Junk Mail

A little while ago Child became frustrated with all the junk mail we were receiving, so she searched online about how to get rid of it. She filled out some forms to get off the credit card companies' lists, mailed one or two things to various companies to get off their lists, but that didn't handle some of the more infrequent fliers from smaller companies.

This afternoon, we started calling a few of them to see about getting off their lists. We got some interesting responses.

A car dealership told us they used a 3rd-party and gave us their number, but the supervisor I talked to, in an unusual fit of candor for a car salesman, told us that he hated mailed advertisements too and his wife had once spent a year trying to get rid of them. It didn't work--he explained that there were 400 different ways for your address to get on mailing lists, and that companies like RC Willey will sell your address to other companies.

He hastened to add that "We here at Larry Miller Auto have NEVER sold our customer lists to other companies!" ...but apparently they have no qualms about BUYING lists from other companies, since we get their advertisements.

One guy from an ad company asked me, a little patronizingly, if I was "a tree lover or something." Because there's no other reason I might not like having my mailbox stuffed full of advertisements every day. (Ironically, I had worn a tee-shirt the previous day that said, "Save a tree, ask me!")

The worst offender, The Daily Herald, was surprisingly easy. It took talking to three people, but the third person just said, "Yeah, sure, we'll take you off the list." We'll see if they do it...

UCPets.com News Article

The local newspapers picked up the story on the UCPets website.

• Daily Herald
• Deseret News
• BYU Newsnet

Notice how the BYU paper doesn't have a link. That's because the article never got published. Yeah, funny story about that. Child hates BYU and everything BYU related. When the newspaper called, she answered my phone. When the caller said who they were, she put the phone against her chest and said "It's that crappy newspaper."

I talked to the girl at the other end, answered all her questions, then hung up and looked at Child. "Um, if you put the phone against your chest, the person at the other end can hear quite clearly what you're saying."

"Oh," she said.

The article never appeared in the paper.

Not that I mind; my thesis adviser has been "strongly encouraging" me to get my thesis done, and I'd just as soon he didn't see I've been spending time working on another website.

Lost n Found Pets

I have a new website under construction at http://www.ucpets.com.

It'll be a place for people in Utah County to post lost or found pets. Steps to completion:

1. (done) Add administration pages.
2. (done) Set up Google Analytics
   
3. (done) Take picture of animal shelter for "Resources" picture on home page
4. Create script to periodically delete old pictures
5. (done) Clean out "test" listings
   
6. (done) Find good domain name and set up on new host
   
7. (done) Get endorsement by North/(done) South Utah Valley Animal Shelters
8. Help (done) NUVAS/(done) SUVAS set up regular uploads of all their animals
   
9. Get story on KSL/(done) Daily Herald/BYU paper/etc.
10. Add option to print a flyer?
    

Comments on features or problems are highly appreciated!