The Hopp Stop

I imagine most people dread a visit to the DMV. My experience has always been one of long waits, disaffected employees and bureaucratic nonsense. Thus I try to conduct all my business via mail. Unfortunately, I have done some car-swapping that required an in-person visit. What’s worse, the transactions seemed relatively complex (registering a car from out of state and transferring a title on a car I sold and therefore was not the current titleholder), so I expected the worst.

Well, praise be to the heavens, the DMV did a good job today. I arrived at 8:50am for a 9am appointment at the Daly City DMV. When I checked in at the take-a-number lady, she asked questions that led her to direct me outside for my car inspection. (They had to confirm the VIN numbers matched everywhere on the Miata, part of the out-of-state transfer.) Then, back inside, a 2-minute wait after I got my number, and off to the counter to interact with a friendly and competent guy. Paperwork was reviewed, I filled out the one form I’d missed, check was written (still no credit cards accepted, ugh) and I was off to pick up two sets of plates from a different woman.

I was outside at my car at 9:10am with plates in hand, titles to be mailed out within two to three weeks. In short, everything was accomplished and in an unbelievably short timeframe. Go DMV!!!

I-280 connecting SF and the Valley used to be a free-speed zone, with very little enforcement from the CHP. This started changing in 2007, to the point where it seems like there are more cops on 280 than on 101. It really takes a lot out of driving on my favorite freeway.

Last week, I saw a CHP car cop shooting people with what was likely a laser gun, with a bike cop sitting next to him, waiting for the green light to go catch speeders. Today, there were 3 bike cops out, although no sign of any car cops. Bummer.

There is a new Fast & The Furious movie coming out, called…”Fast & Furious.” Thanks to Borders for directing me to the trailer. Looks awesome! Can’t wait.

Annoyingly, the embeddable version is of shite quality, so I recommend you click on the high-res option in the embedded video, which opens up a new window with higher quality video.

Pretty damn cool. I’ve seen Google Maps user maps before that show the route, but this is even better, as the video plays in sync with a moving icon on the map. Interesting to see how much they jump from one location to another in SF. I always assumed that the end of the chase was up in Marin, but it turns out to be on the NE side of the large preserve above South SF.

Re-enact Bullitt With GPS Maps | Autopia from Wired.com

…can be found on the BMW blog Bimmerfile here. After seeing my Flickr photos, that site wanted to run them as a fan feature, so I wrote up some bullet points on the trip.

Had an amazing trip with Vanessa (and the BMW 135i). Photos to come. One quick note: The BMW iDrive system is very slick and worked great. The car mags love to rag on it for a non-intuitive interface, but by the end of the first day, I had the system figured out (while driving east across central Europe). The iPod/iPhone connection is great, easy to read on the screen and very responsive. One big plus that I just discovered now when I got home and synced my iPod–playing a track on my iPod in the car advanced the play count in iTunes when I synced. Yes, I’m a big smart playlist nerd, but it’s kickass that this works so well, given my reliance on play count-linked playlists.

More to come.