Nightmare At The Texas DPS

Sorry this is a kind of a late post. All of this is over as of almost about a week now, but I still kinda feel the need to rant about it here. In case anyone is interested in one of many examples of why bureaucracy annoys me greatly.

So for the third time, Aunt Marina and I try to get our TX Driver's Licenses. ಠ_ಠ

The first time, the wait ended up taking SO long, we just up and left. 

The second time, I apparently didn't have enough documentation to prove that I'm a TX resident. OK... I assumed that there was a little more continuity in the United States here... I figured that I could just move from one state to another, and easily get a license there, provided I could at least prove that I am a US citizen and already have a non-expired, non-suspended, non-revoked driver's license... I was definitely wrong. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Driver's License office seems to be very, I'd even say overly strict about getting a license here. 

So I sit there at the station after a little while of waiting. The computer system actually malfunctioned, causing extra wait time... (Thankfully, you can get in line online at DPS Mega Centers, so the wait was not that bad, relatively.) I identify myself, and say I want to get a new TX driver's license. I then hand over my current Maryland license. Then my Birth Certificate. Then my Social Security card. These official documents should be enough to prove my identity. cool. I've proven my identity as a human being, and resident and citizen of the USA. 

The lady then asks for two official documents proving that I am a resident of Texas. I'm dumbfounded, as I do not recall seeing on the website that I need that. I just remember needing those forms of ID, one of them being a valid license. Then Aunt Marina, who's standing there, in the same situation as me (She's moved down here with us from Kentucky) kinda stands in my defense. 

We do not have anything in our name here yet. First of all, we just got here, and second of all, we are living in Dad's house. Everything is in his name or in Matt's. So now, we have to prove that. The lady hands me her last copy of a residency affidavit. Apparently, if I cannot show I'm a Texas resident, I have to prove that I am living with someone who can prove they are a Texas resident. The lady said we can just get the affidavit notarized and signed by Dad and then we just submit that as well as the two documents he will use to prove his residency.

So we go home, kinda upset that we wasted all of this time. I showed Dad and Matt the affidavit that night and read to them the list of acceptable documents, two of which would be required. The list is rather intrusive on privacy. If you can think of something you think is no one's business, it was on that list. Mortgage stuff, bills, government-issued documents, documents from financial institutions, stuff like that. Then the next morning, Dad went to work, copied his documents, notarized the affidavits, and waited for me and Marina to come to his workplace and pick it up and start all over again...

The third and final time...

A completely candid shot that Dad took of Marina and me being totally miserable

We get in line online. Deal with Navigation again. Show up. Wait. for ages. Then I get called and Marina follows me to the booth thing again. I do exactly as I did last time. I hand the lady my MD license, SSN card, and birth certificate. and the signed, notarized affidavit with the related not two, but four documents. (Dad and Matt decided to do four, just in case one or two of them were not acceptable). She looks at the affidavit, looks up at us, and notices that Dad is not present. She then says that he must physically be here because it cannot be proven that he is related to me. Yes, I admit that my birth certificate kinda doesn't have his name on it... Long story, irrelevant... She said had his name been on there, we could just move right on along. But no. He has to leave work in the middle of something important and drive all the way down here to the DPS just to exist in the same physical space as us in order for us to get licenses. So I'm dismissed and we go to the waiting area. Marina calls Dad and tells him the news. He is not pleased. We wait in line for a century. He arrives, and we all three sit there for another eternity.

Finally we are called. Both marina and I got called at the same time. So I go yet again to a lady in a booth thing. I present my documents. Dad stands there and explains and we move along smoothly. Marina, who is sitting a few booths down from me needs him present too, so he moves down there to be with her. Then the woman at my booth needed him so I had to keep looking down toward him and wait for him to come back to me. He had to show his license, so it could be copied, he had to sign some stuff.  Then he had to do the same thing a few units down from mine. Back and forth, back and forth.

