Open letter to the Illinois Department of Transportation (2005/05/08)
Illinois Department of Transportation
2300 S. Dirksen Pkwy.
Springfield, IL 62764
Measure once, cut once, paint it over. (2005/05/06)
My house has been home to a variety of do-it-yourself people. There’s a light in the basement which can be disabled by unscrewing either of two fuses. We don’t know exactly why. The blinds on one of the windows upstairs are spray-painted – strings and all. The house is full of patchwork corrections on top of originally ill-considered things. We’ve found grounded outlets where the ground wire just ran a couple of inches into a pipe to run into… Well, nothing. The lamp over the upstairs kitchen sink has a pair of wires (of the same color!) coming out of the wall to it, and then has a ground wire running around inside it, not connected to anything.
[read more...]Judgment! (2005/05/05)
Most of my junk fax cases have settled. Once, we actually got summary judgment on liability (but not on damages) before settling. But we have a new example. Complex Capital Mortgage bounced a settlement check. (With the amount of money involved, I think this is technically even a criminal act.) We went to court to ask for enforcement, and… Well, it was funny. To make a long story short, CCM was ordered to pay up within a week, or at least to make sure their bank account could provide the money.
[read more...]Time to migrate away from Sprint (2005/05/02)
Well, Sprint’s finally managed to get me to rethink keeping my four cell phone plans (I share minutes with friends and family) with them; not only did they not shift their “insurance” thing to the expensive phone when I asked them to, not only will they not insure it for any reason now… they won’t even credit my account for the charges for the “insurance” on a really cheap phone I didn’t need insured at all.
[read more...]... and two charges of "impersonating a legitimate business" (2005/05/02)
Lots of carpet cleaners use prerecorded calls. Well, at least one does; they might just be very busy. Every so often my phone rings, bearing only a prerecorded message from some guy named Mike, who wants me to know about carpet-cleaning specials. Last two times, he’s told me that “Electronic Coupon Code B1” qualifies me for special pricing. Caller ID is blocked. The only way to talk to them is leave a message for a callback.
[read more...]Apple's "sales event" - WTF? (2005/04/29)
So, MacOS X 10.4 is out. Sort of. Apple has been playing up for ages that the release would be Friday, April 29th.
[read more...]Gotcha! (2005/04/04)
A journalist commented on my third AltiVec article, saying that, for instance:
[read more...]Sore Loser II (2005/03/29)
Okay, this is funny.
[read more...]Marriage Ministry: The drinking game. (2005/03/22)
There’s a forum at Christian Forums called “Marriage Ministry”. The advice given ranges from brilliant analysis of the needs and beliefs of those involved, to painfully inappropriate pat answers, to platitudes that may or may not even suggest a potential relevance to a poster’s question.
[read more...]Why DeviantART is a joke. (2005/03/11)
deviantART admins demand people stop talking about art theft – note that the page has several screens worth of solid evidence of willful art theft, which is apparently too abstract for the dA admins to comprehend.
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