aubreyturner.org

Here is good reason to always demand a receipt whenever dealing with the city.

Police are not arresting anyone wanted on a Class C misdemeanor warrant from Arlington until they determine whether the warrants are valid.

The municipal court system was thrown into confusion early this summer after a routine audit raised questions about cash receipts.

Crystal Leonguerrero, 22, of Arlington was indicted last month on charges of stealing thousands of dollars while collecting fines for misdemeanors and traffic violations. Leonguerrero, who was a criminal justice major at the University of Texas at Arlington, is free on $15,000 bail.

Officials worry that warrants could have been issued for people who in fact have paid their fines.

So far, they don’t think (but they don’t appear to be sure) that anyone was arrested for a fine that was already paid.  But you can imagine that it would be likely, since I’m sure cops have heard the “I paid that ticket” excuse a lot.  If it was me, I’d be pretty pissed if I had paid a traffic ticket fine only to get arrested later. 

Anyhow, it definitely points out lax supervision and controls at the court offices.  One of the actions taken by the city has been to post signs reminding people to ask for a receipt.  I wonder why the system didn’t automatically print them?  It would seem like something that should be part of the system’s checks and balances to prevent anyone from getting into this exact situation (i.e. a paper backup record showing that the fine was paid and that the warrant was cleared, if one had been issued).

I saw a TV commercial today that struck me as very odd.  It was supposedly for a service that would send you a brochure on how to choose a satellite provider.  Given that DirecTV and Dish Network wouldn’t be likely to get together for a commercial that would make satellite sound complicated, I was immediately suspicious.  At the end they give the number 1-888-DISH-HELP.  So I decided to hit Google to see what turned up. 

There were two relevant entries.  The first was a blog posting from Krazy Dad.  He had seen the commercial a couple of weeks ago and transcribed it.  Follow the link to read the whole thing.

The second entry was more sinister.  As Krazy Dad discovered, this number is a service of “Independent Brokerage, Inc” provided on behalf of the cable company.  If you call the number they take your contact information and give you a survey.  They will then send your information to the cable company so their “retention” specialists can go to work on you.

Quoting from their own information:

DISH HELP addresses a concern of many cable television operators. Many subscribers are being lured away from traditional cable by satellite dish systems. By the time a cable operator learns of a subscriber’s interest in purchasing a satellite system, it’s too late. This program was created to identify each subscriber before they purchase a dish and disconnect their cable service. DISH HELP begins an active process for retention of cable television subscribers.

This comes at an interesting time for me, as I have been weighing my options now that Verizon’s Fios TV is available in Keller.  I’ve been with Charter for a long time, since the only other option was satellite.  As part of the comparison of my options, I also looked into satellite.  Given that I abhor Dish Network because of their sleazy marketing tactics (especially the anonymous automated phone spam), my only option for satellite is DirecTV. 

I’ve got a lot of experience with DirecTV, since my mother has had it for quite a few years.  The picture quality is good, and if you’re willing to make a commitment, you can get a good deal on a DirecTV DVR (Tivo) and their Total Choice package.  It would be slightly less expensive than my current Charter costs.  The downside of satellite is that you often lose signal during heavy storms.

I suppose Charter has improved their customer service over time, but only because they have been forced to do so via competition.  I have many unhappy memories of having to deal with them during their monopoly days.  They were arrogant, slow to respond, and inconsiderate of your time.  Back then you pretty much had to give up a whole day to get an installation done.  My chief gripe now is that you can’t individually select HBO, Cinemax, or Showtime.  I used to be on a package where I could do that, but they discontinued it and forced me to take Showtime to get HBO.  Between that and the billing hassles I’ve had with them, I’d just as soon dump them.  Both FiosTV and DirecTV allow you to select HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime individually.  To be honest, I’m actually considering dropping the premium channels altogether.  Since Dead Like Me was cancelled I don’t have any reason to have Showtime, and the only thing I watch on HBO is the Sopranos.  At this point I could just wait for the final season to come out on DVD and get it from Netflix. 

I’m leaning towards FiosTV because I can get a two-tuner HD DVR and a pretty good expanded basic package for about the same as I’m paying Charter now.  It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, since I’m not getting HD right now.  However, I couldn’t get any information on Charter’s rates for HD, since their website is broken (it said that digital cable is not available in my area, so I couldn’t get any rate information; which is funny since I have digital cable right now). 

Anyhow, I think this sleazy fishing operation is the last straw for Charter.  Any company that would use this sort of sneaky backdoor to try to stop a customer from switching doesn’t deserve my business.  I know it’s a novel idea, but Charter might want to consider competing with satellite, instead of trying to fool customers into identifying themselves as potential switchers.  Instead of taking the high road (i.e. running a proactive above-board retention program), they chose the low, sneaky road, and thereby frittered away what little good will they’d been building over the past few years.