Finally, the never-ending nightmare ends. I get a receipt of the license which is to be mailed to the house. Marina mentions how ridiculous it is that after all this, we still don't even have the actual licenses in our hands. We have to still wait for them to arrive in the post. Dad, completely inconvenienced, said he should have charged the DPS his "hourly rate". ;D Then off we all go, Dad to work, and Marina and I back home.

UGH.

Me and Marina keepin it real, gettin McDonalds iced tea and fries after that ridiculous ordeal

The insane traffic we ran into after the McDonalds trip

Samsung Series 3 Chromebook

So. Chromebooks. I replaced my old trusty ASUS netbook with the new Samsung Chromebook.

At first, I thought the idea of the Chromebook was stupid. I mean.. Who would want a computer that can only run a browser and nothing else? Who would want it if its entire usefulness depends on being connected to WiFi? WELL I went out and bought one. Here are my thoughts on the Chromebook after having had it for a couple months:

1. It's AMAZINGLY affordable. $249 USD is a really nice price for a laptop.
2. It's VERY portable. Its form factor and even appearance is very comparable to MacBook Air.
3. It's FAST. Boots in seconds. Literally, after having powered it down and closed it, I open it and it automatically starts booting. I don't even have enough time to unravel and plug the charger in the wall before it's at the login screen. It wakes up from shutting the lid after like a half second. win.
4. The keyboard is very good. It has great support for input languages and layouts. I was VERY HAPPY and even a little surprised to see the Dvorak layout supported. (Why I am weird and use Dvorak among other things in another post.) 
5. The trackpad pretty much just reminds me of Mac except it pretty much only recognises up to two finger gestures. That's all I need really.
6. It really IS useful. Two words: Web Apps. And some of them have capability to work offline. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Google Drive + Docs/Sheets/Slides works without an internet connection after going into my Google Drive Settings and enabling that feature. So I can write documents, edit spreadsheets or presentations offline. At this point, for me, this thing is literally every bit as useful as my netbook. Which honestly isn't super useful outside the internet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has a file manager pre-installed and that it works nicely with NTFS external hard drives. I was able to watch videos and look at photos on the hard drive easily. And there is a torrent app (JSTorrent).
7. The battery life is good. I can use this when I'm out throughout the day without even worrying about running out of battery before I get back home.

So basically, for $249 this thing does everything I need it to do. (Especially since I used a cool little script Crouton to install Ubuntu. More on this later) And it basically just runs Google Chrome. I'm surprised at how much I can do with a browser. It's for most consumers basically a functional laptop. The only programs I miss from my netbook were Skype and TeamSpeak. Google+ Hangout has been working ok as an alternative, but not everyone has Google+... Cool thing is, a friend of mine sent me his used netbook, so I actually have one again. :)

So yeah, if you are looking for a cheap laptop and you're on the web a lot, look no further than a Chromebook. If you already have a Chromebook, I suggest checking out the following links if you have not already. (From the Chromebooks Community on Google+)

• [Official] Support Forum
• [Official] Support Centre
• [Official] Contact a Ninja
• [Official] Release Announcement Blog
• Current Channel Versions
• [Blog] Chrome Story
• [Blog] OMG! Chrome!
• [Resource] Find Alternative Apps

It Is What It Is and I Am Who I Am

It is what it is and I am who I am. I like what I like, and I don't like what I don't like. I'm not picky. I'm very moderate. I'm easygoing and agreeable. I don't put a price tag on life. It's all about good times and being happy. No, I don't really care about wealth. I will probably never drive luxury or own a million dollar house. I won't wear designer clothes. And that's totally cool with me. I also will probably not be on the streets begging for food or money. All I want is to have a place. And that pretty much automatically means a job. And someone to live life with so I'm not lonely. I really don't need much to be happy. I'm not hard to please. Really. Nothing's changed, and it never will. Sure it's cool or whatever to have a high paying job, slick car and huge house. But I'm happy with what I have. I don't need more stuff, much less more of more expensive stuff. And personally, I'm happy with a typical suburban place and job that pays the bills. If I need a car to get to work or whatever, it just mainly needs to be one that runs properly. Honestly though, I could be happy even if I were homeless and broke. If I just had my special someone by my side.

