Backup Brain

What I thought would happen: I figured that I’d put up the post about my license plate on Sunday, it’d get a link or three on Monday, and by Tuesday it would be over and I’d be on to other things.

Not so much.

I did put it up on Sunday, and it did get a link or three on Monday (e.g., Scoble, Kottke). And then a few more on Tuesday (e.g., Boing Boing, The Unofficial Apple Weblog). That led to a bit on on Wireless Flash News (no, I can’t read it either), which I’m told is a hot resource for radio DJs

Yesterday (Wednesday) I got a call from Peter Anthony Holder of radio station CJAD (800 AM Montreal) asking if I would stay up late and be a guest on his show. I told him that I thought the chances of my license plate making it all the way to Montreal were pretty slim, and he said well, once we’re done talking about that, you can talk about your current books. Hey, I’ll always take that opportunity, and so I spent about 30 minutes last night on Canadian radio. If I’d had my act together a little more, I would have posted the link here, as it was streaming live… at 11:05 pm Pacific, 2:05 am Eastern. Okay, even if I’d posted the link you probably wouldn’t have stayed up that late. But I had a lot of fun, and Peter, the host of the show, was great.

What’s next? Who knows? While I was waiting to go on the show, I took a look at my site logs, and noticed one brand-new incoming link: MSNBC’s Clicked. Uh… I don’t think this is dying down quite yet.

And now, because I’m tired of answering the same questions in the comments of lots of different blogs, and because, well, I have to do something geeky in this post (I keep being accused of “not being a real geek” — pffft), here’s the FAQ:

• Q: What are you talking about? License plates?
• A: Go read the original post here.
• Q: Why don’t you just get a replacement tag?
• A: California’s not like that. Not really, at least. The deal is that they send you two plates when your vanity plates are first issued. At that point, you’re required to put one on the back and one on the front.

  I didn’t do that. I put one on the back, and put one away in a stack of papers for safekeeping.

• Q: What was the point of that?
• A: California is sticky about replacing plates. If you lose both plates, you can’t get replacements. Ever. Yes, really. You have to have at least one to get a replacement. And you have to bring it in with you (here’s the DMV Form) (PDF).
• Q: So then, what’s your problem, given that you didn’t put both on your car?
• A: I put the front plate in a stack of papers for safekeeping. In 1998. In Los Angeles.

  For those who want the math done for them, that was one home, 8.5 years, and 500 miles ago.

• Q: And you haven’t seen it since?
• A: I don’t spend a lot of time looking for things I might need someday. Up until now, I haven’t needed it.

  The plate is almost definitely in a box. Somewhere. The box could be in Tom’s office. It could be in the garage. It could have been lost somewhere between the old house and the new. I don’t know, and there are a lot of boxes.

• Q: You said you’re required to put both plates on your car?
• A: Yes, and I’ve been ticketed before for only having one. While CA may give you a ticket for not having a plate, they care more about collecting the money than whether or not I fix the problem, so I just paid up.
• Q: What do you think your odds are of ever having your plates again?
• A: Right now, I’m guessing that it’s about 1 in 3 of someone feeling the urge to send it back to me, about 1 in 3 of finding the front plate (wherever it might be), and about 1 in 3 of being completely SOL. Depending on how much more publicity this gets, of course.
• Q: How much publicity has this received? What do your hits look like?
• A: It’s interesting to see what drives traffic, and how quickly the hits come in and then die down after a major site links here. Here’s how the big hitters divvied up their share of the pie: BoingBoing sent about 40%, Kottke 27%, Scoble 11%, MSNBC 9%, and TUAW 5%. That 9% for MSNBC doesn’t look like much until you realize that he posted just a few hours before my stats last ran.

  The remainder all seem to be from livejournal.com, and all from someone who doesn’t (or someones who don’t) allow public access to their journal. I can tell that the mysterious linker is friends with comicbook-greek, angall, con-girl, scumm_boy, carynb, defamatory, whynotsteve, foms, ash-pixie, foms, iolarah, thornleaf, and vandyke-brown, though. Didn’t any of you have parents who taught you that it’s rude to talk about people behind their backs?

• Q: Did you report this to the cops?
• A: Yes, because otherwise I can’t drive my car on the street. When I drive my car now, I have to keep the officer’s business card + the case number with me on the off chance I’m pulled over. That’s until I get new temporary plates.
• Q: When do you get new temporary plates?
• A: I can’t do that until the paperwork goes through our little PD. From there it goes to the county DMV, and it takes a while after that to get into their system. I was told it would take a few weeks, and that it wasn’t worth bothering showing up at the DMV until they had all the paperwork processed. So I’m waiting on that, and hoping that the plate comes back home before then.
• Q: You’ve got a few people in your comments that are a little, hmmm…
• A: That’s not a question, but I know what you mean. If you think those were iffy, you should have seen what I was called in some of the blogs, forums, and conferences where this was posted. Damn, there are a lot of people out there with too much time on their hands. Why don’t y’all come over and help me look through a few boxes?

And finally, because someone else went to the trouble of doing this: could you please digg the original story? Thanks!