Lars Wirzenius: February, 2007
Contents
- February 21: Demonstration against the EUCD tomorrow
- February 07: Fonecta, part 2, a letter template
- February 06: Fonecta spams me, Monkey see, monkey not do
- February 05: Roomba scare
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Finnish politics: Demonstration against the EUCD tomorrow
There's going to be a demonstration against abuse of Lex Karpela, the new Finnish copyright law based on the EU copyright directive. Tomorrow, at 13:00, in front of the parliament building.
For more information, see Mikko Rauhala's EUCD page.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Rant: Fonecta, part 2, a letter template
Daniel, here you go:
Asun osoitteessa $ADDRESS. En halua puhelinluetteloita, mutta ne oli työnnetty postiluukustani. En halua heittää niitä paperinkeräysastiaan, koska se lisää taloyhtiön jätekuluja. Olkaa hyvä ja tulkaa hakemaan luettelonne pois. Puhelinnumeroni on $PHONE.
Or, in English:
I live at address $ADDRESS. I do not want phone books. but they were pushed through my mail box. I do not want to throw them into paper recycling since that would increase the waste costs of my apartment building. Please come and get them. My phone number is $PHONE.
The e-mail address is info@fonecta.com (it's mailto: on their pages as well).
No response to my e-mail yet. I'm not optimistic: companies who don't mind wasting natural resources usually don't care about non-customers, either. Remeber, phone users are not the customers of phone book companies, advertisers are.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Rant: Fonecta spams me
It's that time of the year again when the homes in Helsinki get delivered no less than two sets of phone books. There's two competing companies producing them, so of course everyone should both sets, they think.
Personally, I think it is ecologically irresponsible. I don't have any use for even one set: I find numbers faster and easier and more accurately on the web, and likewise maps on the web are better.
Up until a few years ago, the phone books were delivered to grocery stores and people would pick them up from there. I could then happily ignore them.
Then they decided to start delivering them directly to the doors of people's homes. This meant that I had to answer the door bell up to four times and tell them I don't want it. That's twice per company, since they would re-try delivery if they didn't succeed the first time. "No thank you" counts as not succeeding, of course.
This year, Fonecta, one of the companies, has decided to produce the books in a size that fits through the mail slots in apartment buildings. When I came home today, I had a pile of useless, harmful crap on my doorstep. That's a good way to make potential customers happy, Fonecta, thank you very much indeed.
I've e-mailed info@fonecta.com to ask them to come fetch them back. I don't want to throw them away, that just increases the garbage bill for my apartment building.
If you, too, live in the Helsinki area and think that paper phone books are an outdated relic of the past, please join me in mailing Fonecta. I can't believe I'm the only one, yet both companies seem to claim every year that no-one complains.
Personal life: Monkey see, monkey not do
I realized something about myself today: I have a relatively strong resistance to learning by imitating what other people do. The precise moment for this was when I was putting on a scarf for the first time this winter. I tend to dislike having things around my neck. Every winter I go through several iterations figuring out the most comfortable yet protective way of wearing it.
Today I started tying it in a new way, which I'd seen Lynoure use. Half-way through I stopped, telling myself that I can't do it this way, because I didn't invent it myself.
Only after I'd already undone the scarf did I realize how stupid this reaction was.
I need to watch out for this.
If I was an aspiring A list blogger, I'd now make a top ten list of annoying personal learning anti-habits.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Random thought: Roomba scare
I'm scared. I suspect my Roomba vacuum robot is trying to rebuild itself to be bigger and more dangerous. Last week I lost my phone's charger, and today I found it inside the robot. I thought I'd take a picture of it for this web log, but now I can't find my camera's batteries, either.