We’ve lived in this area called The Coastside for two years now, and I’m amazed and appalled at the lack of infrastructure. I’m not talking about roads and plumbing (though I’m sure those are issues; I just don’t know enough to complain about them). We don’t have sidewalks and we don’t have home delivery of mail. That may be seen as charming; but it’s getting a bit old for me.

We have no cell coverage. I can’t imagine that will change at any point.

Our Comcast cable television is terrible: image quality is consistently bad (with over-the-air artifacts like ghosting common on some very low channels) and audio is low volume and filled with hiss on higher channels. Recently, channel 3 went out completely. Comcast told many residents who called that they wouldn’t regard it as a real issue until they had reached a minimum number of service complaints that resulted in a scheduled technician visit. In other words, if you called in and told them about the problem, they would treat it as a local-to-you problem that didn’t require any action on their part until someone came and looked at YOUR house and eliminated that as the specific cause. It takes several days to get someone to come out and so it took a few days for Comcast to even acknowledge that they had a problem and to take any action to fix it. We pay the same as everyone else (if not more) for cable, and we get lousy service (both the product itself and the customer service).

Our power goes out many times each winter. For an hour, or for 7 hours. You never know, of course. It’s dangerous, inconvenient, stressful. We aren’t supposed to use the water when the power is out. There’s obviously some non-redundant connection that is very vulnerable to wind, wet soil, trees, or whatever. But PG&E is not investing in any infrastructure to develop a robust solution, so we’re stuck with frequent outages that leave a big section of Montara without power. Our power bills in Montara are ridiculously higher than other places we’ve lived.

Our telephone service is sub-par. Caller-ID information is often not received. A year or so ago I found that I would get a busy signal when calling the voice mail number – and that my own callers would often not be able to leave voice mail; instead having it ring and ring. It took a great deal of effort to get someone at SBC to acknowledge and fix the problem (they were out of circuits or something arcane). Last week we encountered terrible static when calling to Montara from outside of Montara. Calls to either of our home numbers from a cell phone or land line located elsewhere would be at best scratchy and at worst, unlistenable. I have reported this to SBC as have many other local residents. As with the cable, it’s being treated like a problem local to our own service, despite the fact that it’s not, but of course, we can only report our own problem. I was informed by SBC that they’ve checked and everything is fine. It’s not fine; my phone service is only semi-usable (I have to shout at my callers that I’ll return their call), and SBC has decided not to act. Of course, we pay the same fees to SBC that everyone else does.

Can you tell I’m fed up?

More than ever this year I’ve been included on various professional-type holiday greetings, gifts, thank-yous, and the like. Let me make the strongest point upfront that I’m so pleased (nay, thrilled) to have so many connections. Running a small business, my network is colleagues, inspirations, friendships, commiseration, referrals and more. I feel happy and thankful most of the time to have this in my professional life. Growing these connections has been one of the greatest things of my career and being able to step back and see who I like/respect/care about, and who cares about/respects/likes me is a perpetual thrill.

But I am troubled to report that I find most of the seasonal expressions of these connections to be empty gestures. I’ve received mailings and cards that are basically advertising, with nothing speaking to the personal relationship I have with some from that group. Few take the time to write even a few words to me personally. Others are sending digital messages, with a graphic attached to an email. In some cases, the image is simply attached to an email with no text. Some have written earnest and doubtless heartfelt reflections and hopes. I received one logo-emblazoned trinket (so I should advertise for you in exchange for a small piece of technology?) and one gift-basket type of deal that represents the brand of the basket people far more than the brand of the gift-giving people.

This is nothing new; it’s the challenge of so many one-to-many communications. This blog, for example. But at least this blog (or anything that approaches media) doesn’t pretend to be one-to-one. There’s no “Dear Gilles:” prefacing this entry. I’m shouting it “out there” and presumably some will read it. I’m not sending it right to you, dear reader, although I may sometimes picture individuals who I know read this stuff.

And I wouldn’t even have this reaction if it wasn’t for the seasonal pile-on of such missives. I realize I sound incredibly ungrateful and catty for questioning any of this – indeed, it is the thought that counts and in most cases, the thought to include me is quite warming.

