It’s been a bit of a busy week here at Snappish Towers (tower is pushing a bit, but who knows - we’ve already built a new bedroom. Who’s to say that we won’t construct a modernist spire in the next week?). I’ve had job interviews, experience with the infamous DMV, and as I write this, I’m on my way back to Durham on a bus from Washington D.C.. And by the looks of the traffic up ahead, I may be so for the next ten hours.

Anyway, the DMV. Feared and hated by most Americans (one person I know told me that she was trying to gain telekinetic powers so she could alter the expiry date on her licence and not have to go through the torture again. Which seems a little much, but maybe standing out in a lightning storm hoping to gain magical powers will have other benefits), I had to go in order to get a Learner’s Permit. Because, yes, I’m going to try and learn to drive again. My rationale is three-fold:

• It’s America.
• Surely, an automatic car is going to be easier than having to use gears?
• Seriously, it’s America. If you don’t live in New York, you can’t function without one.

So, we went. And we waited. And we waited. And waited some more whilst three different queuing systems slowly counted up, the queue I was in going quite fast until it got to the number right before mine, at which point it stopped moving for about twenty minutes. But eventually, I was called up, filled out and answered the questions (including: “Do you want to register to vote?” / “Er, I probably shouldn’t should I? It would create all kinds of trouble” / “Indeed it would”), and was then told: “Okay, so go over to the terminal and take the test.”

Test?

It turns out that to get a learning permit in North Carolina, you have to take a written test first. It would have been nice to know beforehand. You were allowed to get 5 out of 25 wrong, so I didn’t have to get everything right, but still, all I know about the rules of North Carolina driving is that you drive on the right and you can turn right on red in most cases. And I have not gone into a test without revising for over fifteen years.

As you can imagine, I was a bit nervous. Even more so when I got questions 2-5 wrong. Somehow, I managed to only pick up two more wrong answers on the way to 25, and was handed my temporary Learner’s Permit. Yay me! I have since been out in Stacie’s car, and we survived! That may be less of a feat when you learn that I only went in an empty car park, but hey, I was happy…

The search for a job continues. Last week, I was depressed that I had got rejected from a job where I didn’t even apply (the HR person picked me out of the blue…unbeknowst to the tech team, it sounds like), and there hasn’t been a lot of Sysadmin postings in the past few days. I have, however, had my first face-to-face interview, which seemed to go quite well, though I have the final hurdle of a 48-hour programming challenge to overcome before I go any further. Check back next week, viewers!

DC? It’s still DC.