Virge's blog

It was just another morning until I got to my office and found two envelopes addressed to me. They were the worst kind of envelopes - not the "have we got a deal for you?" kind that can be safely filed in the bin without opening, nor the handwritten address kind sent by a human with a brain. These were intransigent, bureaucratic missive-delivery facilitators, and they seemed to bark "Open me now. You have twenty seconds to comply."

I opened the first - $125 fine for being photogenic while travelling at 68km/h in a 60km/h zone. I looked at the alleged location and date. Yes, that was where I was on November 3rd and the speed measurement is possibly correct although I did keep a pretty close eye on my speed. I don't think I was speeding on that day but there are plenty of other occasions when I've deserved infringement notices but remained undetected. It's a fair cop. There goes 1 demerit point from my driver's licence.

I looked at the second envelope. It looked identical. "Oh, no! Not another one," I pleaded as I opened it. It wasn't another speeding fine. It was worse. It was a $500 fine for driving an unregistered vehicle.

"What?!?"

The new registration sticker was delivered to me at work. Admittedly I was slow to stick it on the car window, but I had the registration. Then I wondered if my work's finance department had been a little tardy in paying bills. The previous year's registration expired on October 28th. Maybe the payment hadn't been made by November 3rd.

It was time to face the phone system of a large government department. I can design software. I can solve calculus problems. I can even count to 1023 on my fingers and thumbs. Yet I still shudder when faced with such ingenious defence systems as those erected to guard government bureaucracies.

I was pleasantly surprised. The automatic answering system was easy to navigate. I selected the option to check my demerit point total... type in licence number... type in date of birth... you have entered blah blah blah is this correct? type 1 for yes... etc.
"Your demerit point total is zero."
That's what it said. Zero. But the infringement notice said I'd just lost a point. I guess their system is slow. I decided to ignore that and get help from an operator on the lack of registration payment. A further surprise left me a little off balance. There was no waiting time for the next available customer service representative. I was in like a thing in another thing.

The rep was helpful. I'll call him Melvyn to avoid admitting that I don't remember his real name. He listened. He understood. He went to check if the payment had been received but placed under suspense for some reason.
Melvyn said: "It looks like the payment was made at the end of September but it's the wrong amount. We received an amount of $523.30 while the registration bill was only for $522.20, so the payment is held at the moment."
"So my car really should be registered? The bill has been overpaid? Does that mean I can have the $500 fine cancelled?" I was relieved. This was obviously their problem, not mine.
"I'll have to put you through to another department for that. Just hold on while I transfer your call."

The next rep was ready to help and I didn't even have to repeat all my details. Should I have pinched myself? Was this too good for any government system? She looked at my case. Oops. Melvyn had mistyped my car's registration number. No, there was no record of any payment for my car's registration. Not a sausage.

My investigation turned back to the company's finance department. I went upstairs into the land of bean-numeracy. Their message was clear. If I'd got the registration sticker, then the bill must have been paid. These people work their systems like bean-machines. The registration sticker doesn't get delivered to the driver until after the bill has been paid. It's a foolproof system. The only problem was that I had the sticker and they couldn't find any record of having paid the bill.

At this stage, old Virge was starting to feel better. There was a slip-up. They hadn't paid the bill. They'll search again and find it accidentally stapled to the back of another bill, or pinned to the new graduate accountant's back for a little wacky-as initiation joke. The company would pay the $500 fine or plead with VicRoads for clemency. It would be out of my hands. See Virge relax.

I left them to look further for the payment records.

Later in the morning I got an e-mail from the financial controller. In a nutshell it said "The company has a policy of not paying for employee fines. Discuss it with your manager. Present your registration notice to finance so they can pay the annual registration. Don't drive your car until you have the registration receipt."

See Virge tense. I went to see my manager. He didn't want to discuss the fine at all. I'd have to see the personnel manager or the director for that. I left Pontius washing his hands to further follow my via dolorosa.

