Last November, I posted on my blog a copy of a letter which I faxed to Congressman Robert Wexler, in which I chastised him for giving my email address (which I gave him when I made a donation to his campaign, so that he could send me a receipt) to another politician’s campaign and demanded… Read More »
I want to be able to switch easily between my computer speakers and headset. Apparently, that’s easier said than done. Some motherboards shut off audio output in back automatically when you plug something into the front. Alas, my ASUS motherboard doesn’t do that. Even if it did, that wouldn’t be “easily” — I don’t want… Read More »
(Simulblogged at universalhub.com.) The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a convoluted(*) unemployment insurance system, under which employers are required to make various quarterly and annual filings and quarterly payments involving at least two different state agencies. This system is administered by the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), who decided to replace their old, paper-based system with… Read More »
I am an email pack-rat. I have saved just about every email message I’ve sent or received at work or at home in the past twenty years (excluding messages sent to public mailing lists). That’s a lot of email, over 400,000 messages. I don’t just do this for the heck of it. I look for… Read More »
Around twenty years ago when I was at MIT, I spent far more hours than I care to contemplate combating anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda on Usenet. This was back before the Web took off, and Usenet was the happening place for bigots, racists and nutjobs of all sort to spread their filth and lies. … Read More »
I file my email in different IMAP folders, grouped by topic rather than the “received messages in one folder, sent in another” model imposed nowadays by most mail clients. It’s easy to keep the messages I receive organized by topic — when I’m done handling a message, I simply move it into the appropriate folder.… Read More »
I’ve been using Vonage for telephone service for a couple of months, and I’m quite happy with it. Their feature set is quite competitive, and I’m paying them significantly less than I’d be paying Verizon, Comcast or RCN for equivalent service. (Shameless plug: if you’d like to give Vonage a try, send me email and… Read More »
I share my home office with my kids, an unfortunate necessity in a house with five bedrooms, five children, and no dedicated office space (the “office” is actually one of the bedrooms). All the kids are fully aware of the “never, ever touch anything on Daddy’s desk” rule, but apparently the stuff on my desk… Read More »
I’ve just encountered a new (at least for me) scam in the ongoing quest by retailers and manufacturers to make rebates more and more onerous to apply for and therefore less likely to cost them any money. While applying on-line for a $10 rebate on an ASUS motherboard I purchased recently at Micro Center, I… Read More »
Today, I received a commercial email message from Sears Home Services, a.k.a., Sears Holdings Corporation. They got my email address when I made a service appointment through their Web site, which I subsequently canceled when it became clear that they were going to charge me more than a local repair man. The email message contained… Read More »