Tag: complaint

Now theyve done it

The DMV told me to get a petition to have our street zoned residential.  The woman I talked to was very nice, but completely failed to address my concerns.  “Is there another street nearby that’s not zoned where you could park on Tuesdays?”  Honestly, I don’t know.  And I won’t find out.  I was parked 15 feet from my front door, and I got a ticket designed to keep commuters from parking all day in residential zones.

I’m going to contest the ticket.  I’m going to write my councilmember.  I don’t know if I’m adequately portraying how ridiculous this ticket is.  It means that I’m subject to a ticket, every Tuesday, unless I drive around and find some other street to park on that isn’t zoned. 

This isn’t over.  I will not pay this ticket.  If I can’t park on the street where I live, then there’s something deeply wrong with the system.

Another parking ticket to contest

DC is a little crazy with their parking tickets.  When I registered my car, I thought I would get a Zone 1 designation on my registration sticker.  The 1500 block of our street is Zone 1 parking.  Most of the surrounding streets are Zone 1.  But not my block.  So I didn’t get issued a zone designation – it says “No RPP”.  RPP stands for Residential Parking Permit.

This morning, I moved my car to the right side of the street for street cleaning on the left.  This afternoon, I got a parking ticket for failure to display an RPP.  I can’t display an f’ing RPP if I’m not issued one.  Are they telling me that, on Tuesdays, I just have to drive my car to work, and not return until I can park on the left side of the street?

This is ridiculous.  The DMV is closed now, but they will be hearing from me tomorrow.

I would rant some more, but I have to go pick up my wife.

Leaning left vs. right

My wife accused me of being a Republican a little while back based on things I’ve written here. And after my last post, in which I didn’t exactly present a Democratic Senator in a totally positive light, I thought I might address that.

I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I think both parties suck. However, I think I just can’t complain about the Republicans anymore. I did, a lot, and they still suck. I guess I kind of feel like the current crop of Republicans in office is a lost cause. They’re going to continue to do stupid and possibly illegal things, and there’s not much we can do about it.

_As an aside, can I say “the current crop is” and then “They are”? It seems wrong, but grammatically I’m not totally sure. I’m referring to the same group, but in a different way? Anyway, if it’s wrong as I’ve written it, I apologize. _

The Democrats should take it as a compliment when I complain about them. It means I haven’t given up on you them yet.

What that means is that the day you see me start complaining regularly about Libertarians or the Green Party or some other political party, that will be the day that I’ve given up on everyone.

Legislating fairness

Techdirt: Senator Really Does Want A Return Of The Fairness Doctrine

Senator Dianne Feinstein said this weekend that a legislative remedy may be needed to counter the influence of right-wing talk radio, which she blamed for stymieing attempts to bring about immigration reform.

Ask any parent – it’s impossible to make a rule that’s fair for everyone. If all parties involved aren’t interested in being fair about things, you’ll never get anywhere.

Of course, this isn’t really about fairness at all. This is about unfairness in the opposite direction. And, actually, Techdirt is either reporting stuff from elsewhere, or is maybe inferring a little extra malice in what Feinstein is saying. She doesn’t seem to be making this as black and white as is suggested.

My view here is that the proper way to combat excessive right-wing bias in talk radio is to get more excessive left-wing bias on talk radio. I mean, that seems pretty simple, right? I don’t think anyone is barring anyone from getting a radio show based on their political leanings. And if they are, there are probably already laws in place to take care of that.

When you have two sides competing, and one is dominating a space, and the other suggests legislating fairness, you have to wonder if things are really unfair as they are. I honestly can’t think of how radio stations could be legally keeping liberal views off the air. They can’t get together and make deals to make sure only conservatives have jobs. Maybe they can just refuse to hire liberals? I don’t know that liberals are a protected group under EEO laws. I would suspect that they aren’t.

_NB:  The wife says, “There is no historical evidence of discrimination on the basis of one’s party affiliation, so they don’t qualify as a discrete and insular minority.”  Hence, no EEO protection. _

However, that doesn’t mean that a group of concerned liberals (With backing from, say, concerned Senators) couldn’t start a radio station and be as left-wing as they want to be.

The other issue here, and I may be completely wrong, but isn’t Bush being uncharacteristically reasonable on the immigration debate? Aside from the ridiculous wall, hasn’t he been pushing a pretty moderate plan?

Why I complain

I may have posted about this once before, so if you’ve heard it, you can just skip to the next paragraph.  A friend at work a few years ago, defending me to someone else, said that, while I complain a lot, it isn’t quite complaining.  It’s really just making conversation.

I’ve always been a big talker.  A perfect example is last Christmas, the first one I didn’t spend at home with my family.  I was with my in-laws instead.  My two younger siblings told me later that we had never realized that I started most of the family dinner conversations.  Apparently Christmas dinner was rather quiet without me.

Anyway, the thing I’m really bad at, and I think the reason that I complain a lot, is that I’m just awful at making small talk with people I don’t really know.  It’s hit home recently in my interactions with the people who live in my building, and the people who live next door.

Just this afternoon, I was sitting on the front steps after I went running, which I often do to kind of cool off gradually before I sit in the air conditioning.  A girl next door, who I’ve never met, came up the steps with her bike.  She said hello, and I said hello.  She asked, “How’s it going?”.  And I had absolutely no response.  Luckily for me, her bike had a flat tire, which I noticed, so I could ask about that.  Otherwise, I really have no idea what I would have said.

