Lee.org

Emails have been flying about HR 875. Here’s my 2 cents, as sent to Laurie and friends
 

I did some homework on this and it looks like the bill creates more government bureaucracy but doesn’t do anything against organic farmers persay. It increases the amount of record keeping required of a food producing organization, which is more of a bother for small farmers and food sellers than large ones.  

The bill has nothing to do with Monsanto. People want “complete safety” with regard to their food. One way of getting that is (ostensibly) to produce all food in a well run factory. I differ, but that’s where the bill is coming from.

Factcheck.org is a reputable site to check

Popehat says, “it’ll be bad for all small producers”

Here’s the whole bill  (I’ve only read parts of it)

I’m generally opposed to it because it increases paperwork requirements and is a burden on small business. At the same time, it’s useful because if you have a big factory farm that feeds tens of millions of people, it probably should be required that you know where that big pile of food is coming from and going to in case you find a problem with the food. One big mistake might bankrupt the company but more importantly it might kill thousands of people. Such disasters are very rare indeed so I’m skeptical that additional controls will help.

Personally, I’m not going to write to my congresspersons about this. But I encourage you to do what your heart calls for!

Lee
 

 
The letter sent to me:

Continue reading ‘HR 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009’ »

I applied for a job yesterday on Craigslist. Here’s how it went

Craigslist listing

Delivery Man Needed !!!

Reply to: job-xzbze-1111112608@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-04-07, 7:56AM PDT

15 openings for Immediate Resume .

Must have valid drivers license and clean driving record
Must be friendly

Compensation: Good Pay +Benefits
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Compensation: Full Paid Job
Telecommuting is ok.
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID: 1111112608

I replied and then I got this email today:

Dear Applicant,

Thanks for your email and enquiry about this Job. I have gone through your résumé and I must say I am impressed. However, the position of Delivery Man has been filled up by an earlier applicant. Nonetheless, the position of Personal Assistant is still vacant and from what I read in your résumé, you are the right person for the job.

I am Linda Jones, I am a Credit/Collection Agent and I have worked with various financial institutions. I work presently with some construction and manufacturing companies.

I want to employ you urgently as my Personal Assistant to handle certain aspects of my job till I return from a business trip to Spain. You do not need any fund collection or accounting experience to execute this job.

BELOW IS THE DUTY YOU HAVE TO TAKE UP UNTIL MY RETURN:

1. Make some minor calls and sometime attend some short meetings.
2. Receive funds from my clients either by Bank Transfer, Cashier Check, Business Check, E-Check,Money Orders and Western Union.
3. Disburse fund to my numerous clients either by Bank Transfer Cashier Check, Business Check, Money Orders and Western Union.

REMENURATION
You will be entitled to a basic salary of $1,300.00 weekly and a benefit of 10% on every fund collected and disbursed.

Get back to me with the following information if you are interested in this position:

1. Full name
2. Full mailing address
3. Contact phone number
4. Age
5. Sex
6. Scanned copy of your valid driver’s license

Otherwise, I must thank you for your time and my sincere apology if I wasted it in anyway.

With Regards,
Linda Jones.

Yeah, I’ll get right on that Linda.
If you can’t see it, the letter shows several warning signs of a scam.
I sent a letter back to her asking for more info about the company and a telephone interview but I’m sure I’ll never hear from this scammer again.

Warning signs include:

• non-company email address
• job duties that look a lot like money laundering
• salary discussion too early
• requiring personal information up front
• the whole Spain thing
• several small language cues
• more, difficult to name issues

I have to commend these scammers for setting a good trap for a mark like me.

• A craigslist job listing costs $75 to place so there is less spam in that channel
• The seemingly personal letter has sway
• “Sorry, that job is filled but here’s another” creates interest

Hey, I’ve got a software localization issue… ie translating software into other languages. If you’re a friend of mine and you have any experience with such things, could you give me a buzz. Thanks!

I just won an ebay auction for 3 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwe notes. That’s 100,000,000,000,000.00 dollars.

