UCSB Parking ticket appeal

Yesterday I got woken up by a phone call asking about my mailing address. They wanted to know where they should send the refund money for my parking ticket.

:D

$45 more to throw onto stocks.

speeding ticket #2

Follow up for this speeding ticket

Case got dismissed.

Ken: 2 - Law Enforcement: 0. :D

Now to wait for my bail money in the mail. I think I'll throw that money onto stocks too.

"Exceeding Maximum Speed Limit of 65 MPH" ticket update

This ticket may actually be easier to argue than I thought it would be..

1. They spelled my name wrong.
a. Makes me wonder what other errors they had.

2. My court appearance date on the courtesy notice is not within the limits of a "fair and speedy trial".
a. It is different from the date listed on the citation.
b. I never signed that I would appear on the new date, so they can't tack on a failure to appear charge if I don't show up.

I could claim to have never received the courtesy notice, cause it really wasn't addressed to the right person, and just show up at the old date, but, at the moment, that doesn't seem like it would work. Besides, I'm trying to avoid showing up altogether, if possible.

I'm just going to call the court and ask for dismissal, or send in mail and ask for dismissal.. if those don't work, I'll just go the traditional mail method.

On a side note, $203 for going 16 over the speed limit doesn't seem too bad, not that I'll pay for it, but if everything fails.. eh.

my plan of (counter)attack for my speeding ticket

Nothing. I got nothing.

So my statement on the request for written trial will simply be, "I am not guilty." Then, hope that the officer is too lazy to file paperwork and I get the case dismissed. If he does happen to file a statement, well, I have a request for a new trial ready at hand as soon as he does.

This buys me about 3 months worth of time to brainstorm my court appearance if it gets that far. I got some ideas at hand, but I'm not going to thoroughly think them out unless I need to.

speeding ticket

So on my way home, I see flashing lights behind me. I think it's an ambulance or fire truck so I changed out of the inner most lane. It follows me. So I go out another lane. Then it goes out another one and a half lane. Now I'm trying to figure out if it wants to pass or if it's the police (it was only red lights). Then a few seconds later it turns on it's siren and, yeah, police, so I pull over at the curb.

The first thing he says to me is, "did you not see the flashing lights, you're supposed to pull over faster." Why yes, I did see the flashing lights, I saw you turn them on and I changed lanes right when you did. If you wanted me to do a 5 lane merge immediately, I'm sorry, I do try to check if it's safe before I merge. Consider using your siren if you really wanted to pull me over 10 seconds faster.

Then comes the fun part. He asks me, "how close were you following the car in front of you?" Err... 3-4 car's length, cause that's how far away I normally follow cars, its close enough so people don't merge in front of me, but far enough for me to react. So I respond, "about 3 car's length." His response? "Oh....... license and registration please. Did you know how fast you were going?" Yes, I did, it was about 70-75, cause that's how fast the car I was following for the past 10-15 minutes was going. But hey, I responded with, "No, how fast?" and the rest of the conversation went like this..

Is this your current address?
Yes.
Walnut?
Yes.
Where are you headed?
Walnut.
Ok.

So he goes back there, and 5-7 minutes later, he comes back and goes, "Well, you have two moving violations, you were following too close to be safe, and, you were speeding, but I only wrote you up for speeding." So I ask him, "How fast was I going?" His responce? "Oh.. a little over 80 back there for a little bit when you tried to pass a car in the second lane".

Was I going a little over 80? Yes, probably for a few seconds at some point in time. Everyone on the freeway goes about 80 and I passed the car going 60 in the fast lane. What the hell. So yeah, I get pulled over for traveling the same speed as 10 other cars near me, and the guy next to me was tailgating the guy in front of him trying to pass me and the car in front of me. Thanks for BSing some reason to pull me over just to meet your month end quota. I'll see you in court, after I make you write an essay 2 months from now trying to defend your case against with me without use of a radar gun. Oh, and of course, if I have to appeal, I'll appeal to a court near Santa Barbara, or Walnut. It's a 1.5 hour drive either way.

If all else fails, traffic school fun.

happy

The weekend was fun. Not a great party Friday night, but fun nonetheless.

I also got some really really great sleep, and lots of it. No roommate is great :D Though, it is kinda quiet..

I'm also ahead in my work. Hopefully I'll stay ahead in work and when Valentines/President's day comes around, I can actually spend it not studying. =)

I also finally got the phone call I've been waiting for. It woke me up just in time for dinner too.

I have food! This is the first time in a very very long time I my meals worked out just right.

Physics midterm is curved! Not sure by how much, but any curve is better than no curve.



