So, I’m sitting here minding my own business on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I hear a car pull up, and some pounding in the front yard. I look out the window, and it now appears I am a Measure Q supporter, because I’ve got a brand new Yes On Q sign in my yard. So I go ask the guy what’s up. He says, “you’re on the list for a sign”. I say, no, that’s a mistake, the only list I should be on is the do not call list. “Take it away!”, I say. ...
Today, I got a letter in the mail hand addressed to Lisa Long, who has her mail sent to my house while she’s in London. The return address is just down the street, which is confusing, since I figured Lisa would have introduced me to any family she had in the neighborhood. Then I notice on the back that it says, “Yes on Measure Q”. Aha! So it’s astroturf, right? The developer has his wife rent an apartment in the neighborhood, then outsources the hand-written address part to a sweatshop in Liberia, then they send them out, and voila: instant grassroots support. ...
So I hopped on my bike and rode down to Yes On Q headquarters. It is, not surprisingly, located in spacious offices owned by the same organization that wants to build the high rises. Sigh. Democracy at it’s finest. I talked to a nice guy there named Bill Ferguson. Here are the things we talked about: me: Get me off your freakin’ list! him: No problem. (He scribbles down my name and number.) him: Your phone number is public knowledge once you register to vote, and we’re allowed to call you. me: Yes, you are allowed to call me. ONCE. Then I’m allowed to ask to be on your do not call list. me: Your telemarketers are not respecting do not call lists, and treating callers unprofessionally when they ask to be removed him: I don’t know how the call centers feed that back that list to us. me: Please figure it out, because I will file a formal complaint against your organization if it happens again. me: This reflects very poorly on your organization, and makes me unsympathetic to your arguments. I’m likely to vote “no” now. So, a constructive conversation was had. I expect to keep getting calls, and I expect to have to learn how to file a formal complaint. Luckily, I’m currently unemployed (by choice, thank god) and so I have plenty of time to make Bill Ferguson’s life hell. ...
If you are searching the web for info about the Marina Shores development in Redwood City this might interest you: I’ve been getting a number of call and hang-up calls on my cell phone with “caller id unavailable”. This is usually an indication that you are in a predictive dialer system’s phone list, and they are having trouble matching the call they made outbound to you with an telemarketer on their end. I kept answering them hoping to finally get someone to talk to to get me on their do not call list. ...
This article in the Chronicle, describing confused visitors to the city of San Fransisco during a power outage, is just over the top. Its treatment of the suburbanites who subsidize San Francisco’s excesses is offensive, and I hope they get called on it. You know, we don’t need to come to Union Square to shop. We have malls in San Mateo and Santa Clara county too. Perhaps we only go to the City because we have some deep seated desire to be insulted by the city dwellers, to be reminded of how inferior our suburban lives are. Or maybe we come offering a few dollars of tax revenue that your city can use to get the bums off your streets, so that we can bring our relatives to your city next summer without being ashamed by it. ...
On the first day it was released, I installed iTunes for Windows. I figured something from Apple has a chance of dislodging WinAmp as my music player. They pay attention to important details, and except for the ongoing Quicktime debacle, make software most people seem to like. Using it to edit MP3 metadata has been a disappointment. Though other people claim it makes perfect sense to them, I can’t for the life of me understand how to make a playlist. Part of the problem is that I keep right clicking on stuff, and nothing useful happens. ...