Tag: Personal

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Becoming a expert on San Diego Trash Regulations

Back in October, I wrote about vacation rentals and how they don’t fit into the spirit of my neighborhood. Since then, I’ve been researching as much as possible about it and trying to figure out what legal way I can help put an end to them. This is not a new battle as the communities of Pacific Beach and La Jolla have been trying to do something about curbing vacation rentals for years. I’ve setup a website to collect information about them.

While the spirit of the residential zoning laws don’t permit short term vacation rentals, the letter of the law permits it according to the city attorney (I don’t believe this interpretation, however).

I’ve been running through lots of different ideas in my head and last night it dawned on me that there may be a different tact. My neighbor has routinely put out his trash cans too early and removed them too late; the city requires that cans be put out after 6 pm prior to the day of pickup and removed no later than 6 pm the day of pickup. (SDMC §66.0105) This got me thinking, what other regulations are there with regards to refuse collection.

I found the regulations and got a huge smile on my face.

The City will not provide Non-Residential Refuse Collection Services, except for limited service to eligible small business enterprises if authorized by the City Council and in accordance with eligibility criteria established by the City Manager (Mayor).

Where “Non-Residential Refuse” is defined as:

Non-Residential Refuse means all refuse that is not Residential Refuse including, but not limited to, refuse generated at a commercial, industrial, institutional or transient occupancy facility, including but not limited to business facilities, hotels, motels, inns, bed & breakfast establishments, churches, non-profit organizations, and non-City government/public facilities.

and “Non-Transient Occupancy” is defined as:

Non-Transient Occupancy means occupancy through ownership, lease or rental for periods of one month or more.

So my layman’s interpretation on this is that one of 3 things has to happen:

  • The City stops collecting refuse for all properties that are short term vacation rentals. The City can use the Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate information to find some (not all) vacation rentals in the city.

  • The City Council has to declare that vacation rentals are eligible small businesses for refuse collection. This, however, could be problematic as saying that vacation rentals are businesses would make them not able to be in residential zones.

  • The City Council has to amend the refuse collection regulations to allow collection from vacation rentals.

If refuse isn’t picked up at the thousands (someone showed me a list of over 1100 vacation rentals in PB alone as listed on a vacation rental website), it could create a big problem for the owners/operators of these facilities. It might convince them to stop having a vacation rental (that’s my hope anyway). In addition, I wonder if the City could send bills to those with vacation rentals for past collections. If the other 2 options are chosen, the City Council has to act which they have failed to do with respect to vacation rentals.

So far I haven’t heard back from the code enforcement officer at the Environmental Services Department, but this could be quite interesting.

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Time Flies – 20 years in mobile

It dawned on me yesterday that I’ve passed 2 milestones in my career. The first is that I’ve now been writing mobile applications for 20 years. Yes, there was mobile way before the iPhone and Android! I started writing mobile applications my senior year in college when Apple sent me a Newton MessagePad in exchange for licenses of my NotifyMail program. I sometimes think about all the changes in this industry and it just makes my head hurt! Development 20 years ago was generally not treated as a hobby due to cost; today, anyone can write an app with no skill (not sure if that is good or bad).

The second milestone is that I’ve been working from home for 15 years. I worked in an office setting for less than 4 years before I started this. It is a choice that I don’t regret and can’t imagine working in an office again. Even though I work for a large company, I have tons of flexibility and am far more productive than if I was in an office everyday.

Who knows what the next 15-20 years in my career will bring, but I look forward to them.

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The victims of airbnb and short term rentals

I’ve heard people say that airbnb and the like are disrupting the hotel industry by letting anyone rent out his or her residence. This may seem like a great idea until you’re the person living next door to one of these rentals. Instead of having a neighbor that you know by name, you have random people staying for 1 night, 3 nights, a week. This can bring more crime, noise, and reduce property values. San Francisco just passed an ordinance regulating short term rentals putting a cap on the number of days a place can be rented a year. This number is capped at 90 days, but that is still far too many, in my opinion.

