T.G.I.F.F.

The extra "F" is for your imagination. Fantastic maybe? We are having a goodbye happy hour at a nearby bar for Danny, a long-time co-worker of mine today, starting in just minutes. He started here in April 1999, a month after I started. It's actually been six years for me. That's eighty percent of my entire professional career! He's going to work for Visa. We're all happy for him.

Random, unrelated note, but I recently found one of my favorite commercials from this year's Super Bowl online. It's really funny, but it helps to know who the people in it are.

So last night, I got a phone call from a somewhat dippy-sounding young woman who was giving her pitch a mile a minute. Something about a free chiropractic exam. I was perplexed. Ever since getting on the national "do not call list", we have never gotten a sales call. We have gotten other calls, but I'll get to that later. So anyway, I asked her, "Do you use the national "do not call list", because we are on it". She was prepared for this. I could hear her pick up a sheet of paper and start reading. With a hint of salf-satisfaction, she began reading. She said, "We are not salespeople. We are calling to schedule free medical exams, so we are not required to..." and on and on. I asked her politely to just put us on their own do not call list. She said that she would, and the call ended. Does anyone know if what she said is true? I could look it up myself, but honestly it's not worth it to me. If it happens again though, I will be checking for sure!

The calls we still get are of course calls from political campaigns, charities, and market research companies. The last political one I got was from our Virginia state delegate Gary Reese. His recorded message seemed very interested in my views on abortion, which I answered for the recorded voice, (pro-choice), as well as a couple other more run-of-the-mill issues, including transportation which is a big deal in the traffic-choked DC suburbs where I live. The recording didn't mention political affiliation, but on a lookup I found he was Republican. As for charities, the INOVA blood donor service or whatever it is has been hounding me on both my home and work phones a couple times a month to give blood. That is getting irritating. You just have to give blood once or twice, and they are all over you, forever. My blood type is A+ so it's not even like it's especially useful to them compared to others. It's a distant second in terms of how common it is. If I were O- (universal donor), or O+ (the most common blood type), then I could understand, and about half the population is O something. The other people that call constantly are Fraternal Order of Police "charity" people. Interestingly, they are always middle-aged to older males calling, unlike most other charities. Do not ever give to those FOP callers, by the way. Go online and research what percentage goes to the charity, and then give directly that way. Most of the telemarketer FOP groups (there are hundreds of different ones) give a woefully low percentage to the actual charity. The rest goes to overhead. If you want to give to the police or anyone else, do some research first online. There are comprehensive sites for this. I will answer questions for research people when they call. It feels like it's somehow in the interest of science, and I like to be able to put my views or preferences into the mix. It makes me feel represented, if only in a small way. Plus one time a few years ago I was called and happened to fall into the demographic they were looking for, and I got one hundred dollars for going to a market research firm building in a two hour focus group kind of thing. It was for AOL, and it was about home networking services for broadband. Easiest hundred dollars I ever made in my life I think.

That's it for now! Tomorrow I am going to tackle something a little more meaty.