farmdevil.net

I think I was too easy on officer Melchi in the last post. I realized that a large part of why I lost was because officer Melchi decided to write 800 block on the ticket even though he verbally told me 900 block at the scene.

I’ve been trying to look at the bright sides of this, mainly that there is no way they prosecuted this case for the $138 I paid. The only way we will curb needless tickets is by impacting the economics behind them. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that I had to do this and waste all of that government money and time. I would rather have seen officer Melchi out on the town preventing a murder or something than having him be paid to sit in court. But he probably would have been ripping poor college students off instead. I make about $1600 a month (pre-tax). I don’t have a lot of money to throw away on this sort of thing, but the system doesn’t understand that. There is no way I could have been more innocent than I was today, so what can a person do when they are wrongfully accused and the system places such little value on personal testimony?

The other good news is that my last post is already the #1 search result for “officer Melchi” or “Brian Melchi.”

I ended up fighting the speeding ticket that I wrote about in a previous post. It turned out that the officer was wrong about the speed limit on the road. There was no speed zone in either direction, which meant that I was doing 55 in a 55 zone. I went to court today and ended up being found guilty anyway. The good news is that the magistrate liked my defense and he suspended the fine so all I had to pay was court costs and I got 2 points on my license. That was still a high price, but I’m confident that the system lost money wasting their time on me. Also I’m uncertain if my Arizona license will ever see those points.

I will include some names because I like my site to be in the Google results when people search for them. I was in front of magistrate Albert Stewart. The only witness for the prosecution was officer Brian Melchi and my witnesses were myself and Bruce Smith, the County Engineer.

I realized beforehand that I remember officer Melchi from my days at Clark State. He was one of the power-trip officers who would camp out by the stop sign waiting for people like me to intentionally run it. But that’s another story.

Officer Melchi testified completely accurately as to his beliefs about the speed zones and I can’t fault him because he never asserted that I was still back in the stretch before the speed limit changed to 55.

The assistant county prosecutor spent his time trying to get me to acknowledge that I had accelerated to 55 before leaving the speed zone. For whatever reason, he was successful at doing just that even though I never once said I was traveling faster than 35 in the 35 zone. He kept asking me to clarify what speed I was going at different points, but I never misspoke as he was hoping for. I thought I made it clear that I accelerated to 55MPH after leaving the speed zone. For some reason, those assertions were enough for magistrate Stewart to agree with him. It became very apparent that it was never about the truth to the prosecutor. He knew he would lose if they stuck with the story about the speed zones being different on each side of the road, since I thoroughly debunked that notion. The problem was that 2 houses in the 800 block rested in the 35 zone. Since my ticket says 800 block I figured I should try to convince the magistrate that I was on the right side of it before accelerating. I should have concentrated way less on that I guess.

The magistrate found me guilty because (he said) he weighted the officer’s testimony more than mine, even though the officer never asserted that I was in the 35 zone. Even at the scene, the officer indicated that he clocked me in an area that was 55 on the other side but 35 on mine. The good news was that the magistrate liked my testimony and professionalism when representing myself so he suspended the fine.

On the way out of the courthouse, I asked officer Melchi if it was ever really about the truth. He indicated that he has no problem with the prosecution’s tactic. That’s funny, since at the scene he said that I would not have been speeding if I had been in the other lane.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The magistrate was helpful to me. He even overruled one objection against me. The county engineer was great and I felt sorry that I had to waste his time with this. The prosecutor did his job, but he is scum as far as I’m concerned. He got me convicted not because of the actual crime but because of a notion that hadn’t been confirmed by any witnesses. At least officer Melchi didn’t actually lie on the stand, but it’s too bad that he isn’t more aware of the speed limits because none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for his mistake. Also I have a hunch that he will gladly pull people over for the same thing again. I have decided that I am always going to pursue tickets as much as I can from now on. If I’m really guilty, I might be less likely to go to an actual trial. People need to fight these things even if they might lose, just to make the system realize that we won’t just pay up. They just need to realize that the system is designed to raise money and there is no allowance for reasonable doubt.

