The way that the government operates is very interesting to me. Annoying, to be certain. But interesting. Take a look at this byline on a recent story in the Charlotte Observer: (County officials) agree that county won't shift entire cost of programs to users. They are flat-out saying that the people using facilities won't pay the full cost for doing so.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned how the City of Charlotte licenses animals. I was annoyed at paying yet another bill, so I checked out the City Ordinance for myself. Section 3-34.1 seems to be the one dealing with this particular issue. It says that every dog owner must pay their license fee. If that fee isn't paid, the city can issue a citation for $50. If you don't pay this amount, the city can seize your dog.
I recently realized that I'd written a number of entries over the last five months that didn't end up in the right place. Some were in About a Blog, others could be found in Family Fare, and there were probably one or two scattered elsewhere. Well, I finally noticed that they were all about the same general topic, and I figured I'd start a new category.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) have a "weather problem". This problem comes from the fact that weather is typically pretty mild in Charlotte. This year, we've missed five days. Woops.
The first problem is that students are supposed to be in school for 180 days out of the year. We've made up three days, are making up another on Friday, and will have one extra day to make up (currently scheduled to be tacked onto the end of the year).
That's the sign I saw on the back of a Schneider tanker truck yesterday.
Now normally I probably wouldn't pay much attention to a sign like that. Things are going reasonably well at our little company, and while I may like some extra income, the hours spent driving probably wouldn't help my back. I certainly wouldn't be able to do much other work while there, so that would severely limit my availability to other clients.
Anyway, the thing that caught my eye was that a part of the sign appeared to have been spray-painted, so that it was not legible. That in itself wouldn't be eye-catching, either, but the part that was spray painted was the part of the phone number that comes after 1-800, and that I found puzzling.
Maybe it was done by a dock worker who was supposed to remove the sign from the truck and couldn't figure out how to separate the sign from the truck body. So instead he (or she) improvised. I like the creativity. But what I don't get is why he (or she) would leave the 1-800? For that matter, why leave anything on the sign for someone to read?
Perhaps it was the work of a vandal, someone who wants people to get excited about working as a truck driver, then be disappointed because they can't find the whole phone number to call. That doesn't make much sense either.
Then again, maybe it was a truck driver. Someone who has time to read the paper and hear all the dire predictions about job conditions, and figures that if there is a line of applicants waiting, their own job is that much less safe. Now that explanation makes sense, in a twisted sort of way.
The other day, I mentioned Charlotte's transit boondoggle.
From just over $1 billion to more than $6 billion, in just six years.
Recently I've had even more problems with my hosting provider. Seems my POP server went down and I can't get the thing restarted. I don't know how to restart it, even though I do have shell access. I can't get them to respond. At least webmail works. And the mail coming into the domain is fine - it's just that blasted POP access that is causing me grief.
So a little gong went off in the back of my head, reminding me of that 1-and-1 account I had signed up for a while back. Don't recall who pointed me that way, though at 3 free years, I sure owe them some thanks.
Anyway, I moved my newest domain (sorry, not currently accessible) over to their servers, and in an hour or so, the DNS changes had propagated and I was back in business. Very cool. I started the change for Everitz Consulting after I had a chance to play with it and make sure everything looks good. That one's still in progress at the moment.
Once all is said and done, I'll probably move this site there too, as the renewal date is just about up, and I don't really feel like paying for another year of shoddy service from my current provider.
Thus far, I've been pretty impressed with their tools for setting things up. Seems to be a robust solution. Plenty of POP mailboxes, loads of forwarders, lots of space, no bandwidth worries in sight in the near future, and best of all, it seems to work great. Of course, everyone has troubles - so we'll see how they do when it comes to that. But for now, I'm happy. Hoping it continues to go so well so I can get out from where I am now - the fact that it's completely free is just a bonus!
If anyone happens to be familiar with setting up subdomains at 1-and-1, or setting up redirection, please fill me in. I'll need to do both somewhat extensively to move this site there, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
