Having Mondays off from work leaves me free on a business day to take care of my, well, business. For instance, if I had to take my car to the shop. Well that was obviously a good example if you talked to me last November, but that was a story for another day. On this particular Monday, the Department of Motor Vehicles had beckoned and I was responding. As I pulled up I began to comprehend what I had avoided for many years, the cramped parking lot with no empty spaces and people lined up and dribbling out of the entrance.

Nimbly I began moving through a multi-step process of documentation verification and relational service position assignment. Mind you, this must weed out at least 1/3 of the individuals who either did not understand that the state likes to know who you are before they trust you to drive or who thought this was going to be like going through the express line at the grocery store around midnight. You can only relish the fact that after making it through the primary line you have one of two activities in which to participate. Watching a LCD screen with large characters that bear a slight resemblance to the ones on the slip of paper you were handed yet are nowhere numerically close, or reading the dialogue on a communally acceptable television program.

The overhead PA announced, “Now serving number 133 at counter 5.” The television was tuned to The Waltons. Which might have been mildly interesting due to the kitsch factor and the episode’s title (“The Tempest”) except that my attention was drawn to the fact that the closed captioning was gibberish. Pure gibberish that could almost be made out into words. Almost, but they couldn’t.

“Now serving number 135 at counter 3.” Settling in, you realize that the temperature must be set to simmer and that no one seems to be moving. So you start paying attention to people. To make sure they aren’t dead. Because if they were you might compare numbers and trade for a earlier spot. After a quick scan you start eavesdropping, nothing serious or intrusive, just when you have 60 people in a room, some people will start conversations and the others have to listen.

“Now serving number 139 at counter 7.” This might be a good point to reenforce exactly what the signs mean that are plastered on the walls every three feet. They read, “Turn off all cell phones inside the building.” Before Monday, I would have interpreted that to mean that you should use the power button to shut down the phone so no calls are coming in or going out. Apparently I would have been wrong. The correct actions to take, according to witnessed behavior, is to stand directly in front of the sign chatting with your friends about how you are stuck at the dmv and wasting our precious oxygen on your pointless conversation.

“Now serving number 143 at counter 5.” As you begin to ignore those ignoring the posted signs, you drift into other conversations and most are ice breakers. “You getting a driver’s license?” or “How long have you been waiting here?” The latter piques your interest because of course, it directly affects how you are spending the next hours of your life. I became increasingly aware that most of the people trading these anecdotes were at least an hour into their sojourn and only halfway to their assigned number. Assuming that the rumor was true and the counter resets at 200. I’ve been waiting 10 minutes.

“Now serving number 144 at counter 3.” Which began to concern me, because of course the DMV was not the only thing on my to do list and of course I was hoping that miraculously I would sail through the process more expediently than those around me. I had mapped and navigated the best path to accomplish everything and that meant the DMV came first. “Surely,” I vaguely recall thinking, “the DMV would not be busy on a Monday afternoon.” The red LCD display informed me otherwise.

“Now serving number 145 at counter 7.” Two people about my age begin a conversation directly behind me. San Marcos and the school formerly known as Southwest Texas State University (may it rest in peace). “What was that restaurant that’s now a joe’s crab shack?” she asks him. “Peppers,” I answer in my head. Then the conversation drifts to the dorms, how the campus is changing… at least it’s a conversation I can join, but it doesn’t make those damn red numbers change any faster.

“Now serving number 147 at counter 5.” I walk out to my car to finish my paperwork and it’s actually cooler outside on this vernal afternoon. Which gives me an idea.

Everyone who commented on time waited was speaking in hours. And they were still waiting. My current time served had only elapsed 20 minutes. The numbered slip in my hand and the to do list in my head, I had a decision to make. Could I, a normal, average citizen of Travis county, expect to be able to predict the rate of processing by the DMV agents? You have to factor in quite a few variables: how many people give up and leave, what’s the average time spent at the counter, are there families or friends buffering the waiting room population? A challenge and social experiment, a push against the reality of having to wait in the holding pen versus the fantasy of getting everything accomplished in an shorter amount of time.

“Now serving number 27 at counter 3.” I had made it back with five numbers to spare. All of my errands were run. Well, I didn’t get the Blizzard from a conveniently placed Dairy Queen along the route. There was still the requirement to exchange money for a horrible ID picture, but I could actually smile easily now. I had beaten Vegas. I had played the odds and they played in my favor. As I sat back down and noticed that some people literally had not moved since I left, I watched the LCD counter click, seemingly more rapidly now, towards my number.

“Now serving number 33 at counter 5.”

