Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Yea, like you can really trust them
Early last month I received some mail from Verisign that my domain,
conman.org was about to expire.
Yea. It expires in October, you idiots.
I've been meaning to transfer my domain over to Dotster, where the rest of my domains are registered. About two weeks ago I figure it was time. So I put in the transfer request and the credit card information to pay for it.
Only a day or so later, I lost the credit card. I cancelled that one and had a new one issued, but it took quite a while before I got the new card (partly because the mailing address is separate from where I currently live and that mail box is checked about once a week). So during that time, Dotster kept attempting to charge the cancelled card.
Every single day.
Gee, you'd think that after three or so attempts they would just cancel the transfer but I guess not.
But once I cleared up that snafu the transfer completed without problem and I no longer have to deal with Verisign or Network Pollutions.
Woo hoo!
Traffic
Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by forty per cent, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly a hundred per cent—in other words, cars have proliferated more than twice as fast as people have. During this same period, road capacity increased by six per cent.
A long but interesting article about traffic trends in the United States (and New York City in particular) and it sounds like thing will get worse before they get better (if they get better at all).
I also believe that zoning laws also contribute to the traffic problem. Strict zoning (like the zoning down here in Lower Sheol) creates traffic problems since to get anywhere you have to drive. There are no closeby commercial areas to The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (which is why I gave it that name); the closest is about two miles away whereas back in Condo Conner, there was a small shopping center just around the corner, and a major one about a mile down the road. Heck, the closest park is over two miles away, whereas my paternal grandparents lived right next to a park.
Don't get me wrong—I love my car and I certainly don't want to get rid of it. I just wish there were more places close by that I could walk to (then again, I would certainly settle for about a 60% reduction in the number of cars down here).
A day at the park
Spring and I took
the boys to a local park in the hopes that they would wear themselves out
playing. The park had this huge, nearly three story tall Escheresque
wooden building with all forms of stairs, bars, slides, cubby holes and what
not to let kids play on, but unfortunately, it was closed that day so we
ended up walking around some nature trails.
I did, however, get to test the digital camera, having gotten batteries the other day. Regular batteries. They lasted long enough to get over 40 pictures.
Other than the power consumption, I have no other complaints about the camera.
