Now, I could understand if I’d been speeding, driving recklessly, or drunk. But I was coming home from work after putting in some overtime. I was not being a menace. I was actually thinking about finding a place to pull over and take a nap. However, the road through the Idaho desert doesn’t exactly have lot of rest stops, or even paved shoulders.

Why didn’t I lie to him and tell him that I swerved to miss a deer and lost control? Because I try very hard to be an honest person. So instead of lying I innocently told him what happened. What’s worse, I went to the station a couple days later when he asked me to come in and give a taped statement. He waited until after I had convicted myself of "Inattentive Driving" until he told me I was being charged. Is that even legal!?

I went to court to fight the ticket, and the prosecutor refused to dismiss the charges. He did reduce them, and my lawyer told me I could do online traffic school to get the points off my license.

So I now have online traffic school open in another window. However, it’s completely stupid. Now, I’m no English major (I’m an engineer), but I do know the difference between "affect" and "effect," as well as "they’re" and "their." Apparently the authors of this online course do not. Reading this stuff is flat-out painful.

Even worse, the questions are so simple-minded that I can answer them all correctly without reading the material. However, there’s a minimum time you’re supposed to spend on each section, usually 25-35 minutes. However, I can skim the material and answer the questions in under five.

If you try and submit your answers before their timer is up, it resets and you have to start over. I’d just do each section and go do something else while I wait for the timer to count down if it wasn’t for the popups. See, they popup a security question to verify your identity at random times. There’s no noise to grab your attention, and you have to answer in under two minutes. So basically I have to keep at least half an eye on the computer and wait for the time to be up.

The total time is six hours. SIX HOURS! I could have the whole damn thing completed in about an hour. So now I’m spending my Saturday staring blankly at my computer, instead of doing something fun. That’s what I do at work! What’s worse is that this is my first day off after six days on, and tomorrow starts another six days on. My sweet, sweet recreational time has been pre-empted by morons obsessed with how much time I spend "studying" material I already know.

ARRRGGGHHHH!