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Our DMV system was much improved a couple years back when they added online check-in. I learned about it when I went in for something and I could enter my cell phone number and they texted me updates, such as my wait time of 2.5 hours. So I went back to work until my wait time was about 20 minutes and then I headed back in. Worked great.

But even better was the shortcut I found. Then time I went in, I wanted to get there when they opened. I did, but so did a few dozen other people. I knew from my precious visit that I could send a text to get in line, so I did. But I learned that the online line didn’t open until the office did. So I couldn’t get in line early like I thought I could.

But here’s the shortcut: the online check-in opened at the same time as the doors. So even though I was 30th in line or so, I ended up being second in line because the people in the physical line can’t check in as fast as online.

It was great. We would all file through the doors and they called my number just as I was walking in. Literally no wait. I was in my car driving out of there in less than 10 minutes after they opened, and I didn’t have to stand outside for half an hour to be first in line.

The next couple of trips to the DMV were like that: get there a couple minutes before they opened, stand happily in line because I knew it didn’t matter where I was standing really, and then check in right at 9:00, file into the office and get called up right away.

I would be in the car heading back to work before 9:10, which is awesome for a system that had been leaving me to sit in a hard plastic chair for two hours awaiting my turn.

Then this last time I got in line just before they opened. I was about 50th in line, but I didn’t worry. The doors opened at 9:00 and I checked in online only to be informed that “this branch is appointment only”.

Well that threw a wrench into my plans. Now I had to wait in line with the common folk.

So I waited, and I heard someone else ask the line-directing lady about checking in online, to which she answered that online check-in now starts 30 minutes after the doors open.

Rats.

They’re onto my scheme.

So the line-directing lady sent most of us into another line and some other people she sent to sit in a waiting area. Our line actually went relatively quickly. I though about checking in online right at 9:30 to skip ahead a few spots, but I was next in line at 9:30 anyway so I didn’t do that.

I suppose I can’t complain. The new way is more fair. I’ll just have to get in line a little earlier.

I’m not a fan of the new digital keys.

I lost a set of house keys and needed to get replacements. So I went to the nearby big-box store and had them copied.

It turns out they have a new key-copying machine.

Digital keys!

Ooooh, fancy new machine. Instead of cutting the new key by tracing the old one, it scans the old key, digitizes the information, and then uses that information to cut the new key.

One of the benefits touted by the banner next to the machine is that you never need to worry about losing the keys because the machine can save your key’s information and they can cut a new key from the file and they don’t need the old key anymore after it is scanned.

My worry is that, since this is a national chain big-box store, the key file isn’t stored just on that one machine but on the company’s servers so that key machines at any of their stores can cut any stored key. And that means if hackers get into the server they get not only names and passwords but also house keys. Not a good idea if you ask me.

I don’t need to worry about that though, because the keys are poor quality so I’m not tempted to go there anyway. In fact, I specifically go to a local store that has an old-school analog key cutter. The digital key idea isn’t bad, but they didn’t give it enough bits. The keys they copied for me are the metal equivalent of a pixelated photo. Yes, you can tell what it is supposed to be, but it is noticeably different.

And it not just looks – the blocky digital key doesn’t work as well as a normal copy. A normal key just goes it and I can turn it and the door unlocks. The digital key goes in fine but it doesn’t turn unless I get it to the exact right depth. And that takes a few tries some times. It gets annoying, especially to some younger members of the family who have not yet learned patience.
“Can I open the door?”
“Sure, here’s the key.”
“Why’s it not working?!?!”

Any, be wary of the new digital keys. Progress isn’t necessarily better.

I finally got to read a book on vacation. And it was a long one so that was all I was able to have time for on vacation this year.

First and only book: “Impyrium” by Henry H. Neff.

It was good.

I could leave it at that, I suppose, but that’s not why you come here.

When I started it, I didn’t know if I would be able to get into it and make it all the way through. There’s a girl whose family has magic powers and they rule the kingdom and there are dragons and it all seemed so typical that I thought I’d lose interest. But I didn’t.

It was a lot of the standard middle-grade sci-fi/fantasy elements, just about all of them I think. But what I liked about it was what it didn’t have: no romance, no gore, no swearing. I’d recommend it for grades 6 and up.

Not that it was squeaky clean. There was one quasi-bad word that appeared two or three times. And of course there is violence – can’t be fighting bad guys without fighting – but like I said it’s not gory. And there is good magic and bad magic, for what that’s worth.

