Not just your Internet

It's bad enough when we have Internet connections problems at home. Monday my lovely wife was unable to register her car. The Internet at the DMV kept crashing. Nothing can be done at the local offices without a connection to the main office. That's a failure point that currently has no work around.

It gets even better. Even if the Internet connection to the state came back, my town clerk still could not help me. Her printer stopped working and tech support can do nothing because their connection is down too. Maybe all the rain we've had lately flooded a basement full of severs somewhere.

Most businesses can function if they lose their Internet connection. They may have to resort to a cash only basis, but they can keep the doors open. Government offices have no backup plan. Maybe that's because if your corner store can't operate if the 'net goes down, the one down the road will stay open and get all the business. The government has a monopoly so you are out of luck.

After leaving the town offices it was with more than a little trepidation that we went to apply for passports. Our local passport office is at the good sized post office the next town over. We walked in and the lobby was empty -Zombie Apocalypse empty. We walked up to the counter and rang the bell for service. Then we waited a while and rang the bell some more. Eventually an employee came in from outside and noticed we were alone.

As it turned out Monday new policies came into effect and everyone was stuck in the back room dealing with a crisis of some sort. Once someone noticed we were there the passport process actually went smoothly. (how smoothly we'll know in six weeks or so when the passports should be ready)

So the day wasn't a total washout. At least something got accomplished. I'm going to call the town hall to see if their problems are fixed. After all, we are now driving a car with an expired temporary registration and have keep travel to minimum.

-Sixbears