I’ve also noticed that we can begin to blur the already terribly fuzzy professional/personal line in these communications – making references to family or religious observations, without any knowledge of my specific situation.

Is this just a decline of business etiquette? Would it have been unthinkable 30 years ago to send a holiday greeting without jotting a personal note above the printed text? Or was business 30 years ago much less creative anyway and so we didn’t have the same level of expectations? Or I am just spoiled to expect a seasonal greeting from Company X to symbolize my relationship with Company X rather than just serve as an indicator that someone at Company X wants to “keep in touch” with me.

And perhaps this is some of the 70s-era Xmas cynicism (at least my point of reference from MAD magazine); that it’s about tipping the newspaper person and employees waiting for their bonus, that it’s advertising and selling of everything (this predates the 70s, of course, Stan Freberg did Green Christmas way before that). Maybe my insane naivete is coming out here; that I’m being asked to the dance, and that’s great, but you didn’t expect to have a nice conversation as well, did you?

I wouldn’t want to be taken off anyone’s list; it’s a great tangible reminder of the connections, in the aggregate. I would love to see simpler less earnest and overwrought and promotional communications. They may be perfectly sincere for the sender, but they don’t find their mark with me. Your mileage may vary!

I rented a car from Budget earlier this week. I probably won’t do so again. They have a new practice, presented as a time-saving feature. If you drive less than 75 miles, they add $9.00 to your bill as a flat rate for gas consumption.

If you filled up yourself, present the bill and they’ll deduct the amount.

I didn’t pay that close attention upon renting when they asked me in their script-like manner if I planned to drive more than 75 miles. I mean, who the hell knows? I didn’t realize until checking the paperwork later that it wasn’t an optional program. I guess I could have used the odometer in the car to track my mileage to see what was going to happen, and then do some estimating math to see if the price of gas available locally at the car’s typical MPG would be more or less than $9.00. But I didn’t. I filled up the car myself, and remembered to have the receipt handy.

When I pull in to the return and am unloading the car, the usual parking-lot-Borg comes over with all their electronic gear, and when I ask about the charge, they tell me I have to go inside. So they ring me up, effectively charge me the amount including the $9 and then I have to take my bags back inside and wait for the one employee working inside to look over my receipts (one for gas, one for their service) and issue me a new version of the latter.

This is not a time- or money-saving feature for me. It probably makes money for them based on some estimated cut-off level, etc.

It’s not optional; I’m forced to alter a fairly traditional way of managing things to suit them. I’m not doing it. I’ll go somewhere else. It’s pretty much a commodity business anyway.

Of course. As soon as I blog about Inca Kola I see someone with a can at Porto’s Bakery in Glendale, CA. At 8:30 in the morning. Hmm.

Yesterday I was at a meeting at CCA, and we found a few leftover cans of Inca Kola (Wikipedia). I had never seen it before. I can’t abide caffeine so I didn’t try it, but I did take one home since it was pretty cool looking. Who knew? It’s a hugely popular cola in Peru!

The New York Times does a great cover story about all the technology products that make strong and unsubstantiated claims about how much smarter they’ll make your baby.

New media products for babies, toddlers and preschoolers began flooding the market in the late 1990’s, starting with video series like “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby.” But now, the young children’s market has exploded into a host of new and more elaborate electronics for pre-schoolers, including video game consoles like the V.Smile and handheld game systems like the Leapster, all marketed as educational.

Despite the commercial success, though, a report released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “A Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers and Pre-schoolers,” indicates there is little understanding of how the new media affect young children – and almost no research to support the idea that they are educational.

“The market is expanding rapidly, with all kinds of brand-new product lines for little kids,” said Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Foundation. “But the research hasn’t advanced much. There really isn’t any outcomes-based research on these kinds of products and their effects on young children, and there doesn’t seem to be any theoretical basis for saying that kids under 2 can learn from media.

In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no screen time at all for babies under 2, out of concern that the increasing use of media might displace human interaction and impede the crucially important brain growth and development of a baby’s first two years. But it is a recommendation that parents routinely ignore. According to Kaiser, babies 6 months to 3 years old spend, on average, an hour a day watching TV and 47 minutes a day on other screen media, like videos, computers and video games.

