After my last post I checked Project Gutenberg for some of Martin Luther King, Jr’s writings. They have his I Have a Dream speech, but that’s all. I’ll have to do some digging.
Earlier this week in one of my classes Abe Lincoln’s second inagural address was pointed out as an example of great writing. As usual I turned to Project Gutenberg, and they had quite a bit. Take a few moments and go read this.
This quote (from William Gibson’s blog) sums up a lot of my feelings right now.
I’ve actually done a lot of thinking recently about what Dr. King would think of our times. Perhaps it’s time to revisit some of his writings.
A disturbing quote from the start of this article:
Torture of suspected terrorists should never be permitted, and coercive techniques should be used only if the president approves them, a panel of experts recommended Tuesday.
Given the number of people who claim to be pro-life who voted for Bush, there should be an outcry to prevent this from happening (some might say it has already happened). Don’t tell me you believe in the sanctity of life if you think torture is fine.
This past Saturday Amber and I were looking for a new place to eat. We eat out fairly often and have fallen into a rut of going to the same places time and again. So we dug out a few spots we had never visited.
We had a bit of time to kill, were close to downtown, and so we went to Brighter Day Market, which is a natural food store. Lots of good stuff there.
We bought some rice noodles, a bit of fruit, some veggies and… tofu.
I’m southern, born and raised. This is the first time in my 28 years I have brought tofu home to cook. I felt dirty.
Tofu is an odd substance. Amber asked, “Will it melt?” I guess anything will given enough heat.
But it was good. Cooked with the noodles, brocolli, carrots, sno peas…. yum.
Can’t find a homepage for Brighter Day, I found some interesting articles and such, including this one from last year, which I’ll forgive for its terrible title.
Amber called and cancelled one of our credit cards last night. I’ve wanted to cancel it for a while because of the funky way they calculate the due date. It’s some odd formula that can potentially cause you to have 2 bills in the same month. They changed this after we had the card a few years to, of course, serve us better.
They also changed the backend to their online payment system. We had a payment due on the 12th of this month. Amber went online the night of the 9th and made a payment. It did not post to our account until the 12th and was not actually credited until the 15th, so we were charged a $39 late fee.
Amber called and was told that they online payment system is a “courtesy” to their customers. I’m not quite sure how having a system where they do not have to pay to send a bill, nor pay someone to open the return envelope and punch in the information, not to mention then doing something with that envelope, is a courtesy to us.
I see this type of thing all the time: Companies that do not understand the internet. The nice thing about this new fangled web thing is that I can be sitting at my computer, in my underwear, at 2am, remember I have a payment due, and take care of it then. To then charge me a late fee because you have a system that takes too long to process payments is stupid and treats us like we’re stupid.
Some might mention the problems with processing so many payments. I’m familiar with them. I worked on a interface to a creditcard processing system in my day job, and used to work on the point of sale system. So I know it’s not hard to set something to say “payment received on 11/9″ and update it to say “payment processed on 11/15.”
I mentioned to Amber that this is another example of why dealing with small businesses is better. They are much closer to their customers and so in my experience they give much better service. My dad established himself in one market because his competition would take 6 months or so to produce a house plan, where he could do it better in a few weeks.
The silliest thing about the entire ordeal? Our minimum payment was $15, Amber paid $30. They then charge us $39 because their system is backwards.
Dave Slusher mentioned in one of his podcasts about potentially doing a southern bloggercon. He’s in the Myrtle Beach area, which isn’t too far from Savannah.
I’d love to get a chance to meet some other bloggers, even though I’m pretty slack about updating. If you’re interested leave a comment on his site.