I can't tell whether this is a legit sign from the City or not. It mysteriously appeared in front of my house next to my car, but I didn't put it there, and it doesn't have the usual City of Somerville logo and phone number and such. The notice certainly doesn't give a specific time it's valid for so...

Catch-22, part 2:

So my car was hit by a neighbor on August 14. She nicely left me a note and called her insurance and the police. Despite the fact that I was parked well away from the street corner, the helpful police officer ticketed me for "being within 20 feet of the intersection". I was very plainly well away from the intersection, with photo proof.

So I try to appeal or worst-case pay the citation online, and discover that I can't, because it was written by a police officer rather than a parking control officer, and the police ticketing system is not hooked up to the parking control system and tickets must be hand-transcribed, a process which City Hall said takes "several weeks" despite the fact that there's a 21-day deadline to pay the ticket or file an appeal. So for handwritten tickets, they won't appear in the system until after the deadline has passed. Lovely.

So I'm stuck printing out my photos and snail mailing them to the City of Somerville, because I can't just upload the photos online. Rawrgh. At least the Progressive insurance claim was simple, easy, and took less than 3 minutes to submit online.

Just argh. Way too much dealing with bureaucracy for me today :(

The Providence civil war continues, with SOUND on the offensive. Last night, we put a CSAA and R64 into reinforce in Providence with a clever gambit, written up in the battle report.

New month, new dog related griping. An adult that walked up to Misty on the subway and just started petting without asking or even making eye contact with me. A parent that watched her child tease Flurry by ruffling her fur with a stick, and just let the kid do the same exact thing to Misty as well, at which point I snapped at her to tell her that was definitely not okay.

The former was at least not dangerous and only discourteous, but the latter could have been hazardous to the child given a less tolerant dog.

See if you can spot the animal in this picture.

So my bank transferred my mortgage to another servicer.

I need to make the first payment to the new servicer today so that it arrives by the 1st of the month. So I try to register for online banking with the new servicer, and they want my account number.

Of course, they don't print the new bank's account number on the transfer notice, but at least the first option of the toll-free help number is "retrieve your new account number" and I'm taken care of. Smooth sailing so far.

Then I get to inputting a password and stuff. "8-20 characters, must contain both upper and lower case letters, numbers optional, no more than 3 repeating characters, no punctuation or spaces, and cannot be the same as your User ID". What decade is this?

But I'm registered at least, and can see my mortgage balance. I click 'make a payment'. It spits out an error. "For your security, we require all customers who wish to use the transfer and bill pay services to have an M&T Check Card or ATM Card. The card number and PIN are an additional method to verify your identity and to protect your accounts". Except, of course, I'm not a customer with an ATM card because I don't have a bloody account at the bank besides the mortgage.

But oh, there's a link in the upper right for www.mtb.com/mymortgageinfo which I was supposed to use instead of the M&T online banking site. So I go to register there, which takes a separate username and password of course, again with pants on head password security requirements (no symbols allowed) etc. And then I try to register for automatic deduction of payments.

"The minimum hardware/software requirements necessary to enroll in automatic payment electronically are Internet Explorer 5.5, Netscape 6.2.3, or America Online 8.0."

Wonderful. And there's a $15 fee to pay by telephone. What decade is this?

But, happily, it allows me to make a one-time payment from my unrecognized ChromeOS browser, and I'm fine. For another month. Next month I might just spill over into a fit of rage.

Regrettably, Providence is now embroiled in a civil war.

US judge says: you have no free speech or privacy rights with regard to your data stored in the United States if you are not a US Citizen or someone legally permitted to live in the United States. The Constitution does not apply to you.

See page 9 of original source document (court ruling)