The question for today is “are stop signs effective?”. I’ve been running along the same route for 5.5 years and either I’ve been noticing people failing to stop at the stop sign more or people just care less. At this particular intersection that is a 4 way stop, a small number of people actually slow down and stop, some slow down and continue, and the remainder simply just blow through the stop sign.

On my run today, I saw a teenager not bother to slow down and make a left turn at this intersection. He didn’t seem to care that there was a stop sign. This intersection is getting more and more dangerous for me as I have no idea if people will stop. I decided to stop for a minute on my way back and take a video of a car running the stop sign. I didn’t have to wait long for this to happen; maybe 15 seconds.

How can this intersection be made safer? Does this happen to all 4 way stops where no one is around to notice? Maybe steal spikes that puncture tires can be made to come up if people fail to stop.

When I started ReceiptWallet, I setup an Amazon Affiliates link to see if I could make some money on the scanners I recommended. Turns out, this was a smart move as I was making decent money for no work. After I sold ReceiptWallet, I get my links around on this blog and while I don’t make enough money to quit my day job, I make enough to goto dinner a few times a year. I’d rather have the money in my pocket than someone else’s, so I keep the links up.

Unfortunately, Amazon notified California based affiliates today that they’re cutting us off if the state passes a law regarding online commerce. The law is a bit of duplicate regulation as California residents are already required to pay a use tax for goods purchased out of the tax; it appears that the law is putting the burden of collection on a company that doesn’t even have offices in the state. The law argues that affiliates constitute a California presence for Amazon and thus it has to collect taxes.

So us little people get punished because the state can’t enforce the current law on the books. Lovely.

I’ve written in the past about the horrible experiences I’ve had with Sprint customer service, so I think it is only appropriate to write about a positive experience. Last month I decided to contact Sprint to find out what would happen to my account if I ported out the primary number and left the other lines alone. I’ve been forwarding my Sprint line to my AT&T iPhone for a year and decided to finally “reclaim” my number. I was holding out due to an ETF, but decided that the ETF got low enough that it was no longer a reason to keep forwarding the number (also SMS didn’t forward). The Sprint representative answered quickly and said that a new number would be assigned and nothing else would happen to the account.

I decided to try my luck and see if I could get the lines on the account rearranged to move included features to the lines that I was keeping. The rep said that since the plan was so old, the changes couldn’t be made which I completely understood. However, when I checked the account, the changes I requested were actually made! I was surprised, but pleased (I did verify this with a Sprint reseller).

After all that, my parents actually ported out their phones to Verizon so my Dad could get an iPhone. When I got my latest bill, it looked as if Sprint billed me a bit more than I expected. It should have been the regular monthly fee + the ETF for my line (Sprint bills one month in advance, so it was the normal fee without additional lines). When I contact Sprint on Friday, I got email back Saturday with an apology and a credit applied to my account; not just the credit I was supposed to get, but credits for other stuff that I won’t see about until the next bill shows up. That was great service to respond so quickly and fix the issue.

Thanks, Sprint!

This week I’ve seen a number of “leaks” showing Lion and iOS 5 as well as people Tweeting about some of the information contained in WWDC sessions. Everyone that attends WWDC has to agree to an NDA (non-disclosure agreement for those not in the loop) and Apple stated everywhere that with the exception of the keynote, the content of the sessions was confidential and subject to the NDA. So, all these leaks are violations of the NDA. Besides what I’ve read on the web, the most flagrant violation I saw was someone taking a picture of the slide that said something on the bottom to the effect that photography was not permitted!

As Jason Snell tweeted a few days ago:

And with that, I declare the NDA completely dead. RT @daringfireball iOS 5 Screenshots and Tidbits at Engadget: df4.us/hqy

There are, unfortunately, no consequences to these NDA violations as Apple wouldn’t accomplish anything by suing the small developer. However, that is no reason to violate it as it won’t help any developer get ahead (I doubt the sites that have published information have paid the developers).

The first point of the Scout Law is “A scout is trustworthy”. I always try to live by this and this includes everything I have done in every aspect of my life including business and work. I wish that more people, especially those in my field, would take trust seriously.

Today my family and I visited SeaWorld as we do fairly often. As I was waiting at the parking toll booth, I heard the attendant ask a guest for his zip code while swiping his credit card. Apparently this guy and SeaWorld staff don’t read the newspapers. This action is in direct violation of the recent (February 14, 2011)  California Supreme Court decision of Jessica Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc. In a nutshell, merchants cannot ask for a zip code when processing a credit card transaction (with a few exceptions). The zip code can be considered personal information and is a violation of California consumer protection laws.

I mentioned this to the attendant and he said that they ask for it for a survey and also ask it for of cash visitors as well. Yeah, that’s kind of the point as the zip code could be used to link the survey directly to the credit card user.

We’ll see what SeaWorld has to say with the message I sent them. They better act quickly otherwise the fines could start adding up. Too bad I can’t get paid for reporting the issue!