Speeding Tickets and Rats

Two months ago I got two speeding tickets on Vandenberg Air Force Base while driving home from work.  I got one ticket for driving 50 in a 35mph zone and then one for driving 62 in a 50 mph zone.  When this happened I was upset because where I turned onto the road the 50 mph speed limit sign was only 1/8 mile away, and so I didn't know I was in a 35 mph zone, and for the fact that I was given two tickets.  Because of these two reasons I thought I might have a case to get at least the 50 in the 35 ticket overturned.  Because I was on the Airforce base the tickets were federal tickets, which are handled a little differently than normal tickets.  It was a little unnerving when I got my court date in the mail and it declared United States of America v. Jeffrey A. Henry.

So my court date was today.  Luckily it worked out that I was back in California for work, and that we weren't doing anything critical this morning so I could have the time off.  I was nervous driving down to Santa Barbara to the court house, and because I didn't want to be late, I ended up an hour early!  Then when I got inside I found out that today was just arraignments and that I couldn't fight my tickets today.  If I wanted to do that I had to come back in a month!  (This is one way I think the federal tickets are handled differently than a state ticket.)  But the U.S. Attorneys representative then talked to those of us that were there for minor traffic violations.  She indicated that we could do traffic school and we wouldn't need to pay any other fines and the tickets won't go on our record.  I immediately decided that I would do that.  But when my name was called there was a little hitch because traffic school can only erase one ticket.  The attorneys conferred briefly and then declared that it was my lucky day and they were dismissing one of the tickets.  So I walked away with only needing to do traffic school in the next 90 days and no tickets on my record.  I can do an online traffic school that will only cost $20-$30 dollars, so I am plenty happy with the outcome! 

I am actually glad I went to court and not just because I got off easy, but because it was interesting to see how the process works.  I kinda wish I would have stayed a little while and watched the arraignments of more serious offences because it would have been interesting to see.  But in the end I just happy to get off easy and get out of there!

Like I said above I am in California for work.  I came out at the beginning of last week to do some testing after we had to deconfigure part of the rocket for some connector issues that came up on other programs.  Things were going good until last Thursday when we went down to check to make sure everything was ready for us to start testing and we found a rat's nest in the ground support equipment (GSE).  The GSE is our computers and other electrical equipment that lets us test and control the rocket up until launch.  The rat had caused quite a bit of damage as it had built its nest right in the middle of one of our racks.  When we started to clean it up we then discovered that the rat was still there!  We chased it away and the people that run the launch site promised to seal up the building and put out traps.  Thursday thru Saturday we cleaned up the mess (not very fun part) and got things put back together .  Then on Monday we went back out to start our testing, only to find the rat back in the same place, but this time it had chewed on a bunch of wires.  So we had to do everything over again, but this time it is taking us all week because of the new damage.  The company that runs the launch site finally called an exterminator, and it looks like we will be rat free when we get back to testing next week!