If those were US dollars, I’d be able to buy every human on the planet a used 2006 Chrysler Sebring Convertible in excellent condition with the sporty 2.7 liter V-6, A/C and alloy wheels. I’d have enough left over to chip in to cover the insurance, gas, and basic maintenance of those 6.7 billion vehicles for 3 years.

But I’m just going to buy a mansion and a yacht.

On Thursday the mouse….

• worked on electronics all day, filling the kitchen–>dining room table with electronics. And I didn’t clean it up!
• Made scalloped Russett potatoes in porcini and (macaroni and cheese) cheese sauce. And I (dare I say) boiled them! And they were fantastic
• Cleaned up the kitchen and it stayed clean. I used 1 fork, 1 spoon, 1 plate, 1 bowl like a true bachelor. And they got cleaned when I finished.
• I ate 1/2 of lunch and 1/2 of dinner standing up in the kitchen :-)
• Went to bed after 3, when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Got up at 9:30 the next day
• Scheduled to go out to dinner on Friday and to a rockin NIMBY party on Saturday
• Played the music I wanted as long as I wanted all night
• Put together a RBBB Arduino and Serial Display LCD board

• Went to the Box Shop to pick up some things
• Had lunch with Kurt to tell him about SWARM’s experience at Coachella (Papalote on him!)
• Went back to the Box Shop to pick up some things (oops!)
• Finally installed electric outlet in garage so I can charge my car battery. I hadn’t run the car in a week and I couldn’t start it because the battery was low. :-((. So, after considering it for more than a year, I installed an electric outlet so I could use this fancy desulphating battery charger (BatteryMINDer BM12248)  that SWARM owns.
• Bed time: 5:30am :-)

Saturday…

     

• Went to NIMBY 5 Year Anniversary Party (note in the photo the metal tracked robot trouncing over the heap of wooden pallets, with large multi-colored flames dripping a flammable liquid onto the fire-ball and onto the pile of tinder. SQEEEEEE!) See the Life Size Mousetrap drop a safe on a cake (3mb AVI file)
• Tried to make a case for the T. Pen with plastic. Failed (so far)
• Bed time: 5:30am :-)

 

And then Charlotte came back.

More on the “Gah!”…

So a friend of mine twot an interesting question. Is there any way I can read the read the responses he received? I’m pretty sure the answer is “No, because Twitter is stupid. He should be using a better, more popular social networking site like maybe Xanga, Imeem, Skyrock, Wasabi, or Viadeco”

Here is the interesting question he posted, “With Hex or Grey Code optical encoders, can varying resistors be assigned to the pins to allow position to be read as an analog value?”

Several of my friends apparently use, in addition to blogging, Twitter AND Facebook to tell their friends about… I don’t know… whatever people can tell their friends in a tiny window.

WHY?

I can imagine READING many sources both because some of your friends might like one format and other friends like the other but… Gah!

Advice to my friends: You’re missing out! If you’re going to sign up for 2, you might as well sign up for all of the social networking sites, just to make sure.

I’ve never owned a soldering iron with such a complete instruction manual

(local copy of WES51 Operating Instructions)

You’ll be there, won’t you?

Come celebrate NIMBY’s 5 Year Anniversary in our new 64,000 square foot location.
Who can believe we have been doing it wrong for 5 years running?

March 28th
9pm
$10 ‘donation’ to enter

The line-up:
Life Size Mouse Trap
Esmerelda Strange
Rose Harden
Wink and Yoni
Fatwater
Live art by Jordan Fillers
Art by the Museum of Unnatural Selection Brian Kenny Fresno The Therm robots Glen Meadmore Disgusting Spectacle Art by Orion Fredricks DJ Big Daddy DJ Zeljko Matt Wirth’s Popcorn Booth Art by Janine Miller …….and more

8410 Amelia Sreet, E. Oakland
info and directions can be found:
www.nimbyspace.org

Why does windows do this? This is dumb. I want to view folders in the left window and files in the right. A .zip file is a FILE for a reason. I don’t want to see the compressed files inside it unless… unless I want to see them.

Here’s how to disable this “feature” in Windows.  

Go to a command prompt and type:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

You can undo this with the following command
 

regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

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