Writing the DMV

I emailed the director of the California DMV to see why new license plates take so long to arrive. Let’s see if he writes back:

From: Paul Schreiber
Subject: DMV’s great (and terrible) efficiency
Date: September 27, 2006 9:09:18 am PDT
To: George Valverde <gvalverde@dmv.ca.gov>
Security: Signed

George,

A few years ago, I moved to California from Canada. My impression of the DMV was that it had always been a punch line to a joke or a sight gag on _The Simpsons_.

I was glad to find out I was wrong. :)

After a few initial hiccups (“convenience fee?”) I’ve been consistently impressed with the online license renewal and vehicle registration renewal. The site works in any browser, takes two minutes, is free, and is pretty much foolproof. And the best part: you get everything in the mail two days later. Well done!

This, naturally, leads me to question the extended delays associated my other interaction with the DMV: buying a new car.

In many jurisdictions, including Ontario, Canada, where I grew up, you get the plates from the dealer when you drive the car off the lot. In California, you get them mailed to you. It’s a bit strange to me, but perfectly reasonable. What’s not reasonable is that this process takes 4-6 weeks.

I tried to think of explanations, but could come up with none:
* a shortage of license plates (unlikely, these aren’t just-in-time parts, but can be stockpiled)
* slow processing time or lack of staff (unlikely, since you turn things around in 3 days)
* USPS (they’re not _that_ slow)

So: why _does_ this take so long? And is anything going to be done to change it?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Paul Schreiber

shad 96c / uw cs 2001
/ mac activist / fumbler / eda / headliner / navy-souper
fan of / sophie b. / steve poltz / habs / bills / 49ers /

“Luck is the residue of design.” — Branch Rickey

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I had the privilege of seeing Who Killed The Electric Car alongside the director back May at the Tribeca Film Festival and was very impressed. There are several good stories here, and I was particularly disappointed with the actions of the California Air Resources Board.

Who Killed The Electric Car is now the 60th highest-grossing documentary of all time. Go see it in a theatre if it’s still playing in your area or pick up the DVD otherwise.

Vote for my SXSW interactive panel proposal

I’ve proposed a panel for SXSW interactive 2007, “Getting to Consistency: Lessons Learned from Big Cats.” The panels will be decided by an online vote. Head over to the 2007 SXSW Interactive Panel Proposal Picker and vote for me. :)

Here’s the description:

Making software predictable and consistent makes it much easier to use. This session will explain UI consistency and point out examples of failures and their consequences. We’ll discuss when it’s appropriate to break consistency, and how to build tools and process to ensure applications are consistent with human interface guidelines and real-world practices. Specific attention will be paid to consistency in your everyday tools: Mac OS X and Adobe applications.

best.review.ever?

So the idiots at Sprint send Joel Splosky an LG Fusic phone to review, thinking he will promote their service.

Phone companies, as Joel points out, have a history of bad decisions:

And it’s 2006, and I almost can’t believe I’m writing this, because way back in 2000 I wrote almost exactly the same thing about WAP, and how cell phone companies keep failing to insert themselves as toll collectors because they’re so darn clueless about how the Internet works, and about the value of many-to-many networks instead of broadcast networks.

Needless to say, the phone sucks, and Power Vision sucks too. Is Power Vision a 3G service? Why do phone companies have to brand everything in some incomprehensible way? mMode? MEdia Net? Vision? Power Vision? Vcast? Stop, my head hurts.

Now, on to the good part:

the LG Fusic user interface could basically serve as an almost complete textbook for a semester-long course in user interface design, teaching students of usability exactly what NOT to do.

And one more:

A little bit more exploring and I discovered that there’s another entirely separate MP3 player on this device. It’s hard to find. You have to go to Tools, then Memory Card, then to the Music folder, and another MP3 player starts up which you can use to listen to your MP3s. For this player, you don’t have to be on the network, so it works in the subway, but—get this—the minute you close the clamshell, the music stops! I am literally not making this up. There are two bad MP3 players on this device, neither one of which remembers where you’re up to, neither one of which can be used on the subway with the phone folded in my pocket, neither one of which has a fast-forward feature.

Mixing your metaphors

One of my favourite mixed metaphors—which I had somehow internally misattributed to David Johnston—was this one, from University of Waterloo registrar Ken Lavigne:

Admissions is a crap shoot, and this year we won in spades

This week, Peter Lewis of Fortune may have topped it:

Apple is making applesauce out of the old canard that Macs are a lot more expensive than Windows computers.

What kind of applesauce do you get from a canard, anyway?

Lessons from interviewing

As part of my job, I perform technical phone interviews (“phone screens”) for our group and a couple others. The basic phone screen is more about breadth then depth, touching on C, Unix, object-oriented programming and some data structures and algorithms over 30 to 45 minutes.

During this process, I’ve learned a few things, including:

  • Undergraduate computer science students at Brown prove P=NP as part of an assignment.
  • Half of 216 is 28 … or maybe 24. Not sure.
  • Dereferencing a pointer sets it to null, leaking memory.
  • Basic data types in ANSI C include array and string.