My neighbor decided earlier this year to kick out the family that had been renting his house for a few years and turn it into a vacation rental. He claims that he is a “family man”, but the only motivation for doing this is greed. He “fixed up” the house by putting in a hot tub, redoing his deck and planting grass. His vacation rental doesn’t fit into our neighborhood as all the houses in the immediate area are single family houses that are either owner occupied or long term rentals (I’ll ignore the mini-dorm across the street owned by another greedy person). So now we’re going to get random people staying at the house and have to deal with potential noise and the feeling that we may not be safe because we have no idea who is supposed to be next door.

The city of San Diego is too chicken to pass regulations on short term rentals because that would affect beach rentals and other rental properties that bring the city money via the transient occupancy tax (provided people collect and report it). Zoning laws are supposed to separate different uses for properties, i.e. commercial and residential. A short term rental is definitely commercial as a residence is where someone lives. Shouldn’t short term rentals fall under commercial zoning regulations?

People could have similar arguments against bed and breakfasts, but they are more regulated (one we stayed in said that they could only serve breakfast and not any other meal) and have a host/manager on site.

The rise of short term rentals anywhere someone wants may be good for the property owners, but in my opinion, is not wanted by many residents of neighborhoods.

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Going on a fad diet

OK, my title is a bit misleading, however it caught your attention! Luckily I’ve never really had to watch what I eat and I try to run about 4 times a week. (About 4 years ago I did put on a few pounds when I really hated my job; I didn’t have the desire to run and just kept eating.) Earlier this year, I started having some stomach problems and after a my doctor performed a few procedures and determined that there was nothing wrong with me, I was kind of on my own to solve my issues.

My wife suggested I try a gluten free diet. I was quite reluctant to give up gluten (I love cookies and cake), but was willing to try anything. The first few weeks I gave up gluten were tough because it seemed like everything contained gluten. The reality was that I just had to look harder at packages and make better choices. I started eating a lot of apples and more fruit. Also, when we went to birthday parties, it was a bit difficult to turn down cupcakes and cake. However, it started getting easier after awhile.

I’ve been on a gluten free diet for about 5 months now and have been feeling great! Since I don’t have a gluten allergy or celiac disease, I don’t have to worry about things made in a gluten free facility, I just have to read ingredients. I also ask more questions when we go out so that I get exactly what I want.

I consider myself the “problem child” when it comes to eating because I no longer eat gluten, red meat, nor dairy. I was at a company offsite meeting last week and had to request a special meal to meet my dietary restrictions.

While I can’t exactly say if the gluten free diet has helped me, it surely hasn’t hurt me. This leads me to some questions about diets; are people becoming having more dietary problems possibly because or more processed foods, are people becoming more picky, or is something else causing the dietary trends to be more commonplace?

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Too Smart for my Own Good

A few weeks ago, my wife put something in the freezer, but managed to not close it completely. The door alarm didn’t sound as the door was “almost” closed. When we got home, I found that the freezer had started to defrost. I figured that there had to be a way to sound an alarm if the temperature increased too much. I had a Z-Wave Wireless Temperature / Humidity Sensor sitting in my server closet to alert me if the temperature got too hot, so I decided to throw it in the freezer. The specs on the device said it would get down to 14°F, but I gave it a shot anyway.

I set an alarm for > 0°F, 5°F and 10°F. To my surprise and delight, I saw that the device read down to -4°F. However, I kept getting alerted that the temperature was rising and even hit 20°F every few days. This, of course, worried me so I called for service (the refrigerator/freezer is less than 1 year old).

The repair guy came out yesterday and was very patient explaining to me a feature called “adaptive defrost”. This is where a heater in the freezer turns on periodically to defrost the freezer (raising the temperature, obviously). When the heater turns on is based on how often the door is open, how long the compressor has been running and when the heater came on last. So, the huge temperature swings is expected and normal. I kind of felt dumb for having called, but the guy did say that the display has burn in and needs to get replaced, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

I’m really surprised that when I called service, they didn’t flag this and explain the issue. I spoke to my dealer twice and Samsung twice; out of 4 reps, no one mentioned it. I guess they aren’t trained in troubleshooting and find it costs less to just send someone out.

