Despite half a day spent in the bowels of bureaucracy, waiting my turn at the Department of Public Safety to turn in my Colorado driver's license (which expires tomorrow), I still managed to get quite a bit of translation done, which is always a good thing.
While I waited, I tried to grok the system the DPS has in place for processing people. It starts simply enough, with a person near the door who asks what your business is, asks some preliminary questions (e.g., "Do you have your birth certificate?") and then hands you a slip of paper with a number. That's when things get interesting.
The numbers fall into various categories, very likely distinguished by the first digit. Mine was 302. The numbers on the wall-mounted information screen as I sat down to wait were 221, 222, 019, and 018. From time to time, a 9xx number would come up on the screen, and the 2xx and 0xx numbers incremented by one. At around the time 239 went up on the screen, I looked around the waiting room and quickly concluded that even if everyone remaining in the room had a 2xx number, there was no way that 302 was a continuation of the 2xx series.
Then my number was posted, and a little time later, I walked out with a temporary Texas driver's license. To tell the truth, my interest in the DPS queuing algorithm has all but disappeared, but deep down, the question "How do they do that?" will probably remain.
Gotta go get ready for t'ai chi...
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