I'd better stop hammering the keyboard about this. You don't want to hear more details of Virge gettin' grumpy with it. The crux of the screw up was that a change in the car leasing scheme done last year meant that the registration sticker did get sent to the company, but not via the finance department. After about 10 years of having a registration sticker sent to me already paid by the company, this year the finance department didn't get to see it because it was addressed directly to me, but still sent to the company's street address. Therefore, it was supposed to be up to me to detach the notice and send it to Finance to be paid.

The saga isn't over. I haven't written off the $500 yet. It's a huge fine for an innocent paper-work mistake. I may be able to sweet-talk VicRoads into cancelling or reducing the fine. Wish me luck.

There is something special about coming to work on a spring morning, when the air is cleaner than an obsessive compulsive's toothbrush, the birds are broadcasting their conversations like histrionic teenagers on a fan forum, and the sun has either had an earlier night last night or has bought itself a new alarm clock. I punch my plastic key into the complementary slot to unlock the door, thinking back to the valuable life lessons taught by shape-matching toddler-toys. How would I have survived this high-tech environment if not for the square pegs of childhood?

Through the door and round the corner walks the feeling-special engineer. I swipe my bar-coded name tag down the (again complementary) time clock channel. It beeps reassuringly - one staccato pip. I, Virge, am in and the machine knows it. There is a bounce in my step. No dragging feet. I don't want to leave nasty black marks on the lino, do I?

Two more corners take me to the start of "the carpet". Ordinarily this carpet's spectre would loom up before me and wail its mournful cry that I may have bitched about in former journal entries. It normally whispers to me as I tread its rotting threads. Its theme is a repetitive nasal chant of just one word: "neglect". Does it haunt me this morning? No way. My first view of "the carpet" this morning reveals change. The splits in its threadbare ruts had in the past been covered with strips of bright yellow adhesive tape and even that tape had been peeling. Today there was a difference that brought a jaunt to my pre-existing bounce.

Before I tell you about the difference, you need to know why anyone would cover the carpet gashes with bright yellow tape. The holes could not be allowed to stay - they represented a tripping danger. Employee safety is extremely high on the director's agenda. It's not that he cares so much for us, otherwise he might actually approve the renovation budgets and we might get floor coverings that cover the floor. No, it's high in priority because of the new proactive workplace safety regulations (translated as "big fines if you don't preempt any ridiculously vague potential threat"). So why use canary colouring? Why have the carpet patches chirp at the corners of your vision? Because the engineers were pissed off with nothing being done about the carpet and wanted to draw attention to its state of decay.

Now, the difference that added the scoop of icecream to my effervescent mood lay in the solution to the problem of the peeling yellow tape. What do you do when your bright yellow "hey boss, I really need replacing" bandage has been in place for six months and itself is succumbing to the infection? You don't just replace the tape - you apply a different coloured tape to the edges of the peeling yellow tape to hold it down.

I chuckled onwards to my office. It doesn't take very much to make a day special.

A colleague of mine brought in a cut rose from his garden. (It is huge. The hand in the picture is not petite.) I must remember to take my camera when I visit.

Here's some links that made me chuckle.

For those of you with some experience in software development, here is a heart-warming story: ".NET Saves Boy Down Well".

For Magic: The Gathering fans, you know you want the Mormonism deck. "Mormonism: The Gathering".

Do you enjoy your work? Check out the worst jobs in science.

If I told you that I left work early today to meet a woman I only see about once a year, and found myself lying back with her poring over me and exploring my mouth, you might raise an eyebrow. If I told you she takes me to places where I'm not completely comfortable, that her well practised ministrations keep me just short of the pain barrier, you might raise the other eyebrow too. This sort of liaison is just too expensive to do more often. If I told you that I had a dental appointment this afternoon you'd probably yawn and browse some other journal.

