Category Archives: kudos

kudos, rant

Fire near Temecula, Twitter a mixed blessing

So the De Luz fire headed straight for Temecula; I can understand that, it’s a nice place to visit. My first touch on the existence of that fire was at work, when a co-worker’s wife called from Fallbrook about the smoke there.

Huh, fire near Temecula, which will likely impact my commute home. So I decided to find some information online about this fire; that was at around 4:30 PM. There was an hour old news article that came up on Google, and no real results from a Google blog search. Hmmm, I thought, what about Twitter?

As a matter of fact, the information I found with a search on Twitter for “temecula fire” was fairly helpful; so much so that I saved the search term since I just knew it would be useful later.

Now, if you’re looking for news on the fire itself and somehow got to this post, I would suggest you check the info now up on The Californian. Although, I couldn’t help but be struck by how well this fire was handled, especially in light of the recent “minimizing” of the local firefighters due to budget constraints, as reported by The Press-Enterprise.

My big gripe in this is about how puerile folks got on Twitter. When I later went back, and looked for results on “temecula fire” on Twitter, a bunch of fools had decided it would be great fun to post links to, well, adult content under the guise of info links. I realize that wanting responsibility in Twitter use is as futile as expecting good spelling from YouTube comments… but it ticked me off.

So, bottom line, good job points to slimly budgeted firefighters, and shame points to tweeting twits.

kudos

Pride in Workmanship

Yesterday a cable installer from Time Warner did finally show up, to hook up two cable boxes in my home. He did a great job, both in the work done and in the manner he conducted himself.

Not only did the guy call when he arrived outside my house, he was immediately ready to work. (I compare this with the twenty minute prep time the first cable installer needed, and, of course, the lack of arrival of the appointment last week.) However, he took one look at the cable that was already installed for my cable modem and decried the work done as highly unprofessional.

Nice to hear my opinion confirmed, I guess.

This installer hooked up two new cable connections, one at either end of my house; and he firmly and cleanly tacked down all the cable. All this in less than half the time the original connection needed.

More importantly to me, he had a really good attitude while doing this, in spite of the triple-digit temperature outside and my four-year-old wanting to keep “helping” and asking questions about his tatoo. (Actually that part was cute… I doubt the guy expected my wife to come down on the side of “yeah, he can have a tatoo some day if he really wants one.”)

Anyway, I’ve got cable again, after over four years without. I wonder how long it will take before it dominates home life?