On Mar 18, 11:17*am, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article , notbob wrote:
On 2010-03-18, Lew Hodgett wrote:

California allows you to do this on line.

A few key strokes and you're done.

A far cry from when I was young back in Ohio.

A far cry from things in CA just few years back. *I have horrible
memories of standing in line for ANYTHING at the CA DMV. *An hour and
a half --no exageration-- was not uncommon. *I actually joined AAA
just to be able to register from their offices rather than endure the
wait, the lines, and the surely clerks that were the norm at CAs
biggest bureaucratic nighmare.

Likewise Indiana -- until a few years ago, if you had to wait *only* an hour
and a half at any urban BMV, you counted yourself lucky. And the offices had
no public restrooms, either. :-(

I remember about 8 years ago visiting the BMV to get plates for a car I'd just
bought. Arrived about 11:30am, took a number. "Now Serving: #72". check my
ticket -- it's #168 Walked across the street to the public library, browsed
for a while, checked out a couple of books, came back to the BMV... *"Now
Serving: #113" *Walked over to Burger King, had lunch, came back to the BMV
.. "Now Serving: #139" ... Sat down to read for a while... Finally got back
to the office around 3pm. The actual transaction took only about ten minutes.

It's a lot better now, though.

Doug, let me "add" to the IN BMV tales. Are the BMV offices still
political "plums"? We lived there from late '60 to mid '74, and every
time the state government changed parties, so did the staff at all the
BMV offices! Now you had a whole new staff who didn't know their a**
from their elbow,and you're their OJT guinea pig. Do you still have to
show your property tax reciept in order to get your plates renewed?
Now we all "know" that nobody circumvented that system, but seemed
like there were always some BMV staff members who came home @ night
with more money than they went to work with. Then there were the
random investigations that exposed people driving around while their
property taxes were unpaid.

Don'tcha just love big brother government?

Norm