My wife’s car registration was due in October. After getting my paycheck at the end of September, I dutifully went on the Internet to pay her registration. Amazingly enough, the DMV payment system was down. No, not because of hacking or PG&E power outages but for an overhaul of their payment system. Furthermore, I was greeted with a note that when the system came back up, DMV would be charging me a percentage for a processing fee.
DMV Warning of extra charge
Being a thrifty guy, at least when it comes to surrendering money to the government, I decided to write a check for the renewal and snail mail it. I wrote them a check and mailed it on September 28th.
On the 15th of October, I received a note from DMV that there was no payment enclosed in the envelope. I know this is not true. These guys lost the check. I even wrote the license plate number on the memo line of the check.
Knowing that the due date was imminent, I wrote them a check the very same day and mailed it again, but not before holding the sealed envelope up to the light and reading every part of the check to verify that they are without excuse.
Yesterday was November first and neither check has cleared my bank. Now I’m worried. Did they lose the second check too? I looked on their website and there’s no way to verify if something is paid. So, I came up with an experiment that seems to do the job. Here’s what you need, last five numbers of the VIN and license plate number. You pretend to pay online, and one of two things will happen, it will give you an error or show you an amount due.
DMV renewal screen
I tested this on my car that was paid many months ago and then with the car due in October. I got the same result, so my conclusion was that both were shown as paid at DMV. I still don’t know what happened to either check.
If you get this error then DMV shows your renewal as paid
I think if enough of us start opting out of paying electronically, they will drop the surcharge to pay online. Just don’t wait until the last minute because if they lose your check you need time on your side.
Elon Musk has been rewarded by the 90-day calendar guys after surviving the third quarter report. Elon apparently sprinkled magic pixie dust on the financials and turned a year over year sales loss into a $50 a share boost in one day.
Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) third-quarter revenue tumbled 39% in the United States, its first drop in more than two years…
U.S. sales, which account for the biggest share of the company’s total revenue, fell to $3.13 billion from $5.13 billion a year earlier.
If it weren’t for all the hysteria about saving the planet from imaginary destruction and other automakers being forced into giving billions to Tesla in the name of carbon credits, his goose would have been cooked years ago.
Speaking of cook, our friend of the blog, Tim Cook, has found a new way to be featured in tech blogs, he broke Apple’s Tesla app. Yep, iOS 13 has struck again. The latest iteration of this troubled operating system—also known here as “Apple’s Vista” —has killed the iPhone’s ability to run apps in the background and multitask.
iOS has of course never been famous for being an operating system which placed multi-tasking first, but some developers have come to rely on having their app running in the background.
One of these has been Tesla, which lets you replace your car keys with your phone. Tesla owners are now complaining that their doors do not open when they approach with iOS 13.2.
Of course, not only Tesla owners are affected. Many home automation systems like electronic door locks rely on the same feature.
Apple is rapidly earning a reputation of delivering more issues than features with their software updates, and I suspect more iOS users will be reconsidering installing the latest OS update without it being well tested in the market first.
Apple ‘s iOS 13.2 update was supposed to fix bugs introduced with the initial buggy iOS 13 release and add a few new features, but it seems like all is not well over in Cupertino.
iOS’s RAM management is so heavy-handed that it shuts down apps almost as soon as you switch away from them. Users find it hard to maintain a conversation on say WhatsApp and switch to Safari to get some information because the former app will reload when they switch back to it and Safari will shut down tabs when they switch away. This issue has shown itself on iPhones as expensive as the top-end iPhone 11 Pro, so it has been a frustrating experience even for superfans.
“I’m sure Apple has good excuses about why their software quality is so shitty again,” Overcast and Instapaper creator Marco Arment said over on Twitter. “I hear the same thing over and over from people inside: they aren’t given enough time to fix bugs. Your software quality is broken, Apple. Deeply, systemically broken. Get your shit together.”
Modern software is often developed with a ship first, fix later attitude. Apple’s fast updates mean that while users can get fixes as soon as they’re ready, they’ll also be more likely to experience bugs due to the initial shipping scramble.
Last I heard, north of 60 percent of Apple phone users—that don’t loose support November 3rd—were running this version of the operating system. I have faith that Apple will eventually get it right. I know it will irritate their customers but when you have folks locked into your eco system on two and three year contracts, then these sorts of errors don’t hurt the 90-day clock too badly.
Back to Tesla’s founder; California’s looming solar mandate for new construction and PG&E blackouts are breathing new life into another Elon Musk venture. This convergence of mandates and malfeasance is looking like the next step in cordcutting, being able to live off the grid in suburbia.
Once again, Elon is benefitting from government interferrence in the free market under the guise of saving the planet. It’s amazing how he has inserted himself into the minds of many as the high priest of the green religion.Musk’s use of captalism to fleece socialists is kind of poetic.