Oh, and I got two parking tickets, for $45 each.. both given by the same officer almost exactly 24 hours apart from each other. Now I know when the popo patrols parking lots. Of course, I'm appealing these. I appeal everything, cause I really have nothing better to do but tell you how poorly you do your job. Even more so cause this time I'm absolutely sure I'm not one bit at fault and I will escalate these tickets to the Superior courts if I have to. Fun stuff. But I moved my car anyways so I wouldn't get a 3rd ticket.. and if I do get a 3rd ticket I will go apeshit on parking services cause I'm actually parked where I've always parked for the past quarter.

Court Desision

I win.

The police requested an extension. The court granted them the extension. Even after the extension, they couldn't make up a viable story to challenge my 10 page long argument (with pictures).

Nothing on record and I get my bail money back. Weeeee

Now what can I spend $519 on... hmm...

i did have a nice, relevant title for this entry 10 minutes ago, but forgot it as i began to type

My summer sucks. Yes, that right, it sucks so far, really only because of two things, which is really caused by one thing. I'm stuck at home, and I have to deal with the morons in the government.

Super short version of my bad luck and error in judgment. Its dark. Police officers blocked road with their trucks with all headlights facing me. They're not moving. I thought they were opposing traffic on the other side of the road. They're on my side of the road. I ended up about 10 ft away facing the front of their truck. Pissy pansy officers take away my license and write me up for speeding and failure to yield. May they die in a traffic accident for poor road blocks.

Now so far, every government employees that heard that story, and/or the officers story pretty much had the same confused response. The DMV safety clerk told me it was a very minor violation, and I could still drive. I told him the officers took my license. Then he asked his boss, who asked his boss, who then called up half the employees in the office and had a super long discussion about what to do. Their answer? Police officers were not supposed to take away my license; they wrote up a temporary one for me. They're still confused. Same goes for the officer that took my statement on what happened. She couldn't make sense of the officers report. She took forever to understand my side of the story. In the end, she still let me drive, but I had to pass another behind the wheel just to keep my license, or so she said.

So I go to the DMV for my behind the wheel. I'm pretty sure I pissed everyone else off there cause even though I was behind like 20 people for the drive test, I was the first to actually take the drive test. They gave me the extensive test, not the simple short 5 minute test that only takes up a few columns of the score sheet, the full test that used every box and every line of the score sheet, plus freeway that takes 30-45 minutes. I also got the supervisor of all the proctors to test me. I swear he catches every mistake possible. So thats, 30-45 minutes of change lanes, change lanes again, right turn, left turn, right turn, left turn, left turn, left turn, right turn, lets go on the freeway, lane change, lane change, exit the freeway, right turn, right turn, etc. You'd think after 20 right turns he'd assume I'd know how to right turn before making me turn right 20 more times, then on the 39th right turn, oh, you turn was not sharp enough, you were a little bit farther away from the right curb than you needed to be. I ended up getting 5 errors(20 to fail), 2 of which were driving slightly off center in a lane, 1 for not being right enough on a right turn, 1 for doing a California roll on a stop sign (oops. bad habit), and 1 for slightly speeding, I think 28mph in a 25mph residential area. He told me I was a very very good driver, and had no idea what I was doing in the DMV for a reexamination. I told him my story, he laughed cause he thought I totaled a car and killed several people, or something like that. Course, then he also told me it didn't matter if I passed or failed, they wouldn't take away my license away unless they thought I had serious serious problems operating a car.

So what was my first week of summer like? Two trips of the DMV safety office, one trip to the West Co. DMV. Two vision exams. One traffic laws exam. One behind the wheel exam. My mom calling me stupid every time I talk to her. My dad passing trucks on the dirt part of the on ramp for the freeway in my car. My mom calling him stupid. My dad having no ride to the airport because both licensed drivers were at the DMV (my mom ended up ditching me at the DMV to take him to the airport. Connie had to find herself a new ride because I couldn't drive. Thankfully, most of this is over now, except the DMV wants another vision exam, but I can drive again without restrictions. Mom still calls me stupid though (I'm starting to think her evaluation of my intelligence is highly dependent on her current mood), and now she's panicking over the whereabouts of my actual license, since the DMV has no idea, and those incompetent officers probably have no idea. Identity theft paranoia. At least I still have my government ID card, so I can still use my credit cards. Oh, and there's all the work I have to do for my court case, which as of right now, I will go to to contest my citations, unless heavily advised against by people with more law experience.

Other than the hectic driving issue, my summer so far has been very busy yet very slow. My mom managed to make a super long to do list for my and my dad to do before I leave for college. So its fix the garage wall that I crashed into 3 times with the Mercedes, get rid of the Mercedes, buy insurance for the Mazda, fix our wooden deck in Monterey Park, don't fix the deck, replace it, kill the fat yellow snake living under the wooden deck, take a family portrait, cover windows, fix the couch, fix one of our dining table chairs, move a file cabinet from the office into the master bedroom, dust the house, vacuum the house, return all the bowls we borrowed from my cousin, wash dishes, clean my room, laundry. We didn't finish half that list, oh well. That fat yellow snake can live happy for a few more months (gopher snakes are harmless anyways).

