OT: Brataleeee !

You rang....?

"n5hsr" ...

I dunno how they get that information - maybe from our credit card companies? Who knows - it's damned irritating though.

Natalie

Since I got my Medicare card because of my kidneys and not my age, I bet that as soon as my name popped up on the Medicare list, they auto-generated the mail thinking they'd missed me in the 50's list.

Every time, for instance, that I either move, upgrade my amateur radio license or renew it, I get a catalog from AES in Milliwaukee. Hmm, no one is watching the FCC amateur radio license list, either, are they?

Charles of Schaumburg.

Drivers license data, maybe.

"n5hsr"...

Big Brother...

Natalie

"JoeSpareBedroom" ...

Probably that and a bunch of other things we never thought of.

Natalie

Well, I was accused of being a Successful African American once.

Charles of Schaumburg

I don't like my name being sold to advertisers, but until we closely monitor where our politicians get their money (using surveillance techniques which are illegal), there's not much we can do about it. States sharing lists with commercial entities should be illegal, but I'm sure that if you could monitor our elected slobs closely, you'd find them having lunch with representatives of direct mail companies, and they would not be picking up the tab for that lunch.

"n5hsr"

Hey, a close friend of my mom's was invited to join the KKK. He thought about it, but decided it might not be wise, his being black and all.

Natalie

"JoeSpareBedroom"

Bitter, Joe? Oh, a tad.

:-)

Natalie

I made a few donations to some animal shelters, who must share or sell lists with everyone involved with animals. Saturday, I got a junk mail request from a shelter for homeless pot-bellied pigs. Too many, too often.

Bitter? I'm realistic, Natalie, and I've been around long enough to know how business and politics intermingle. Are you familiar with the Rochester fast ferry debacle?

"JoeSpareBedroom"

Can't say I am - what is it?

Natalie

A few years ago, the city of Rochester got this crazy idea that everyone in Toronto was dying to come to Rochester regularly, to enjoy our world class restaurants (all one of them), our baseball team (but Toronto has their own), and maybe the George Eastman House, which is a great place, but not something which attracts people from very far away. It was decided that we needed a nice ferry to shlep people back & forth across Lake Ontario. Part of its reason for existence was that people would happily pay $30-ish per person instead of taking the time to make the trip by car.

I love boats, but it was clear from the beginning that the plan was faulty. The business plan addressed only two things: The expensive terminal built here, for customs & security functions, as well as some airport-style businesses, and the price to be charged for tickets. The plan did not include any research to find out if anyone actually wanted to ride on this ferry. The terminal was supposed to make a huge contribution to the neighborhood in which it was built.

Final results:

- After its long trip from Australia, where it was built, the boat needed something like a million bucks worth of standard maintenance. Nobody knew about this. So much for the business plan.

- The Canadians didn't build any sort of facilities at their end, so passengers were stepping off the boat into hideous weather sometimes, while waiting for a cab.

- The boat was booked solid for the first month or two, probably because of the novelty. After that, it went kaput.

- Because the boat wasn't initially registered in the U.S., Coast Guard rules required that it have a harbor pilot aboard for each arrival. This wasn't terribly expensive - $500 per arrival, if I recall, but since passengers were dwindling, it was a burden.

- The thing was only going to run for about half the year, mainly because Lake Ontario's waves can get very strange with little or no warning. Worse than the ocean, in many cases.

Anyway, the boat was recently sold. Now, residents are finally beginning to understand who made out like bandits, and how those bandits were connected or related to the politicians who thought this was such a hot idea.

It's about to happen again. I live just outside the city, where my town board's making noise about building a 300 slip marina for "all the transient boaters who need this kind of thing". Questions are being asked about who owns the land that'll be sold to the town, and how the town knows there's a need for a marina. I was told that the Army Corps of Engineers had reviewed "the data". I called them, and was told by two people that they are in no way involved with the business end of such projects.

Why do you think the politicians are pushing for this marina?

"JoeSpareBedroom" ...

To help their rich friends related to the project. And to have a place to use their yachts?

Natalie

Bingo. Now who sounds cynical? :-) No matter how badly some of these projects fail, the construction companies still make out like bandits, along with the architects and lawyers.

"JoeSpareBedroom" ...

The American way.

Natalie

We had a fiasco like that in Arizona. The legislature passed a bill to subsidize cars and trucks that could run off both natural gas and gasoline, supposedly in the interest of cutting pollution, and buyers of such vehicles were eligible for a tax credit worth 30-50% of the vehicle's price. But instead of causing people to fuel their cars with natural gas, 95% of the buyers simply used the tax credit to buy cars for 30-50% cheaper than normal and ran them exclusively on gasoline. Not only that, but most of the natural gas modifications were poorly engineered and actually caused vehicles to emit more pollution when run on natural gas rather than gasoline. The legislator who introduced the subsidy was recalled and served some jail time for fraud because he owned an interest in a company that performed the natural gas conversions.

I'd like to see pillories returned as a form of public humiliation.

Ask Joe about the bridge option(s) for the mouth of this project's bay.