You’ve been busted. You just got a traffic ticket. Now you have to attend traffic school if you don’t want that citation to send your insurance rates into the outer strata.

Do you really want to give up your Saturday to spend all day in a musty hotel conference room attending traffic school with other hapless traffic offenders?

Most people would rather experience a root canal sans anesthesia.

I feel your pain. Although it has been quite a few years, I too have some pretty unpleasant memories of my traffic school experiences. I remember resentment building up in me for days on end before I had to go, whining all the way there the day of the class, and sitting in a cramped kiddy desk or a smelly hotel meeting room feeling bitter and bored as some retired police officer droned on for hours about things that I felt I already knew. While traffic school is supposed to be a refresher course on driving and traffic law – those experiences sure as heck felt punitive to me.

When I retired from teaching high school and college to spend more time with my young sons, I decided I needed something to put some cash in my pocket and I answered an ad to teach traffic school on the weekends.

After I was hired, I was handed a 5-inch-thick manual with the DMV-approved curriculum in it. I was told to “find a way” to fill 400 minutes and to “crack some jokes” if I knew any – since this was a “comedy” school. At that moment, it became eminently clear to me why most traffic school experiences were so poor.

Teaching any subject for eight hours straight requires someone who really knows how to keep the interest of students by involving them in the learning process, varying the tempo and the impact of what is being taught, and understanding the importance of entertaining students to keep their attention.

While there are some traffic school teachers who are naturally gifted instructors and who work to create a class that embodies these qualities, most are simply people who have been handed a big book and told to find a way to teach what is between the covers for 400 minutes.

That explains why the online option has become a more desirable way to dull the pain of the traffic school experience.

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SPAM is email that you didn’t ask for. They usually are looking to sell you something. Although SPAM is usually just plain aggravating, it can include malware like viruses or can redirect you to phishing sites in an attempt to obtain your personal information. You can’t stop all spam, but you can reduce it.

Software geared at fighting viruses will provide a safeguard from spam with ill intent. Make sure that your computer has antivirus software installed. (Some antivirus software includes a spam filter that protects your computer.) Although you will probably realize that you should not open an email with an unknown attachment, because viruses can also be contained in pictures or Word documents. Don’t give your email address to people that are untrustworthy. If you have to give your email address to get something from a website, it is best to set up an email address just for the purpose of receiving junk. Hotmail or Gmail web mail is very good for this. Don’t reply to any email unless you have asked for that email. Most spam contains information, often at the bottom of the message, with directions on how to be removed from their mailing list. Ignore the temptation to respond to this because it alerts the spammer that your email address is indeed live, thus paving the way for future attacks. For just this reason, don’t send your address to opt-out or removal lists. Check out any email by first looking at the subject line prior to opening the message. If you are sent email messages requesting funds, don’t send it along to anyone. Chances are that it is a scam and an effective method of gaining email addresses used by spammers. A lot of emails warning about viruses are hoaxes too. Prior to letting your friends know about them, you ought to investigate virus alerts so you won’t pass the scam along to them. When you forward an email to a group of people, use the BCC field; this will hide their address from the others. Request that your friends deliver emails to you in this manner also. Keep your name off mailing lists, chat rooms, and newsletters by having an ‘expendable’ email address (Just like number 2, above). If your website gives your email address, see if your developer can encode it to prevent spammer’s web crawlers from being able to decipher it. “Enkoder” is an excellent free encryption program. Search for Enkoder on Google to find it. You may make a complaint to the spammer’s ISP or web hosting service via an email message to their administrator or potmaster. The majority of servers feature an email address provided in the WHOIS part of the IP address. You can look in the email’s header, locate the origin of the IP address, and then start a WHOIS lookup. There should be an abuse email address. There is a no-cost lookup service at http://whois.domaintools.com online.