Commissioner Gordon orders Obama signal extinguished

I chuckled when I saw the Obama signal being shown on a downtown Raleigh office building. Unfortunately that building, One Exchange Plaza, is owned by the City of Raleigh, which probably does not appreciate political advertising being shown on its walls.

Just now a Raleigh police sergeant wandered into my $WORK offices to ask if we were responsible for the Obama signal. He wasn’t surprised when I told him no, and said “everybody’s been denying it.” I got the impression he was dutifully going through the motions but given the million other things RPD has to do it wasn’t exactly his highest priority.

Why the City would take a cop off his regular duties to chase down this whimsical prank is beyond me. It seems to me if the City really wanted to find out who was responsible it might be helpful if city employees didn’t clear out of their offices at 5PM or earlier each day. But I digress.

Also, what could the person responsible be charged with? Criminal mischief? Photon littering? How would one prove anything? Once Obama becomes President would this be legal? Isn’t there a presidential portrait hanging in all federal offices?

I personally think the Exchange Plaza building has a butt-ugly blank wall so anything that might spice it up is welcome in my book.

Parks book

After posting the history of Lions Park last night, I thought it would be a fun project to write a book on the history of Raleigh’s parks. Certainly it would be a good education for me as a new member of the Raleigh parks board.

Now, where can I find the time to do this …

Lions Park: a park born of love

I took a tour this afternoon of Raleigh’s Lions Park with the park director, Mark Wilson. On the way out he handed me a photocopy from a book which tells of how the park came to be.

Reading it blew me away. A huge number of Raleigh citizens and civic leaders banded together to donate their time, money, and sweat to create this park. I truly had no idea. What a contrast to today’s park process: one which has been accused of completely ignoring the citizen involvement.

I’ve retyped the article in its entirety on my East Raleigh blog. Reading it will open your eyes to this jewel in our midst (a midst that was once known as “North Raleigh”)!

Another bogus quote, this one from Tocqueville?

Got an email with the following alleged quote at the end:

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), French social philosopher, author of “Democracy in America”

As he was a famous French historian, Tocqueville gets quoted (and misquoted) constantly (see this site for a prominent example). A Google search today lists 186 results, which isn’t much if this is indeed legitimate. Wikiquote says its unsourced.

My thought is that its bogus. Maybe I’ll track it down, too.

Great Atlantic Warranty now North American Warranty Solutions?

Great Atlantic Warranty, the car warranty scammers, has apparently put on a disguise to try to throw search engines off its track. According to this post GAW is now working under the name North American Warranty Solutions. The domain has been active for all of three months. Great Atlantic Warranty’s former website is now a hand-coded page, and (surprise, surprise) it says GAW is out of business!

Great Atlantic Warranty, as a selling agent, has stopped selling new vehicle service contracts. Great Atlantic Warranty has submitted all contract information to the respective warranty plan administrators.
Who do I call if I have a claim?
If you have purchased a contract, please refer to the cover letter you received with your contract, or the actual contract, for the appropriate customer service contact information. If you cannot locate this information, but you have your contract # or Owner ID #, please click on “I have a Contract Number” below.

> I have a contract number.

If there was no reason to be suspicious before, there is now. Can’t say I’m surprised, though.

The good news is that the net is quickly closing around this clown. The gig is up. As Einstein once said, “you can run, but you can’t hide!”

Or was it Thomas Jefferson? I never know.

Thinking: not just for brainiacs!

Rita Mae Brown once said that insanity is “doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” I suppose insanity might also mean expecting people to apply critical thinking skills to anything.

I’ve been poking through MT.Net‘s logfiles and I’m pleased to see so many searching for the Thomas Jefferson Bank Quote. As of today, MT.Net is the third Google result for those search terms. That’s all fine and good. What drives me up the wall is when I go to the pages linking to the quote, in many cases the linker is presenting the quote as fact, not even reading that I’ve debunked it! Um, did anyone read the post? What kind of fool would link a quote to a post that clearly says the quote is bogus?

No wonder America is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to using our noggins.

James Taylor plays Raleigh’s Moore Square

Its strange to see a music star the magnitude of James Taylor play a corner of Moore Square. On the other hand, the unassuming Taylor seemed at home there. The stars align like this maybe once in a million years, so I wasn’t about to let this chance pass me up. My officemate and I played a bit of hookey to see the show.

After catching up on work emails this morning, I took a stroll down to Moore Square a little after 10 to see what was happening. To my surprise, roadies were setting up a modest stage while maybe a dozen fans waited around in the warm morning sun. Then my officemate then called and needed to be let back into the office. Only when I got there did I find out I missed Taylor’s soundcheck by minutes.
Continue reading →

Slashdotted!

I got back from the James Taylor show to find MT.Net has been Slashdotted. Seems my Caller ID sleuthing in relation to Automotive Warranty Solutions caught someone’s attention.

I also see that I’m missing out on some big money. According to the NC Attorney General’s office, these warranty calls could be worth $500 to $5000 apiece! That’s some serious change in this down economy. Even better, I could invest that money in a lot more SIP phone numbers with which to snare even more fines. And I wouldn’t have to lift a finger to collect (well, I would have to show up for court, but I could earn potentially +$25k for each court case).

Hmm. Passive income paid by scammers … what am I waiting for?

MT meets JT

OMG, I just shook James Taylor’s hand. How cool is that?

I saw before soundcheck that his crew walking to Marbles with a carton of coffee so I guessed that’s where he was hanging out. After today’s show (which I’ll blog about soon) I went to the board of elections to vote, chatted with an old friend there, and then wandered back to Moore Square. As I looked in the windows of Marbles, I spotted an eight-foot-tall man in a wide-brimmed hat lumbering up the sidewalk towards the Imax Theatre. A small group of fans were making their way back to their cars and stopped for some photographs with Taylor, who was gracious in the requests.

As he was about to head inside, I thrust my hand out to him and he shook it.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Taylor,” was all I could manage.

“Thank you,” he answered sincerely in his quiet way, smiling and then posing for yet another photograph. Sadly not mine, though, as I had ditched my camera after the show.

I didn’t get a photograph, or an autograph. But what I got was enough. I shook the hand of the legendary James Taylor.

OMG.