My email address has been sold!

While this really isn't a new occurrence, it is interesting to note who sold it and who bought it. Several years ago, I read about someone that creates a new email aliases for each website he visits. Since I run my own domain and can easily do this, I adopted website.com@gruby.com which lets me easily track (and disable) email addresses. Today I received email from the San Jose Mercury News; I signed up on their website at one time to view some article and used a new email address. I also uncheck the "share my name" options and all the email options. Well, it looks like the Mercury News feels they need to support their website by sending out spam. The email I received today was a paid advertisement from the Phil Angelides campaign.

I can see less reputable companies doing this, but the newspaper for Silicon Valley? They really should know better than to spam their subscriber list. Their FAQ states:

Will I receive email?
Our content is available to you as a free service. Occasionally, we will send emails to update you on new features and products from MercuryNews.com and on behalf of our selected partners and advertisers.

So while they are in their rights to send me crap, sending me a political advertisement when they haven't sent me anything in years is just in bad taste.

Not a huge deal for me, I just disabled the email alias and now they can't send me any more spam.

Software Installers should have uninstallers

I've not been a huge fan of either software installers or uninstallers, but understand the need for installers. Recently I tried out a program on my Linux box and used the installer to install it; I was unimpressed with the software and the mess it scattered over my drive. I looked around, but couldn't find an uninstaller. Maybe I deleted it trying to quickly recover from what it had done or maybe it didn't come with one. If it didn't come with one, it should have. It took me awhile to remove what it installed and then it wasn't until a day later that I discovered it changed some of my system files. Luckily I had backups of those and was able to restore them. Hopefully I'll no longer complain about shipping a product with an uninstaller as I now know firsthand how hard it is to remove some programs.

Blogging, a year later

I've now been blogging for just over a year. In that time, I've written about many random topics from politics to technology. The most popular article, by far, has been my review of the Garmin Forerunner 305. This article has been quite valuable, it appears to many looking at the device. All my other posts seem to be for my own entertainment, which is fine by me.

Have I learned anything over the last year about blogging? Well, I've learned how to make the site prettier and that by writing in a hournal type environment, I can put my feelings down and stop bugging my wife.

All in all, I'm glad that I started this blog.

Franchise Tax Board is incompetent

Several months ago, I blogged about the Franchise Tax Board somehow losing my tax payment. For the last 2+ months, I've been calling them to find out the story and was promised a call back a number of times. No one ever called me back and I called them again today. This time, I got a different story...I had to make the payment AND the interest and penalty. So the $68.81 penalty and interest has now gone up to $92.31 because they'd been jerking me around for 2 months. This is not to mention the $20 stop payment fee I have to pay the bank so that the original payment doesn't get cashed. I'm going to send the damn payment today by certified mail (or registered letter) to ensure that they get it and I can put this behind me. I can't believe I have to pay an additional $23.50 due to their incompetence. My future tax payments are going to be sent certified or registered. I don't have the time or patience to deal with their stupidity.