Tag: dc

Doing a little gardening


Originally uploaded by thetejon

Up until this afternoon, it could have been argued that I lived in a dentist’s office. The front yard, such as it is, was clearly designed by someone who didn’t want to offend anyone. Unfortunately for him, I was offended. What are those grass-bush-things? They’re ugly. Especially after they got a little brown over the winter, and then they started growing again this spring. They looked terrible. I’ve been saying I wanted to replace them with something else pretty much since we moved in over two years ago. Today, I put my sweat where my mouth is. The wife, the kid, and I went to Garden District and got plants and mulch and a little spade. They were quite helpful there.


Originally uploaded by thetejon

We picked out a rose bush, some blue flowers, another bush that should flower late in the summer, and some marigolds. I don’t remember all the details, but I know I had a marigold garden when I was about four years old. I’m sure I did most of the upkeep work. In my opinion, clearly unbiased, it looks amazing. We’ll have to wait and see if anyone else in the building acknowledges my genius. One already told me it looked good, but he ran into me while I was cleaning up, so he pretty much had to say nice things. It remains to be seen if anyone else will do it unprompted. Luckily for me, a much improved garden is its own reward.

Has Columbia Heights turned a corner?

The wife and kid and I went to D’Vines yesterday to get beer for the Celtics game (Probably should have gotten more considering the end result). Out in front of the Columbia Heights Metro were beggars from Greenpeace! While avoiding eye contact as much as possible, the wife and I were secretly thrilled that these organized panhandlers had branched out from the fancy spots like the P St Whole Foods to come to our neighborhood. Of course, now I’d like them to go away. I don’t like being accosted for my wallet every time I go near DCUSA.

The Opposite of Community

Internet forums are often wonderful. They can take a group of people who are spread across the globe, joined only by a common interest, and bring them together to talk and make friends. Or they can be terrible. You can have something like the Columbia Heights Community Forum, which takes people with common interests who are already co-located in one DC neighborhood, and drives them apart. At least someone notices my struggles with the forum. It’s really an unbelievable amount of hate and rage and incoherent ranting. Some go around pushing buttons, and others simply wait to have their buttons pushed so they can scream about it. It’s really too bad that something that could be a positive force in the community is actually driving people apart. Although, like a train wreck, I just can’t look away. I can’t even stop posting there.

This man is my hero

Here is a story of a man who beat the DC parking enforcement machine.

“Even when there were shootings on my block last year, I wasn’t this disappointed in my city,” he wrote in one protest email. “D.C. effectively stole my automobile.”

After the city gave him a “courtesy tow” to an illegal parking spot, lost his ticket contestation documents, and booted and towed his car, he actually got them to return the car to a spot near his house. Then he had them do it again, because the first time they brought him the wrong car. I talk a lot about my small victories over DC parking enforcement, but this puts me to shame. I had lunch with his wife on Friday – she works with my wife, and a group was going out to watch some basketball, so I joined them. Had I known her husband was a giant among those of us who joust at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer.

This is why I live close to work, Part 2

A friend once told me that, when considering two more or less equal candidates for a job opening, you should choose the one with a better commute. Wait, where was I? Oh, right. Today my commute involved tiptoeing past my daughter’s room, hoping not to wake her, and sitting down at the table to get to work. There’s, like, a blizzard, or something, going on out there. I have no meetings, and no one is really expecting me in the office, so I’m staying put. Daycare is opening three hours late, and since the snow is still coming down hard, they may not open at all. So I may have to watch her this afternoon anyway. If you’re going in to work today, or going out anywhere, be careful.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be fixing?

Metro Use A Rarity For Half Of Board | WashingtonPost.com

[Ward One Councilman Jim] Graham said frequent night meetings make mass transit inconvenient.

Taking transit is not convenient for their jobs, [Metro board members who don’t actually use Metro] said.

