[Chat] various items

[Emil Volcheck]

Hello, neighbors,

I have a few items of interest to share.

I spoke to our neighbor Mr. Aguirre (3014 Guilford) a few weeks back.
His wife passed away a few months ago.  They had been married 52
years.  I hadn't heard, so I figure maybe others haven't.

Our neighbor Stephanie Lau is a teacher, and she had her wallet stolen
from her purse while she was at school during lunch period.  Of course
it was a real pain to replace everything.  Within hours of the theft,
the crooks had spent hundreds of dollars at different locations,
including 800 dollars in one shopping trip at a Safeway!  I take this
as a reminder to keep a list of all my credit cards in a safe place
and to leave at least one credit card at home to fall back on in case
your others get stolen.  It's also a reminder to report a loss
as quickly as possible.  Whoever took the purse handed it off to
some people who knew what they were doing, because they evidently
split up to use different cards in different places simultaneously.

I've heard about the new publication the Baltimore Examiner.  I went
to their website, and it turns out that it is one company with
editions in about 24 cities.  Their slogan "Baltimore's Second
Opinion" seems odd to me.  We've had the City Paper for quite a while,
so it seems to me the Examiner might be a third opinion.

Last weekend, Kathleen hosted a booth for the House Rabbit Society at
a large veterinarian conference down at the Convention Center, the
Central Veterinarian Conference (CVC) East:

    http://www.cvceast.com/  .

The booth was expensive, but they waived the charge since the HRS is
nonprofit.  They gave her information about set-up, and it turns out
that they have a sweetheart deal with a Teamster-run firm called
Freeman, Inc.  The Convention Center requires all exhibitors to use
Freeman, Inc. to receive, ship and take-down booths and exhibits.
They allow each vendor to make one trip with one person themselves for
carrying goods into the hall, and you are prohibited from using a
dolly or cart.  Only Freeman can use a dolly.  And Freeman costs about
$70/hour/person.  That's outrageous!  But they let Kathleen use
volunteers to load the booth, but no dolly.  One guy from Freeman made
the gratuitous remark to Kathleen and myself as we were carrying in
boxes "Hey, you're saving yourself 60 bucks, but think of the wear and
tear".

That said, once we were inside, every other employee with Freeman was
friendly and helpful and didn't care (or know?) that the HRS was
nonprofit and not paying full fare, so to speak.  The flip side of
being expensive is that all these blue collar folks have good union
jobs, and Baltimore doesn't have a lot of good jobs that don't require
much education.

--Emil



-- 
Emil Volcheck
volcheck at acm.org
http://acm.org/~volcheck