Catch-44

Thats a double catch-22, by the way, and yes, I am about to blag about a parking ticket.  I realize how pathetic that is, but I just want another human being to acknowledge the absolute absurdity of this entire ridiculous situation.  Furthermore, I think I am a better writer when I am irritated.  And it suffices to say that presently I am at least a mite embittered over the situation at hand.

It all started a few months ago when I paid money for the service of being able to park on a public street-- and seeing that written out just now actually made me a little more upset.  But I digress.  I payed my fee, displayed the permit on my vehicle, and went out to dinner.  When I returned with a full hour of parking time remaining, I quickly tore into the yellow envelope which had been painstakingly and artfully folded into a fist with the middle finger extended and lovingly nestled beneath my windshield wiper.  Ok, I lied about the folding part, but lets face it, thats essentially what it represents.  Being a somewhat reasonable adult, I gave the ticket the benefit of the doubt, and checked to see if my time had expired.  Nope, more than an hour left.  Just like I thought.

That marked the beginning of the madness.  Because what the hell else would you get a parking ticket for if you paid for your parking?  I did mention I paid, right?  Because I did.  Now isn't the time to get arrogant and self-righteous-- wait, this is a blog! Of course it is.  I always pay the meter.  Every time.  And if that's wrong than let God strike me down from this chair, which I have draped a body pillow over in order to make it more comfortable.  I'll allow a pause to see if anything happens...

Now that that's cleared up, allow me the liberty of informing you what I got a parking ticket for, because its so unrelated to the physical act of parking that a even legal scholar with an emphasis in traffic law wouldn't stand a chance at guessing. I got a parking ticket for not having any license plates.

So to recap: I got a parking ticket for not having plates, which aside from having nothing to do with parking, is simply not true.  Our car has a license plate on the rear.  Thats how it was when we bought it.  When we bought it from a licensed auto dealer.  And its not like this is an uncommon sight, anyway.  There was actually another car parked less than one block away with no front plate and it had no ticket.  It was also a Mercedes SL550, which cost upwards of $105,000 new.  But I am sure that had nothing to do with it.  Nothing at all.  But again, I digress.

My eyes went back to the citation itself, which let me tell you, was a sight to behold.  Despite being printed, which would imply that there was some level of legibility and consistency desired when it was produced, it is a veritable menagerie of bafflement, as everything was jumbled up and printed in random order on top of existing text.  Either that, or the time issued really was "OREGON", and I was in violation of the law "$55.00" The actual citation number, which I assume is moderately important, was completely illegible, as it was printed directly on top of the words "PARKING VIOLATION".  The date wasn't much better.  Really, I have no choice but to include some evidence at this point, since after all, a JPEG is worth 1024 words.

The citation number, as it appears on the ticket. 

The date, as it appears on the ticket.

Uh, what the fuck? Am I expected to solve genius-level captchas in order to understand something as mundane as a parking ticket? Apparently so.  However, the illegibility issue was actually a very welcome development.  I remembered reading an article about getting out of trouble on lifehacker, so I looked it up...

"The city government loves their parking tickets. So many of these things get handed out that you could end up with one even if you didn't break the law. Either way, the first thing you want to check for is a mistake. According to parking expert Eric Feder, if anything on the parking ticket is wrong—from the date to the location to the cited violation—you have an easy out. You can even get out of a ticket if the writing is illegible. If anything is off or wrong on your citation, contest it and you should be able to get it dismissed without much trouble." 

--http://lifehacker.com/5811657/how-to-get-out-of-the-most-common-kinds-of-trouble

Score.  That was exactly what I remembered.  It's funny to me that this article even emphasizes that illegible handwriting can be grounds to excuse a ticket, since I'm sure that's exactly why the city of Portland prints their tickets. But, when they come out looking like a dot-matrix printer just wiped its ass on a used Safeway receipt, you're not really accomplishing much in terms of legibility.  Furthermore, none of the field names corresponded to what was actually printed there.  My license plate number is listed as the date,  and the address is listed as the receipt number.

So, I was feeling pretty good at this point, because I basically have the most fucked up parking violation ever, and it was issued for breaking a non-parking law that I didn't actually break. There was no way in hell I'm was going to pay this thing.  I flipped the envelope over and sure enough there were three options on the back, which are summarized below:

1. PAY TICKET: Submit the full payment, thus pleading guilty and waiving your right to a court hearing. 
2. POST BAIL WITH EXPLANATION: Submit the full payment along with a written explanation as to why you contest.  Your explanation is waver of your right to a court hearing, and you consent to any judgement rendered.  The court may refund some or all of the bail, but will not consider any explanation without bail.
3. REQUEST COURT HEARING: Submit bail, along with request for hearing.  Request will not be considered without bail.

Wait-- that's not the summarized, thats the full text!  Sorry about that.  Here is the summary:

1. Pay.
2. Pay.
3. Pay.

Oh, Portland Circuit Court, you sneaky, sneaky bastard-- every option involves posting the full bail amount!  And, according to the ticket, any payment is considered a guilty plea!  Here's that catch-22 I was taking about:  To plead not guilty, pay the fee.  But if you pay the fee, you automatically plead guilty.

But being the naive person I am, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought, "That's crazy-- I am reading into this too far.  They probably just want the check to hold onto in case I don't show up in court.  Surely they wouldn't accept it as a guilty plea and cash it before the ruling even happens."  So, like a pig to the slaughter, I mailed in my hearing request, along with a check.  

