I was recently browsing www.myplates.com and I’ll say it’s actually quite fun to see what plates people have randomly bought. I found it easy to spend 15 or so minutes typing in all sorts of fun and silly things into the search just to see what would come up.

Here’s what I found.

I started off just looking for simple things. Such as SQL and it was taken.

Next I thought, why not some sort of profession like SQL DBA… taken.

Next I searched for the real fan boy plates… All taken. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting I’m not a full force fan boy myself. I’d totally rock any of these but they were taken.

Why not Search for something that no one else would possibly want on their car? — — — Taken… I can honestly tell you I did not see that coming.

So what wasn’t taken?

My Twitter handle was available and that doesn’t surprise me. Why would it be taken?

The last two are available and are my favorites

After all the fun of searching, I couldn’t help but think about how responsive the website is and wonder what technology is behind it. I know the state uses SQL Server and a wide variety of other database platforms.

Surely this can’t be that large of a database, right? Alpha up to 7 characters and only store what’s actually used. Then I wondered how many vehicles are registered in Texas. Even then the database would only have to store personal plates.

The world may never know… 🙂