paul schreiber

I wrote Nancy Pelosi, letting her know that electronic voting machines are problematic and voter-verified paper ballots are essential.

She wrote me back:

Like her colleague Diane Feinstein, she is having trouble finding competent correspondence staff.

Note the key paragraph here:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-NB) introduced the companion Senate bill, S. 1431, on July 9th, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

NB is New Brunswick, Canada. Last time I checked, Canada was a sovereign country. Bill Nelson is the senator from Florida.

The apple.com search engine seemed to have a spot of trouble with this one.

Buried in my Amazon Chase Visa “This E-Sign Disclosure and Consent” was this gem:

Hardware and Software Requirements. In order to access, view, respond to, and retain electronic Communications that we make available to you, you must have:

• an Internet browser (Microsoft ® Windows 95 or higher, Windows NT 4.0 or higher with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5+, Netscape 4.6+ or AOL 4+) that supports 128 bit encryption;
• sufficient electronic storage capacity on your computer’s hard drive or other data storage unit;
• an e-mail account with an Internet service provider and e-mail software in order to participate in our electronic Communications program;
• a personal computer (for PCs: Pentium 120 Hhz or higher; for Macintosh, Power Mac 9500, Power PC 604 processor 120-MHz Base or higher), operating system and telecommunications connections to the Internet capable of receiving, accessing, displaying, and either printing or storing Communications received from us in electronic form via a plain text-formatted e-mail or by access to our web site using one of the browsers specified above.

I’ll dig out that Power Mac 9500. It’s around here somewhere…

Recently, I received an email from Nancy Pelosi:

Apparently no one explained to her (despite representing Internet central), that scanning your letterhead and pasting it in to your email is a bad idea. It looks worse when it’s on a funny angle.

Having text as images this must be some sort of ADA violation.

Finally, the message lacks an unsubscribe link.

Of course, Speaker Pelosi isn’t the only one with problems. Anna Eshoo, who represents the only slightly gerrymandered California 14th, home to none other than Google and Yahoo, can’t get her web presence together, either.

First, her mailing list is woefully out of date. I left her district almost three years ago, yet I still get emails from her. As with Pelosi, there’s no unsubscribe link. I’ve left her district office staff numerous emails and voicemails, but they won’t remove me from her list.

Second, when you visit her web site, you get an SSL error:

…this certainly doesn’t instill confidence her ability to keep constituent communications secure and private.

Once you submit the form, you get obtuse error messages like this one:

…1996 called, they want their form validation code back.

For those wondering what required-prefix means — that’s the formal prefix that precedes your name, such as “Ms” or “Mr.” Which, of course, shouldn’t be required in the first place.

Who needs an “SEO Mavin” anyway?

There are seven continents. But who’s counting?

I’ve been playing with the prerelease version of Chrome for Mac OS X and found a rather amusing bug:

How’s that for juxtaposition?

Good ol’ Fklsdjf Fldskf;!

For those of you who just want the answer, here you go:

• Range hood bulb: 10 Watt G4
• In-oven bulb: 50 Watt 130 Volt GY6.35

Head to your corner store and pick one up. Now, on with the story.
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