Until I formalize thought on design for this site and my sidebar, one thing I would like to share but don’t really have an appropriate space for are interesting items I stumble upon during my daily surfing. These don’t require extra comments, but I might have some, so for now, here are a couple of links for your weekend perusing.

– Got a new buffalo nickel on the way

– The humor’s in the 6th graph, where a google “expert” claims home users on peecees only crash once in three years. ONCE IN THREE YEARS.

– The new PowerBooks have a sensor in them to help protect the hard drives in case of accidental droppage, but people are starting to put it to other great uses.

– Low-tech for high tech. Hand powered iPod shuffle.

The top ten bestselling books of all time. Most of us, I feel assured, can guess what at least one of these books is without clicking the link. If for some bizarre reason you’re expecting to see Danielle Steele novels or Stephen King frightfests on this list, you might be sorely surprised and you better view the list now before you hurt yourself. With the exception of #8 (Message to Garcia) and #10 (Valley of the Dolls), all of the other books could be considered reference manuals, my opinion. Granted there’s a little difference in style between “The Holy Bible” and the “Guiness Book of World Records” but they are there for very similar reasons, providing guidance to the goals in your life. Spirtuality vs. Elbow Licking. Tough matchup but apparently they are almost (read: at least they both made the top ten list) equally as motivating to purchase a bound copy of the newest, updated tome. The most amazing similarity between at least the top seven volumes: I’m not sure I know a single person who has actually READ these books all the way through. There’s a reason they aren’t on the first kiosk you see as you walk into Barnes and Noble.

And upgrading and upgrading and changing permissions….ahh, upgraded

For those of you whose cynical views make you want to clutch your friends by their shoulders and scream, “the sky is falling!”, I give you The Geminids.

Part of the reality of starting a new job is having a completely different office environment that can dramatically change how you operate on a day to day basis. Specifically, the dominating issue of lunch. Some may try to minimize this routine daily observance, but I find that lunchtime can be that pendulum in your day connecting morning to afternoon, pre-lunch to post-lunch.

Most people start their work career in part-time jobs and the lunch spots available to them are brief and rushed. I spent most of my thirty minutes trying not to choke while I inhaled my hastily prepared fast food. How could you not look forward to that luxurious hour long lunch associated with real jobs. Little did I know that my first full-time job after college would come with an amazing perk: for the small pittance of working through lunch when we had clients, I received a meal from some of the best restaurants San Francisco had to offer. Granted, I also ate my fair share of tuna salad from The Roastery, the cheapest food offering from the deli around the corner.

After starting my new job in September, I was once again plunged into a new routine in unfamiliar surroundings. Hoping to get to know some of my coworkers and wanting to get a little sunshine everyday, I began going out to lunch. They pretty much know my name at Subway and Wendy’s. After a month (okay, two) of eating out pretty much solid, I made the decision to start bringing my lunch. Surely I could make a sandwich that could rival a turkey and ham with cheese on honey oat from Subway (the Wendy’s chicken nuggets would be a little more difficult) and save a little money to boot. So I made the prerequisite grocery store trip and started preparing my lunch every morning before work.

Which brings us to a very important part of bringing your lunch to work:

ACTUALLY BRINGING IT

Now today, as my lunch begins, I will unveil the lunch I made to eat, yesterday, and just be thankful that I remembered it today. Because tomorrow I would definitely be having second thoughts about that turkey sandwich.

The New York times published an article yesterday about the relative state of American education. “The study, released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group based in Paris representing 30 nations, used tests given to students in 2003 and was intended to assess relative performance and to try to determine reasons for it.”

So far, so good. The US ranked 18th in reading and 28th in math. Out of 40 countries that’s pretty well straight down the middle average. Nothing to brag about and definitely something to keep in mind when reviewing the importance of education in this country. Note that only the word importance appeared in that previous sentence, not importance of funding. The study “noted that while the Czech Republic spent only one third as much per student as the United States did, it was one of the top 10 performing nations in the study, while the United States performed below the average of the nations surveyed.”

What really caught my eye was the following paragraph:

” The survey also questioned students about their own views of themselves and their work, and found that while good students were more likely to think they were good, countries that did well often had a large number of students who did not feel they were doing well. In the United States, 36 percent of the students agreed with the statement, “I am just not good at mathematics,” while in Hong Kong, 57 percent agreed. In South Korea the figure was 62 percent.”

Without knowing the full scope of questions asked, there seems to be a very important follow-up question about these views: “How do you react when you feel that you are not doing well?” I’m afraid, if the students were honest, you would find a large percentage that give up when they encounter that feeling. If most of the students in America would change their answer to that question from “I quit” or “I cheat” to “I apply myself even harder until I understand and succeed,” the United States would have no problem scaling the ranking ladder and becoming more than just average.