It was an engaging story, good characters, plot twists, and all that. Makes me want to go read book two, but I am not fluent in French. And that leads me to the main detraction to this book: the ending.

It does not have, as Rick Riordan says, a strong ending. That means it left a lot up in the air – the story felt incomplete at the end. It needs a book two, but alas, we English speakers do not get book two.

While I wait for book two, I just might read his Tapestry series.

The other detraction is that there is no pronunciation guide for the protagonist’s name: Faeregine. I had to watch the trailer for the book in order to get the pronunciation, but I didn’t do that until after I had finished the book, so I spent much of my time in the book trying to guess how it should sound. It’s “FAIR-uh-jeen” but with a completely soft J, so more like “FAIR-uh-zheen”. It’s hard to write an English pronunciation, since we don’t have a G sound that starts soft. Think of it as a French word and you’ll get it. Or just listen to the trailer yourself.

We were at an Independence Day concert. It wasn’t billed as such – it was to be just a normal concert of a gospel quartet. But it was on the 4th of July weekend so it turned into a celebration of America.

It was fine, but then they sang “Proud to be an American”. The song is fine, but it’s what the audience does with it that annoys me. We had been sitting comfortably throughout the concert. But as we approached the line “and I gladly stand up next to you” I knew that the audience would stand up at that line and peer pressure would compel me to stand.

Sure enough, right on cue at the word “up”, about a quarter of the audience (mostly the people near the front) stood up. The pressure of patriotism spread throughout the audience and eventually all the sections were standing for the remainder of the song. It’s not like the lyrics tell people to stand up, or any of the singers said to stand if we like America. There was no one standing and defending America at that point, so there was no one next to whom we could stand. But people stood anyway. Then the song was over and we all sat back down like we were doing before. I considered it a 7th-inning stretch.

At least the people who stood did it on purpose. That’s better than when there’s a performance of “America the Beautiful” some time before the national anthem at a sporting event and people just automatically stand because they don’t realize it’s not the national anthem.

But the best/worst part of the concert was yet to come.

After that song, there were more patriotic things, like the anthems for each branch of the military, and recognizing veterans in the audience, and so on. And then, since it was a gospel concert, they finished up with the Hallelujah Chorus to remind us that praise belongs to God and not our government or military.

I’m a fan of the Hallelujah Chorus, especially when it is performed as originally written. But I did not like the use of this song in this situation.

Why not?

Because people stand up for it.

We had just recently gotten back into our seats after standing for a Lee Greenwood lyric, and now the Hallelujah Chorus?

People didn’t want to stand, but it takes only a few people near the front, and then everyone else reluctantly gives in and stands.

It was annoying to have to stand back up, but the amusing part is the reason why.

Why do people stand for the Hallelujah Chorus?

Because the king of England did.

A long time ago.

My line of thinking went like this: we are celebrating Independence Day here, and America and stuff – our independence from England, so we wouldn’t be under their rule anymore, which means we don’t care what their monarchy does. So why are we honoring something the king did a long time ago, especially for an American celebration? Let’s exercise our independence from British rule and remain seated for the song.

I’m just glad it was something simple like standing. What if the king had sneezed during the performance of the Hallelujah Chorus? Or done a cartwheel? I’ll be glad when the standing tradition dies out, but since it’s been over 150 years and still going, I doubt I’ll ever see it end.

Sticking with the theme of last week’s post about having a plan for how you child will learn how to navigate the internet, I’m posting this week about what we did with introducing phones.

It seems a lot of kids are getting phones while in elementary school. I remember a few years back, my brother-in-law was telling us how his 6th-grade daughter was complaining to him how she was the only one in her class without a phone. He thought she was being dramatic, so at the parent-teacher conferences, he asked one of the teachers if that was true. The teacher answered that yes, the daughter was the only one without a phone.

Now, just wanting to fit in with the crowd is not necessarily a good reason to get something.

We tried to wait as long as possible before getting a phone for our kids. The oldest got his first phone in 8th grade because there were a number of things he was involved in after school that he needed to call or text us when he was done and needed to be picked up at the school. Back when I was in school, I used the pay phone in the lobby to call home collect for things like that. But since there are no pay phones anymore, we decided to go ahead with the phone.

We certainly didn’t buy him a phone, as that’s a waste of money. We just went to the phone store and got a SIM card for one of our old phones that would have netted us only $30 if we traded it in when getting our new phones.

