February 2, 2009

           Here is a classic winter shot of the coast. The wind and surf, looking southeast past Miami. I chose this view because it makes things look colder than they really are. The people are wearing jackets because of the wind, not the temperature. The blue tinge is not a filter, rather the glass door at Toucans pub. Read to the end of this week to find out what I was doing there.
           My cell phone is on the fritz. Just after I put in my application at the casino. This was an undertaking with substantial forethought and consultation with my people. I am obligated to say the feedback was all positive. I am not a gambler, but this casino is [apparently] a household word in the industry nationwide. Anything from there looks good on a resume except, I suppose, getting canned. I applied for surveillance work, not security. The next move is up to Pete the Rock.
           Now Wallace is ready to head for his operation in Canada. This is a two-hour standard procedure but I view every hospital visit as a major crossroads. Let’s wish him the best and that he’ll be hiking in the Everglades by April. Mike, the laptop guy, has both hips replaced and he was back at work in a week, totally recovered in two.
           With my bank statement this period, I received a document from the new parent company, Chase. This explains that their privacy policy is one of the most sordid pieces of tripe yet devised. Chase persists in saying it protects privacy but states four times it will disclose anything “permitted by law”. Not required, merely permitted.
           Chase also shares with affiliates but do not say who is responsible if an affiliate “loses the laptop”. Again. They will also provide your personal information to “retailers, auto dealers, auto makers, direct marketers, membership clubs and publishers”. That leaves out, well, the Girl Scouts and the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti anyway. What? That’s the KGB, but I didn’t want to say it in case Chase had excluded them by accident.
           We all know what happens to information once “direct marketers” get ahold of it. Also, you cannot prevent Chase from giving information about you to a credit bureau. I can, but you can’t. You see, I don’t give my bank the information in the first place. The ONLY way you can safeguard personal information is to not give it away. Think about it, just what kind of things does Chase need to tell auto makers about you so badly that they state their intention to do so, albeit hidden in paragraph 14.