Every now and then, petitions do pay off...

Emma Thompson will remove her name from Polanski petition, and good for her! Already one of my favorite actresses...although my appreciation is tempered by the fact that she had to be talked into it. Still, great news.

Oh, and the elections?

Gail Collins nailed it. I don't have much else to add.

I will say that I'm less than delighted with Bill Owens winning in NY-23. He's anti-choice and uncertain at best on gay rights (the official Republican nominee was actually better on both issues), and we really don't need another Democrat like that in the House. Besides that, the whole thing did start with Obama nominating a Republican to be Secretary of the Army, which is a wonderful way to reinforce the already-widespread mentality that Democrats just aren't capable of handling national defense. But at least Owens is a dependable vote on health care, and I can't deny the symbolic value of picking up a seat that includes territory last represented by a Democrat when Ulysses Grant was president, not to mention that the Republicans are now down to two districts out of 29 in New York. It wasn't that long ago that they had almost all the districts outside NYC. That brings the total Republican share of the Northeast House delegation down to 16 out of 92 if I've counted correctly. Has the mainstream media stopped clucking about how Democrats can't win in the South yet?

Work updates, and an invitation

I do try to keep this blog focused on my personal life (stop that laughing - travel, politics, music and occasional angst about stuff in general...that is my personal life), but, well, there hasn't been much of one lately, as work has been quite hectic. No complaints there, given how hard it is to find a job these days. In any case, that, coupled with the fact that my job involves spreading the word about my company's services all over the world, has gotten me thinking I should put out a plug for those services here.

You'll notice I don't mention the company by name. Although I probably wouldn't get in any trouble for naming it here, I do want this to remain mostly a personal-issues blog, so I'd rather it not turn up on a Google search of the company name. But I can and will link to it here. I'd like to encourage everybody to create an account for yourselves. It is free for consumers, with no hidden costs whatsoever, and you can start saving information about your purchases (such as date of purchase, warranty expiration dates, and even saving a copy of the receipt) right away. At participating stores, they'll enter the information for you at point of sale and even register the warranty online. Odds are there are no participating stores where you are unless you live in Singapore; but if I do my job, there will be soon. Now is a great time to get in on the ground floor.

Note we also maintain a blog, on which almost all the recent updates are from me, so you can see I haven't been as silent as you think on the web lately! We are also on Twitter, and yes, all the tweets so far are from me. I hope you'll give us a try, wherever you are, as we will be reaching out to retailers near you shortly. (Next stop, the US beginning in December - I might even get a trip to San Francisco out of it, which you will of course read about here!)

It's October 29

...and Starbucks has its Christmas drinks out.

I'm rejoicing at the availability of Peppermint Latte once again, of course. But still, it's not even November yet!

It did give me a good idea for a marketing gimmick for the company. I'm going to see about setting up a registration drive at my favorite mall in the near future.

"Bowling" for the right to call it that

In these lean economic times, bowling is my one extravagance. Maybe I shouldn't really call it an extravagance, actually, as it's pretty cheap compared to most other ways I could be spending my spare time. But it feels like an extravagance for whatever reason. And I will bowl a 150 one of these days...but I digress.

The last time I went bowling, there was a party of three in the next lane. University students, I think. And they were bowling very, very badly. I'm not talking about people who are just learning how to bowl and are still hitting a lot of gutter balls (that still happens to me more often than I'd like!). They weren't even really trying. They were just tossing the balls every which way and not even always rolling them hard enough to make it all the way to the end of the lane. (Yep, just like Mr. Burns.) They did seem to be having a good time, so more power to them. But I do wonder why anybody would spend money on something like that!

Halloween isn't the only scary day in October

The good news about October thus far:
1. My work visa, which was set to expire in November, was renewed for two years. There was no reason to expect that wouldn't happen, but still, that it did is obviously good news.
2. I may have scored a big investment in our company. Last Friday we were one of five startup companies who were invited to address a meeting of a local investors' group. (The group claims we were chosen from a few hundred applicants - sounds like an exaggeration to me, but why should I argue the point?) Each company rep was invited to give a ten-minute presentation to the group, after which we left the room for half an hour or so before being invited back for lunch. At lunch, the event organizers notified us as to whether or not any investors were interested in us, and if so, we could expect to hear from them in the next two weeks. This time around, only two of the five companies got any interest from any of the investors - and we were one of them.

The bad news: the boss has been on a tear about something or other, and has been really ungrateful for all that has gone well as a result. I don't know just what he's upset about (I do have my theories, but it wouldn't be appropriate to post the details here), but it has made for a very unpleasant week when we should have been celebrating a job well done. The other day he actually accused me of "forgetting" to include certain information in our presentation to the investors, when in fact I had deliberately omitted it because the organizers had told me the investors wouldn't consider it relevant, meaning it would have been a waste of time. We had ten minutes, period, so it made no sense to include anything I was specifically told I didn't need!

I explained this in what I believed was a reasonably diplomatic manner, considering how absurd his complaint was. Believe it not, his response was that "the other presenters" did include the information he had referred to.

That's right, they did.

Of course, they did not get any positive responses from the investors.

We did.

But I should have done a presentation more like theirs.

Even Dilbert can't touch that. Geez.

The nobel prize

See here for my favorite reaction so far.

Since there is no Jimmy Carter or Nelson Mandela waiting in the wings this year, that reason sounds as good as any to me.