The name of the game is “Who can stress Doyce out more in one evening.”

• Averdata’s Entry: “You’re still using too much bandwidth, buh-bye.”
  
• Verisign’s Entry: “You can’t update your DNS information, because you didn’t put in the correct password, because we haven’t mailed it to you yet. If you want to make changes to your account, here’s a form, fax it to us at 10:30 pm, then wait an hour, call us back, and MAYBE we can give you the password you tell us to, at which point, THEN you can update the DNS stuff. (Better hurry, though, because if you take too long, the email address we use to confirm your changes won’t work, because Averdata’s going to shut you down.)”
  
• Douglas County Medical Offices Entry: “We know you can’t put The Boy on your medical insurance because he’s not “really” yours, so you’ve been using independant insurance for the last 2 years, and it’s been fine for everyone else, but when we double-checked, we see that he wasn’t ever a resident of North Dakota, so we cancelled the insurance approval. Oh, he’s from SOUTH Dakota? What’s the difference? Anyway, you straighten it out and call us.”
  
• Douglas County Public School’s Entry: “The Power of Attorney for The Boy that you’ve had and used with every other authority in the State of Colorado isn’t good enough for us — here are 10 more forms to fill out, half for you, half for his mother — what do you mean you can’t get the father’s signature? Send along proof of his lack of custody, please. Oh, and get a notary public to sign all your forms and the mother’s forms while you’re signing it. Oh, and there’s an unspecified, unnamed deadline you have to get all of this done by. Have fun.”

Give points to Averdata for simplicity, give points to Verisign for complexity, but the winner HAS to be Douglas County, just for generally being priggish, elitist, bastards.

I can’t even put into words out frustrating it is to continually have to proove and proove again that WE ARE THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO WARD THIS KID. As soon as we make it though one set of hoops, some new fuck-o comes along and decides we haven’t filled out enough paperwork yet.

Imagine: you are a parent and the state somehow decides that you have to get your distant, estranged sibling to sign off on all major decisions regarding your child. That’s what it’s like.