Today was visit the DMV day. We'd finally unearthed all those necessary documents we needed to complete 4 necessary pieces of state paperwork. Two were new driver's licenses, one was changing registration and plates for the old car, and one was giving them a form to copy (again) to prove we were allowed to own our home because the previous owner had died.
I let Steve go in first, while I turned around and found nearby parking. His errand was brief, and why keep him standing longer than necessary? Of course he'll have to go back later anyway since they made the mistake of checking the box saying he needs glasses to drive. He had aced that test. They asked for 5 numbers and he just kept reading, just for fun, down the chart far and long enough that I accused him of showing off! Busy as the place was, first of the month and in a very short week, it got a chuckle. After all, not much else to do while the allowed ten people inside at one time in that tiny office waited their turns besides listen to everybody else's business.
Once I finally got to my window, I stood around getting the right papers with the right project, then waiting for the computers to spit out proof of conforming to the laws of the state, for nearly an hour, or long enough to begin to get light headed. No worries, though. I recalled the lesson from marching band days in high school that if one feels likely to fall over from standing in place rigidly for too long, one should start flexing alternate legs to keep the circulation going up to the brain. So I did. It mostly worked, if one can trust my judgement that the brain is (nearly) intact.
With all that done, and the property tax bill for the second half of the year taken care of at another building in another town, we were ready to head home. After a brief respite, I called the insurance company handling the home to add the car into their coverage, saving me a boatload of money. It's positively silly to have both insured but in different states by different companies. Particularly so when the former auto insurance people charged for my driving in a metropolitan area and with the snowbirding round trips added each year. Now we're far enough out of the metro that we're charged for rural rates, much lower than previous costs. Overall, insurance now costs just over a third of what it had.
I immediately called the old insurance company and cancelled, since the new one already had my financial info and started me today. They'll mail me an official card proving I'm insured. In the meantime, here's one via email for the car.
Uhhh, sure. Email? I have located my printer and gotten it set up, along with the old laptop which can communicate with it. Still not sure which box has the printer paper, however. Such paper one would consider quite useful IF somehow this email system on this laptop could communicate with my printer. (I will admit there is a possibility that could happen... if only I knew the secrets to setting it up.) However, this is today, not some mythical future, and any driving I do today would require, not the old discontinued proof of insurance, but the new, actually effective, proof of insurance.
With much thought, I found a way, and with several tries, I accomplished it. I just have to remember to take my laptop along in the car whenever I drive until the new paper card arrives.
If you think I could just bring it up on my email and show the nice officer waiting patiently for this novel kind of proof, let me just remind you that in order to access the email copy I'd need to be in range of wi-fi. Fairly quickly too, I'd assume. I tend to muddle through setting up a new wifi connection because it happens to be needed so seldom. There's my house, Paul's house, and back to my house. Very occasionally I risk trusting motel wifi, generally from need for a bank statement or a weather report when traveling which the motel TV isn't cooperating in providing. At least, not on my time frame, and some times not at all. I just tell people I'm out of touch for however long, or use the phone. Of course, when I'm driving, that means my phone had to be dug out of my pocket from under where it's trapped by the seat belt so Steve can answer it for me and tell people I can't talk legally at the moment, can he relay a message? Note we are assuming that can all be done before whomever is calling hangs up. Are you really that optimistic?
So if counting on strange wifi is not the best workaround, then what?
The camera, of course! I have two advantages there. First: I get 16 megapixel pictures. Lots of detail. However I do have to be sure the subject I'm shooting is in perfect focus. The print in my email of the card's pdf file comes across on my laptop's little screen as about a size 3 font. Perhaps I exaggerate and it's a size 1. On a good day, with a very energetic squint, I can make it out. My email version somehow imagines it is going straight to a larger printed form and will thus be quite readable. AS IF!!!
The second advantage of my camera, always provided I can somehow get a sharp enough focus that when enlarged will produce something readable, truly a feat in itself, is that so long as my laptop has a charge remaining, I can if stopped and pulled over, turn it on, boot up the photo software, and trust its ability to do what it does without benefit of needing wifi. My files are internal, not in the cloud somewhere. Since I had a reasonable idea of where the camera was last left, I went and located it in less than two minutes. It was in plain sight after all, just not in the camera case when I opened that. So the trick of the day was finding out how many different shots it would need for me to get one sharp enough to enlarge into something other than lines of blur. Even reading it off the email I had no idea that one of the top things it listed were Steve's and my names, the owners of the policy. And if you can't get that.....
Well, one needs the name of the insurance company. Surprisingly, (just kidding) that's in a very familiar logo as the largest thing on the card. It's even in red too! Then one needs a policy number, the effective date, the names of those insured and for what purpose, which vehicle is covered, a phone number for any prospective claims, and so forth. If you stop to think about it, there's no wonder the font is so tiny! That takes half a chapter in a decent sized book!
And never forget, the very largest, boldest print, eclipsing even the logo, is the warning that one copy of this needs to be kept in the vehicle at all times. I mean, why else would I be going through all this work? You think I want to stay home for a week till the needed piece of mail comes? Just remember, the way things have gone lately that week could be two months!
So, time to play photographer. Explore the variables, give it some tries, input the SD card into the laptop, fiddle with adjustments for light level, definition, cropping to make the "card" to fill the entire page.. uh, screen. See what you get. Stand too far away, your focus will be fine but still too tiny to read. Get too close, even with micro setting you're too close and it's blurry. Wrong light level and the flash goes off, leaving a bright orange spot in the picture. (Why orange, anyway? Anybody? Anybody? Buehler?)
About the seventh shot, after taking one or two, loading the files, twiddling with them, disposing of them and starting over, I finally got one I could actually read... if rotated on its side and expanded to full screen. It thinks it's a vertical piece of paper. My screen now knows it's a horizontal one and we all just have to turn our heads to read it. But, glory hallelujah, we can read it! Now pardon me while I go charge up the laptop again.
Whew!
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