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A few years ago I ordered a custom license plate 'NULL'. What should have been a 2-3 week process lasted 8 months, with the order being canceled multiple times, and at one point a blank plate being shipped to the county clerk's office.

More recently I've gotten out of a parking ticket in a certain municipality when a frustrated meter maid told me they saw my plates were valid, but the handheld device used to issue tickets would crash any time they tried to issue the ticket.

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When it backfires: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/16/10425167-mans-van...

These guys need the Maybe monad on their forms.

I have an LLC called "NULL VENTURES LLC". I often get mail that is addressed to:

  " VENTURES LLC"

I still laugh a little bit every time.

I just checked, NULL is not available in California, but this one is ("INVALID"): http://imgur.com/1KhRws2

But, I wonder how much more frequently you'd get pulled over with a plate like that.

the CA DMV lets you check for custom plates online: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/ipp2/initPers.do

I'm pretty sure "INVALID" lets you park in disabled person parking spots.

When I was working at British Airways a decade or so ago there was* a problem with a screen-scraping programme that terminated the crew printout whenever there was a passenger needing medical assistance on the flight manifest because the text "invalid" was assumed to be an error condition.

*Actually long enough ago I can no longer recall whether this was something that happened while I was there or just a tall tale that was doing the rounds in the department.

'NO PLATE' and 'NO TAGS' are taken but 'NO TAG5' is available if anyone wants to take their chances.

-edit 'MI55ING' is available too.

That is amazing. Not that I endorse criminal activity or anything, but I imagine the amount of power you now have to evade traffic violations, get away with jewel heists etc, must have made the wait well worth it

Null and various other strings are banned for use in license plates in many states. Think plates that might confuse humans (0/O and 1/l in words, NA, NONE, NO PLATE/TAG etc etc) and make it difficult to accurately read/write out a plate.

I've always wanted a license plate I1II0O0O just to mess with the automated license plate scanners and video tolls

Many states don't allow both "I" and "1" or "O" and "0" in their character set. NJ is one that doesn't.

However in NYC I saw a limo with the plates "1I11II1"

I always wanted to have an MMO character named "Bobby Tables".

I do have one who's the III, only it's spelled Ill for reasons of forced capitalization.

Wouldn't be a problem if they used the FE font. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift

https://xkcd.com/1105/

Lots of quotes of Bobby Tables, but here's the really relevant XKDC :)

https://xkcd.com/1105/

Edit: as someone else jumped to mention as well. Howdy there.

Best life hack.

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