The hearing request was interesting to write to say the least.   All the information they asked for was illegible, so ultimately I just photocopied the ticket and included a copy, since I haven't won any international cryptography awards yet.  It couldn't have been more than two days later and the funds were whisked from my bank account.  That was over a month ago, and as of yet, I've received no notification of my court date, or any other contact from them at all.  All I know is they took my money without question and didn't even give me a fucking receipt.  And I was pretty clear that I was requesting a court hearing...

But spite is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and I am nothing if not spiteful.  If they are that willing to take my money before even considering my case, I might as well delay the court case well into the next decade.  It's not like I have anything to lose at this point.  Also, I will be requesting an ASL interpreter for Beth at the last possible second when I finally do show up.  On their site, it says they want 48 hours notice for any translation or interpretation, but guess what: they are legally obligated to provide an interpreter if we ask for one, regardless of notice.  Basically, I will be doing everything in my power to make this the most expensive parking ticket to prosecute that the City of Portland has on record, and I will have a blast doing it.   Hey, who knows... I might even get my fifty bucks back!

Another big relief

Arguably, I was a great deal happier upon the discovery of my summer term grades, however I had a very similar feeling today when I finally obtained admission into the classes I have to take this fall.   So this is what my final schedule looks like… 

The green classes are at PSU, the purple one is at PCC.  Registration for the PSU classes was entirely straightforward: I only needed those two, they each were only offered once, and they didn't conflict with each other.  Score.

However, these classes didn't play very well with PCC's math department.  You're looking at the only possible outcome that could have possibly worked.  Sure, there were other Math 252 classes-- there were 9 of them-- but all except that one either conflicted with the PSU classes, or were ridiculously far away.  Out of curiosity, I mapped out how long it would take to get to the "Rock Creek Campus", wherever that is.  Oh, about two hours.  Each way.  Sorry but that ain't happening.   To complicate matters further, the one viable math class was, of course, full.  So after pleading with the professor, she finally let me in with only a couple days to spare.  Had this not happened, I would have had to take another math class at PSU. Therefore, I would have had to buy a 3-term math text for one class, pay about 3 times more for the credits, and likely get a worse education.   So I'm glad things worked out the way they did.

With that all said and done, I am pretty excited about these classes.  Taking ECE 221, (Analog) Circuit Analysis, will be very nice, as I feel like a lot of the digital circuitry classes I have taken so far reference concepts from it and assume you have already taken it.  I wasn't able to take it first because Calculus is required.  I'm guessing that it won't be overly difficult, and I should get to dust off my toolkit and build lots of cool stuff, too.

ECE 371 is all about Microprocessors.  Honestly, I don't really know what I am getting into with that class, but it's taught by the guy who wrote the book on microprocessors (No, really... he did) so I have a feeling I will be learning a lot.  I am guessing difficult but interesting.  Probably more programming assignments than hands-on circuit building here.

Math 252 is Math 252.  Calculus II.  Don't really know what to expect, but so far my pure math classes haven't been too hard.  Hopefully not too much busywork from this course.

A nice little milestone: this term I will take my first upper-division ECE class!  I will be taking a lot of those over the next couple terms, then next summer I do an internship (Google, are you reading this?), then a year from now, I am beginning the Masters program. Time really flies when you're in engineering school!

The other great thing about next term: I have Friday off! How cool is that?  I am sure that I will need to use the entire day to study, though...

A brief encounter with “free time”

I really thought once CS 163 was over, things would be far easier academically.  This would have been true, had I not fallen behind in Calculus trying to keep up with 163.  The way things worked out, I ended up being slammed right up until the final.  My studying paid off though, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I got an A in calculus as opposed to the B I was counting on.  So in the end, I got a 4.0 this summer! 

It’s really starting to seem like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel that is my post-bac.  So I guess really, I can see the entrance the next tunnel that is my masters.  But so far everything is going great, and every 4.0 I get is just one more reason for them to let me into the master’s program.  Case in point, last received word from my advisor that if I keep getting grades like that, he will waive the GRE requirement if for some reason I need to take it. 

Right now I am scheduled to take ECE 371 – Microprocessors, ECE 221 – Circuit Analysis, and MA 252 – Calc II.  I’m really excited about 371 and 221, but Calc II is proving already to be a chore, as I cannot take it at PCC due to schedule conflicts.  Surely you must remember how much I love paying triple for an inferior education via PSU’s horrendous math department.  Right now, all the classes are full, so I have been begging the professors to let me in, as not taking 252 next term would pretty much fuck everything up for me.  I’ll get in somehow though.  More on that as it develops. 

My time off is absolutely flying, and its hard to believe I am already nearly a third of the way through it.  The first week hardly felt like time off, as I was finishing all the little tasks and projects that had accumulated over the last 6 months.  Now I am finally relaxing, playing with the dog, and keeping my mind sharp with minecraft, which I believe was created with the sole purpose of disrupting the careers of engineers worldwide.   (Check that link out.  Especially the fully functional 16-bit computer built from scratch using wires and AND/OR gates INSIDE MINECRAFT!!)

Speaking of relaxing and playing with the dog, here’s a video that I threw together this morning.  I was actually listening to that song while I was playing with Jackson, and I thought “man, this is really just a prefect song for this situation.”  So then I made this.  Enjoy!

(Click the video while playing to watch in higher quality on YouTube)