During the summer of 2004 a flap erupted in a Euless subdivision over flying the American flag.  I wrote about the situation and the resolution.  Various factions within the homeowners association were upset at being exposed under the harsh glare of the media spotlight, but it appeared that Mrs. Martin had won the battle.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the people that run these associations are often petty little tyrants who don’t like having their power challenged.  Since the flag flap, the Martins have been subjected to a campaign of harassment by the former president of the Heritage Place homeowners association.

A year ago, two beagles, Tara and Toby, watched from their Euless back yard as a squirrel climbed a tree. The dogs barked at the squirrel. Hearing this, the dogs’ owner, Kenny Martin, called them inside.

City officials say next-door neighbor Margarita Montelongo called Euless police to complain about the barking.

“Upon arrival,” a police officer later wrote in a report, “there were no barking dogs.”

An everyday occurrence in suburbia: Dogs go outside. Dogs bark. Neighbors get upset. Sometimes, neighbors even call police or animal control.

But for two neighboring homes in the Heritage Place subdivision in Euless off Texas 10, this is no everyday occurrence. A search of public records shows that police officers and city Animal Services staff members have knocked on the front door of Kenny and Linda Martin’s house more than two dozen times in the past year. The reason? Complaints about barking dogs.

At least that’s what city records available under the Texas Public Information Act show. Actually, Euless’ animal services supervisor Larry James says, many more calls about barking dogs at the Martins’ home were handled by telephone and did not result in written reports.

Most reports describe the outcome of the visits similarly: “No violation witnessed. Dogs were in the house.”

Although some of the complaints were called in anonymously, James says, “Everybody knows who it is.”

Montelongo’s name appears in some police reports, and city officials in three city departments confirm that Montelongo is the complainant.

Montelongo is former president of the Heritage Place homeowners association. She and Linda Martin battled last year in a public squabble about whether Martin could fly an American flag in front of her home.

The situation has reached an absurd level, with complaints being called in at times when the dogs aren’t even there.

Police and animal services reports show that city staffers visit the Martin home to investigate complaints, but they do not hear any barking.

The feud places city officials in a quandary. Police and animal services officers are stretched thin in the city of 50,000. Yet all police calls must be answered. Animal services, which has two full-time officers, responds to most calls, but not all, depending on other duties.

“There’s been a few times we go to the house and on our way back to the shelter, we pass by where Linda Martin works and the dogs are at her place of work,” animal services boss James says. “They are not even at home.”

Linda Martin showed a letter from a pet day care center she often hires to care for the dogs. The letter states that her dogs were at the center on a day when a complaint was called in about barking at her home.

At this point, it appears that Montelongo has gone off the deep end.  The city has tried to get her involved with some sort of mediated solution, but she is uninterested.  In an effort to curb the misuse of city resources, the city is now going to have to get tough and try legal means.

City officials say they have attempted several solutions, including peaceful mediation.

Assistant Police Chief Bob Freeman says: “We’ve tried to meet with both parties to see if we could work out the issue. Miss Martin has met with us several times. Margarita doesn’t seem interested in doing that.”

Deputy City Manager Gary McKamie says: “From what I recall, there’s no strong evidence that would tell us absolutely that the calls are false.”

David Montague, a spokesman for the Tarrant County district attorney, says it’s a crime to make a false report to a peace officer. Upon conviction, the Class B misdemeanor calls for up to six months in jail and $2,000 in fines.

The city is trying a new strategy. Because animal services officers are not peace officers, police accompany animal services officers to answer complaints at the Martin home, James says. The police officer could act as a witness and file false report charges.

Not that I’m vindictive or anything, but I wouldn’t feel sorry for Montelongo if she were to have to grace the city jail with her presence for a while over this sillyness.

Apparently this happened a while back, but I just learned that the Confederate Air Force has renamed itself to the Commemorative Air Force.  Bleh.  Not only is it a cowardly thing to do, the new name isn’t very catchy.  Sure, it fits the initials, so they’re still the CAF, but “commemorative” is a word that doesn’t roll off the tongue very well.

I caught a bit of the WB33 News last night.  They were doing one of those entertainment fluff pieces that annoy me so much (and just why are these people supposed to be news?).  Anyhow, it was about Heidi Klum’s baby boy with Seal.  The male newscaster repeatedly mispronounced her name.  The female newscaster corrected him and noted that, “most men would know that.” 

I wonder just what she was trying to say? 

