Toll Story
Posted on | July 13, 2008 at 10:40 pm | 1 Comment
Movie Review Sunday!
I don’t have any movies to review today. Haven’t seen any this week, at home or in the theater. I do have a backlog of flicks I’ve been meaning to mention, but I don’t feel like getting into any of those now. They are fading from memory.
So… hmmm… what else to talk about?
Pet Peeve of the Day: The State of Colorado. Well, remember back in this post, I talked about how I applied for a permit to allow me to travel in an HOV lane in my single occupancy Prius Hybrid? Well, I got a letter from the State of Colorado on Friday telling me that I’ve been granted the permit. Hooray!
The only problem is that apparently in order to get the permit, I have to apply for an ExpressToll transponder. This is supposedly because the single-occupancy Hybrids are going to be allowed in the HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes of I-25 and not the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes. The transponder is supposed to tell the toll machines that I have the permit and am exempt from the toll. But you still have to give them your credit card and put the $35 on the transponder and all that. This is sure a lot of trouble to go to. I am especially miffed because I anticipate like never wanting to use the HOV/HOT lanes on I-25. I never drive on the Valley Highway during rush hour. I only wanted the permit so that I could drive in the Santa Fe HOV lane when I go to visit my dad in his nursing home after work. Santa Fe Drive is like a parking lot during the rush hour, but a parking lot with very large trucks every third vehicle. Being able to go in the HOV lane would speed the drive immensely and allow me to spend more time with my dad.
But I don’t want to have to get the frickin’ transponder. Gad, I wonder how many other Hybrid owners this will discourage from actually going through with obtaining the permit? (Hopefully all of the Hybrid SUV owner.)
This is just another typical example of the way the Colorado state government runs things. And it’s far from the worst. As a taxpayer, I’m very frustrated. Here it took them three years to actually get this Hybrid HOV thing off the ground (it’s been conceptually legal that long, they just didn’t have the permits thing worked out), and then they make it more complicated than it needs to be.
Latre.
Bonus Pet Peeve of the Day: I haven’t had much time to download third-party apps to my iPhone yet, though I have tried out a few free ones. One of the apps I installed is actually an Apple app called “Remote” that allows you to control the iTunes library on your computer through the WiFi connection on the iPhone/computer. This is very cool because I can pipe iTunes into my living room stereo via this wireless Logitech dongle thing I have. I hate to have to go running to the computer to switch songs or albums or playlists, so having the iPhone act as a remote would be fantastic. Unfortunately I can’t get the thing to work. The iPhone and the application pairs with iTunes and the PC okay over the WiFi network, but when I go to actually choose the library on the iPhone, it times out and says it can’t locate it. And yet it was able to locate it enough to pair with it in the first place.
According to the Apple discussions forum, it appears that other people are having this same problem, and the only commonality is that their iTunes libraries are stored on external hard drives like mine. Since my library is so huge, I don’t feel like moving it temporarily to the internal hard drive to test this theory. Guess I’ll just watch the webs and see what other people come up with or what Apple says.
Update: Wouldn’t you know it? Right after I posted this entry, I tried the Remote application again, and it worked. Must’ve been because I rebooted the computer or rebooted iTunes or something. Anyway, it’s totally awesome!!
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “i’m becoming a hermit and i like it”.
Comments
One Response to “Toll Story”
July 14th, 2008 @ 6:55 am
I don’t see why you couldn’t make a blog post out of movies you’re hoping to see at some point. I for one would be able to identify with that more easily than – well, other sorts of blog postings, in general, shall we say.
I may see only about 3 movies per year lately, but I aspire to see several times that amount. I think I could get my wife to back me up on this, if it came down to a vote.