As a rideshare driver living in Texas and a frequenter of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, it made sense for me to get a TxTag, which is Texas’ version of the little transmitter you stick on your windshield to make your contributions to a toll road’s governing regime less painful (insider tip: it also works on the Kansas and Oklahoma turnpikes, but I do not believe it works with any other states yet). It makes the tolls a little cheaper. It makes paying tolls less of a hassle once you’ve got it (Texas is one of those states that mails you a bill for all your tolls, rather than letting you pay cash at a tollbooth). It gets me brownie points with the state government, which is also in charge of the University of Texas, which employs the people who decide whether or not to stop me from bringing nine signs at a time into Texas Longhorn basketball games.
Anyway, I got the TxTag a few weeks ago.
And there is a problem.
The transmitter itself works fine. And the system is functional. But multiple times when I’ve tried to log in on the website, I’ve been stopped and told I’m entering the incorrect password. It keeps happening. Once I reset the password and re-enter what I think was the old one, I can then log in with what I’m pretty sure has been my password the whole time. But in all instances but one, I can’t just log in right away.
There are two possibilities with this, and one certainty.
The possibilities are that I’m unable to type my password consistently and/or have been failing the security test and not realizing it, or that there’s an issue with the TxTag website. My guess is that it’s the latter, but I’m not too proud to say it can’t be the former. Either way, because my suspicion is that it’s the latter, the certainty is that when this inevitably happens at a time when I’m trying to use the site in a hurry and/or when I’m already stressed, I am going to blow a gasket, unleashing a furious torrent of energy usually reserved for times when I’m out of milk and have forgotten to get more. Nobody will hear this but me and the neighbors, and it will pass, but it’s coming.
It’s a time bomb, and it’s ticking, and it’s between me and either myself or the Texas Department of Transportation.
But I wanted you all to know.