In any case, now that I know the reason for the temperature changes, I set my alarms for 25°F and 30°F and will see what happens; that should be high enough to know if the door was left open.

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Electronic Mail Is Still Useful

In an article I read the other day, the author quotes the CEO of a newsletter company (which some might call a spammer) saying:

“Email is a 40-year-old technology that is not going away for very good reasons — it’s the cockroach of the Internet.”

This got me thinking about how people use email and why some people are not effective at using email.

I’ve been using email on the “Internet” for almost 25 years, have written 2 email clients ([Eudora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) for Newton and Mark/Space Mail), and have worked on a third ([Eudora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) for Mac), so I think I have a little experience using email. With all the new fangled communications means such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instant Messaging, some would say that email is dead. I’d argue that email is more useful than ever and that people need to be trained (or re-trained) on how to communicate. The ease of some other mechanisms has made people lazy. I’ll just go ahead and list some of my ideas that I believe helps in business communication; personal communication is different, but some of these ideas can apply there as well. Most of my items apply to composing messages, but I also threw in an item about receiving email.

  • Email should be treated like any formal communication. If you want a good response, in particular for business purposes, write your email like it is a term paper that you’ll receive a grade.

  • Don’t use abbreviations like LOL, OMG, etc. They make you look dumb when communicating with customers, co-workers, business partners.

  • Proofread your email. Check your spelling and punctuation. You never know who will read your message or how they will judge you. Remember that a lot of business email is forwarded; more than just the recipient may see it.

  • Slow down and take your time to compose your message. For some messages, I’ve spent hours composing the message and then have someone else review it before sending. You can’t unsend a message, so if you write it quickly, it may come across in the wrong way.

  • Don’t write or respond to email when you’re angry; you may regret it later. Your tone can come across in the message.

  • If you want an answer from someone, make your case, then clearly list your question or questions(s) on separate lines. I like to make my questions into a list so that someone that responds can respond inline with answers. No matter how much you think your ideas are great, if you don’t get to the point, you’re not going to receive a meaningful answer. A former boss told me to ask questions like I was talking to a 3 year old (my son was that old at the time). While I don’t completely agree with it, I think that simplifying questions in certain cases will make it easier to get an answer.

  • Don’t assume that your audience has the same context you have. In many cases, the people you are sending email to may only know a little bit about your problem and don’t know all the other working parts. So, make it easy for you to get a response by narrowing down your email to question(s) that the audience can answer.

  • Don’t address your email to a mailing list if you want a response. Address your message to one or more individuals that can give you an answer; copy appropriate mailing lists. Using the shotgun approach to email may make you look and feel good, but is not very effective.

  • Learn to use Bcc. You look like an idiot sending email to 50 people when a reply isn’t relevant to all 50 people.

  • Trim down the cc and to lists on replies removing people that aren’t relevant.

  • Know your audience. Sending email to some email list at a company is usually a bad idea. The list could have 2500 people on it who have no idea what your email has to do with them. You may think it is relevant, but others may not care. For instance, if you’re changing the schema on a database, sending it to thousands of people, many of whom don’t use the database, is going to annoy people.

  • Get to the point. Long email messages are either skimmed with the reader not getting the whole point of it or are skipped. The reader’s time is precious; treat it as such.

  • When you receive email, remember the delete key. Check the subject and maybe the first paragraph and delete email that isn’t relevant to you; you’ll be able to get through your pile of email quickly. You don’t have to reply to every message.

I believe that there is no other electronic communication means as effective as email; however, people have gotten lazy and made it less useful. A work day doesn’t go by that I don’t have to write email; if my email isn’t effective, I can’t do my job.

I’m sure people won’t agree with everything I’ve said, but some of these tips help me every day. Any comments?

