Here and There

That’s right — this here blog started at its present outpost on the internet four years ago today. As you can see, regular posting fell by the wayside sometime after last year’s presidential election (love that drunken iPhone post). Some day soon, I hope to offer an early assessment of Barack Obama’s presidency. But if you want to know what happened to my propensity for website maintenance, well, it’s very much alive. Well, some might say. I spend most of that energy helping to moderate Muni Diaries. Here and There daily posting has reverted, more or less, to Twitter. Find me there.

Well, well. Today came the news that Don Fisher, founder of the Gap, et al., has decided to scrap plans to build a world-class art museum in San Francisco’s Presidio to house his world-class art collection.

Without going into detail, and off the top of my head, the proposed museum now joins the likes of BART in Marin County, light-rail on Geary street, and, most recently, American Apparel in the Mission district.

Pat yourselves on the back, San Franciscans. Never will you be forced to progress or enter some modicum of normal, decent, civilized society. No, your streets can remain filthy, your homeless can remain outdoors, your mentally ill can go without treatment, and your non-native, eucalyptus-filled forests can remain “pristine.” Oh, and you can keep protesting whatever the hell  you feel like, all at once. Michael Jackson died? What better time to speak out against land mines in Afghanistan?

The city I live in and love is a fucking embarrassment.

On some of my bike rides to and from work recently, I’ve been thinking about how seemingly difficult it’s been for Barack Obama to enact parts of his agenda — health care, tax hike on the wealthy, ending corporate-tax loopholes, drawing down in Iraq, funding the closing of Guantánamo Bay, to name a few.

Then I thought back to how George W. Bush really did seem to just show up and start kicking ass, cutting off funding for overseas family-planning clinics who advocate abortion (which, to be fair, Obama has since restored), cutting taxes almost to the point of eliminating them, and (ahem) getting us mired in this whole Iraq mess in the first place.
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hi AT&T,

how r u? i’m home. same place u dropped those callz last week. tryin to txt my girl. on my iphone. can;t. awsum!

kthxbai

Again: BIG distinction here between “newspapers” and “news organizations.” But, as usual, The Daily Show nails it:

Oh, awesome. Did ya hear? The United States Postal Service will be raising the cost of first-class stamps starting Monday. The current cost? $0.42. The increase? Let me give you a magnifying glass: $0.02.

For a whopping grand total of $ANNOYING.

What is it with the U.S. Mint and the USPS keeping pennies on life support? Where’s the incentive in charging for them, not to mention doling them out in the form of change from stamp machines?

Memo to the Secretary of the Treasury and the Post Master General: This hard-working, tax-paying, minimal mail customer would gladly pay a healthily rounded $0.50 for a stamp. Hell, I use the mail so little, I’d be cool shelling out a dollar.

Yes, I would pay cash money to no longer have pennies in my life.

(Alternate post title: How HR screwed up my dental insurance)

Perhaps this post belongs on White Whine. I had a dentist appointment scheduled for the end of the month, and hadn’t yet received my new dental insurance information. My benefits kicked in May 1, you see. I had received medical and vision cards. Just no dental.

But as the appointment wasn’t until May 31, I figured I had plenty of time for the card to arrive at my house.

I asked a coworker yesterday whether she had got hers yet. She had. Something seemed fishy.

I spoke with HR today, and the rep read my address back to me, off by one digit. Awesome.

But this all reminded me: Why are we still filling out forms by hand? There are so many reasons why we shouldn’t be doing this, namely:

1. It increases the chances of error (see: this post)
2. It wastes paper
3. It wastes time
4. It creates at least twice as much effort as is necessary

If you’re an office, and you ask people to fill out a form that you will then enter into a computer, do us all a favor, please: Stop. Just set a computer terminal out where people can access it, and let us fill our own damn information in.

Okay, carry on …

They’ve been plaguing me for at least six months, maybe longer. They are calls from various numbers, various area codes (never local), and because I typically screen unknown numbers, up until yesterday, I had only heard the voicemail extent of their message.

The voicemails always began the same way. “The warranty on your automobile is about to expire.” Oh, you mean that warranty I don’t have, for that car I also don’t own? That one?

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Just got back from afternoon coffee at Peet’s in the Boudin building in Fisherman’s Wharf, and was surprised to find the District of Columbia quarter as part of my change. I hadn’t been paying attention since receiving Alaska’s coin. I was simply waiting for Hawaii, and refocusing on accumulating some presidential dollar coins.

Lo and behold, the DC quarter, emblazoned with Duke Ellington’s likeness. Awesome.

This is also the first coin I’ve seen with a 2009 vintage. It’s good to be alive.

A few weeks ago, I tried calling San Francisco’s invaluable 311 service from my iPhone while at work. I got an “unable to complete this call” message to the effect of, “We are unable to complete the call as dialed. Please hang up and try again.”

What? Annoying, but whatever. I borrowed a coworker’s phone and made the call (to complain about a Muni driver, no less).

Well, today, I needed to make a 10-digit, out-of-area-code call, also from work, and got nearly, the same message.

So I got on the horn with AT&T customer service. We ran through several diagnostics, then they transferred me to technical support (ironically, the transfer caused them to drop my call). Tech support ended up asking me to stop by an AT&T retail store to try switching out the SIM card.

I just did that, to no avail.

Then, I got home and tried calling both 311 and my 10-digit number, and guess what? Voilà!

I came across a bitch forum page on the AT&T website, so I know I’m not alone.

I’ve never heard of this problem happening with any other carrier. It really makes me hope this rumor is true.

Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (R) this weekend brought up, once again, the question dead issue of President Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Just a few fun figures to mull over while Shelby gets to the bottom of the real problems plaguing this nation:

• Alabama’s overall poverty rate is 16.6 percent, ranking it 10th nationwide
• The state’s child poverty rate is 23 percent, ranking it 9th in the nation
• Its senior poverty rate is 12.6 percent, ranking it 7th
• Alabama’s unemployment rate rose 3 percent, nearly doubling, to 6.7 from Dec. 2007 to Dec. 2008

Shelby is up for re-election next year. It’s never too early.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor

This poll applies to drivers and cyclists in San Francisco only, please.

Vote away:

But this is a good thing, I promise. My Twitter feed will clear up a lot of real estate on this here blog for when I really have something to say about something. A majority of “posts” over the years have more constituted micro-blogging than anything else. After much contemplation, I decided Twitter offered the perfect space in which to convey these little bit-size nuggets of awesome.

So follow me, please, into the random unknown. Or just check that nifty widget at the top left of the site.

Who knows what we’ll find …

A 15-year-old mom and 13-year-old dad. God love ‘em.

Goddam them and their fucking pennies! Why waste perfectly cool designs on a lousy $0.01 coin that everyone hates? Why not honor Lincoln properly by unveiling his image on a new $1 coin?