Brendan Gates

I voted today. My state has mandatory vote-by-mail for all citizens, so we received a ballot a few weeks ago and it gets dropped off in one of many white “vote here” mailboxes all over town. Seems like a good idea, at least in terms of voter participation. Definitely negates the need to call for a voting holiday, which would be another good way to try and encourage more participation.

Are you going to vote? You should. It’s your privilege as a citizen. Not voting is kind of like if your friend offered you free tickets to see your favorite band, and you went wearing earplugs. Get it? The band is the government and your friend represents democracy and… whatever. It’s a terrible analogy but you should still vote. Let’s list out potential non-voter excuses:

Excuse: I don’t care about politics.
Rebuttal: Sure you do. Do you care how much tax comes out of your paycheck? How many potholes you drive over on your commute to work? If our economy is good enough for you to find a job in the first place? Whether or not you or your family members get drafted to fight in a war?  If gays can marry? If abortion is legal? How your child’s school is run? Everything is politics. Just get rid of that word, politics, and insert whatever you care about.

Excuse: I don’t know who to vote for.
Rebuttal: Most states provide a voter guide, and many newspapers are running candidate comparisons . Read them. Almost all candidates have a website, check them out. Go to the library and use their internet if you have to. Watch a debate on TV or listen on the radio. Project Vote Smart has a Vote Easy site that lets you answer questions on issues and they’ll try to match you up with candidates in your state. Open Secrets lets you look up candidates by state and find out who donated to them (for incumbents it also tries to connect donations to actual congressional votes). Bad sources for information include TV/radio campaign ads or alarmist ad-supported news websites like CNN.com, MSNBC.com, and FoxNews.com.

Excuse: No candidate represents me.
Rebuttal: There are a lot of candidates running, covering a decently broad spectrum. Are you sure? You should probably give that candidate listing another look (see previous rebuttal). If there really isn’t somebody representing your interests, maybe you should consider running?

Excuse: I have to work/sleep/play/convalesce on election day, so I can’t get to the polls.
Rebuttal: Vote absentee (by mail), or move to Oregon or Washington where everybody votes by mail. We can offer you lovely summers, and all the subarus, coffee shops, apples, and rain you could ever want.

Excuse: All politicians are corrupt.
Rebuttal: Some are, yes. The campaign finance system certainly is. Our toothless laws mean that most candidates spend an unreasonable amount of time fundraising, and often primarily from those who have the deepest pockets.  Does this money translate into influence? Yes. So make campaign finance reform your personal issue and support reform candidates. The Fair Elections Now Act is also a good step in the right direction; contact your representatives to ask them to support it.

Now that I have thoroughly shredded your anti-vote defenses, your choice is clear. Vote!

To be fair, you do also have the option to mutter something about me being a nerd and resolve to stop visiting my blog entirely. While my site logs might indicate that many have already opted for the latter, I can promise you that the former will be a much more fulfilling experience. And if you were already planning to vote, well, you’re awesome. How ’bout them Tigers?

We have returned, from Playa Del Carmen in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Actually, we were just outside of Playa at the Hotel Valentin Imperial Maya. I took some pictures, you can see them on my Flickr page here.

It was a great trip. Very relaxing, lots of time on the beach. We couldn’t have asked for more.

A few comments:

– The Mexican people were extremely friendly, and not just the resort employees who could have been pleasant just for the sake of a tip. Every person we came across, down to the airport security employee who searched my bag, was amazingly friendly.

– Based on a consumer reports review, we went with a Walgreens brand sunblock. That stuff worked great; easily the best sunblock I’ve ever used. I thought for sure my fair pseudo-ginger skin was going to fry, but it didn’t. I have a little color from walking around without sunblock in the morning, but otherwise I look much the same as I did before I left. I can’t recommend this sunblock highly enough, especially considering it’s a discount brand and I put it to the test, spending at least 4 hours a day out at the beach or pool in the blazing Mexican sun. It was the Walgreens Sport SPF 70+ Continuous Spray. If you want to spend some time in the sun and not burn, even you fellow paper-white peeps, get this stuff (and don’t forget to reapply).

– And for other teetotalers out there, you can get non-alcohol beer in Playa Del Carmen. I had about a 50% success rate in getting it when I asked, and about a 85% success rate in getting a weird look for asking for such a thing. At the Argentinian Steakhouse in Playa they had O’Douls Amber, and at the resort they had Sol Cero.

– Back to sunblock, be advised that the super fantastic sunblock I was just evengelizing above will do you no good if you go snorkeling or swimming in the caves. Those are protected areas, and as such you’ll need biodegradeable sunblock. Predictably, it doesn’t work nearly as well. But if you’re going the cave route you probably won’t see much sun. Snorkelers should buy the bio-friendly stuff ahead of time so as to not be forced to buy the overpriced versions when you’re at the snorkel shop in Mexico.

– There is no shortage of “day adventures” you can sign up for, and the zip lines alone are worth the price of admission. We did the Tulum Xtreme and were led around by a great guide named Gus. You can see a video of me riding a zip line here, ladyfriend here, and Gus here. Our day trip was offered by Aventuras Mayas, and we would definitely take a tour with them again given the opportunity.

I’m sure there is more I can say, or there are details I’m forgetting, but the pictures and video links are the most interesting things anyway. If I think of anything else I’ll come back and append this post.

Google Voice is here!

It was announced last week that Google Voice was coming, and that current Grand Central subscribers would be migrated automatically over the next few days. I checked my Grand Central account twice a day, every day, since that announcement, and up to yesterday I was getting a little worried. But no more! My old Grand Central account became a new Google Voice account effective this morning. Happy St. Patty’s Day to me, indeed.

So what is Google Voice?

It’s a forwarding service on steroids, basically. They give you a free phone number, in most any area code that you can think of. Then you can attach your other existing phone numbers to that new number, based on rules.

For example, if my mom calls the new number, I can have a rule set up that will forward that call to my cell, work, and home numbers. I can also set up special voicemail greetings and she’ll only hear the one meant for her. If my office calls, I can make sure that it forwards only to my cell and never my home, and maybe I have a special VM greeting for them too. And if I have a telemarketer harassing me, I can send that number straight to VM without ever going to any of my phones. Better yet, I can actually send that call to a “your call cannot be completed as dialed” error message to really throw them off.

So my callers only ever need to know my one Google Voice phone number. If I get a new cell, or I move, or I change my rules around, that doesn’t affect them at all. They just keep dialing that one number.

It also works with SMS (text messages). I can forward those to specific phones, or even just have them emailed to an email address I specify.

Sound cool, right? That’s not even the best part. It has voicemail speech-to-text transcription! This means that when you leave me a VM, Google will translate what you said into text, and email that to me. It will also save the VM itself so I can listen it like normal, but if I’m not in a position to make a phone call (like a meeting) – the email feature will really come in handy.

If you want to help me test out the service, click on the button below. It will call the phone number you give it, and then connect you directly to my voicemail (and since the rule I’ve set up sends it straight to VM, and not to my phone, you don’t have to worry about disturbing me from another time zone).