For all those of you who don’t know yet, we just moved last weekend. We’ll send out a mass E-Mail at some point, but we haven’t had the chance to sit down and figure out who should get it yet.
New contact information is available on the contact page.
I got an unsolicited letter today from someone who wants me to hire him as a salesperson (no resume was included). He did enough research on my company to know that I’m local, and to get my address, but that’s apparently it. He has “sold to Owners, CTO’s, CIO’s, Communications Managers, IT Managers, Office Managers, and General Managers.” Since I sell to missionaries, he is doing a pretty good job of eliminating himself right in paragraph two (paragraph one demonstrated that he believes in neither hyphenation nor commas).
My favorite, though, is the following sentence: “I am computer literate and very proficient with many programs especially Word, Excell and ACT.”
I have two links for anyone who wants me to hire them:
(And yes, there are two positions that I want to hire people into. I’m not advertising them very much, but if you can figure them out and if you fit the (rather stringent) criteria, I’ll most likely hire you.)
A while ago, I noted that a credit card company had gotten more creative in trying to switch people to paperless statements, by saying that it was a good way to hide Christmas gift purchases from your spouse.
Today, I just received one that’s even better, from a different company:
Subject: Switch to Paperless Statements & name-of-company will Plant a Tree
[…] Enroll in paperless statements and name-of-company will plant a tree on your behalf.
Trees play a major role in keeping our environment healthy. To put things in perspective, over a 50-year lifetime, one tree will generate $31,250 worth of oxygen, recycle $37,500 worth of water, and control $31,250 worth of soil erosion.
By switching to Paperless Statements, not only will you be conserving a vital natural resource, name-of-company will also plant a new tree on your behalf. […]
I’m moderately curious how they put a price on oxygen, but anyway, there was still no comment to be found about how it saves them money. Of all the vendors I get these letters and E-Mails from (and there are quite a few, and they tend to use monthly tactics), I have yet to find one who admits that that might be even part of their motivation.
One of my customers just sent out a mostly unsolicited recommendation for my service to a bunch of people (mostly = he let me know beforehand, so that I was able to do a couple of tweaks to make it easier for anyone who signs up as a result).
Unfortunately, he mis-spelled my web site address (and my name, but that happens all the time)… Fortunately, it occurred to me some time ago to register some possible mistake domains, so that has just become a worthwhile investment. Yay!
As seen in a code comment I just wrote:
Do some transformations before returning [some fields, including] initial-capsing names that are all-lowercase.
I was looking at flight prices, mostly out of curiosity, and decided to see what it would cost for me to fly home (always an interesting exercise, since I can usually find prices to practically anywhere in the world for less).
My home airport (Deer Lake, NL) didn’t come up as having any available flights, so I used Halifax, NS instead, with the idea that I’d just price out two flights. Starting from Manchester, NH, the minimum cost for a round-trip ticket to Halifax was $273 (plus any taxes, charges, fees, and whatever other nickel-and-diming techniques they can come up with) using Delta.
However, that would give me the pleasure of flying from Manchester to JFK in New York, to Boston, to Halifax. That beats even the itinerary that would have flown me from Manchester to Minneapolis by way of Atlanta a few years ago.
(For any non-locals who may not fully appreciate the absurdity of this itinerary, Manchester to Halifax is mostly due east, with a bit of north thrown in since it’s in Canada and most Americans wouldn’t put up with the idea of any part of Canada being south of any part of the US except Alaska. Manchester to JFK is 250 driving miles almost exactly south west. JFK to Boston is 220 miles almost exactly north east, meaning that, in two flights, I’ve gone a total distance of 54 miles, by air, over the course of six hours. It would be faster to go by bicycle.)
So, I decided to skip that and go directly from Boston, which should be cheaper, right?
Nope, Boston to Halifax is $327 (plus taxes, charges, etc., etc., etc.) via the exact same flight.
In other words, I get four free flights (two returns) and fifty dollars off my ticket if I want to go from Manchester… as long as I don’t mind those flights being used as a tour of northeast airports on either side of my trip home.
I wonder if I could get the first ticket, check my bags and get boarding passes at Manchester, take a shuttle to Boston, and board just the third flight…
Hmm, I should really start doing some printing so that the office warms up…
I haven’t needed to turn on the heat yet this year at the office, because the printing equipment puts out enough to keep me comfy (which, admittedly, is a lower temperature for me than most). On days when I spend most of the day programming, though, I’m pretty much the only heat producer in the office outside of a couple of computers, and my new office has quite a bit more volume to it, so it’s a little nippy.
Print first. Program later.
Resolution: Begin the year with 0 E-Mails in the Inbox.
