David can drive! Yay!

Now this may seem like a minor accomplishment to most of you, but I've finally gotten my driver's license. I actually bought a car 3 months ago but have been unable (well, legally) to drive it. I took my driving test once before in December, but flunked it due to a technicality (you can't just turn right from the rightmost lane, you have to shift into the bike lane and then turn!). Well, this time I passed with a 93/100 and 4 of those points were for waving someone through an intersection when I could have gone myself! (The other 3 were for a wide turn out of the DMV parking lot; I was nervous!)

The scary part was that I had the same driving instructor who had flunked me the previous time; my heart nearly pumped itself out of my chest! When we pulled in and he announced that I had passed the test, I was so happy I hugged him.

Rushing back to my car, which I had left parked for three months (I had taken the test with Stanford Driving School's car), I tried to start it. No go. I got a friend to jumpstart it. Still no go. Nary a peep as I turned it on and tried to start it. Ack!

On Monday I called AAA; they came and jumpstarted the car in a very friendly fashion. I drove it around and came back after 20 minutes to lock up my bike. When I got back in the vehicle I accidentally jingled the keys and the motor turned off. When I tried to restart it? Nothing at all, just like before. Ack!

I called AAA again, and this time when they came I drove right to the car shop. They fixed things up (turns out that the battery needed to be replaced!) while I waited, and I talked to Ole, the proprietor of the shop. Turns out, Ole's written this very spiffy Windows application to keep track of who is working on what car and has already resold the beta version of it for $1500 a pop to half a dozen other auto shops in the area. He's friends with the CEO of Cisco, and has wired the garage with 100BaseTX ethernet, all connected to the 'net via a cable modem.

Goodness. Only in Palo Alto.

So I got my car back and the next day (today, in fact) I got it registered. Just for giggles, I decided to try and register a custom Lake Tahoe plate. I got DEW. Wow! I'll admit, I had searched in their plate database and found that DEW was free, despite the fact that 541 license plates were registered that contained DEW. Woo-hoo! =) The plate comes in the mail in six weeks.

So now I'm licensed and registered and ready to drive! Yay! =)