the right hand lane…oops, that was a little too far right. I was stuck in the Sun Pass lane. This happened a few times and when I reported it to the car rental company they just laughed. I was assured that I would get a bill. Well, no bill just a series of automatic charges to my credit card, each one carrying an additional “administrative fee”.

I don’t drive too many toll roads. Except for mishaps like in Florida I seldom have a need to pay tolls. I bet I don’t spend $10 on tolls in any given year so I just pay the old fashioned way, with cash. Well Massachusetts announced it is taking down the toll booths. Everyone needs a transponder because paying cash will soon be obsolete. Without a transponder you will have your license plate photographed and run through the registry so they can bill you, after adding on that pesky administration fee. If they think you are trying to be a “Toll Evader” the fine can get hefty.

Needless to say, I found this incentive enough to decide to bite the bullet and get a transponder. The equipment is free but you have to set up an account so they can automatically take the toll out of your bank account or charge a credit card. You can enroll online and they will mail you a transponder or you can pick one up at designated locations and registries.

Silly me. I thought that I could just drop in and get my transponder, like a store. Ha! I was handed paperwork to fill out about me, about my car. When I returned the paperwork I was given a number. It said only 19 ahead of me. Since the registry was filled to overflowing I was directed to the “overflow” waiting room. It was only 49 degrees outside and the registry didn’t bother to turn on the heat. That might be ok for a short wait but as 15 minutes turned to 20 and then 30 I began to get a little chilled. Worse, I was in “A” queue and that wasn’t being called at all.

I sat next to a young man from the “I” queue and we began a friendly competition to see who would get called first. We were “neck and neck” as the elapsed time rolled into the 2nd hour. Finally I was 1 number away. I moved into the main room where there was wonderful heat. My number came up right after that. As I was standing at the window going through all the information on the form for the clerk I heard the “I” numbers get called and there was my young friend. He’d made it to the window next to me.

Total time at the registry to pick up a transponder….2 hours and 28 minutes. Next time I’m signing up online.

NaNoWriMo is Here

Posted on November 4, 2013November 4, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Don’t know what it means? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t either. I know it always rolls around in November but I thought it was a challenge to bloggers to post at least one post a day, no restrictions, no minimum, no maximum, just be dedicated enough to post at least once a day.

For a part time blogger that can be tough but the point of the exercise is to create a new habit..or so I thought.

I decided to look it up for once and I found out the NaNoWriMo really stands for National Novel Writing Month! It was started to encourage budding athors to pursue their dream of writing a novel, maybe not the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, but who knows what’s locked inside if you never get started.

Now reading novels is more my speed than writing them but that doesn’t mean I don’t embrace the idea of a month in which we make an attempt to post daily. One of the quotes I found says NaNoWriMo is all about writing something you want to write, just for you, without worrying about others sitting in judgment, so it’s an exercise in truly expressing yourself — which means, if you think about it, there really isn’t a way to fail!

Pretty cool idea, huh. I know I try very hard to make my posts interesting. When I don’t have first hand experience I put a lot of research into the subject. Sometimes that takes more time than actually writing the post so when, after all that, no one sees it or reads it, it can get kind of disheartening. I’m sure all of the other bloggers out there feel the same way.

Oh I know, you’re writing for yourself. You don’t care if no one else reads it. Don’t kid yourself. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t put it out there for everyone to see. You’d have a private diary or journal.

So hop on the band wagon. See if you can post something every day in November, short or long, good or bad, just post something so you can be a part of NaNoWriMo.

Happy Writing!

The Week in Review

Posted on November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Wow! This week has been all over the place with snippets of news and some weirdness. I suppose that’s to be expected any week that includes Halloween.

Probably the most horrific event was the shooting in LAX. I’m not going to delve into that tragic event as that’s what I consider “Hard News” and I prefer to keep this as soft as possible.

So how about the Most Unusual Wedding Proposal. We’ve seen them on the Jumbotron at sports events, and the skywriters have become fodder for jokes but this week’s proposal was a first as far as I know. Very original.

It’s been reported that she said YES!

Dell laptop buyers make a stink over cat smell

Stop blaming poor Garfield. Your pretty kitty is not the culprit. If your new Dell laptop smells like a dirty kitty box it’s just part of the manufacturing process or so they say. Dell said Thursday that its investigation revealed that the strange scent is related to a manufacturing process, which the company has since fixed. But if your portable PC isn’t purrfect, Dell recommends contacting the company’s technical support team to have your laptop’s palm rest assembly replaced.

