So court.  

Went to the courthouse, the first floor, signed in. Told to go to the 4th floor. Got in there, they asked me what my name is? Gave them my name, couldn't find it.  I handed her the letter with the case number on it and then she found it.

Turns out the guy sitting at the defendant's desk seat is the judge. I was wondering who that man was, lol. He said the best I can offer you is a 71 in a 70 zone.  OK.  I wasn't going to argue that, if it screws me at work, it screws me.  I paid the fine at the first floor window and got out of there.

Fast forward and my cop friend next door asks about it. Yea, I replied, they reduced it a 1 mph over infraction instead of 15.  "Uhhhhmmm" he replies.  Fast forward, that was unacceptable to him and he's going to try to get it removed altogether.  Nice to have friends like that.  Note that it isn't the higher up judge that he knows that I was dealing with.  

I dunno, but I didn't think trying to get the ticket removed altogether was really worth the far greater aggravation and time and money spent over a 1 mph over speed infraction.  I was not going to try to stop him from trying, he's been in those court rooms for 25 years, he knows all these people, he grew up with all of these people. Yes it's at least possible he could get it dismissed.  

The property.  An underground utility locater company came out and put a huge amount of orange paint on the ground right next to where the telephone pole is going to be installed.  What? this is well away from the street. It is 20 feet away from where their line runs. What is this nonsense?  So, I moved the telephone pole stakes several feet closer to the property line but still on my property, just barely.  I have NO idea what ATT has going on there, but trust me when I tried to find out again, today.

No one that I have spoken to at ATT yet has been able to tell me what services they offer and all of them tell me they don't have anything going on on that street.  Funny, I replied today, this new marking from the utility locater has flags saying "ATT" on it.  I was on the phone a long time and got nowhere.  Can I please talk to someone in engineering, in planning and development, whoever had all of that infrastructure installed on that street?  There is no way that I can do that, sir.  It's typical of ATT for it's right hand to not know what the left hand has done. 

"It must be a newly installed set of lines". No, it's not.  I couldn't get any info on how to actually speak to someone who would be able to find out what is actually installed on that street.  So, I found something on line that is a request for service to be installed in the neighborhood.  It's amazing, but it's typical, of a giant corporation to not be able to find who you need to speak with.  

I did not call Fidelity, the local internet provider. I didn't, because the telephone pole isn't installed and I don't even know if where I reposted the stakes is going to work.  I wouldn't mind taking a shovel and digging down to the ATT marking and see what, exactly, is under there and why, more importantly, it is there.  

My giant doggy, Addler, is crashed out on my bed, lol. I don't mind when I'm around, i can monitor it, when I'm gone, I load the bed up with stuff to keep them from getting on it. 

Ohh! and the company I was giving up on? I called one last time.  They informed me that he - the guy that I was talking with - was busy. Ok, and cool, but I texted him twice last week and heard nothing back from him and tried to call him now?  It really doesn't bother me if they don't want to deal with me for some reason I have no idea what.

The man texted me 10 minutes after speaking to the office. 12k to clear the property, would give me a formal bid on the rest of it.  

I also called the guy that did the water tap installation.  He didn't answer but called back later. He's going out of town on a hunting expedition with his daughter.  Cool! We talked about that for a bit and then I expressed my desire for him to contact me when he gets back.  

That's it.  I'm done for the day. 5:00 pm, taking it easy until tomorrow.

Late load, I won't be worrying about other companies trucks butting in front of me, they do that earlier in the day, not later.  

Steroids working but I'm still coughing horribly at times. Ugh.

 Rather hellish day driving back.  I'm not going to sit here and try to say it was a breeze feeling the way I do.  It didn't help the next door neighbor was complaining about the german shepherd jumping over their fence and getting into their garbage....The dog is more trouble than it's worth. It causes problems all the time, but especially when I'm not around. I had NO idea she was still jumping over their fence, I thought she had gotten over that.

One of the very few times in my life I would like to get rid of a dog.  I've tried and I've spent the money, trust me, I have dumped out the bucks trying different methods.  No one has control over her when no one is home.  