…

Others have less restrained marketing: The “Brainy Baby – Left Brain” package has a cover featuring a cartoon baby with a thought balloon saying, “2 + 2 = 4” and promises that it will inspire logical thinking and “teach your child about language and logic, patterns and sequencing, analyzing details and more.”

“There’s nothing that shows it helps, but there’s nothing that shows it’s does harm, either,” said Marcia Grimsley, senior producer of “Brainy Baby” videos.

Incredulous italics mine, of course.

For all the credit we give Yahoo and Google for fighting off Search Engine Optimization (SEO) how long has it been since looking up a hotel in either search engine worked? Years, I think. If you want to search for a hotel by name, you’re going to get dozens of hits that are from hotel reservation sites (often the same site under a variety of URLs) and have to look hard to find the actual Ramada page, or the actual Hyatt page. Sure, it varies by hotel, city, chain, etc. but for the most part, the promise of those search engines to bring you what you are looking for – in this particular category of highly consistent search – is totally broken

The New York Times offers some nice cultural insight on the phenomenon of decals in car rear windows as tributes to the departed. Decal Junky, cited in the piece, has six pages of memorial decals.

Arturo Ramirez of Cathedral City, Calif., who expressed his grief over the death of his friend Ernie Zamorez in a car crash in October 2004 by having 50 car decals printed at $5.50 apiece, said he sees the tributes primarily on cars of people with Latin American backgrounds. Trips around the Coachella Valley and Los Angeles freeways, however, turned up other backgrounds as well. “In Loving Memory of Rocco DeJoseph” read one decal on the back of a blue Saturn, positioned next to a decal proclaiming “Italian Princess.”

Those who study the way societies process death see the decals as yet another iteration of an increasingly mobile and transient America. “We try to keep track of our dead,” said Thomas Lynch, an undertaker and poet in Milford, Mich., who has written two books on the culture of death. “We’re the only species that does. There’s a need to name the loss, to give it some texture.” The decals, Mr. Lynch said, are “bringing the cemetery to the freeway.”

Gary M. Laderman, director of the graduate division of religion at Emory University in Atlanta and the author of two books on funeral customs, said the decals bring a do-it-yourself mentality to memorializing death. “It’s part of the post-60’s consumer empowerment, where everything can get caught up in commercialization,” Professor Laderman said. “Before, it was left to the funeral home. Now you take the production into your own hands and have it your way.”

In Southern California, where so much of life is conducted in cars, many people say it makes sense for death to be reflected there too.

Leanne Fuller, the girlfriend of Ernie Zamorez, said decals were the most efficient way to get word out about his death. “He had friends from high school who didn’t hear anything in the news, and they see the car and know he died,” she said, adding that she will keep the decal on her Honda Civic until it falls off.

I was trying to snag an interesting bargain at HomeDepot that I found on slickdeals.net so I registered with their site, figuring if it knew my local area it might better find available stock for me. I declined to receive any of their 8 mailings and figured that was that.

I get a registration confirmation that is kind of scary

Steve, this confirmation email verifies your recent registration at homedepot.com. You will not receive additional email from The Home Depot unless you opt-in for our email offerings or purchase at homedepot.com.

[various other content in the welcome email snipped]

You may be removed from this list by calling 1-800-430-3376, or mailing your request to Customer Care at:

The Home Depot
2455 Paces Ferry Rd NW
Atlanta, GA 30339

So it’s confusing, for one. Why do I need to be removed from this list if I won’t receive anything else anyway? And why will they presume to add me to this (or some other) list when I make a purchase? Forcing me to write or call someone to opt-out? That’s heinous. Definitely makes me rethink my purchase, if I am therefore forced to make a call to opt-out.

I was in New York earlier this week. On Friday morning I looked out the window and saw this

I am pretty sure it’s been several years since I had seen snow. After a while it stopped. There was quite an interesting view looking north at Central Park.

It worked out fine for me; despite some anxiety about just doing basic stuff like getting around when weather was happening, it stopped for good once I left the hotel, and turned into a sunny day. Some annoyance with slush, but it worked out. I was amused at myself having grown up with this stuff but being so completely unsure (or to some extent, unprepared) in dealing with it.