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And finally a note of caution to would-be burglars and thieves. Don’t leave any body parts behind less you be identified by DNA or, in the case of an Arizona man, his fingerprints, from his severed finger!

An air conditioning company employee told Glendale police someone tried to steal the wire from his truck on Oct. 7.

The spool of wire — worth more than $300 — had been pulled out about 20 feet from the truck, and what appeared to be a cut off finger was caught in the wiring. Police retrieved the finger as evidence, and forensic technicians were able to match the fingerprint to 29-year-old Joshua Allen Goverman. OOPS! Goverman says he lost the finger while working on a car and has no idea how it got in the spool of wire. Dismembered fingers – spooky!

And how was your Halloween Week?

A week in Review

Posted on October 13, 2013October 13, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Strange things are happening in the world today.

Of course nothing is stranger or sadder than the government shutdown. I saw a FB post the other day saying they all should be fired. That is an understatement but I doubt enough “outraged citizens” will remember when it comes time to vote. Anyway, I said my piece about that so I’m not going to waste any more space on it here.

Did you hear about the groom that left his bride at a gas station? Yeah, it happened in Germany. Gotta watch out for those German men. (Just a joke as I have a good dose of German in me)

BERLIN (AP) — A German couple’s marriage got off to a rocky start when the groom forgot his bride at a highway gas station on the way home from their honeymoon, only noticing she was missing after hours had passed.

Police said Friday the couple was heading home to Berlin from France when the man pulled over near the central town of Bad Hersfeld late Thursday to fill up their van.

The woman had been sleeping in the back but got up — unbeknownst to the man — to use the toilets and he drove off before she returned.

Only after 2 ½ hours on the road did he notice she was gone and called police, who said she was patiently waiting.

Associated Press

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Ok so how ’bout the man who’s alive but declared dead?

Seems an Ohio man who was declared dead by the courts after he disappeared in 1994 can’t now be declared alive just because he showed up in court breathing and talking. He only had 3 years to let the government know he wasn’t really dead. Just in time for Halloween!

Hancock County Probate Court Judge Allan Davis called it a “strange, strange situation.”

“We’ve got the obvious here. A man sitting in the courtroom, he appears to be in good health,” said Davis but Davis also said the three-year limit was clear.

“I don’t know where that leaves you, but you’re still deceased as far as the law is concerned,” the judge said.

Maybe he’s one of the “Undead”

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And all I can say is at least she’s off the road!

A Montana woman called 911 for assistance. When asked the reason for her emergency she said she couldn’t get out of her car. The dispatcher asked her if the reason was medical or mechanical. The woman replied…”Because I’m too drunk!” Prosecutors say her blood-alcohol level was 0.311 percent!

I hope she’s sleeping it off behind bars keeping the roads safe for the rest of us.

And that’s the week in review! 🙂

Government Shutdown

Posted on October 1, 2013October 1, 2013 by Dusty Roads | 14 Comments

As most of you know, I usually keep political comments to a minimum. The biggest reason is I don’t consider myself a “deep thinker”. I’m just your “Average Josie”. I go along with my business and leave the governing to those elected to govern just as I leave the police to do the policing and the firefighter to fight the fires. I study issues to vote and then keep my vote to myself. But this government shut down has me irritated.

Listening to the sound bites and news anchors make me think I’m watching a bunch of toddlers fight in a sand box. Where is the leadership? Where is the responsibility? Where do these people, who are our elected officials, get off making decision that hurt the public? The same people they owe their jobs to?

One recent headline said 2.1 MILLION federal workers could be affected! But do you know what really gets me? These “elected officials” who are causing this atrocity still get paid! Yes, a government shut down won’t affect their paycheck.

I didn’t know why. I was complaining on FB that Congress should get “docked’ first and one of my friends said “27th amendment”. So I looked it up. The 27th amendment protects Congress from changes in their salary.

“The Twenty-seventh Amendment (Amendment XXVII) prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of the Congress from taking effect until the start of the next set of terms of office for Representatives. It is the most recent amendment to the United States Constitution. It was submitted to the states for ratification in 1789 and was adopted, over 200 years later, in 1992.”

Now as I said, I’m just a simple, average person. I never took any political science courses and even living in one of the most political states in the union, I manage to stay out of most political discussion. But I can’t help but think that any amendment that took 200 years to get ratified can’t be a good idea.

I don’t think John Q Public is free of blame either. We elected these morons. So maybe we deserve what we get but basic negotiating skills are learned in the sand box. Maybe we need to send Congress back to kindergarten so they can learn to play nice together.

Comments are welcome. Is anyone else embarrassed and annoyed by Washington?