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Drones and Privacy

A few months ago, I received a DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter for a present. For most people, a quadcopter is called a drone. Call it whatever you want, it is a fun toy for me (tool for others). I have it outfitted with a GoPro camera and a video transmitter so that I can see what is going on during flight. In a conversation with my in-laws where I was showing my father-in-law how it flies, my mother-in-law indicated that she thought the devices were creepy because they can be used to spy on people. This is the same thing that the media is playing up and catering to the fears of people.

The quadcopters are first off, noisy, you can’t sneak up on people and take a picture; you know they are coming. Second off, the cameras on these copters aren’t all that great for details. The GoPro is a decent camera, but if you want to take a picture of someone in a house, you’re going to have to have the copter right at a window. Third, if you live in a 2 story house, it’s likely that you can already see in your neighbor’s yard. We live on a hill and can easily see into our neighbor’s backyard from our backyard.

In the current state of copters, I find it quite hard to really invade someone’s privacy without them knowing. Also, as I’m just learning to fly, I only fly on my property. When I get more experienced, I’ll goto a park and fly; flying over people’s houses may not be the smartest thing to do.

Time will tell what lawmakers decide to do to this new found hobby of mine.

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Lessons in home remodeling

Almost a year ago, we embarked on the journey to transform our house into a home. It has been an interesting journey, to say the least. I’ve learned a lot about myself and a lot about the process. While I love our house and I consider it down, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I never want to do this again! Why would I say this? Remodeling a house requires you to make hundreds and hundreds of decisions ranging from what faucets to get to what color paint to put on the wall. We had a general contractor who handled all the sub contractors. Dealing with the general contractor was easy and he was quite responsive.

We had an architect do the design and my dad who was in construction inspection his entire career offered to act as the project manager, per se. Man dad was at the house a few times a week and paid attention to all the details along the way helping mitigate problems that arose and guiding us on what we should do. By getting up early every day and working from 5:45 am to 2:30 pm, I was able to goto the house everyday and see what was going on with the house. Inevitably there was some problem I had to deal with or some decision to make.

Just to give you an idea of the decisions we had to make:

  • What faucets to buy
  • What countertop to get in the bathroom
  • What countertop to get in the kitchen
  • What light fixtures to buy throughout the house
  • What outdoor light fixtures to get
  • What floor to get
  • What color paint for all the rooms
  • What color paint for the outside of the house
  • What kinds of toilets to get
  • What towel bars to get
  • What kinds of windows to get (I was very specific on the type of lock I wanted)
  • What sliding glass doors to get
  • What tile to get
  • What fireplace to get
  • What tile to go around the fireplace
  • What color stain for the cabinets
  • What ceiling fans to buy
  • What track lights to get
  • What thermostat to get
  • What furnace to get
  • What garage door to get
  • What garage door opener to get
  • What shelving units to get
  • What closet organizers to get
  • What sinks to get
  • What vanity to get
  • What doors to get
  • What door hardware to get
  • What speakers to get
  • What appliances to get (refrigerator, microwave, washer, dryer, range, dishwasher)

etc.

I tried to keep ahead of the contract and to make things as easy as possible for my wife, I tried to only present a few decisions to her at a time.

On top of the decisions, issues came up with just about every sub contractor. Some issues were easily resolved, some were a bit more complex. One of the most memorable problems was the day we moved in (the house wasn’t done, but enough so that we could move in), I smelled gas in the attic, so I shut off the valve to the furnace. The next morning, I went up again and still smelled gas. The shutoff valve wasn’t properly connected so I had to shutoff the gas to the house. The contractor got the sub contractor out to fix it right away, but that kind of workmanship is pretty unacceptable as it was a safety concern.

This really wore on me and caused me an immense amount of stress. Our house is now really a home and I’m very pleased with the outcome; the process, however, is one that I could have done without.

