May 30, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Next Tuesday is
Election Day (Vote Early!
Vote Often!) here in
California and that has started one heck of
a battle, not to choose which
Democrat or
Republican (or
Green Party or
Libertarian or all those “little” parties) to elect to the state
assembly, or the governorship; but rather to choose which Democrat to
run against which Republican (and all the “little” parties) next
November. That’s right, the
ballot is two pages long.
But this is just the
Primary.
Wait for the “real” fight in the fall.
In the meantime, my mailbox runneth over with “Don’t Vote for That
Idiot!!!” glossy, full-color ads galore.
I can hardly wait for next week when they will give way to the
usual junk mail. Not that I
have to wait to vote, of course.
I do my voting by mail.
Many, many years ago, when I was going to be out of town on a business
trip, I applied for what was then called an
absentee ballot.
That’s when I discovered how easy it is to vote ahead of time.
Just fill in the appropriate boxes, sign, seal and drop in the
mail.
No stumbling in the dark, trying to find some obscure address that turns
out to be on the other side of you-can’t-get-there-from-here.
So I started absentee voting even when I wasn’t absent, so to
speak. The People In Charge
Of Voting caught on and sent me a form to sign if I always wanted to
vote-by-mail. As long as I
kept voting every election, they would keep sending me the “absentee”
ballot. Such a deal.
So I’ll vote this weekend and be all done by Monday.
In the meantime…
Before I got all caught up in my
Homeowners Association, the Board had
decided to set up a new system for accessing the swimming pools here at
our community. Right now,
you have to have a key that unlocks the gate to get into the pool.
(There are two pools, the “Main Pool” beside the Clubhouse,
across the street from me; and the “Lower Pool”, or the “Back Pool”, or
the “Other Pool”, which is now where my mailbox is located, all the way
over there.)
The new system will use key cards, or “swipe cards”, instead.
You’ve seen them, probably used one or twelve.
You hold, or “swipe” the card in front of a reader.
If the card is “approved” the reader signals the gate, or door,
or turnstile, to let you in.
The Good News: This will
allow us to set the system to automatically lock the gates at 10:00 PM,
when the pools officially close for the night.
Even if you have a valid card, you still can’t go in for a
“midnight swim” after 10:00.
The gates will also automatically open at 7:00 the following morning.
The people who live in the units immediately adjacent to the
pools will greatly appreciate this.
The Even Better News:
Homeowners who fail to pay their Association Dues will find that their
cards don’t work. Once you
give out a key, getting it back is very difficult.
As is preventing duplicate keys from being made, even though the
key is stamped “Do Not Duplicate.”
Cards are harder to duplicate.
And cards can be deactivated quite easily, or so I’ve been told.
Which leads to…
The Bad News: Someone has to
program all those cards into the system.
Getting the system set up, and the readers installed at the
gates, was taken care of by “Manny, the Maintenance Guy” who owns and
runs the company that does the maintenance work around here.
But we can’t expect “Manny” to program cards for every one of 188
units.
Which is why I volunteered to take care of it.
“Manny” and I were supposed to get together the other day so he
could show me how to use the system.
But, apparently, the system had a problem that day.
“Manny” called the guy who “trained” him, but that guy said he
only did training. This was
“system support”. “Manny”
had a call in. Haven’t heard
anything since.
Doesn’t exactly inspired confidence in the vendor who supplied the
security system, but we’ll see.
In the meantime, I’ll concentrate on which “Bozo” to send into
the fray for next November’s “real” election.
Love, as always,
Pete
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