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

• @coder32768 Grow these http://tinyurl.com/dzg7x8 Star Apple, Miracle Fruit. Sorry, they’re not awful. in reply to coder32768 #
• RT @veevi: Microblogging is losing its charm; the interrupt level is a drain on my productivity. It’s like a constant game of mental #
• RT @veevi: whack-a-mole. #
• @creativemuffin would that be useful to the greater facebook community? Don’t facebookers have rss feeds and the ability to view web pages? in reply to creativemuffin #
• @creativemuffin I just don’t want any more virtual facebook sushi. It left a bad tas… It was dumb. in reply to creativemuffin #
• @coreyfro not soft serial, I’m using the arduino lcddisplay.h library to talk directly to hd44780 with 4-bit interface in reply to coreyfro #
• @coder32768 charlotte says to me, “you know what would be cool is if he quit twittering and started blogging again.” in reply to coder32768 #
• Scottevest #

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 got my HD44780 LCD screen working without the use of the Phanderson serial board. :-)

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.

I had this terribly annoying Google Adwords problem with my old WordPress Theme. When displaying a Google Ad in Internet Explorer 7 (not, Chrome, not Firefix, just IE), the font color of the majority of text would change to white. If I resized the screen so that the lower ad couldn’t be seen, the font color would change back to black correctly. But… gah!

I stared at the source code for a while and couldn’t figure out what the frig… so I borrowed another theme and adapted it to Leeness. It’s called Fluid Blue  by srinig. I’ve still got a tiny bit of cleanup to fully adopt the theme but it’ll be done shortly.  

Enjoy.

I should say “Installing WordPress 2.7.1”. It’s all going smoothly but I’ve got so many plugins to nudge.

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.

My Tweeting friends might have noticed that I installed Twitter Tools. It allows my blog posts to be cross-posted to Twitter. And my tweets get cross-posted onto my blog weekly. I think that satisfies my desire to keep everything centrally located on the blog while still allowing for the quick silliness of Twitter.