Number Six Speaks

Just found out through a weird set of circumstances that to renew a driver’s license in WA state now costs an exorbitant $90! From what they tell me at the licensing dept. our legislature in its wisdom, just raised the renewal rate from $20. WTF is up with that. I know that state is strapped for cash, but this just affects many of those who can’t afford it. There is a solution – although it is the third rail for politicians in Washington State, income tax. We urge everyone to sign the new initiative I-1077, which would institute an income tax for high income earners in Washington (of course they’ll probably just move out of state – although only 9 states currently don’t have an income tax).

Stop by our store to sign this petition. An income tax is a much fairer way to collect revenues. Sales taxes are very regressive in that they affect take a larger percentage of income from lower income people than they do from wealthier people.

This is an open challenge to all the Tea Party attendees/followers. Since one of the main messages seems to be against “Socialism” and all its evils.  I challenge all Tea Party devotees to do the following:

• When driving don’t use any roads, unless they are privately paid for.
• Don’t attend rallies that are on public spaces
• If you’re currently getting Medicare/Medicaid limit what you take from this system to what you put in (go ahead figure what you put in at 10% interest, but don’t forget that your employers contributed some to this, so deduct what they contributed).
• Don’t drive  a GM or Chrysler automobile
• Don’t fly in an airplane that uses any of the federal air traffic control system
• Don’t spend any time in national parks or forests (or even local parks)
• Don’t call the police when you have a problem with crime
• Don’t call the fire department if you have fire problem.

Humans are a social creature by nature, and to not recognize this is to go against that. I believe that it is possible for us to have

The point being that we already live in a country with some socialist policies, and that many of these policies do contribute to the greater good.

Humans are social creatures by nature, and to not recognize and deal with that seems to go against our very essence. I believe that is possible for us to have a society where we all contribute towards the greater good, yet are able to maintain our own individuality.

I think that there is actually a broad agreement across the political spectrum about a large distrust of the corporations and the government. I think we all also agree on ideals for our kids – clean water, healthy food, a place to live. The problem seems to be in how to get there. Open dialogue is where we have to start without the nasty rhetoric. I highly recommend the techniques practiced by the Trans Partisan Alliance as a great way to start respectful, civil dialogue on the issues that affect us all.

As many of you may know, Number Six and the Head Cheese currently run a small brick and mortar gift shop in Seattle. Business has taken a HUGE downturn in the last 3-4 months forcing us to give part of our store back to the landlord. Due to this downturn in sales, we need one of two things (or a combination of both), more sales and/or another job for Number Six. If you like our progressive politics and our involvement in the Wallingford community, we urge you to do one of two things: come in and shop, or help Number Six find a job. Remember, we have the largest selection of buttons and stickers in the Seattle, as well as a large selection of fun wacky cards, toys, political and green items.

Now you ask, what kind of job is Number Six aka Jon (yes, I’m posting this, even given my views on privacy ) looking for? I’m looking primarily for a tech support job,  I love being able to help people, and the challenge of having to deal with different problems all the time.  Check out my Linkedin profile to see some of what I’ve done in the past. I know how to provide SUPERIOR customer, and I’m very responsible – while at Boeing I had access to their five million part production database, and any errors had the possibility of costing millions of dollars in lost productivity. I currently do some consulting on the side, helping small businesses with their technology issues, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Although not trained formally in SEO, I have taught myself a lot about this and my stores website ranks VERY highly. Just for laughs, I keep track of all the top 3 rankings that our site has achieved (I used to keep top 10 rankings, but there where just to many!).  Search for the term “Not A Number”, and you’ll usually find us in the top 3 out of hundreds of millions of pages.

So please stop by the store and shop – 1905 N. 45th St. Seattle, WA 98103 206.784.0965, or if you have any ideas/leads on possibilities for jobs contact me,  jon @ number6.org . Stop by the store to chat, I’m almost always there. If you have small company that just needs part-time, occasional support, I’m your person! Contact me for references.

Thanks for reading!

PS No, Archie McPhees moving into the neighborhood has not been a factor in our store’s declining sales, in fact they have been good for us, as the often send people to us for items they don’t have, and vice-versa.

I’ve put a lot of thought into the ideas of privacy lately as it seems that our ideas about privacy have changed TREMENDOUSLY in the last 20 years. I think that there is a large difference in the views about privacy in those under 45 or so, and those over.  I’ll admit to even being leery about posting this anything personal about myself, and I of course then think to myself that it’s easy enough to find out many things about me with a quick Google search, so what’s the big deal? That being said, I still have some reservations about posting stuff on the Internet.

At some point I think the our society will reach a point where it will be considered strange not to be connected, or always available, and that somehow if you don’t want to be connected/reachable all the time that you’re doing something wrong. It’s already been shown in several studies that people under the age of 25 (at least one study was done on college students) cannot go more than 3 days without their cell phones/crackberries etc.

On one hand I would argue that this breakdown of privacy is good for humanity in that I believe that in order to create societies that enhance our quality of lives we need to surrender some of our privacy. Without getting to know each other and what we each want, it becomes impossible to work towards a greater good for everyone. On the other hand, if we all become so used to tuning out drivel such as “I’m having toast for breakfast”, then we risk ignoring communication that might be important.

I would hope that we would reach some sort of happy medium, where there is a balance between what is kept private, and what is made public.

Well after all that fun with Expedia (see last post), the money has finally been credited (or not taken I guess) from our account – it only took 5 days! I think Expedia owes us a credit!

We made a plan reservation last night around midnight for a plane flight today at 12:30PM using Expedia. It looked like everything went fine, in fact I could see the transaction pending using our banks website within 15 seconds. The next morning my wife gets to the airport, and lo and behold they claim that the ticket was never issued, and that the ticket had not been paid. Yet the money was still tied up by the pending transaction as my wife tried to by another ticket only to have it declined due to the “lack of funds” in the account. At first Expedia tried to claim that the flight had been canceled – a total lie! Our bank told us the only way to have the transaction reversed and the funds freed up was to have a fax sent to them from the Expedia telling them to void the transaction. In the meantime, Expedia kept claiming that the charge should automatically reverse itself since the tickets had not been issued. As of this writing, almost 18 hours after the initial charge the has not been reversed!!

It turns out that the reason the ticket was never issued was that it was “purchased” within 24 hours of the flight time. Expedia NEVER made it clear that there might be an issue with the ticket, and they even sent an email confirmation showing the reservation had been made.

Expedia should have made clear in the “confirmation” that there was a possibility of a problem, and they also NEVER should have charged our account for a ticket that had not really been issued. And when this was brought to our attention they should have IMMEDIATELY issued a credit to our (or voided the transaction, whatever they had to do to alert the bank to return the funds to our account).

The moral of the story? Don’t trust the travel sites, especially when making reservations with less than 24 hours. And when paying for tickets, use a credit card, not debit card.