________________________

That was last night.  About an hour from now and I'm headed to court to try and get the speeding ticket either reduced or done away with altogether.  I had to sit here and think for a while all the relevant factors that I can and probably should say to at least give the judge a snapshot of where I'm coming from.  I'll even tell the judge I'm okay paying a fine, I just would really please and thank you like the ticket changed to something else/lessor so my driving record isn't stained as bad as it's going to be with a 15 mph over on it.

It's unfortunate but true that the system does not delineate between your personal vehicle driving and your commercial vehicle driving.  Whatever happens, it goes on the CDL and unless you fight it, there's nothing you can do about it.  It's was also true that you cannot go to driving school, but I"ve heard some saying they have changed that.  I'm going to look that up after I get done with this entry and see what Texas allows - if anything.

There is also a deferral, but I don't know if that applies to CDL drivers. It's basically a deal where they say if you drive the next 3 months and don't get any tickets, this one will go away.  Well, it's been over 3 months.  I haven't had a moving violation in over 7 years, that should help my case along a bit as well.  I'm not actually worried about this, whatever happens, happens and if worse comes to worse, I will ask for a jury trial, get a lawyer and spend the money to preserve my license.  I gave up worrying about it weeks ago when I thought, well, I'm just a human, I'm not perfect, never claimed to be, I make mistakes like everyone else. Sometimes I do stupid things, like everyone else has.  Shrugs shoulders.  

I remembered around 2 am - after waking up and hacking away, unyielding coughing that simply wasn't going to stop anytime soon - that the doc had prescribed me Prednisone the last time I had a cough like this.  Yup, out of bed, 2 of those pills as the directions say. About 40 minutes later maybe? I felt that stuff going through my system and all of a sudden- the coughing stopped.  I still have enough of those pills to last for several days.  I won't need to go to Urgent Care today, those two pills are good for 24 hours.  

Steroids have always helped when I have a dry hacking cough like that.  I dunno how it works, but it definitely does!

Family still up north, they're coming home tomorrow.  I am still not feeling all that great.  I really don't think I'm going to want to go to work tomorrow.  I definitely wasn't feeling it yesterday, it was a long day trying to just keep focused on the road and tough it out.  You start feeling like this and working is the last thing on your mind.  I went to Chili's after getting into town,  no one home meant no dinner waiting and definitely wasn't in the mood to cook.  Had a drink - that helps a lot too - stops the coughing somehow.  

I really don't know if I'm going to make any calls about the property today.  I guess it doesn't matter about talking to people on the phone but if per chance one of them wanted to meet over there today? Not into it.  If I didn't have to go to court I would have just stayed in bed.  I figured to get up an hour and a half early, take a long hot shower, get that steam down into my lungs - that helps a lot too.  Drink a cuppa and get mentally prepared to at least make a decent case for myself.  

I hope I can curtail the coughing while in there, yes the steroids are working but they haven't eliminated the coughing 100%, it's like they got rid of about 90% of the coughing.  I'm afraid they're going to throw me out of there if I am hacking away.  I figure at least wear a mask in there, I definitely could have Covid.  I've never gotten headaches with a coughing cold before but I've had them the last 4 days since this all started.  That seems to me to be a sign of Covid.  But the coughing? Pretty much status quo misery that occurs every time I get sick.

Yea I think I will make some calls today.  Especially that guy who said he could do all of it, it's been a week since I last contacted him with no reply whatsoever. If he for some reason doesn't want to do it, that's fine, just tell me so I can move on.  That's all I ask. The other 2 as well, It's been over 2 weeks now, they said they could come out and take a look, we'll see if they answer their phone and just give them a friendly reminder that I'm still here and I still need this work done....and probably drive by there anyway and see if the power company is ever going to show up.....

Funny how a cup of coffee slowly starts to motivate a person out of slack and slumber, lol. 

I'm enjoying my time off of Facebook, btw.  I moved the app on my phone to the last page, all by itself, instead of at the bottom of the screen where it always shows no matter what page I'm on with the apps. That way I don't just automatically click on it.  I was going to delete the app altogether, but decided against it. There are interesting videos that show up there from random people, it takes you to Tik Tok. I don't have a Tik Tok account and I don't have the app on my phone but you can still watch other people's tik tok videos, some of them are hilarious.  The Trump app is apparently coming somewhere around the beginning of the year?  Whenever it's rolled out I'm going to join that and see how it compares. I would like to ditch Facebook permanently....no longer in love with their propaganda and censorship.  It really has just become a tool of the left and the far left to tell people how to think and what you are "allowed" to say. And if you come up with anything they don't like?  Baaammm!  And they must flag accounts that get repeated suspensions.  