After swearing off football during college (a combination of marching band overload and a horrible college team) I have finally found the fun again. Even though I watched the spanking of UNT by Texas last Saturday (thanks for the pay-per-view Brad), this week marks the beginning of the football season in so much as my participation.

For the last two years I’ve been part of a friends and family pool for NFL games. Less time consuming than fantasy football but just as much fun. Of course it has as much to do with the company and “friendly” competition as it does the game, but I’ve followed the NFL much closer since I started playing in our pool.

My picks for the week are in and I’m waiting for the kickoff. Are you ready for some football?

Pulled a t-shirt out from the bottom of the stack to wear today. This wasn’t a choice, as in, “Hmmm….I think I’ll get my t-shirt from the bottom of the pile today.” It was more analogous to, “Well that pile of dirty clothes seems to be taking up all of the floor space in my room, I wonder if I actually have any clean t-shirts.” As Neil Young persuasively titled a song on Harvest, “A Man Needs a Maid.”

Amazingly there was a clean shirt, and one I hadn’t seen for a long time. I think I’ve kept it around because it illustrates both a strength and weakness in nontraditional advertising. Back in the summer of…okay let’s not date this…back when I was taking summer school classes at SWT (not TSU-SM but that’s another rant) I headed towards the coke machine during a ten minute break from an exciting lecture on something that happened in our American History. So fantastically exciting I needed a caffeine jolt to kickstart my attention span. I started to clink the quarters through the change slot and make my selection.

Side note: even though I said I was heading to the coke machine, anyone who knows me is aware that I mean Dr. Pepper and have just not been able to break free of the classification system that makes others say pop or soda. (Of course soda has to be pronounced so-DA in a thick Fargo accent.)

As I made my selection I noticed that the can seemed quieter or softer coming down the chute. Pulling out what roughly approximated a can of, uh… Dr. Pepper I was a little bewildered by the plastic-wrapped 100% cotton can. “This is NOT going to help me stay awake during the War of 1812,” I stood contemplating to myself. Allowing students behind me to get their fix, I stepped aside and unwrapped my present. It was the white t-whirt emblazoned with the logo of Citra, a drink I assumed was just being introduced or hadn’t been selling very well. They had pressure packed this t-shirt into the form factor of a cola can and randomly placed it in the distribution chain.

Every college student knows that free t-shirts are a wonderful thing. They must be or the credit card companies wouldn’t have lines at their booths to get their t-shirt for signing away your credit history. And Coke must know this too if they were advertising via slot machine handouts. It’s not quite Vegas but at least you know your going to get something from the exchange.

The good news for Coke, I’ve never forgotten their ad method or which product was being pushed. The bad news, I’ve never even tried Citra. I wasn’t completely convinced to try a new product. But to reinforce a brand, which obviously anyone standing in front of the red glowing caffeine distributor is aware of, the freebee is a powerful reinforcement of whose sugar you are going to consume.

For everyone out there saying to themselves, “Well, you paid 50

ain’t got no job, ain’t got… you know how the rest goes. After awaking ever so early and starting the water for that caffeine kick known to the world as coffee, cameron, chris oliver, and I went to play a round of disc golf at Searight. 5 minutes from the house and on a weekday morning, nicely abandoned. That used to be an advantage so I didn’t have to feel guilty about the constant foraging for lost discs but my game is starting to improve. Now we just worry about large groups of people in front of us drinking and smoking and pushing the baby in an unnaturally large SUV-like off-road stroller and not letting us play through.

Home to study for my interview Saturday. It was supposed to be a mixed day of studying and finishing some details on the Turbo Dwarf website. Alas, the banal plans were destroyed when Cameron’s girlfriend showed up with 4 friends in tow and asked why I wasn’t going to go down to Sculpture Falls. Not really being able to come up with a convincing reason to counter the arguments (all four of them) my studying would have to wait.

I’ve written before about the greenbelt here in Austin and Sculpture Falls adds another destination worth the hike. And it’s really a hike down a steep trail with lots of rocks and barbed wire. Of course you could drop in off of MoPac and take the long way in, but what fun would that be. No injuries to report and we spent the afternoon swimming and lounging and trying to not make those people not actively participating in our game of catch accidently active.

All in all, I can feel the summer winding down. School is starting and August is almost over. Of course, what that really means is all of the students are back in town and the temperate weeks in Texas (when you actually want to be outside most of the day without a swimming pool or jacket) are on the way. Not exactly a bad time to be in Austin.