I just don't think that the U.S. Dollar is the correct unit of measurement for a person's character. I can't think of a standard unit of measure, but I'd say that attitude, outlook, personal mottoes, and actions are great places to start. Wanna know how good someone is? Look at how they actually treat other people and what they say about other people. Look at how other people treat them and what other people say about them. Often, these go hand in hand. Also, not everyone is in real life what they make themselves out to be on social media. Some people like to keep it real online, some others like to joke around and have a certain persona which is different than their real-life one. Not like any of this even matters because judging is lame.

I'm staying true to myself, my standards, and preferences as I'm sorting things out to make a life for myself. I'm just looking to live a happy life. Simple as that. Along the way I'm just gonna try to be as good as I can be and do my best. And have fun with it, hopefully.

Just me drinking some orange juice. No big deal.

Pleasant Surprise

So the other day I was flicking through my Twitter stream. And then out of the corner of my eye I see a tweet made by Dad with a link to the latest post on the Houston Chronicle blog he and Matt write for. The headline was "The Call That Changed It All". So I decided to click it.

To my surprise, it was a blog post all about me, and how genuinely ecstatic Dad and Matt are to have me move in with them. That was very very nice.

Click here to read the post. (I would copy and paste it here, but I feel like it would be nice to give the Chronicle website the traffic.)

So yeah. After a bit of talking to my girl, I just HAD to give him and Matt a hug for writing that post. Yay for having people who care about you. Later that night he sent me a really nice Facebook message about how truly happy they are about all this.

 

Moving

Ahhh, moving house. Everyone's favourite activity. NOT.

I hear that moving into a new home is one of the most stressful things about being alive for most people these days. And it's true. But the thing is, the most stressful part can be handled if you hire a service to pack everything in the house and then move it into the new house. I will have to say, that surely is THE BEST way to move house. Not only is it fast, it saves so much back pain. And people who do that for a living get money to support their families. Cool.

But you still have to unpack the seemingly endless boxes and unwrap the seemingly endless paper. The rubbish pile accumulates to mountainous sizes. Once you get used to it though, it's not really that bad. As long as the mentality stays one room at a time with a positive optimistic attitude.

It may not be immediately obvious, but moving house is actually typically a nice bonding experience and you see who your real friends are. Especially if you don't go for a moving service. ;D It's always cool to go through stuff while unpacking and talking about how much stuff you have that you had no idea that you had. Like the tonnes of fine china that belonged to my great grandmother. I don't remember ever having fine china or ever dining with it. Apparently that is a shame and I've lived a sheltered life. ;D I have never seen so many spiffy little tea cups. Tea party for 4 families? :D

There's just something about organising stuff in the new place that's part of the excitement of it being new. It was cool to unpack my room. Not just because it was the quickest and required the least effort, but also because it's a fresh new start for me. It's been fun to unpack all my stuff I brought here with me. I went and got a desk and chair and built those.

Now I have a cozy bed, a nice desk, everything. Except WiFi. My room is the only room in the house where the WiFi connection is really bad or nonexistent on my mobile devices. But that shall change very soon when I unpack the range extenders. Yay. :D

Yeah. I'm loving this nice new place. It's roomy and cozy. A bit chaotic still as the unpacking/rennovating saga continues. With all the lighting reforms, painting sessions (which I have not had to take part in except a little taping), and getting some new furniture and whatnot and stuff. It took me forever today for some reason just to hook up a basic functioning Living Room A/V setup. Embarrassing, I know. :S But I must say this house is coming together quite nicely.