And I fear that people will think me unfriendly, or that I don’t want to get to know them.  I would like to get to know my neighbors.  I’ve met the people in my building, some more than others, and I’ve met a few people next door.  They all seem very nice.  But I can just never think of anything to say to people I don’t really know.

I’ve never really understood why.  I love to talk.  I talk at great length when I’m comfortable.  But when I’m not, I’m nearly mute.

Maybe there’s a class or something I could take.

Go ahead, shoot the messenger

Techdirt: Tighter Lending Standards Make Credit-Piggybacking Services More Popular

This issue — whereby a person can “piggyback” on another’s credit report and gain benefit from it — is just one that’s fueling financial institutions’ unhappiness with FICO scores, and the company behind the system, Fair Isaac, says it’s making changes to eliminate the positive influence of piggybacking.

Well, not exactly shoot the messenger, but I couldn’t think of a more accurate yet still catchy title.  What’s going on here is that people are using what amounts to a loophole in your FICO score that makes it beneficial to “rent” your good credit to some schmuck, allowing the schmuck to get a loan.

The proper response here, which is what Fair Isaac is doing, is to fix the FICO so that this doesn’t give the score lender a bump.  It will all but eliminate the market for this stuff because no one will want to do it anymore.

The improper response is what the lenders will probably do instead, which is to move away from the industry standard and make up their own numbers.

I did financial analysis at a very large company in the mortgage field for about a year just out of college, and one of the things I learned is that a FICO score is a remarkably good predictor of loan performance.  The company I worked for employed some very smart economists to try and come up with a better method (Or at least an in-house method so they could stop paying for FICO scores), and I don’t think they ever really improved on FICO.

And lately, lenders have shown that they really aren’t very good at predicting loan performance (See:  subprime mortgage market implosion).  So getting away from a score that may need a little tweaking, but has been really good for a long time, seems a little silly.

It happened again

The disaster magnet once again worked its magic. I went out back yesterday to retreive the trash can before someone stole it, and I saw a note on the disaster magnet. I suppose I was being nosy in going to look, but I couldn’t help it.

Someone had hit the car. Parked in the driveway. Who gets their car rear-ended while it’s parked in the driveway? The person left a note, but seriously.

Even funnier, perhaps, is that I went out to retrieve the trash can after the salesman who was supposed to meet me to talk about installing garage doors at the back of the driveway stood me up. We want to put in doors because our driveway is currently the only one without them, which means that everyone turns around in our driveway. And sometimes hit the cars parked there.

Anyway, there wasn’t a lot of damage (And the car still hadn’t been repaired from last time, so he can get it all taken care of at once, that lucky guy).  But it’s enough to send you to Zipcar.

Whoa, there

What’s going on at Mount Vernon Square Metro?  I’ve been riding the Green line to there and picking up the Yellow line to get to Pentagon City since March.  Yesterday, the Green line train overshot its normal stopping point by about half a six-car train-length.  This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that I usually sit in one of the back two cars – they tend to be less crowded as everyone stuffs themselves into the middle few cars.

I refuse to run for a Metro (Which is probably a little silly, but I don’t care.), but I will walk briskly.  Which I did, and I made it before they closed the doors.

Then, this morning, the Green line train stopped at about that same spot, half a train-length past the normal spot.  The Yellow line picked up at the normal spot.

What is Metro trying to do?  I don’t appreciate it.  I’m a creature of habit, which includes standing in the same spot on the platform every day.  And I expect the train to cooperate.

Weekend bus trauma

Well, trauma is perhaps too strong a word. But I did have a few “incidents” on the bus over the weekend.

First, on Friday, I was taking the bus down to the DC Improv to meet the wife and some friends. The bus driver decided that the light at Connecticut and Florida just north of Dupont didn’t really apply to him. A few cars thought that maybe it did, and registered their disagreement with their horns. No one was injured.

Then, on the way home from the 10K, we were on the same bus line, the 42, going north on Connecticut.  We were at the Q St. stop, and a gentleman in a large Range Rover decided that he wanted to pass the bus before he missed the light.  Unfortunately, his Range Rover was wider than the space between the bus and the Jersey wall.  Oops.  So he hit us.  I actually didn’t notice the impact, but the bus driver had to stop and call it in and wait for her supervisor or something.  So we walked the rest of the way home.

I was a little disappointed in the reaction of the passengers on the bus, some of whom expressed a lot of anger at the bus driver.  It wasn’t her fault that she had been rear-ended, or that she had to wait for permission to move the bus.  But try telling that to the angry people on the bus.

Anyway, I think the bus driver handled the whole thing well.  She called it in right away, then told the bus passengers what was going on.  She apologized for the inconvenience.  Not much more she could have done.

And riding the bus still beats driving in the city.

Sorry for the downtime

The main site, complainthub.com, and the site to submit your complaints, submissions.complainthub.com, have been down since this weekend.  Sorry about that.  My hosting company upgraded from Rails 1.1.6 to 1.2.3 and forgot to tell me.  Thanks to Mo for pointing it out.  No thanks to Dreamhost for not telling me.  Actually, they’re a pretty decent hosting company.  If anyone is looking for hosting, let me know, if I refer you I get money.

And the submission site is still down.  I don’t know why.  I’ll try and get that fixed ASAP.  And by ASAP, I mean when I get around to it.