Newsletter late...

Hi all,

To those of you who subscribe to my newsletter, you'll notice it's late (I usually send it out on the last Monday of the month). However, yesterday I went out for a "should've been quick" trip to the DMV (department of motor vehicles) to get my id/photo driver's license updated. (You have to do it before your birthday, and it's this week). Sadly, I managed to pick the one day when the normally great system they had in place fell apart. The computer system crashed, and took several hours to get back online, so the place was packed with backlog. The whole seating area was full, and lots of people were standing - a strange enough occurrence that we had a guy from one of our local newspapers there taking pictures. When the DMV revamped the system several years ago, it was a huge improvement - now they have several offices all over the place, whereas before for pretty much all of Halifax County you had to go to main office in Halifax (a long trip) and stand in one long trailing line by their huge windows and wait who knew how long to get seen. Now, they have a very comfortable waiting area, with lots of nice chairs, and a "take a number" system all done by computer. You choose the type of service you're there for - license plate renewal, or photo id renewal, or motorbike license stuff, etc. and they give you a number and a letter based on your particular needs. Certain desks process certain needs (for example, the id license renewal place has digital cameras to take your picture, so they're all in one part of the room) etc. But with the computer down, they really couldn't do many of the things they normally do - some could be processed on paper, but most couldn't. So there was a massive backlog of people. I couldn't fit this in any other day this week, so I was stuck, waiting well over an hour. The poor DMV people were strung out after being yelled at by people and having to do all this paperwork that many of them (it seemed) weren't trained for. Poor buggers. Fortunately, this is very rare. Unfortunately, I got caught in it. So, by the time I got back, I was in no mood to finish the newsletter. :) I hope to have it finished by this evening (Nova Scotia time - ADT).