Then Aunt Marina (and her four Shih Tzu kids) arrives with this big truck full of stuff of her own to move in. A good friend of hers stayed a little while to help unload and unpack a little bit. It actually was not as much stuff or as bad as I thought it was going to be. But then again, in general, we seem to have a lot more to unpack than we thought we even had. That small-ish minimalist house we came from seemed to hide away stuff very well. She did some personalisation of the place herself. Including adding a not-so-welcomed Redskins hat to the Dad's classy decorative foyer gnome. Crazy Redskins fan. Let's hope she doesn't get herself evicted from Texas cheering too loud for the Skins.

I love unpacking as much as the next guy but I just can't wait until it's over. Soon enough I get my TX drivers license (which thankfully will be quick and easy) and start applying for jobs. YAY for making my own money!

I'm liking where life is going so far. I think moving down here to Dad's has been a good move. Yee haw! (Because everyone TOTALLY says that round here in Houston, Texas.)

Hello, World!

Hey everybody what's up? 

I just figured I'd check out Blogger again to see what's going on and maybe get back into the blogging scene a little bit. So this will be a place to organise my random rants. Feel free to comment and discuss. Just know I won't put up with trolls.

Some random stuff about me:

• I'm 22, male, straight and happily taken. 6'1", ~200lb
• From Baltimore, now living near Houston.
• I don't smoke or drink. I have before but not anymore. It's not really as cool as the manufacturers force us to believe.
• I'm a big fan of languages, science, maths, and tech. Therefore, I'm a nerd. Or something. 
• I love Sci-Fi. James Cameron's AVATAR and Doctor Who. 
• Generally speaking, I'm on #TeamGoogle and/or #TeamAndroid. But I don't hate on Apple. Not seriously, anyway. 
• I'm always on Social Media checkin stuff out. Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Facebook. (Not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I'm kinda stuck using it.)
• I'm a Linux user and support Free and Open Source software. 
• Speaking of which, though I'm not particularly amazing, I like to write code. I know Java, XML (I like to play with Android sometimes), Python, Javascript, and a little of some others. They're all interesting.
• As for spoken languages, I'm only truly fluent in English, But my Na'vi (from AVATAR) is pretty good (seriously. I love teaching it to people. It's actually easy. Nerdy to the max, I know, but whatever) and in general, I can understand German. I'm familiar with some stuff in other languages too, like alphabets of Russian, Korean and Greek. I need to brush up on Japanese. And then actually learn it. I can also understand Spanish, but for some reason can't speak it very well these days. 
• I want to travel the world but I'm broke.
• Just because I think tech is kinda cool does not mean that I think nature is uncool; I totally think nature is beautiful and fascinating. I like green stuff. Going green whenever possible is cool.
• I totally appreciate wide varieties of art both visual and auditory though I cannot create super awesome stuff myself. Or at least I think so anyway. My girl begs to differ.
• I play guitar and a little bass. I have a history of hard rock and metal, but I like the soothing stuff too. Especially these days. I guess I'm either getting old, or mellowing out or both. meh.
• Modern stuff is cool, but I respect the classics.
• Not too keen on sports. I'm also terrible at every single one I've ever played. Might have something to do with it.
• I'm almost always calm and chill. I'm not much for violence. Or hate. I'm just not a violent or hateful guy. Equal Rights supporter. 
• I consistently wear jeans and T-shirts. Sometimes I go crazy and do cargo and Polo. I don't actually care what I look like or wear as much as other people do, or as I should, probably. Oh well.
• I've got TL;DR syndrome. 
• This post is getting kinda long

Okey so some of these things will get their own posts or series later on. Hopefully I'll find the time to post things here. I may come off as a bit ranty, but that's just natural for me. I'm not holding back. And yes this is how I actually talk in real life. Anyways, that's about enough ranting for today, I think you guys get the general idea here. Seeya around. Hopefully on Google+.