Hey, I can't help it if I'm not a drama queen. I do have to twist the words a bit to make my contented life sound vaguely interesting. Is it my fault if life wants to fall neatly under my stride? Am I to blame if fate refuses to front up with nerve gas, landmines and flame throwers? Maybe I should be convincing myself that I need so much more from life. I could get grumpy and irritated at all the things that have served to make me contented. Then I could agonise about it online.

Bah! that last paragraph was getting far too self referential.

I should tell you all about the weekend at Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival. Before my memories fade I really should write notes about the stand-out acts like Ash Grunwald, Fiona Boyes, James Greening, Han Bennink and Paul Grabowsky, but I won't. You just had to be there. I'm sorry. I'm just feeling lazy. The best I'll do is point you to some photos I took while I was there.

I'm feeling lazy because I actually had to do some manual labour. [Insert shocked gasp here.] It was just as well Monday and Tuesday were holidays for me.

I strove mightily with furniture of great weight to restore the items of worship to the house of the Virge. The great white frost-free altar had to be reinstalled in its niche and re-consecrated. The sacred video cabinet had to be returned to its rightful place in time for the Buffywatch Sacrament.

Yea, even unto the garden was I driven to till the soil, lay low the mountains and raise up the valleys in order to prepare the way for the coming of the shed. By the sweat of my brow have I wrought this flat earth - a final resting place for the garden booth.

(Ok, I know that didn't take all Monday afternoon and all Tuesday. I spent the rest of my time catching up on browsing and chatting. What did you expect?)

There won't be much of Virge round here for the next couple of days. Being netless at home while the floors dry has been limiting my net-connectedness. Tomorrow the Virge family heads off to a jazz and blues festival for the weekend. It will be Monday before life returns to normal.

I didn't make it to the gym last night. I think I had enough of a workout at home. The exercise circuit included carrying trays of crockery and ornaments up a flight of stairs; lifting half a piano; manouvering half a wall of video/hifi cabinet; table juggling; sofa porting; then we ran out of time and had to head out to a cabaret comedy act in the Spiegeltent. My cheek to cheek dance with the refrigerator had to wait till we got home some time after 1am. At 7am this morning the heartless alarm started the final round of exercises: the buffet shuffle then the broom and vacuum extension stretches. My triceps feel very stretched, as do my hamstrings and a few back muscles who haven't been introduced to me by name (if pressed I would probably call them lower hackle muscles or baby back rib muscles).

All the hardwood floors in our house are now clear of furniture. The garage, rumpus room, laundry and master bedroom are crowded. DaughterOfVirge migrates to ParentsInLawOfVirge. CatOfVirge will take a holiday with VetOfVirge boarding kennels. The remnant will converge on the bedroom and en suite bathroom complex at the back of Virge Mansion.

At 8:30am this morning the floorists (that's my term for them, not their own) came with big nasty sanding machines give our floors a jolly good dressing down. There may be a little dusting to do when they've finished. Once they've started slapping coats of estapol on the floors (some time this afternoon) we can survive in our little complex and get to the laundry by leaping across the hallway. The rest of the house is out of bounds.

At my work there is a 20km/h speed limit in the carpark. It is clearly signed and very clearly ignored. The speed humps do little to slow down the larger cars and four wheel drives, but if they make the humps bigger then they scrape the guts of the low clearance sports cars.

Yesterday morning as I drove up the driveway towards the gates of Mordor and waited for them to complete their ponderous arc, I noticed a speed measurement station had been parked some 20-30 meters in from the gates. The station has a gigantic illuminated display to show the passing driver how fast he/she was travelling. No doubt it keeps a log of all speed measurements so that our facilites supervisor can tell how naughty we've all been.

Well, humans will be humans. Last night as I left work I heard that an unofficial competition had been established to see who could clock the highest speed on the measurement station. The best from a standing start at the gate was 39km/h. This morning a colleague claimed he'd got to 41km/h and still had time to brake before the speed hump.

"Cats aren't so damn superior.  Heck, you can easily hypnotize one by dangling a shiny object in front of its eyes and giving it tuna... giving it tuna... must give the cat some tuna...."

- Lil Owens