Not long ago, I got a ticket while driving my son to school. He was mad about being a few minutes late to school, but I knew much more time would be required on my part 🙂
In California one can attend “traffic school” for a variety of traffic tickets. My infraction was stopping for a stop sign beyond the stop line rather than before the line, so I fell into the category of people permitted to attend traffic school. Doing so takes somewhere between six and ten hours, and prevents the long-term markers being placed on one’s record and a rise in insurance costs. The schools are independent businesses certified by each court system. Some are better than others.
California now authorizes a lot of schools to provide online courses, so I chose one of these. Fortunately, I chose a good one. They had thought of all the likely issues (such as — I need to finish in 24 hours — how do I do that?), had good customer support and a reasonable price.
Best of all, the website worked flawlessly. I was astounded. There are something like 14 chapters to read, four “security questions” to help make sure the student actually read the material, four quizzes and one final exam. Each section is timed, the time is displayed, and completing one automatically makes the next available.
At the end, I had to call the school to change where they send the completion certificate (after one completes the course this can’t be done online). Certificate delivery requires a signature, so I want it sent to work where there will be someone around to sign for receipt. Otherwise a trip to the post office is required.
Of course, customer support needed the address. I started with my name, and then “c/o Mozilla Corporation.” I spelled “Mozilla” very slowly and carefully because it confuses so many people. Not this time. The customer service representative perked up, “Mozilla? You work for Mozilla?” I replied “Yes, I do” and he continued “We all use Firefox here.” After some discussion he added “We support Firefox and, eh, Internet Explorer. But our webmaster and all of us use Firefox.”
Send that man something special!