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Another trip, another lesson (or more) learned

While I don’t travel all that often, I do travel between 6 and 12 times a year. I have my routines down pat and usually get through the airport unscathed. On my most recent trip to Portland, disaster almost ensued. I arrived at the airport very early as there are limited flights to San Diego and had nothing left to do downtown; this turned out to be a great thing. Security line was long and I made it to the porno scanner. As I always do, I opted out of the scan. I was doing my best to watch my bags as I waited for a screener to come over, but it is pretty hard to do so. After 10-15 minutes, they finally found a screener for me to do my rub down, I mean pat down. This kind of delay is pretty routine when I go through Portland; I find this unacceptable. Also, I find it interesting that every family that was traveling with a child, the TSA officer let all members of the family go through the metal detector and not one of them had to go to the millimeter wave detector.

When asked what items were mine, I pointed to a bin and my backpack and told the screener that my suitcase was missing. Depending on the day, I shove my phone, watch and wallet in my backpack or my suitcase. This trip, I put my phone and watch in my backpack and my wallet in the bin with my shoes. I did, however, but my belt in my suitcase. This must have been an “oh sh*t” moment for them as they didn’t seem to know what to do. The head person said that they’d review the video footage and try to locate the person that took my bag. I had my screening with a very nice officer who skipped over some of the baloney speech as he knew I’d been through it before. After the screening, they saw that a bag was left behind and searched it as I indicated it is likely that someone took the wrong bag. One officer found a pill bottle with a name on it, which allowed them to page the person and hope that the person would come back to the screening area.

I asked if they could use the passenger manifests and find out what flight the person was on and get the airline to grab the bag before the person boarded. I was told that they didn’t have access to that information. This, of course, is completely false as the TSA can’t do its job with the no fly list without knowing who is on what flight. A passenger search is a simple task as there are many a few thousand people in the airport and searching a database of that size takes maybe a few seconds at most. This is what really annoyed me (besides waiting for my screening) as they have enough information to locate my bag (unless the person left the sterile area).

Luckily they found my bag as it appears that the passenger heard the message over the intercom. The passenger was very apologetic and it was an honest mistake (OK, his bag really didn’t look like mine, except that it was black).

I’ve learned a few things about this experience. First, I need a big piece of brightly colored duct tape on my bag. Second, I need to grab a Bluetooth LE beacon such as StickNFind or Tile and shove it in my bag. Even though the range isn’t great, it could give me half a chance of finding my bag running up and down the terminal or setting up an alert when the bag leaves the area of my phone (this assumes that my phone isn’t in the bag and isn’t taken at the same time). Third, I really need to get into the TSA PreCheck program. I have no problems spending the $85 and submitting my fingerprints, but there isn’t a facility close to me right now to process my application. Portland, however, has one so I’ll try to set that up for my next trip up there if it works out. And the last thing is to speak up and get one of the officers to pull my bags off the conveyer belt right after it goes through the scanner.

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Paranoia trumps common sense

Today my family and I went to the San Diego County Fair and with most events these days, were prepared for the additional security and screening. While they allowed in backpacks and food, they didn’t allow in water bottles (unless they were for children for fears that they would contain alcohol or explosives, I guess). There were numerous signs at the entrance saying that weapons including pocket knives were not allowed and should be left in cars. This wasn’t a surprise, but the metal detectors surprised me (my wife had already been this year, so she went through it before). Stuff that didn’t go through the metal detectors (backpacks, cell phones, etc.) were just pushed alongside the metal detectors.

Those that are paying attention realize how ridiculous it is to partially screen bags (they poke a stick in bags), but that’s not where this article is going. I thought nothing of the weapons ban or any additional security screening until we sat down for a presentation on Kitchen Craft Cookware (the cookware looks real nice and something like it is on our list to purchase sometime after our house remodel is done). My wife was pretty astute and quickly won a plastic juicer that you shove in a lemon/orange/etc., then a “ninja” spatula by being the first to answer questions. Then the kicker came a few minutes later when she answered another question and won a small paring knife. Yes, you read that correctly. We weren’t allowed to bring a knife into the fair, but there was no problem with us walking out with one. Then I started to notice a number of vendors selling knives that you could take home.

I wonder if the person or people that came up with the no weapons policy gave it a second thought or just forgot that vendors sell knives at the fair every year (we went many years ago before all the extra security and bought a knife). Too bad our society is so paranoid these days that people forget about using common sense when making policies.