Then theres the few big events parents had planned. I went to a wedding, ditched the banquet for Char's BBQ. I went to my cousin's 8th grade graduation (sure, we call it a promotion). I ended up having a long text message conversation after the 2nd of 5 speeches lasting until my phone died cause my dad called his office.

I feel fat since I don't exercise as much now, even though I'm actually slowly but surely losing weight. I need to find somewhere cool to exercise during the summer. Sister says my 4am jogs might scare the old grandmas walking around during that time, I think shes psycho for jogging during daytime. Time to get myself a gym membership!

Everyones also out of town. Vacations are nice.. when you're on them. Last vacation with my mom caused more stress than it relieved, so my next vacation will probably be without her, or with someone other than her, or both. It feels like everyone just disappeared.

Since there's no one to hangout with or talk to, and I'm poor and unemployed (like everyone else in the U.S. yay poor economy) I find myself sleeping a lot. Sleeping in the daytime isn't exactly great, since it's hot, which makes me sweat, and it screws up my internal clock, which is pretty screwed up anyways, hence 4am jogs! All that sweat during my daytime sleep pretty much made my room smell more like a guy's room. My mom is still mystified by how my sister can stand being in my room for such long periods of time. Oh, and it's impossible to walk around without stepping on dirty laundry. Something else I didn't do on that list.

Half my time not sleeping is spent playing video games with my sister. Because our Wii is outside in the living room, and my mom is watching that TV 24/7, and she hates us playing the Wii, we relocated to the TV in her room, playing the SNES. :D Hours and hours of Tetris attack. Awesome game, my first video game actually. Since we both grew up playing that game, were not too bad at it. Even my mom knows how to play decently, apparently she pulled her first all nighter outside of college trying to beat the one player for that game. Which was funny cause when we woke up when we were like, 6 years old or something, she was super happy cause she finally beat the piranha plant. Though now she hates it cause one night we were playing it at 2am in her room when she was trying to sleep, and it's pretty hard to sleep when you hear a bunch of "HOCAS POCAS! hehe~ hehe~ hehe~ hehe~ HOCAS POCAS! HOCAS POCAS! hehe~ HOCAS POCAS!" all night long, followed by "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH! You lost again! You suck, make your difficulty harder, harder, there we go..... HA! I win! That's because you're on easy and I'm on hard..." She started attacking us with pillows half an hour later.

Now all the remaining free time I had was spent on, surprisingly, not eating, since we have no food at home cause I am no longer employed in a supermarket and my mom just doesn't do grocery shopping, watching American dramas on the computer. Well, not exactly, my sister watched them on my computer, I had nothing better to do so I watched them with her when I'm not sleeping. I slept through pretty much all of Gossip Girl, catfights! one hour at a time, 18 times. Only thing I remember form that is just some girl sleeping with a gay guy.

Now the other series I ended up watching with her is One Tree Hill. I've seen like, 10 minute segments from two different episodes when it aired on TV. That's just how I watch TV, I watch something until the commercials start, then I leave the room to get food or something and I end up not coming back. I ended up watching the first Pirates of the Caribbeans that way, after it aired 5 times, though I'm still not sure what order the events happen in. One Tree Hill I actually like, they have wonderful friendships with crappy events that ruins their otherwise wonderful life. It'd be boring to watch otherwise though. I'm sure my sister was very annoyed with all my questions since she tended to watch episodes out of order cause some of them shes seen before, and some of them just didn't download correctly. So it pretty much sounded like "Who's she? Brooke, oh. Who's that? Thats Rachael. Which one's the cheerleader again? They're all cheerleaders. Why does their school have pretty cheerleaders? Because we go to Walnut. Now who's that? That's still Brooke. What's she doing in her house? Who's house? ...Haley's...? That's not Haley, that's Peyton. Now that's Haley. So what's.... Brooke doing in Haley's house? They live together. Oh. Then how'd she get into Peyton's house? and whose house is she in now? Lucas'. Why is she so good at getting into people's houses when they're sleeping? Shut up" or random comments like "Look! He has a pimple right there. Move your finger, you're blocking the screen. But he has a pimple~. Yes. -_- high schoolers have pimples. But he's an actor! Actors aren't supposed to have pimples. He's still a hot actor. So pimples are hot? really now? Look, he has another one right there. That's the same one, now SHH. Oh, it disappeared, I like how his pimples disappear overnight. Pimple. Singular. He had ONE, and he still good looking, now SHHH." I seriously need better to something to do.