zappos.com -- WOW!

i spend so much of my time complaining about stuff here that i needed to balance it out with a recent positive experience. i am still amazed at the speed in receiving two new pairs of shoes from zappos.com.

i ordered the shoes at 220pm.
the shoes departed kentucky at 456pm.
they arrived in connecticut at 653pm.
the ups guy knocked on my door the next day at 255pm.

so within 24 hours the shoes were ordered and delivered from kentucky to massachusetts!

add in the fact that shipping is free (both ways, even on returns) and i dont know why everyone wouldnt order their shoes from zappos.

thank you for the great service.

what recession? part deux

right on cue after my last posting, today the boston herald reported on all the new hiring done by the state this year. according to the article, the state has filled over 1300 new positions this year. though an aide stated that 236 of those people have since been laid off, it still amounted to $46 million of new spending...

...during a recession.

argh!

what recession?

file this under the government just not getting it...again.

according to a usa today analysis of federal salary data from december 2007 until june 2008:

** federal employees making greater than $100,000 increased from 14% to 19% - before overtime and bonuses are counted

** the defense department made out the best with pay increases. eighteen months ago, 1868 employees made $150,000+. now 10,100 earn that amount!

** the treasury department used to have one solo person making $170,000+, now there are 1690

** this growth in salaries pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206 compared with the private sector's $40,331

apparently this is an area where bipartisanship actually works as these pay raises are due to new salary rules and pay raises put into place by both president bush and president obama.

while the rest of america is struggling with cutting back personal and corporate budgets and unemployment hovering around 10%, the federal government just keeps taking more for itself.

everyone should be outraged.

gotta love massachusetts politics

current state rep and mayor-elect william lantigua of lawrence is, to me, representative of how politics works in massachusetts. lantigua won the mayoral election but has vowed to stay on as state rep even once hes sworn in as mayor. of course this also means collecting both salaries - $100,00 as mayor and $61,000 as a legislator - and both pensions.

what makes this especially grating is that the city of lawrence has recently declared that they can no longer pay their bills and is requesting $17 million of state aid.

thankfully state rep thomas golden of lowell has stepped in to say he will file a bill to prohibit lantigua from his double-dipping shenanigans. only time will tell whether lantigua is grandfathered in by the bill.

reason #189 why i love living in a city

sure theres benefits to heading to the suburbs. but im willing to bet the suburbs dont offer the chance to catch a glimpse of a homeless guy wearing jean shorts over his red velvet santa pants, festive santa hat and black cape with fur trim.

happy festivus to us all!

sometimes i want to be a city planner

i spend a lot of time in my car which gives me an intimate view of the layout of the streets around boston. there are two specific intersections that get me particularly frustrated. i dont land on the road rage end of the spectrum but i have personally witnessed how other drivers get escalated to this level.

intersection #1 - cross st and north washington st, north end
















this intersection is one of the errors resulting from the big dig. there are two lanes on cross st coming out of the north end, making a soft right hand turn onto north washington st. immediately after making the turn, the left hand lane (labeled A in the photo) becomes a left hand turn lane allowing drivers to make a u-turn to head back towards i-93 south. the light is timed so that A lane drivers get a left hand turn signal and the straight traffic lane (labeled B) remains at a red light. thankfully boston drivers dont recognize lane A as a dedicated turn lane so once the light turns solid green, all lanes proceed straight. unless of course youre stuck behind a car that needs to turn left. so the frustration arises in two lanes of traffic trying to merge into one lane while making a turn. an additional issue is that some drivers, either out of frustration or confusion, make an illegal u-turn instead of waiting for the light.

my simple solution is simply to keep two straight lanes and add a dedicated left hand turn lane.


intersection #2 - university rd and comm ave, boston






















this intersection has more personal meaning to me as another driver actually threatened me here one day, all due to the layout of the road. coming from the brookline direction, there are two lanes that intersect with comm ave. the lanes are clearly marked during the turn to indicate that the left hand lane (labeled A) makes a left onto comm ave towards the bu bridge. the right hand lane (labeled B) goes straight onto university rd toward storrow drive. the problem comes from both lanes trying to make the left hand turn. this wouldnt be as big of a problem if there were still two lanes to turn onto the bu bridge. however, for an unknown reason, the city has instead decided to create a giant median and only one turn lane. you could argue that the reason is because of the bridge construction reducing the traffic to one lane. but isnt this construction temporary, meaning it eventually will have two lanes in each direction again?

i see two solutions. either strictly police enforce that only the left lane can turn left onto comm ave. or allow both lanes to make the left hand turn but reduce the size of the median and return to two turn lanes onto the bu bridge.

roll back the sales tax

great news today from carla howell and the alliance to roll back taxes! thank you to all who signed the petition.

Success! Today We Filed a Bullet-Proof, Challenge-Proof Number of Validated Signatures to Roll Back Sales Tax from 6.25% to 3%

Today, at 10:30am at the Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Carla Howell and several volunteers filed the last batches of validated signatures for this petition drive.

"We filed a bullet-proof, challenge-proof number of signatures for our ballot initiative to roll back the sales tax from 6.25% to 3%," said Carla Howell.

"We needed 66,593 validated signatures to qualify. Today, we turned in the last of over 75,978 validated signatures - 9,385 more signatures than the law requires."

Why did we need to carefully collect 94,000 signatures? Massachusetts' Draconian ballot petitioning laws. Regulations and court rulings that allow legally registered voters' signatures to be disqualified. Plus, an aggressive teachers union that loves tax hikes and hates tax cuts.

Results? We're headed for the November 2010 ballot.

if you want more information about carla howell and this organization, you can go here. but more importantly, be sure to go to the polls next year to vote the lower tax rate into law.

civics class

below is a link to a short 12 question quiz to see how well you pay attention to the news. can you pass it?

take the quiz