On Tuesday I mentioned the LA power outage.  It turns out that it adversely affected my hosting company and they’ve only gotten things squared away this morning.  The full details can be found on the Dreamhost blog, but the short answer is that the building has a UPS system and five generators.  The system requires four of those five generators to function.  Unfortunately, two of them failed, causing a full shutdown of the datacenter.  When they finally got power back, a number of services had to be restored, and then their main router lost its primary supervisor card and had to switch to the backup (the supervisor card is the router’s CPU). 

One of the side-effects of the network problems they had was that database connections were running very slow.  The slow connections caused this site to respond slowly and it caused problems adding comments on The Bitch Girls, which is hosted on my account.  In the last hour it appears that the network issue has been fixed and the sites are responding as usual.

I’ve noticed that companies have a nasty tendency to try to deflect blame to other parties for any of their potential shortcomings.  A good example of this is the message you get when you try to login to your account on the Cingular website.

Of course, someone with a slow Internet connection would see slow response times, but I noticed that the page is polling while it waits for some backend system to respond.  On my fast Internet connection the page refreshes occur pretty quickly, so it becomes obvious to me that the real issue is their slow backend.  But rather than just acknowledge this, they have to try to blame the Internet connection.  If they’d just leave off the last part of the message it would be accurate and much less annoying.

The second instance of this was with the Verizon online account management system (hmm…. two phone companies… I wonder if there’s anything to be inferred from this?).  I had used the system to add Caller ID to my second phone line.  The system gave me confirmation that the change had been made (and it explicitly specified that the changes were for the second line; this would be important later).  The change should have only taken a day to make, so after a week I called Encore to enquire as to what happened.  The support rep discovered that Caller ID had been added to my primary line instead of the second line.  Rather than just fix the problem he had to try to blame it on me (!) by suggesting that I had selected the wrong thing on the website.  Given that the system makes you select the line at the start, and that I had printed confirmation, I was a bit miffed to be accused of incompetence.

I suppose it’s also interesting that I’ve never had a successful change go through on either the Cingular or Verizon account management website.  Every time I’ve tried to add or change features I’ve ended up having to call them in order to get the change to go through, regardless of what the website says.  You’d think I’d learn by now.  But I keep hoping that they’ll get it right so I can handle things without having to sit in a phone queue (or talking to a stupid robot) to get things done.

Damn, it must suck to be these guys right about now.

After Katrina hit, Kim du Toit reposted his summary of SHTF items (guns and supplies).  The following comment caught my eye and set off a dangerous cascade of mental activity on my part:

Following on to my previous rant, here’s a challenge for everyone…

Once you have your SHTF/BOB gear together, pick a “come-as-you-are-camping weekend.”

On arising that day, allow yourself and your family 10 minutes to load up before leaving – no more.  Head for an unprepared site away from town; no stop-offs at 7-11 to fill the ice chest or pick up any goodies.  Spend the night at the site with only what you brought along in the 10 minute loadout.

I promise it will be most instructive.  If you have to return home early, don’t despair.  At least your first time out won’t be when you’re cold, scared, hungry and tired and gambling with you and your family’s lives instead of the chance of having bored kids, a grumpy spouse and a backache from a night of camping.  What you’ll learn from this might someday spell the difference between being a live evacuee or a dead refugee.

It seemed like a good idea and also got me to thinking about two scenarios.  The first is covered, in that I could shove a bunch of crap into the Avalanche and bug the hell out.  But what if you had to carry everything on your back?  It also seemed fun to me to try backpacking.  So I’m thinking of trying to put together a set of gear that would be useful for backpacking and as a subset of the bug-out kit.

I’m still evaluating the right kind of load-bearing-equipment, though.  That stuff is damn expensive.  However, if you’re in a situation where you have to carry three day’s worth of food, water, clothing and shelter, you’re going to want something that works well.  I’m also looking for canine packs, since I have no intention of bugging out without my dog*.  I’ve found a few possibilities on REI.com (like this one).  But it looks like I’m going to have to take her into the store with me and try them out on her.  She’s a mixed breed, and her measurements (54lbs, girth 30”, and length 23”) make her a bit of a strange fit.

Despite the cost, my enthusiasm factor is still fairly high.  Although last night I started to question how wise this endevour would be, since my back is giving me problems again.

* I think the situation in New Orleans with people and their pets is a good lesson.  If you can get out, then do it.  Otherwise you’re at the mercy of whomever finds you and gets you out of the city, and that often means leaving your animals behind.  If you leave before the storm, on your own, then you can do it your way and not have to leave the dog behind.

I’m not sure why, but lately I just haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say.  I could rant about all the usual suspects and their usual bullshit concerning the New Orleans situation, but why bother?  Sometimes it just seems like it’s all been said already. 

Anyhow, this seems to be the usual state of affairs for me during the summer.  Usually this passes once things cool down.