If you don’t like reading rants, but like knowing the point of things: read the last paragraph. If you don’t like reading rants full-stop: continue no further.

Today I went to renew my license and registration at the Queensland Department of Transportation. The license expires on the 3rd April 2010 and the rego expires tomorrow, so I thought it kind-of-important that I should go register it today, lest I get pulled over. I left work after lunch, at about 1:40pm. What happened there after was… special.

Proof of Identity

I arrived there, waited 10 minutes to get served and when I got served the lady told me that the bank notice that I had wasn’t valid since it wasn’t a bank statement, it was just a letter (from my old bank, sent to my current address) about my insurance. I had already provided my Driver’s License and Medicare card as points of identity. So I had to take a trip down to the Commonwealth bank, print out a real statement from my current bank and bring it back them. I was angry that there was no other way that I could prove I’m me, but there’s other people out there who, despite all known forms of logic, would wish to impersonate me. As far as I know, there (currently) is not a Ryan Bigg fanclub.

Let the fun begin!

Then I arrive back at the DoT and have to wait again, and I get served by the same lady. Then their internal system goes down. The tickets are broken. She enters my details and “ums” and “ares” for what seems like an hour. Oh wait, it was an hour. During this time I think was when I got my license. Without issue. So she calls over a co-worker and they chat about it… eventually the system (did I mention they’re running what appears to be DOS on top of Windows XP? pause for giggles) came back online and she was able to continue the registration process. At one stage she even gave me registration plates and I thought that we were on the absolute final step of the process thank you $WORDREPRESENTINGSAINTLINESS $DEITY!. Then she says more “ums” and “ares”, asks me for the registration plates back and says that the car has been reported as a “repairable write-off”.

“What?”, I uttered. This was a car that I drove from Adelaide, to Brisbane. It’s still in one piece! It was serviced LAST WEEK and wouldn’t have they notified me if the car was a writeoff or had dodgy repairs done to it? They didn’t.

She again explains that the car has been reported, once in its 11 year lifetime as a “repairable write-off” and her colleague does a marvelous impression of a parrot. I think at one stage she was even fed a cracker for doing such a great job! So I ask them if they could look it up. Apparently not. She tells me to contact the Queensland Inspection Services and writes down a number for me.

So I leave, angry, sad, confused, at about 4:30pm. Three hours, gone. Time I could’ve been working.

Mother Darling and Connecting the DoTs

I call mum who’s fiance’s friend sold me the car and ask her if I could have the contact details for the guy. He rings me later on and claims that the car had 3 previous owners before me, and that it was imported from New South Wales. He says to confirm the VIN on the registration slips (and it matches), and then to call the South Aus. Department of Transport and ask them to do a VIN check on the vehicle, and that’s precisely what happens. The kind lady on the other end informs me that once a long time ago in a state far, far away the car was, indeed, reported as a “repairable writeoff”, she informs me that if I contact the NSW DoT they can clear it and I can register the car in the Best State (Queensland, duh). She’s even kind enough to give me the number for the NSW DoT! Service++!

During this call I do a quick Google for Queensland Inspection Services and find out they charge a flat rate of $450 for a car. Didn’t I just get this safety checked last week? Yeah. That’s what I thought too!

I call the NSW DoT and Kind Lady #2 informs me that she cannot clear it, nor can anyone. Uh oh. I was misled.

In further fury and anger, I vent in the office and Dr Nic suggests registering it once again in SA. This I can do over the internet. This doesn’t mean that I go to a smelly building with smellier people and wait for a number to be called, I log in, enter my registration number and credit card details (no, I’m not going to give them to you), and select “6 months” and the entire process is done in less than 5 minutes.

Registering my car over the Internet. That’s how it should be. Quick. Simple. Easy. I beg the other government organisations, please come join the rest of us in the twenty-first century.

Zed Shaw (Mongrel creator, amongst other awesome things) had a small rant about Rails and how he’s been fucked over in the world, aka Rails is a Ghetto.

Compared to my last rant, Zed is a ranting king. He makes it sound so convincing, but most of the article is about behind-the-scenes politics.

Made for an interesting read.

I got a comment posted on a a news.com.au/adelaidenow article

I wrote: I’m suspecting the whole two people praising TransAdelaide in the above responses actually work for TransAdelaide. I caught the 7:51am train (which is almost TWO HOURS after the initial “fault”), and by Mawson Lakes the train was packed. This usually happens, but today it was crazy. Another carriage wouldn’t go astray. Only a half-hearted “TransAdelaide would like to apologise…”, after we arrived.

It’s getting worse, their apologies mean nothing any more. Not just anyone, but everyone involved with the transportation system should not use their cars to travel to work. Instead, they should use their own system, pay the extravagant ticket prices (we pay more and more for a system that’s getting worse and worse, what the?), and put up with what we have to put up with.

It is beyond a joke and something serious will happen and TransAdelaide will be caught with its pants down. It’s only a matter of time.

I’ve been hearing this line more and more frequently, and it has begun to lose all meaning. When a train runs late:

Attention all passengers, TransAdelaide would like to apologise for the late running of this train.

Words that are fed into the mouth of whoever happens to be driving the train at the time, just to make the passengers feel better. It’s kind of a like a “boy who cried wolf” story. You think they mean the apology the first couple of times, but after it happens again and again you just lose all faith.

What am I talking about? Well, here’s a list of things:

Late running of trains with little explanation, such as a “signal fault”. I’ve heard news reports that a certain government has recently received a $37billion profit. Now if they actually did something with this money it would be good, like ripping up the old Adelaide track and replacing it with a new shiny one that isn’t at least 5 decades old. Yeah, it may be heritage and have a lot of history associated with it, but old things are dangerous. Nothing serious has happened yet, but it’s only a matter of time until something does. The most serious thing to my recollection is a train derailment just outside of Adelaide Station, where the top speed limit is 10km/h. The 1st November 7:51am train arrived on time, but stopped about 500m outside of Salisbury Station with no explanation, and no apology. Not that the lack of apology matters anymore.

Slow points on the track. For no explanation the train slows down to a crawl on some points of the Gawler track that I travel on. I have heard reports of trains doing similar things on other lines. If the track is faulty, then it needs to be replaced. I cannot stress how important I think this is. If some train driver is not fully alert on the job and they don’t slow down for this point, what happens when it derails? Catastrophe.

Timetables are extremely optimistic. If you ever catch the 7:51am train and arrive at Adelaide station and pass through the gates before 8:31am, walk over to the newsagency at the southern end and buy yourself a lottery ticket. Not once that I’ve caught this train have I walked through the gates at 8:31am, it has been as early as 8:32 and as late as 8:51. As a person who relies on the trains 5/7 days, they should be reliable, not random like a lottery.

There’s an election coming up soon, I wonder if that will persuade them to suddenly replace the trains and the track. If not, something will happen. When it does it will be catastrophic. It’s only a matter of time.