I paid four parking tickets today. I had a stack of them sitting around for the last few weeks and I finally got to my computer and my stamps and pens to fill them out and send them in before their costs multiplied.

Four parking tickets from four different places. Los Angeles, where I parked at an angle between a dumpster and a curb in a stinky back alley to save $20 in costly conference center parking (ticket: $35). Stanford University, where I missed my meter by two minutes but said nice things to the traffic control officer anyhow.

The surprise? Only Berkeley allowed me to pay my ticket over the web. That was painless and intelligent. Santa Clara county, seat of the microchip technology revolution, offers only mail-in payment. San Francisco, formerly a web maven haven, allows payment by credit card, but only by phone, and only with a $2.75 convenience fee. Humph.