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mistakes will be limited to such things
Tuesday, June 12 2001
I got a pink-bordered "final notice" with my electric bill today. This was not, mind you, because of any failure or negligence on my part. Instead, it seems that the first bill (and perhaps other bills that precede the final notice) had evidently been misdelivered by the idiots who are supposed to deliver snail mail in West LA. I'm still holding out hope that the dotcom downturn will eventually flood civil service with competent mail clerks. At that point the losers presently working in the mail industry will be displaced downward economically, where their mistakes will be limited to such things as giving me paper when I specifically asked for plastic.
While I was bitching about the mail service and writing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power a $78 check, John was telling me I should just be happy I have an address. He'd spent an hour at noontime trying to help a huge African American gentleman find a job as a bouncer. But since the guy is homeless and has no address, he doesn't stand a chance. Apparently he spends his nights riding buses and his days sleeping on the beach, where he likes to take off his shoes and "pretend I'm a millionaire for a couple hours."
Another thing to be thankful for is that, while living in California during the present energy crisis, I happen to live in Los Angeles and not some other city. Because of the bullheaded decision of a 19th century Hispanic mayor, Los Angeles has its own independent water and electricity system, and it negotiates its power and water contracts separately from the rest of the state. Consequently, while rolling blackouts and huge electric bills plague Santa Monica neighborhoods only four blocks away, the power in my neighborhood is cheap and abundant and goes out.
Following one of John's suggestions, a feature I implemented today on the McVeigh execution page was a PHP script to make it so it doesn't load reliably every time, but instead usually shows a green screen saying the server is overloaded. This adds a certain authentic quality to a page that, given the nature of its content, should be getting phenomenal traffic. I was hoping people would see how unreliable it was and immediately begin putting up mirrors, but unfortunately I didn't see any evidence that this was happening.
In other news, my over-zealous posting of the McVeigh page link in the CNN messageboards resulted in my account being disabled.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?010612 feedback
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