Still, I am amazed at how far removed the average John Q  can be from the how and where of food source origins, and I applaud Doug’s efforts and his honesty; because really, who wants to give up mobile phones, computers, or the internet?

Neil Gaiman’s essay on fairytale in The Guardian makes me rethink whether, for me, this should be.

“…but I enjoyed the screenplay and I really like the film they made - which takes liberties with the plot all over the place.  …A star still falls, a boy still promises to bring it to his true love, there are still wicked witches and ghosts and lords…”

The retelling of the thing is, perhaps, a whole new experience to know.

Which is to say that I was and am, and thanks for asking.

As a civic duty, voting ranks right at the top of my list of important things to do as a full fledged citizen. In Wisconsin, I first voted at the age of eighteen, and I have voted there regularly ever since.

Enter Georgia, my new state of residence, and a whole new voting experience. I went in prepared; I printed off a copy of the sample ballot, marked out the races for other districts, glanced at the unopposed candidates, and read up on the candidates and ballot measures that were left. I noted my choices on the sample ballot, located my polling place online, and looked up polling hours. I thought I was ready.

My polling place was poorly identified. But I had the address, and I located the door. Inside, the poll workers checked my identification and issued me a credit-card sized piece of plastic. Gone were the blue paper black marker scantron ways of Wisconsin voting; Georgia uses Diebold touch screen voting machines.

The poll workers were concerned about voting machine malfunctions, and I was asked to try a machine previously reported as not working. My bug testing skills were ready, and the poll worker told me to let her know if I noticed any irregularities. I slipped the plastic card into the machine, and I made my first choice. And the machine recorded the another candidate. I unchecked the errant choice, and again made my choice; the machine marked the same candidate as before. Irregularities? Sure.

The poll workers were very professional, and malfunctioning machine was powered down. Local news later reported on this very issue, and many machines across the metro area had to be recalibrated throughout the day.

I understand the arguments in support of electronic voting. But I work enough with technology to know how fallible it can be. And I know that elections are expensive to put on, and electronic voting provides results quickly — so important into the instant age we live in. But what if a machine crashes, and results are lost for 5 hours of the afternoon? What if lightening strikes? What if a machine refuses to accept the candidate choice being made? If this really is a democracy, and enacting the will of the people is paramount, are electronic voting machines the right way for us to choose? Maybe it is my fondness my home state, but I cannot help but wonder if scantron based paper ballots would be a much better, and recountable, choice.

I received said coupon, at work, via email. I received it last week, and I immediately questioned the wisdom of distributing via email an electronic document useable to create an unlimited number of legitimate paper coupons. There is a Starbucks in my office building; I used the coupon twice. Free iced mocha? Whenever I want? For over a month? Sure thing! Don’t they cost somewhere around $4 each?

And then I read this article. Glad I saw it before attempting to make use of coupon number three.

UPDATE: For no apparent reason, Caribou Coffee, scrappy midwestern-based coffee chain, says it will honor the Starbucks coupon next Friday, September 8. Iced coffee insanity continues.

They want to sweep my apartment to make sure (because they think I murdered someone in the bathroom?) everything is ok. At this point, I start to wonder if someone has broken into my apartment and is in one of the back rooms. I agree and let them in. So burly police officer 1 and 2 sweep all the rooms in the apartment while burly officer 3 stands in the doorway (blocking my escape?). I take off my shoes.

Officers 1 and 2 appear back in the living room, appologize for any inconvenience, and all three take off. I lock the door and watch them go back to their squad cars parked almost out of sight, down the street. Then I call my girlfriend at work. And then I call the library, because I can’t find the number for the police department in the phone book, and then I call the police. At this point I’m wondering if I just had my apartment cased by three very clever crooks.

The officer on the phone confirms that there was in fact a 911 call from my building, though from a different apartment, (none of the units in my building actually have numbers by the doors to indicate which apartment is which; the unit where the call was placed, I assume, is one of the two lower units, but really there that apartment number doesn’t exist yet and won’t be until someone moves into it and decides to give it that number). The police officer on the phone also confirms that the officers at my apartment were actually police officers and not someone else in disguise. And then she tells me that it’s not uncommon for a storm to cause a disconnected phone line to make a 911 call, and sometimes the police department get 911 calls from vacant lots. So not to worry, she says, it’s probably nothing. Which is good to know, because I also imagined someone breaking into one of the vacant units and laying in a pool of blood until the smell eventually wafting up into my apartment and I ask the landlord to investigate.

Two different officers came by a few hours later to check up on me and the building and to again say that everything is fine.

What would have happened if I’d gotten home a few minutes later…would my front door have been kicked in off its hinges?

Also, my parents’ old furnace has one leg strongly up on the new furnace in my new apartment; when the electricity is out, so too is the gas furnace, because unlike my laptop, the furnace’s electric lighter does not have a battery backup. Safety - 0, dangerous old mainstay - 1.

What impressed me most was the note on the Department of Motor Vehicles website describing how I, as a resident of another state moving to Georgia, could make an appointment to obtain my new license. I optimistically assumed this would mean a ten or fifteen minute visit with an employee of the Georgia DMV, and that said employee would go over key driving factoids of which I, new to Georgia, should be aware. For example, as a motorcycle rider, I would be informed that Georgia is a mandatory helmet state, and I would then dutifully wear my motorcycle helmet every time I rode. Or maybe that right turns at red lights are always illegal at every intersection across the state. Fifteen minutes, thought I, for a brief primer on driving and I would have my license in hand. Go Georgia…what a great way to welcome newcomers to the state.

Oh, how wrong I was. When I reported to the DMV one Saturday morning within the mandatory 30 day application window, I was able to breeze right past the line of supplicants at the door to the DMV, only to arrive at the front counter and find out their computer system was down. Still, I was issued a number and told to take a seat in the waiting area. I was a little early for my appointment. I was wondering about the correlation between my number and my appointment time. There wasn’t one.

The appointment time more or less locks one into a hourish window, instead of the normal three hour window, it takes to get a new license. So really, all it proved good for was bypassing the stand-around-a-long-time line; there still was much sitting and waiting to do. And when called, there was no explanation about the finer points of Georgia driving; the only give and take I had at the service window was whether I wanted the five or ten year license, and to please verify they had my information entered correctly. And an hour and one license reprint later, I was walking back out the door with my license in hand.

I still don’t know for certain if Georgia is a mandatory helmet state. Observation suggests it is, and given the conditions of the roads and driving habits in the greater Atlanta area, riding with a helmet on is just a good idea. And as for my experience at the DMV…well, at least I don’t have to go back for ten years.