As some of you may know, I am in Florence, Italy for CHI 2008. If anybody is unsure, that is the premier Human Computer Interaction conference. I am a member of a team that designed a successful submission to the CHI Student Design Competition. Only 12 out of 40 teams were accepted to the conference. Last night we had a poster session where those 12 teams were judged to decide who would advance to the final four. Our team was selected, so now we get to give a 10-minute presentation tomorrow morning to compete for our rank within the top four spots.

The conference has been great so far and I have met many people from all over the world. I have also been working as a student volunteer, which has really facilitated networking. Iowa State’s name isn’t really out there very much in the HCI community and it has been great representing our program. Carnegie Melon has about 40 students in attendance and we only have 2. Hopefully when I get back I can help drive increased attendance at next year’s CHI in Boston. I would like to get a submission accepted obviously but, since it will be so much closer and cheaper, I would like to go anyway.

The picture above features me with Thad Starner. For the many of you who may not know, he has been wearing a computer since 1993. That thing that I am holding is the display. After this picture was taken, I joined him and a couple hundred of his friends for the Georgia Tech GVU reception. I was shocked at how many people were present and how awesome it was. I met many new people and got to know some a little better. Tonight should be even better, since there are about 5 parties to choose from, including the infamous Google party. Unfortunately I can’t be out too late, since we have our student design competition final presentation at 9AM.

I just got another ticket. It was near Springfield and was a similar scenario to how a got a ticket when I was 17. I was driving on a road with a speed limit of 35 MPH while the other side was 55.

It was a Clark County Sheriff who pulled me over and he was one of the more friendly and professional cops I have encountered. But was writing me a ticket really accomplishing anything other than revenue-raising? Punishing people for crimes that they accidentally commit does nothing to deter future crimes. That cop could have instead spent his time preventing a murder or even pulling over somebody who was maliciously disobeying the law. Also I don’t want to imply that this happened, but it certainly fails to reject the hypothesis that Ohio cops target out-of-state plates (probably less chance of the cop needing to show up on the court date).

Further, it has always bothered me that the speed limit is 20 miles-per-hour different on each side of the road. It seems like this would rarely be necessary for safety and further supports revenue-raising theories. Particularly in the case of both roads that I am referring to, where the limit on the downhill lane of the road is lower than that on the uphill lane.

When I drive in Iowa, I never feel threatened by the police. I just drive at a comfortable and safe speed, mostly within the limits but no guarantees, and they never bother me. Here in Ohio, the only people who don’t get tickets are old people who just drive slow naturally. People who drive the sheer number of miles that I do every year (20,000-30,000), and aren’t old and slow, just don’t have a chance. Interestingly, these old and slow drivers are causing accidents too, but the cops don’t even notice them.

Since eBay has been touting it’s changes to the buyer and seller ratings system, I thinks it’s time to chime in.

Since the detailed seller ratings were first introduced, I have had a particular problem with one of them: shipping fees. Why should a buyer be able to rate a seller’s shipping fees? There is nothing secretive or misleading about shipping. If you agree to buy an item, you know the cost that you have agreed upon up-front. As a seller, I reserve the right to charge for packaging materials as well as my gas for the 20 minute drive to the shipping store. A buyer can take it or leave it, but why should he be able to affect my ratings because of that?

Buyers notoriously tend to have no concept of what shipping actually costs. Before I sell an item on eBay, I go to the UPS store and have them tell me the total cost to package and ship the item to 90210 (or an obviously far away zip code from whatever state I happen to be in). I mark it down a few dollars, and that’s my price. I lose money on some and gain money on others, but it’s a flat rate and there are no surprises.

Last year, a customer of mine was upset by my shipping price of $25 on an item. After getting lucky and winning the item for $0.99, he emailed me and proclaimed that the shipping costs to Colorado were $7 and asked that I give him a discount. For one thing, what incentive do I have to give him a discount after he already bid and won? For another thing, nothing ships from Ohio to Colorado for $7. Add packaging and even the smallest items must cost about $12 to ship there. This was a rotisserie unit for a cooktop! It was big! I had already heavily discounted the price that shipping to 90210 would have cost ($35). I emailed him back explaining my policy of flat-rate shipping and how I win some and lose some. I believe it ended up costing $19. I’m sure he rated my shipping fees poorly, but is that any indicator of my selling fairness?