If they eventually ban my account? I dunno if I"ll start another one.  It might just be the last hurrah, goodbye, good riddance, am already getting used to life without it now on my 3rd 30 day suspension, them treating users as some sort of school children that need monitoring is ridiculous. It's not like I go around cussing people out and calling them personal names, I'm not a troll in other words.  What you see here is what you get on the internet. I don't act out like a 5 year old having a temper tantrum as many, many grown adults do all over social media.  You see in the news where some celebrity or media figure has tweeted or posted on Facebook some outrageous statement about people they don't like - and usually directed against Trump supporters - neither Twitter nor Facebook does anything about them.  

The double standards are glaringly obvious.  

But it's also amazing how Facebook can seemingly take over your life if you're not paying attention to how much time you spend on it.  What would the progressives do without conservatives to bash on that platform?  As it stands I don't even go into debate groups anymore, save one, very small group (:and no, it's not an echo chamber) that has diverse views but the people remain civil. Many of them have been banned from facebook and are using alternate accounts, their main accounts disabled forever.  

And on that thought, I am in trucking groups where people talk some serious s***, I come nowhere even remotely close to the things these people say that don't get banned.  I'm mostly in those groups to dispel the constant misinformation that many truckers dish out all the time. Seasoned, veteran drivers that believe things that are not true, at all.  Newbies looking for info, I like to try and help them out.  many will get on there and bash them, but I take a stand against the trolls and I give real life, useful information to people that are just starting out in the industry and really are just clawing their way through the menagerie of all the things they need to learn.

I wouldn't even like attempting to start out as a newbie, greenhorn in this industry.  It's so overloaded with endless regulations and trucking companies looking over your shoulder, watching everything you're doing and troopers pulling you over all the time and some of them giving you a hard time even when you're being respectful to them - it's no wonder more people quit than stay in the industry within their first year.  I guarantee you that if I get any kind of ticket out of this, even if it were reduced to not having a seat belt on in my personal vehicle, my company is going to try to get all over my case about it.  And I'm going to shrug my shoulders, ask them about their perfection and if they have ever gotten a ticket and tell them to do what they must.  If that's part ways, it's part ways.  I'm not going to be shamed or humiliated because I did one single thing in the last 7-1/2 years that I have lived in Texas, in my OWN vehicle.  

I'm not going to apologize, I'm just going to say I'm human, I make mistakes. Show me a single driver here that hasn't had some kind of ticket in the last 7-1/2 years and I'll buy them dinner.  It's really outrageous that they hold us to such high standards - these companies and the states - but they don't hold themselves to the same standards.  You literally have to be a perfect little driving angel.  If you get enough tickets, they will suspend your CDL.  2 15 over tickets I believe is a year suspension.  I don't have 2 of those, but saying if I got another one I'd be being dragged before some counsel and being told I can't drive anymore.  

Just one more reason I desperately want out of trucking - before that happens and they take my livelihood away.  I'm not going to sit here and proclaim that I'll never get another ticket again....that would be stupid to say.  But I can tell ya, if I were just driving to my property every day and taking care of business there? The odds of getting tickets would go down greatly since it's only a little over 4 miles away, versus the 32 miles to work and the endless driving in a truck all over the place.  I can just be a hometown boy, working my own thing, minding my own business, helping others as much as I can and not having a corporation breathing down my neck along with a state that is insane along with all the other states and the feds in doling out punishments to drivers.  You wonder why they say there is a driver shortage? 72,000 of them have been disqualified for failing a drug test.  A vast majority of it marijuana - which can linger in your system for 30 days. Then you have drivers being disqualified for ridiculous reasons. And you have drivers that are saying screw this, I've had enough and hanging up their keys.

It's going to get far worse.  Only when automation takes over will it ever get better.

That's my rant for the day, I'm offa here, get my mind into a neutral mode and head over to the court house.

G'day.