(Simulblogged.) February 1, 2011 Mayor Thomas M. Menino 1 City Hall Square, Suite 500 Boston, MA 02201-2013 mayor@cityofboston.gov (617) 635-4500 Dear Mayor Menino, On the brink of yet another major snowstorm, I am writing to complain about how incredibly bad the city’s handling of the snow has been this winter.
A walk of less than 0.4 miles on one side of the street in Brighton Center, showing 20 violations of the City of Boston’s snow shoveling regulations, many of which are the fault of the city itself. Here are the violations, with time stamps in the video: 0:36 437 Washington St. – curb cut (Foster… Read More »
Letter I sent to the Herald this morning: To the editor: Wellesley Parking Clerk Bonita Legassie dispatched a parking attendant with a handheld computer Legassie knew was broken (“Driver finds survey ticket a wrong turn”, Jan.10). The broken handheld issued parking citations which Legassie knew were bogus. Legassie did nothing to dismiss the bogus citations,… Read More »
Here’s the letter I originally sent to the Boston Herald, with mark-up (strikeout for removed text, green for added) showing what they actually printed today: To the editor: It is infuriating to see rich people, who can afford to give back their imaginary “profits” from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, whining about the actions of Irving… Read More »
In the last six months I have received no less than 16 promotional mailings from Comcast, many of them only a few days apart. I have tried repeatedly to get them to stop sending me these mailings, to no avail. I filed a complaint about it with the Better Business Bureau; not only did Comcast… Read More »
You’ve probably heard the expression “five nine reliability,” which is shorthand for saying that a product, Web site, service, application, or whatever is fully functional 99.999% of the time, the equivalent of less than six minutes of downtime per year. Most Web sites don’t need to achieve that level of reliability. However, when you’re in… Read More »
Apparently it’s “big companies that can’t keep their Web sites up in the middle of the day” week. Yesterday, Citizens Bank online banking was down for over two hours. Today, National Grid’s main US Web site and online account management site are both down:
At 9:45am on a weekday:
Last July, when we were preparing for our trip to Israel, I called Citizens Bank and asked this simple question: “What is the least expensive way for me to get Israeli sheqels out of my Citizens Bank checking account?” In response, the customer service representative told me the following: The fee for withdrawing currency from… Read More »
A week from today is election day. In Massachusetts, there will be three statewide ballot questions in addition to candidate elections. These ballot questions are important and I strongly urge all registered voters in Massachusetts (if you’re not registered, register before the next election!) to visit the polls and weigh in. I recommend voting no… Read More »