I had been looking for a cheap flip phone as a sort of learner’s permit – one that could call and text but no internet. All the flip phone still came with web browsers, so those weren’t safe. We settled on the old iPhone, which has the convenient feature of being able to disable the browser (and other features if you want). He doesn’t have the passcode to enable the browser, and he doesn’t have his own iTunes account, so we will let him search the app store for games and apps, but he has to have one of us install it. There’s a lot more flexibility on the iPhone regarding parental controls than on a flip phone.

Plus, one of the things we didn’t foresee when we got him a phone in 8th grade is that the high school classes are setup assuming the students have certain apps on their phones. I’m sure the teachers would have made arrangements if we had said he doesn’t have a phone and can’t do what you assigned. But it makes the kid’s life easier just having that there, and not being annoyed that he has to go to the teacher to get special arrangements.

Beta got his phone is 7th grade. I was trying to wait until 8th grade like we did for his brother, but with kids at the elementary, middle, and high school, our schedules were a little more packed than they were when Alpha was in middle school. He had to borrow a phone to call us to get picked up and by that time we were familiar enough with the limits we could put on the phone so it wasn’t as big a step. Gamma and Delta still have to wait until middle school activities keep them after school though, before we get phones for them.

One of the memorable quotes I like is “If you are doing something for the right reason, you will probably be doing the right thing.”

That might not be an exact quote, but I think I got the concept right. The context of the quote was an experienced engineer (Lyle D. Feisel, in Lyle’s Laws) advising a younger engineer on how to know if he was doing the right thing. The setting was engineering, of course, but I think it applies to much of life.

For example: if one child is wondering whether he should tattle on another child, ask him to apply this reasoning. Why does he want to tell on him – to get him in trouble or to keep him safe? This might not work, depending on the age of the child, since kids can be devious. But if someone can be honest with himself when answering the question, it works well.

There are some people who may not be satisfied with that rule of thumb, because there is not an objective standard for “the right reason”. And in some areas that may be true. In my line of engineering, I can ask myself “Would I be able to answer the customer if they questioned this decision?” or “Would I be able to defend this action if the federal regulatory agency inquired about it?”

In my case, I have years of working with the same customer, so I can reasonably ask that question to myself. Not everyone might have that same luxury, so their role-playing questions might not be able to provide guidance.

Even outside of engineering, this rule of thumb should work well. Not everything is going to be cut and dried, of course. But if you’re wondering how to decide on what the right thing is to do, then chances are good that you’re on the right path. If you’re asking yourself how to get out of doing something, then this line of reasoning probably is not for you.

I know it’s not in the best interest of the companies that send out emails, but I don’t like how unsubscribes are handled.

I think Europe has the right idea of the right-to-be-forgotten. Right now in the US, all of my unsubscribe options take me to a screen that has my email address and my settings, so I can choose how or if I want emails from them.

The problem is that still leaves my email address in their databases. I don’t want these email lists to save any of my information – I want an option to delete my information.

My wife got some scam emails recently that claimed to have hacked her email and password and instructed her to send them some bitcoins in order for them to not send out incriminating stuff to all her contacts.

We could tell that it was a scam, because we use different passwords for everything, so we knew the password they sent us was not her email password. And because of the unique passwords, we were able to figure out what happened.

The hackers got into some website where my wife had signed into once or twice, and they stole everyone’s emails that they used to sign up for the site along with the passwords for that site. Then they sent phishing emails to everyone from there, assuming that some of the people use the same password for everything and thus wouldn’t know their email really wasn’t hacked.

If people had the option to delete their information from the site, then the damage from these types of attacks could be reduced.

The action when I click “Remove me from this list” should literally remove my information from the records, not just add a note that says I don’t want emails.

On the plus side, I’ve noticed that some of the “Manage your email” pages let me not only opt out of various types of emailings, but they also let me change my email address. I think that is, while not perfect, certainly an acceptable way to remove my real address from their system. Sure, let me update my email address to someone@example.com…

Ok, last point – it should not take 10 days for your system to update my email preferences. If your back-end database really takes 10 days for settings to propagate through it, you need to fire whoever set that up. Unless it runs off magnetic tape reels that need to be manually switched – if it’s that old then you get a pass. But any email list management software worth its salt should be able to make changes instantly. Those claims of 10 days are nothing more than feet-dragging policy.