jikamens's blog

Dear Councilor Connolly,

When I arrived home (__ ___ Street, Brighton) at 6:15 this evening, I found a "Connolly for Boston" campaign sign secured to my porch railing with zip ties.

My wife tells me it was not there when she arrived home at 5:15. My three-year-old son tells me he saw "a man in a pickup truck" put up the sign.

Neither my wife nor I has spoken to anyone from your campaign or approved the placement of this campaign sign on our property.

Please explain yourself.

Furthermore, please remove this sign from our property immediately.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

CC: UniversalHub.com
CC: allstonbrighton2006@googlegroups.com
CC: blog.kamens.us
CC: Boston Globe
CC: Boston Herald
CC: Allston-Brighton TAB

[Simulblogged.]

Dear Mayor Menino,

My wife and I have lived at [elided] in Brighton since 1997. At least a third of the residential units on our block are rental units, most of which are rented to a different set of Boston College students each year. Some years are good: the students are respectful of the neighborhood, keep the noise down, and keep things clean. Some years are bad: the students host loud, rowdy, outdoor parties until all hours of the night; get drunk; throw plastic cups, beer bottles and cans everywhere; throw up or urinate in the street; set off fireworks under cars; etc.

Although we never know what we're going to get in terms of students, we do have a pretty good idea of what we are going to get from the police department, which is that when we call the department at 2:00am on a Sunday morning because the students are playing Denis Leary's "Cause I'm an Asshole" at top volume out of an open window, drunkenly screaming along, and waking up the entire neighborhood, and we call 911 and ask for someone to come do something about it, the odds are that nobody is going to show up.

They've blocked off Post Office Square this morning and are shooting a Sarah Jessica Parker movie there. I think I caught a glimpse of her, but I'm not certain. Some photos.

Caught this photo this morning of the Naked Pizza sign being hoisted in Brighton Center. Looks like the transformation of the old Exxon station is pretty much complete!

To the editor:

What a relief to see our elected officials finally getting tough on the aid recipients who spent 0.002% of last year’s welfare funds on underwear ("Pol gets tough on welfare abuse", Feb. 15).

How dare these women buy high-quality, inexpensive undergarments from Victoria’s Secret? Wal-Mart should be perfectly fine for poor people. Or maybe they should make do without underwear; if beggars wandering the streets half-naked in rags was good enough for our ancestors, it should be good enough for us.

It’s even more outrageous that some of these women are shopping at outlet stores. If they’re going to use taxpayer money on underwear, the least they could do is pay full price.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

(Simulblogged.)

(Simulblogged.)

February 1, 2011

Mayor Thomas M. Menino
1 City Hall Square, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02201-2013

(617) 635-4500

Dear Mayor Menino,

On the brink of yet another major snowstorm, I am writing to complain about how incredibly bad the city's handling of the snow has been this winter.

1. Neighborhood streets all over the city are overwhelmed with snow. There's no place for residents to put new snow even if they want to do the right thing while shoveling. There's no place for people to park their cars. Other cities in the area, such as Waltham, have recognized the problem and are removing snow from neighborhood streets, not just main arteries. Why isn't Boston? (examples: Foster Street in Brighton between Surrey and Washington Streets; and Leamington Road in Brighton)

20 shoveling violations in a 0.4-mile stretch of Brighton Center, many of them on or abutting city-owned property.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reSAg6U_Cc

I've emailed the mayor a link to the video. Think he'll do anything about it?

Stabbing this morning on Beach Street in the Leather District.

Can you say “pandering to the elderly”? Tim Cahill can.

I wish I could figure out why the Boston Herald prints letters to the editor which are so mind-numbingly stupid that they leave the reader agape, his jaw dropped so far that it spills his morning coffee.

This morning's chestnut was Harry Shuris of Winchester, who derided the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission for, um, doing its job by recalling a novelty chair decorated with lead paint. He offered the following "proof" of why this shouldn't matter:

Pencils contain "excessive amounts of lead." I would venture to say that at any given time there are more kids chewing on pencils than on basketball-shaped chairs.

Except, of course, that "lead pencils" don't actually contain any lead.

I sent the Herald a response, although God only knows if they'll print it. It may be that they don't want to soil their precious letters page by printing letters that contain nothing stupid or false.