I have been really lazy at updating this, but every so often there are things that I want to share…

As many of you know, I was a precinct captain for Barack Obama in Iowa. As you probably can also imagine, business was great last week. It was really a fun time and it is amazing what we accomplished. I met Obama twice and saw him a seven events total. One of the things that I like is his accessibility. He spent a lot of time in Iowa and he usually found time for group photos and handshaking.

The caucus was crazy. At the first count in precinct 4-3 (my precinct), Obama was the only viable candidate with 81 out of 160 people in his corner. After a long time for realignment, we ended up with 93 people, earning 5 delegates for Obama. Edwards scrapped together enough people for 2 delegates and Richardson got 1 delegate. It was really a great experience for individuals like myself to be involved in something with the potential to make such a big impact on the choice of the next president of the United States.

I like Barack Obama because I think he will actually make decisions based on what is best for the country as opposed to who funded his campaign. We need to get rid of special interests in Washington and we need a president who is willing to say what needs to be said, even when it’s unpopular.

Now we need the rest of the nation to follow Iowa’s lead. It is unfortunate that he didn’t beat Clinton in New Hampshire but, in reality, he did pretty well there considering what he is up against and what many people expected.

I have wanted to write about this for some time but I wanted to complain to the proper people first. I have plans to start an anti-photocop website dedicated to exposing the problems and unconstitutionality of the systems. Note that this is clearly written by an angry person, but I assure you that all facts are accurate to my knowledge.

Now for the story…
I was out in Arizona last Spring and I rented a car to drive to Nevada for the weekend. The car was a Chrysler PT Cruiser and I rented it from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I went home to Ohio a couple days later and returned to the house in Tempe in July. On the last full day of my July trip, I went through the mail that my roommate had stacked in my room for me. I found a Scottsdale photocop ticket amongst the papers. I also started getting junk mail for how to beat photocops, so apparently this ticket was publicly released.

Here are scans of what I received (click for higher resolution):

If you look critically at these images, you should easily be able to spot the error. The vehicle shown is a Jeep Liberty while the ticket refers to a “CHRY PTE.” It would be somewhat forgivable if the readers of this page don’t catch that, but a person who is trained to review these before sending them out should spot it immediately. Notice that Bill Harper has “signed” off on the ticket.

Back to the story…
I am aware that all I really had to do was throw the ticket away because they would never have been able to serve me in Ohio. Due to an experience my uncle had and other stories I’ve read online about lying process servers, I thought I’d just go down to the courthouse and clear this up (I was innocent, after all). I had been planning to drive up to North Scottsdale to work on the boat at my uncles’ house, so I stopped by the courthouse on my way. I didn’t see any reason to change into something nicer than my “working on the boat” clothes, so I wore American Eagle Jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and some Teva sandals. I got to go in and speak to the judge but, since there is no prosecutor at those hearings, he could do nothing for me. I charge that the prosecutor is not present at those hearings because the system is set up to facilitate people just paying and not fighting. All he could do was schedule a court date in a few weeks. Obviously that was not going to work for me since I was going home the next day. I did get the judge to direct me to the prosecutor’s office, which was behind the courthouse. I went over there and waited a few minutes to speak to the prosecutor that handles photocop tickets. She was friendly and agreed to get it dismissed. When I asked her who Bill Harper is, she said I was wasting her time and that she wanted to eat lunch! I told her that I had planned on eating lunch as well, at which point she sort of acknowledged my wasted time. It’s not like she really had any option but to dismiss the charges. If she had brought me to court, it would have been malicious prosecution.

