End-of-July Catch-up
I’ve covered a few topics here and there as I’ve been keeping up my end of the Monday Newsletter, how about a little update and maybe a new item or two?
No More Southwest Airlines
I had a fairly disappointing experience with the Southwest Airlines people on returning from a weekend birthday/Father’s Day trip to Phoenix. The story itself was minor, the response from SWA staff (including via Twitter) was about what we should all expect from them with their 2021 track record delaing wiht unruly customers. I filed a complaint and asked that my Rapid Rewards account be closed. There is apparently no way to do this other than by sending a request to customer service.
Well, one month to the day, I received a response, that my account was closed, that they apologized for what had occurred, and that they hoped they could service my travel needs in the future. Well I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask, but that’s not going to happen. I’ve never really liked SWA, since my travel to and from home from Ontario Airport near Mudd. There are better airlines, to be sure.
Fintech
I mentioned that I’m giving virtual banking a try, starting out with Novo and Brex, and just added Mercury. I can’t say much about Mercury just yet, except that the sign-up process was delayed because they had sent me two emails on the same day at around the same time when I first began the sign-up process, and I didn’t notice the other of the two… logging in to their account portal did not advise me that there was an item that needed my attention, which I think is not a great intro to their platform. We shall see.
Brex has been essentially perfect for what I was looking for when it comes to business accounts payable. That is, the ease with which I can create virtual payment cards to manage paying for things like AWS and GitHub and whatnot without facing the card update fiasco if a card number is compromised (been there done that, more than once). Novo has been fine also, though I can’t say I’ve taken advantage of all of their services yet.
Sign up for Brex (this is my affiliate link, automatically assigned)
Novo has a “partner program” that I did not join, and I don’t see anything for Mercury. Here are links to their sites anyway:
To be continued…
Podcasting for Projects
Did you know that I’ve got a few podcasts (and Show Notes newsletters to go along with them) that I’ve mostly been pursuing before we do some “real” media for actual projects… this is absolutely not to say that the Hugo Floss podcast, the Quoggling Sand podcast, and the FFS Talk podcast are not real shows, but they are not centered on actual projects. As I’ve reacquainted myself with production workflow, and we’ve learned that Zencastr is not great and Zoom is not awful (but it is also not great), the tools and processes we need to get a few new shows up and running as part of overall projects are coming together.
Which projects, you might ask?
Workie, the open source workspace ideation project
CasaNunzia, the assistive technologies co-creation project (nonprofit)
FTYPodcast, with the always-coming-soon mobile vendor tools platform
and a few others. That I haven’t convinced anyone to be a guest on either Quoggling Sand or FFS Talk is disheartening, but these are interesting times and I’m stll establishing those, so we’ll see if perseverance gets me anywhere in the near term for the existing shows, and if adding on some project-related media (including potential video streams, especially for Workie) will lift all boats.
As I’ve mentioned at least once or twice, you can follow my out-of-band profile page (and posts) at Buy Me a Coffee, which I use as a central hub for links to my various undertakings next to a convenient tip jar of sorts (all proceeds go to actual coffee, and there is no obligation to add to the caffeine supply).
Remember, no obligation, but links and more links coming soon…
Here’s a snippet from the profile page:
Hugo Floss podcast via Anchor
FFS Talk podcast via Anchor
Quoggling Sand podcast via Anchor
Speaking of CasaNunzia
As you read this, I’m preparing to file the simple paperwork to form a nonprofit for the CasaNunzia project in the State of Nevada. If you’ve not done that before, it’s pretty easy to do, and it marks the first real step toward making this happen.
Once we form the nonprofit entity in Nevada, we can add board members and do the various administrative bits to boot up the rest of the way, and get started on the 1023 filing for a 501(c)(3) determination. As a Public Charity we can being to form our workgroups and assemble some tools and expertise to drive co-creation and development and deployment of assistive technologies.
If you would like to know more about this, drop me an email and I’ll share version 0.1beta of the short slide deck we’ve assembeld (the longer story is, well, longer, and that’s what podcasts are for…).
Dan at CasaNunzia (dhugo@casanunzia.org)
Leaving Las Vegas
As I’ve mentioned (and will mention again, my current humble abode is due for vacation, no thanks to the property management company which on 9 July sent me a 60-day no-cause notice to quit (non-renewal), one month after I received my usual offer to renew my lease. Long story short, I am moving to a new place in Las Vegas second half of October, but there’s that gap during which I will exit Nevada for a few weeks to visit beyond our boarders.
When I had a house fire in Sunnyvale, California on 8 April 2013, I had 60 seconds to exit the premises (maybe a little bit less than that). Here 60 days seems like a piece of cake, especially since I had my next spot all set 28 hours after getting the news. Could have been worse. I spent 5 weeks in Ireland when I took my first trip for Intel Corporation, the first of many trips to many places, so a few weeks away from Nevada is also not a bad thing. Spending the gap in Ireland would be okay, but now is not the time for that…
How Funny
Stand-up comedy and YouTube, two great tastes that go great during lock-down, and may yet again… for now, I like to share my findings week-in, week-out, thanks sometime to my own devices, other times to the artificial intelligence of the YouTube algorithm.
A DryBar compilation of olympic humor, apropos!
Whitney Cummings is pretty hilarious, and she even does the Good For You Podcast. This is just a taste. By the way, could she pass for Gal Gadot’s cousin? Sister? Maybe.
Daniel Tosh is sometimes a challenge, but always well-crafted. His humor is not for everyone, but I’ve always enjoyed his take, and his Tosh.O show was just my cup of tea. Check him out…
Light Reading
I finished Never Split the Difference again, I think Chris Voss is probably a pretty good teacher of his craft, the book is interesting, worth going over (or listening to).
I grabbed two books by Richard Feynman, just finished one, The Meaning Of It All, and I have to say that it would have been better had it been read by him. It was not. The book is basically a transcript of his speaking, thus his particular mannerisms, which always add to his presentation in general, would have gone well here. Interesting, but could have been better.
Artwork Attribution
Photo by Dennis Klein on Unsplash