So, what they’re saying here is, “We’re so grossly incompetent that we can’t even make Metro work for ourselves. Good luck to all you poor schlubs!” What kind of schedule do these people keep that Metro isn’t convenient? I don’t believe that they have Metro board meetings at 4AM on Sundays. Seriously, this is like the CEO of Bank of America keeping his life savings under his mattress because the branches are too inconvenient. Maybe the reason that Metro has a $29 million deficit is because it’s not serving the residents of the DC Metro area. And maybe the people responsible for fixing it could actually use it and see for themselves what the problems are. Instead, they’ll probably just raise fares again, making it less convenient for everyone. Next year we’ll have a $40 million deficit, and more people who don’t use it will make more bad decisions.

Please stop bunching the 16th Street bus, WMATA

I just missed the bus this morning. As usual, I was waiting for the interminable light to cross 16th at Harvard NW when the bus went by. Then another, and another. Three buses, bumper to bumper, and all gone by the time the light changed. So I waited. Not too long, six or seven minutes, but then three more came. From Harvard to Euclid there were 12 people on my bus, then 11 until we got to M. After I got off at H, I think there might have been one person left. No one got on while I was riding. There was another bus right in front of us that picked up all the passengers. And I got on the bus at about 7:20AM, not peak rush hour, but plenty of people are on their way to work at that time. It’s frustrating that, had the buses been spaced out just a little bit, I would have gotten one of the first bunch that went through. And WMATA would have saved some cash. Eleven fares probably don’t even cover costs on the bus.

Finally someone on the home team to cheer for

The Nationals signed Adam Dunn! I’m so excited that there will actually be a player on the home team that I want to see. Usually I go to games to see the visiting team, but this year will be different. I mean, I’m still mostly looking forward to finally seeing Albert Pujols and maybe getting tickets when the Orioles come to town. But watching Dunn will be pretty cool.

That’s not the way to win fans, Comcast

I posted the other day about the funny exchange I had with Comcast’s online help. In the middle of last night, someone (or, more likely, some script) posted a comment.

Thanks for sharing this post and I apologize for the experience. I will make sure that this is passed on the appropriate department for evaluation. Most importantly, we would like to have our customers have a good experience. I am also sorry to learn that you are deciding to cancel your cable service. If you are interested, I can reach out to my contacts and see if we can offer a lower-rate package including both services for you. If you are interested, please send me the phone number listed on your account so that I can assist further. Thanks again for sharing this post. Best Regards, Mark Casem Comcast Corp. National Customer Operations We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

First of all, it’s nice that Comcast is looking at what people say about them online. This makes good business sense. But that’s where the good decisions end. What mistakes did Comcast make? Let me list them for you. First, they clearly didn’t read the post. The comment responds to the general gist of the post, but not the details. That, coupled with the timestamp, suggests that this was not a person but an automated script. Engaging dissatisfied bloggers in conversation about how you can provide better service is great. Spamming blog comments with vague promises to fix things is not. If Mark Casem wants to personally sign the comment, then I want Mark Casem’s email address, not some generic help address. Sure, this means that Mark Casem is going to get a lot of junk mail, but there are always costs associated with doing business. Comcast’s IT department can get a better spam firewall. Second, they could have contacted me directly. Every blog has an “About” page. Mine is right here. It tells you how to contact me. Some people already have. A ten-second personal email would have been so much more effective than this. Third, if a package is available at a lower rate, why don’t you just give that to people? Sure, it costs you some money on people who would have never known about it. But don’t you think it might create some customer loyalty? When Verizon Fios comes to DC, if they’re offering a better deal, do you think people who have been overpaying Comcast are going to stick around? It is somewhat ironic that a complaint about how the customer service people are nearly indistinguishable from a well-designed IM bot gets a response from another customer service person who is indistinguishable from a computer program. Or maybe it’s not ironic but appropriate. In any event, it’s unhelpful. Too bad Comcast didn’t make a real effort to engage me. I would have happily spoken to a real person, and would have blogged about the good experience. I know I complain a lot, so I make an extra effort to also talk about the things that go right. But you missed your chance this time, Comcast. I’m not emailing your help desk. If a real person comes back here and talks to me about my problem, not about the problem that other customers who use the same keywords have, I’ll talk. Edit to add: As you can see in the comments, Mark Casem replied directly with his email address. I’ll be contacting him later today, and I’ll let everyone know how it goes.