St. E's recently gave my wife mediocre care in their ER, then withheld her test results from her primary care physician for nine days, then lied, evaded and falsely blamed my wife's PCP when I wrote to them and complained.

Here is the first complaint I sent them, in which I made it clear that all I wanted them to do was admit that they screwed up and explain what they were going to do to prevent similar screwups in the future. Also, in that letter I suggested this change to their billboard:

(Simulblogged here.)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a convoluted(*) unemployment insurance system, under which employers are required to make various quarterly and annual filings and quarterly payments involving at least two different state agencies.

This system is administered by the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), who decided to replace their old, paper-based system with a Web-based system called QUEST ("Quality Unemployment System Transformation"). The DUA promised QUEST would bring countless improvements: one-stop shopping, filings for all agencies in one place, faster filings, less wasted paper, reduced printing and postage costs, reduced data entry costs, no more data transcription errors, etc., etc. You've no doubt heard it all before.

QUEST went live at the beginning of 2010. As of the go-live date, the usage of QUEST for all employer unemployment insurance transactions was mandatory; paper filings were no longer permitted. I.e., the DUA went straight from paper filings only to on-line filings only, with no transition period or overlap.(**)

It would be an understatement to say that the QUEST go-live is not going well; in fact, it is a disaster.

Photos at http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2009/10/28/mayor-menino-is-it-your-policy-to-allow-your-staff-to-park-city-vehicles-illegally/.

Comcast thinks that its customers won't notice if it increases their monthly service charge by $2, if they call it an "equipment charge" increase rather than a service charge increase. They're increasing their revenue by $358 million per year without taking on any additional costs or providing any additional services. Consumers, fight back!

Please visit http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_sneaks_in_rate_increase_as_equipment_charge to read more and help me publicize Comcast's most recent attempt to cheat its customers.

This is not a good way to win votes...

http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2009/09/29/spam-yoon-round-2/

Here, by the way, is the body of the spam he just sent me:

(Simulblogged on my blog.)

A recent political mass mailing from Michael Flaherty has a charming photo of him, his wife, and three of his kids, with this text above it (emphasis added):

A husband, father and lifelong rsident of Boston, Michael is a graduate of Boston College Law School, Boston College, and Boston University School of Law. Michael and his wife Laurene have four children, three of whom attend the Boston Public Schools.

Um, OK, so just out of curiosity, what about child number four?

Ayanna Pressley spammed me at the beginning of her campaign. I complained. She ignored me. I probably would have voted for her if she hadn't spammed me OR she had acknowledged my complaint.

More on my blog at http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2009/09/14/why-i-wont-be-voting-for-ayanna-pressley/.

MBTA Transit Police threaten to arrest me for distributing flyers to reporters at Google Transit press conference

Ride the T with Google Maps? Sure, if you don't mind ending up in the wrong place!

To:

To the editor:

It has been painful to watch the avalanche of flawed statistics and discredited urban legends wielded by opponents of a primary enforcement seat-belt law in their foolhardy efforts to stop a law which would undeniably save lives.

To:

To the editor:

Councilor Michael Flaherty’s idea to slash the city’s motor pool by having workers ride the T is a brilliant strategy for doubling the number of employees on the payroll. How else does he expect to maintain the same level of productivity when workers are forced to spend half the day waiting for trains and buses that run infrequently and arrive late, if at all?

Is Flaherty trying to save the city money or earn points with the unions by creating jobs for their members?

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton

We've been living in Brighton Center for over a decade and until recently never had to worry about crime. The worst we had to put up with was drunken parties thrown by the BC students who rent on our block, and some years even that isn't a problem if the students are polite.

(A couple of years ago there were a couple of really talented guitar players renting across the street from us. They often jammed late into the night with their friends, but man, they were good, so we didn't care. Wish they'd stayed!)

John Houghton
Superintendent, Cabot Bus Garage
MBTA

Dear Mr. Houghton,

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If so, then I must be insane to rely on the T.

It’s not so much that many of the 5xx express buses were horrendously delayed for hours this morning. I understand that was caused by a problem outside the T’s control, in particular, a stuck railroad crossing gate out in Waltham.

blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us...daughter-on-the-wrong-plane/