Since 1971, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has offered a service called the Mail Preference Service (MPS). The alleged purpose of the MPS is to allow consumers to register which kinds of direct marketing mail they want, or to opt out completely. DMA members are then supposed to scrub their mailing lists against the MPS… Read More »
(Simulblogged on universalhub.com.) Long-time readers of my blog know that I have been trying, for almost two years, to eliminate junk mail — the paper kind — from my mailbox. I’ve registered everyone in my family with the DMA’s MPS, tried out various Web sites that purport to help you stop junk mail, and most… Read More »
For those of you who use Cygwin to make Windows slightly more bearable… Suppose you’re happily working in a Cygwin window, and you need to load one of the files you’re working on into a Windows app. You could select File > Open… in the app and then browse to the ten-levels-deep Cygwin folder to… Read More »
I’m responsible for coordinating weekly new-functionality demos for my company’s R&D organization. Each week, a developer or product manager presents a half-hour demo of some new functionality to a local audience in one of our offices, using a big 1920×1080 digital TV as the local display, with a GoToMeeting session set up so that people… Read More »
On July 29, I received an unsolicited bulk email message from Ayanna Pressley, a candidate for one of the Boston City Council’s At-Large seats, with the Subject line, “Our Campaign Kick-Off for Boston City Council At Large!” The email message to which it was sent (I use different email addresses for different purposes to make… Read More »
Mom: “No naps today. We have to pick up the older kids at school very soon!” Four-year-old: “I am just dying for a nap. I will have to take a very short one or I can’t go to pickup nicely at all.”
I keep my primary address book in Outlook, but I wanted to export it to Thunderbird so that when I’m using Thunderbird at home, I have easy access to all the email addresses I’ve stored in Outlook. It’s easy to import from Outlook to Thunderbird on Windows, since Thunderbird will happily allow you to do… Read More »
For the past week or two, we’ve been having a problem with a slow leak in one of our tires. Well, at least, it was a slow leak until this weekend, when it turned into a fast leak, and we’re going to have to get it fixed tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ve stopped at a… Read More »
Apparently it’s a good week for customer service. Following up on my compliment to CVS, I also want to single out the Shaw’s at 1065 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Here’s the letter I sent them through their Web site: Greetings, I want to commend the performance of the cashier, [name elided], who rang up my… Read More »
We go through a lot of Pampers diapers, so we buy them in large-count packs to save money. At CVS, we always buy the larger “Jumbo” size. At least, we did until recently, when the Jumbo packs suddenly disappeared from the shelves, leaving only the smaller “Mega” size, whose per-diaper cost is 11% higher. After… Read More »