how to beat the DMV

Thanks to my genius friend Shy, I discovered a workaround for the aforementioned bastardized government service we call the DMV. I thought I should share it with you, since it's something I never knew, and you may not either.

Join AAA. For about $70 bucks (a $20 joining fee and a measly $50-something annual fee), you can become a member of AAA. That means you can renew your registration through them. In other words: YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO THE DMV EVER AGAIN. Can you hear me jumping for joy through the very words on this page? Because I am.

There happens to be one of those handy dandy AAAs two or three blocks from my house, and they're open until 5:30, which means I can make it there before they close. Upon hearing that I could do it there, I jumped the earliest possible shuttle home, stopped in, joined, walked up to their "DMV Stuff" desk (no line), spoke to the (very nice & helpful) lady behind the counter, and renewed my registration. They have the stickers and everything!!! They do only take cash or check, so I found out how much it would be, ran to the ATM next door, and came back with cash. $411 in cash, mind you - thank you, SF parking cops with an overblown sense of what constitutes CITY SIDEWALK vs. MY DRIVEWAY!!! But that's a whole other story...

Let me just let it be known that I think it is pathetic that we have to resort to private businesses to do what a government service is supposed to do. I say if that's the case, shut down the DMV and privatize the whole damn thing. If there was competition in that arena, we could expect at least a modicum of service from these agencies. But there's not, so we can't.

Now children, what is the moral of this story? That's right! Fuck the DMV. Join AAA.

the big inbox dump

The Big Inbox Dump, or How Unclutterer Saved My Life!

A while ago, I watched Merlin Mann's "Inbox Zero" presentation at work - watch the video. It sounded so great, but I just couldn't find enough info in his articles on HOW to actually get there. I had not hundreds, but thousands of emails in my work Inbox! We're not talking about *gasp!* months of emails, we're talking two years of emails!!!  And I'm here to tell you; this truly is one of those things that only gets worse if you put it off.

Seeing as how I had 13,758 messages in my Inbox, over 6,000 of those unread, it was time to do something. (That doesn't even include the thousands of others that I automatically filter out into other folders to "read later" - mailing lists like "for sale" or "miscellaneous".)

Do you have any idea the kind of stress that puts on a person??? The psychological weight, the helplessness, the constant feeling of being overwhelmed?

Yesterday, I'd finally had enough. I vaguely recalled an article that had a method I thought I could at least start with, I just didn't have time for it at the time. I tracked the article down on Unclutterer: Simple strategies to clear email clutter — From Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.

The key to this for me is the very first point: The Big Inbox Dump. You make a new folder/label called "Backlog", select the entire Inbox, and put it in there. Then you go back in and pull out the important emails from the last day or so that need action and put them back in the Inbox. From there, you have to go back and work through the backlog, archiving and deleting ruthlessly. I'm staying on top of keeping an empty Inbox, but I do have a gazillion folders/labels, which they don't recommend. One thing at a time.

Right now, I'm just reveling in my Inbox; 3 action items, 0 unread.