Yesterday, 01:02 AM
(12-11-2024, 10:49 PM)terracore Wrote: So I cranked it up and.... it was running great! I was so stoked I looked at the time and thought I could actually go get my safety sticker RIGHT NOW and have this car running and street legal! Yeah! My luck was turning around.Fun times. Thanks for sharing your tale of perseverance.
All fired up with misplaced optimism, I found my insurance card and started rummaging through the glove box for the registration. Wait.... where is the registration? I remember getting the renewal and paying the inconvenience fee to do it online... nowhere to be found. I looked at my license plate.... no sticker. Did I actually renew it or did I forget? It was back in February. So I check my emails, sure enough, I had the receipt but nowhere did I have the registration or the emblem.
Did they never send it (has happened to me twice before) or did I lose it? Rather than trying to piece together what happened 9 or 10 months ago when the bureaucracy always wins regardless, with head hanging low I drove to the DMV to see about getting replacements. Okay, technically it's not called the DMV in Hawaii but it's the capital city of the bureaucratic wasteland, where the drinking fountains flow with Brawndo and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. And this is pertaining to the same cursed car they previously wouldn't give me a registration for without getting the car weighed first. And now I have to crawl back through the wasteland on my knees and beg Lord Humungus for another one.
Last time this happened, they made me pay a 50 cent fee and they gave me a copy of the registration and the emblem. Since that's what happened last time, certainly it would play out exactly like that again, right?
NO EMBLEM FOR YOU!
Just like winter gives way to the spring, and the invasives start growing faster and the feral chickens start pumping out more crowing roosters, the bureaucracy also blooms. Now it's $5 for a copy of the registration, and no emblem because while the safety was current when the registration was renewed, now it isn't. But don't worry, just go get that safety sticker, come back and wait in line again, pay some more, and the Ayatolla of Rock 'n' Rolla will give me an emblem.
"Do I need to get the car weighed first?"
"What?"
"I need to assuage my thirst. Is that Brawndo?"
"What?"
So I left. Registration copy in hand, I returned home to MAKE SURE the car would pass the safety by checking all the lights etc again. Wait. Why is one of the high beams out?
For my mental health I need to skip over some steps that happened but here's the deal: I never use my high beams. The low beams are the high-intensity LED variety that every time you get blinded by them you wonder who is the asshole that drives around like that. Sorry, it's me, but I need them. I can't remember the last time I actually drove at night, but rest assured somebody probably cursed me. The miniscule improvement by trying to use high beams makes them obsolete when you have the brightest LED low beam headlights China can produce. But the safety place doesn't care if you use them or not. You have to use them once a year to get the retarded sticker so the cops don't pull you over. But you know what? They won't pull you over for blinding people if you drive with your high beams on all the time. But I digress. For whatever reason, trying to use the high beams I never use causes the fuse on the driver's side to blow and I can't troubleshoot the cause. I looked. And looked. So I did exactly what you're thinking: a 20 amp fuse in a 10 amp socket and hope the light works long enough to pass the test before something catches on fire. So I can display a sticker showing the lights I never use worked for two seconds at the safety check place. Success!
When I got home I removed the fuse. It had blown. No visible fires. 12/25 safety sticker on car. Like Christmas.
BTW, aftermarket LED headlights are illegal.
But of course you're right, there's no enforcement. "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has not approved any aftermarket LED bulb"
