No CA or CE?

The past few days I've noticed a plethora of C's emerging in the area. In fact I just saw a new one, CG a couple of days ago. Still no CA or CE, which got me thinking, maybe they are leaving out the vowels for the C's. Maybe that's what the Truck plates will use after they run out of A's.

Unfortunately, the next vowel used in license plates will be U (I and O are not used for the obvious reasons), so it will be a little while before CU could be around. Considering how long it's been since CA should have been around, and I've seen so many CB, CC, CD, CF, and now a CG, it is plausible they've skipped the vowels. Only time will tell.

None of this explains the lack of an AU. I know I have seen AA and AE, but they were out before I started keeping track. Which is why they are not on the list. There are less A's so there is a good chance I just haven't seen one yet. Once I start seeing more AV's and AW's then I'll start some AU conspiracy theories.

Added Tracker

I added a tracker in the right column today. It's just a simple html table, but I have to admit I never bothered to wrap my head around those until today. I found a real-time HTML editor that was useful in figuring it out; bookmarked that one for later too. Of course the W3C was the key to figuring out the syntax to make a table.

I know it's not pretty, but it is an important part of the site. Later I may change it up to be sortable. I hear there is a little javascript I can make that happen with.

Courtesy of Texas

I also added some rather lame art blatantly ripped it off this image. Some day I will do my best to make it pretty. I think it would be cool to incorporate the red squiggly on the upper right somewhere on the site too (what is that anyway?).

While coming up with the background image for the title I came up with a new title for the blog. It is now cleverly called "The Lone Star Plate Hunt".

After making the sad image with Microsoft Paint, I almost changed it to "Hunt the Lone Star Plate," but that would require a lot more effort. My MS Paint skills just aren't what they used to be.

What Counts?

The new Texas plates come in two variations, both with similar patterns. It took me some time to figure it out, but plates marked 'Truck' start with an 'A'. All other plates, I've decided to call them regular or car plates, started with a 'B'. Both types have a total of seven characters divided up into a 3-4 pattern. 

For example, truck plates are all an AB1-2345 pattern. Two letters and a number in the first part, then four numbers in the second part. They increase incrementally. The first plates were AA, then AB. Currently the highest I've seen is AV.

Car plates are very similar except they started with B. An example would be BA1-A234. Notice the letter in the second part of the plate number. Assuming 10 different numbers can be used (0-9) and 23 letters used from the alphabet, this gives cars significantly more plates.

For every BAx-xxxx there would be a total of 230,000 plates (10x23x10x10x10). On the truck plate side, for every AAx-xxxx it would be merely 100,000 plates (10x10x10x10x10). From my observations there are a lot more car plates than truck plates in Texas (amazing I know-but I'll get back to this in a later post).

It is the second letter of either plate that is most significant (to me anyway). So if the last truck plate I saw was AS, that means now I keep an eye out for anything higher. Presumably AT would come next, but this is not always true. Some letters are not used (another post topic). Sometimes you just see them out of order (yet another future post topic).

Now that all those details are out of the way, what counts? Like I said in the first post, I only count plates I've personally seen. This does not mean I discount when other people tell me about anything new. My girlfriend told me she saw an AS; even sent me a photo of it from her cell phone. Even though I had not seen it yet myself (don't count photo's either), her sighting confirmed the existence of AS.

Finally, we've established the particulars to how this plate hunting works. So where are we today? I plan to post a column on the side that shows the current plates spotted and the dates they were seen. But for now I'll update within this post.

Highest Car Plate

CF - October 3

Highest Truck Plate

AV - September 25

Blogging the Mundane

Admittedly, blogging about license plates is a boring idea.

Texas started issuing new license plates on November 1, 2009. I could not help but notice a pattern in the new plate numbers. I sincerely tried to ignore this patter, but the geek inside me would not let it simply be there. I threw a small spiral notepad and a pencil in my truck. Every time I saw a new set of numbers I wrote down the date and any other circumstances I felt were pertinent at the time.

Here I plan to share my plate tracking experience. It is sure to be the epitome of mundane. Regardless, I will persevere for a couple of personal reasons. First, it gives me a steady topic to practice writing. Like many others I've started several neglected blogs. Secondly, I find irrelevant data interesting in some context. The dates found in this blog are about as irrelevant as they can be because they are the dates I saw the plate. Not the date they were issued. Not the dates they stopped issuing. Simply the dates I saw them "in the wild". Some I see in an order that makes since. Others I missed until well after their order. I will explain the spotting and recording of plates in more detail in another post (probably the next post).