Off-topic but IMPORTANT:

http://www.digtriad.com/news/watercooler/article/178031/176/Florida-Homeowner-Forecloses-On-Bank-Of-America

I think you might have some interest in bad karma befalling BoA...

<Rant on>
And people wonder why I truly detest the thought of working in an urban center.

I work for a wholly owned subsidiary company out on the edge of a city loop. My drive -- door to door -- is 55 miles. Corporate is talking about consolidating all of the subsidiaries to a downtown location. The actual distance added is 6 miles. The drive time goes up by 25 minutes.

Then once there -- I have to add the cost of parking -- an extra $100 a month at least.

The one that I really love is the cost of parking garages goes up steadily -- regardless of the economy. You have an open air structure, probably built in the 70's' that needs light maintenance. Your employees can be paid near minimum wage. If you have 100 spots filled at $15 a day -- that's $1000 profit easy. Why do the prices continue to rise?
<Rant off>

Just like I think folks who design products that need to be assembled at home should actually assemble their products at least once before sending it out for mass production.

I once talked to a guy at the Estee Lauder counter at a major department store, and asked him some questions about sales. (They weren't busy and I was waiting for Gregg, and the guy didn't mind answering questions, he said.) I asked him if those "promotions" really work, and he said they do, but their executives place them too closely together. He had just had one several weeks before and they were running one again, and no woman would need stuff again that fast. But, nobody talked to the people on the selling floor, he said.

Just one quick astronomical point Amy, a wormhole transports you vast distances(and possibly thru time as well) in no time, a black hole keeps you trapped where you are

Hi Amy,

We like The Culver Hotel a lot. Did you park in the facility attached to Trader Joe's, the one across from the AMC or somewhere else? In CC's defense, when were you there?

Not only is parking a nightmare in Culver City. It's a confusing place to try to navigate, and there are plenty of red-light cameras. I live not far from there and never go in there unless I have to. Rather drive down to South Bay.

Speaking up whenever you have a bad, or a good experience is something we should all do. People who just drift thru life like a leaf in a stream allow some really hella bad things to happen to the rest of us because feedback is what makes businesses improve their service. Letting people know when they do good reinforces that good behavior. I will go out of my way to hunt down the manager for either if I feel the person or situation has earned it.

I'm with you, Kay. And I also speak up when I have a good experience. One of the community policing officers, a few years back, showed kindness in dealing with the homeless she had to move out of an encampment in a neighborhood. She left notes for them on their stuff in advance, telling them it would be removed and asking them to remove it so it wasn't taken, and was generally very compassionate while being firm. I wrote a letter to then-Chief Bratton about her (I used to see him at a dinner every month and knew him and his wife a little) and I copied it to the captain at her station. If you are a complainer, my feeling is, you also need to be a complimenter when things are right...through whatever means that takes, from the kind of tip you leave to telling somebody you appreciate them to writing a letter.

Was this all due to traffic in the garage itself, or was there a jam on the street outside holding things up? Something similar happened to me once, trying to leave the Universal Studios parking garage(took several hours IIRC), but it was caused by a tie-up on the surface street the lot fed onto.

Keep blogging about this stuff. It's therapeutic for those of us who can't comprehend how badly "planners" can screw up simple logistical basics.

We've been complacent for too long about parking lots, traffic patterns seemingly designed to create congestion, poor (basic) customer service, and inexcusable rush-hour scheduling of lane closures.

I lived in a major (and majorly corrupt, union-dominated) eastern city. A month after I moved into an apartment they began digging up the neighborhood park. It was a glorified landscaping job. I lived there for two years. They finished a month after I left. And, frankly, the casual acceptance of the populace that "well, that's just how it is" was one of the reasons I left. I didn't want to be in a place where I was the only one outraged.

The last straw was when I was in the neighborhood market and a city "planner" was asking the owner to put up a propaganda poster of what the park would look like (and this was 22 months into the project). I realized that I had almost fallen into that brain-dead complacency. I've never looked back.

Maybe all we can do is bitch on the internet, but I happen to believe that enough people "waking up" to the little idiocies of life is the only way to build consensus to fight back.

All the popular places are too crowded for me.

All the popular places are too crowded for me.

Posted by: MarkD

Yeah, sure is a pity that both the bird and swine flu didnt really take off.

There are, contrary to some opinions, other places. No pandemic is necessary. You are welcome to California, and your misinterpretation of my remark.