A week later, my roommate in Tempe called me saying I got a letter from the Scottsdale courts. I had him open it and it turned out that the motion to dismiss had been denied! I had a court date set for the exact date of my move to Iowa. It said if I didn’t show up, I would have a default judgement issued against me. I was wondering to myself who the heck I was going to fight in court if the prosecutor agreed with me, but obviously this would not do. I called the prosecutor’s office and eventually got ahold of her. She looked into it and eventually called me and apologized and said she was embarrassed that this happened, but apparently the paperwork was filed wrong. She filed it again and the next week I got a letter saying that the case had been dismissed.

What happened…
I have communicated with several people about this. They all confirmed and enhanced what I already knew about how the system works. Apparently at the time of my ticket, Scottsdale hired Redflex to administer their cameras. Redflex is a private company that sells, calibrates, and operates these systems (an obvious conflict of interest). Apparently what happened in my case is that the license plate photo was blurry so the computer accused the wrong car. Enterprise Rent-A-Car pointed at me, so I got the ticket. Redflex is supposed to have three people look at each ticket and then, once they have approved it, a police officer is supposed to give it a final review before sending it out. It has been understood for years that the only reason that a person reviews the tickets is to pacify the public, who was questioning the constitutionality of having a computer accuse a person. In my case they all failed to notice that the vehicle in the picture said “JEEP” in large letters on the back, when they were ticketing a PT Cruiser. This is probably because the system is more interested in the money than the crime.

The players…
Some of them have been more helpful than others but none of them seem to value my time. They all have the attitude that I got lucky and handled this properly so I didn’t have serious problems. I think that my time is important and they need an exercise in humility so they should write me an apology letter.

• Frank Vardon-Dove: This is the representative that I have been speaking to from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. He initially defended their position in cooperating with police. But then I pointed out that due dilligence (looking at the citation) would have protected me from this and it was probably a legal matter to violate my privacy by giving out my information whenever someone asked for it. Also I mentioned that Enterprise is the only rental company known for doing this. Most others don’t turn the drivers over, from what I’ve read. I sent him a copy of the citation to review. [UPDATE 12/28/07: He just called me and said that they have a system in place now where they will verify the plates. Also he says he will send me a coupon for a free rental. I couldn't be happier with his response. If they must involve themselves in this broken system, they should protect their innocent customers and take responsibility for mistakes that happen.]
• Richard D. Baranzini: This is who I initially communicated with from the Scottsdale Police Department. He was very helpful, but does not value the trouble I went through and the implications of this mistake. I was basically required to go to court to fight evidence that pointed to somebody else. That a computer can cause this and that proper checks weren’t in place are serious constitutional problems.
• Robert Salcido: This is an employee of Redflex. He is obviously unapologetic and I believe he lied to me about an important detail of their system. He also is one of those assholes who points to their email signature like it’s legally binding so I can’t repeat his communications. I suspect that, in reality, it isn’t very binding at all. But it really doesn’t matter. He said exactly what was expected of a company that makes money by bending the constitution.
• Bruce Kalin: This is Richard Baranzini’s boss at the Scottsdale PD. I am still waiting on a response from him about my apology letter. I sent him an email outlining how this was a hassle for me and how any amount of hassle was unacceptable when it was completely due to a failure on the parts of the Scottsdale PD and their contractors.
• Bill A. Harper: This is the (fake?) person whose signature is printed on the citation. By him putting his name on it, it really should be him who I sue. However, I’m sure he has some immunity that protects him from the need to be ethical or legal.

If I don’t hear back from the PD and Enterprise, I will consider other action. There have clearly been laws broken with respect to my privacy and my right to confront my accuser. I understand that my ticket was released to the public due to some information request act. Since the information will be seen by companies and possibly my insurance company, it is important that a person does the ticketing instead of a computer. The release of my information, strictly based on false information that brief due diligence would have spotted is borderline slander.

If anybody knows of lawyers that deal with this sort of thing, let me know. I am definitely interested in having this resolved properly. Regardless of what statistics exist (or don’t exist) pertaining to the lives saved by these systems, any system that would falsely accuse somebody from out of state in this way is completely unacceptable. If I hadn’t gotten my mail, I could have had a warrant out for me for all I know. I dedicated a few hours of my life and many cell-phone minutes to this, some while on vacation and some while I was preparing to move to Iowa to start my Ph.D. work. This was a very busy part of my life without all of this.

I’ve done some research that I think might be interesting to friends or anybody who finds this page from a Google search. First I will give some background and then I will explain my research.

I first discovered Tire Discounters when I was seeking nitrogen for my tires. I called them up and was told that nitrogen was $4.95/tire. I wanted to try it out so I was going to go ahead and pay the money so I went in there and the guy told me it was free. They got lucky that time because right after he told me it was free, I told him about the patch I also needed. That was just the beginning of my saga with Tire Discounters. I went in there with the truck the next week to get the nitrogen in it as well. The manager greeted me and told me that it would cost $4.95/tire. I told him that wasn’t going to happen because I got it free the week before. He looked in his system and told me it was because I got something else done. Well, as I just mentioned, I didn’t ask for the other service until I had already received the quote of free. Over time, I went in to that same location to get my tires topped off and I also had some other minor things done (rotation, balance, I forget). Each time I felt like the manager was trying to rip me off. The other employees were very helpful. Once they scratched my wheel and, when I pointed it out, they were very honorable about making it right. Note that anytime you go to a big chain shop like that you need to take very careful inventory of scratches.

I ended up going to another location one time and the manager there took care of me for free so I asked him what the deal with the shiftiness was. He told me that they can do it for free with no problem but the only time he wouldn’t was if someone came in with brand new tires from somewhere else. I could respect that attitude.

Finally, we took Tiffany’s car in to another one of the locations and that is where it got really shifty. The manager tried to tell me that it cost $5/tire (if I remember correctly) but then when he found out we needed two valve stems as well, he ended up saying that it would be $15 for the valve stems and he would inflate the tires for free. I felt like he was being less than ethical in his pricing so that is what led me to do my research.

I called every Dayton and Columbus location and 6 Cincinnati locations. I only called each once, because I was worried I would ruin the experiment if they were suspicious. When I called I always asked about inflation first because I didn’t want them to “throw it in” with another service, and then I asked about the price of replacing a single valve stem.

The most important thing that I found was that if you call that last location, you can get a quote of $0 for the inflation and $5 per valve stem. This basically shows that the manager got a happy medium out of us between the normal price and the price he had originally tried to get. I have since concluded that the managers are like used car salesmen and they try to figure out how much they can get you for before you even come up to the counter.

Here are the results:

Note that the prices for inflation ranged from $0 to $7 and the prices for a valve stem ranged from $0 to $18.95!

The moral of the story is that you should always be careful when dealing with used-car dealers turned tire salesmen. Tire Discounters has decent products. They even have pretty good deals on tires with lifetime maintenance. They should let those things sell themselves and not spend all of their time trying to rip people off on nitrogen. If they keep me happy by keeping my nitrogen filled, they will have a customer for life. But if they continue the shiftiness, nitrogen is all I’ll use them for.

I checked IE7 in Vista yesterday to see how much horizontal screenspace was occupied by borders and scrollbars. The number is 21 pixels. As a web designer, this was relevant to me. Hopefully somebody else will find this useful.

You may have noticed that the site has reverted to a default color scheme. I’ve just migrated all of my hosting to GoDaddy and while I was at it I thought I’d redo everything. I imported all of the old posts and went through them looking for dead links and other issues. I think I pretty much fixed everything. If you find any broken links, please let me know. Once I find a new image for the header, I will decide on a color scheme. But for now, this is it. I won’t be posting very often as I plan to be busy with school and other projects. But I hope to continue ranting on various issues from time to time.

Also you may have noticed that the Gallery is now gone. I don’t plan to reinstall it. I have decided that running my own gallery was too much hassle and I may eventually start using Flickr or something along those lines.

Note that this is probably more like version 4.0 of the site. I don’t recall what iterations there were before I started using blog software. This is the third in a line of sites that I feel like claiming at this point.