Tax time has come around again but, contrary to reports both published and whispered, the IRS is not after your soul.

This year, as every year, many young folk are faced with filing their income taxes for the very first time. Some will get no help from others in their family. This post is addressed to those individuals, but the rest of us could probably profit from reading it, too.

Click here to read on, my friend.

I suppose by now that you are hoping I will leave off the rants for a while … and in a while I intend to do so.

But not yet.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Everyone else, listen up.

I hate GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their insidious sidekick, chemical farming, with the same passion I reserve for pedophiles, politicians, abortionists and big bankers.

Click here to read on, my friend.

As a gardener, I know that my wife and I are held ransom to water. Rain, dew, pipe, irrigation, drip, flood, spray, weep … if the water doesn’t reach our garden somehow – or if there is too much of it or it is timed poorly – our plantings are doomed. If we were counting on that food for our own survival, as much of the world does, things could be bleak indeed.

In many, many places, there is a thick layer of dust and doom spread over the landscape. What water is available is often polluted beyond use, too salty, a vector for horrible diseases or too deep underground to retrieve. Global climate trends have forced people off formerly arable land squarely into the lap of aid agencies. Even if the aid agencies operated in some sort of idealized state – and they do not – living from handout to handout is hardly humankind’s proper state of existence.

Enter, stage left, the incredible synergy of water projects and micro-finance loans.

Click here to read on, my friend.

I just got back from my local IHOP and I am IHOPPING mad..

I considered letting the matter just ‘ride’ and being silent about it. But that’s what most other people would do and that’s what allows companies to leave matters messed up year after year … even if they might be inclined, with a little prodding showing that something is important to significant numbers of their customers, to fix them.

All too often we say “I’m only one person, what could I say that would possibly matter?” in a defeatist tone of voice and the little guy inside of us shrugs its shoulders, defeated again. But why is that? Because the voice inside sabotaged the meaning we could have brought to life, the person we could have been, our right to have and express a viewpoint.

Now try “I’m only one person, what could I say that would possibly matter?” again, with the focus merely on choosing your words well, for their effect. So that they WILL matter.

So here, without further ado, is a copy of the letter that IHOP is going to find in its fax machine in the morning.

IHOP Restaurant Support Center
450 N. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203
P: 818-240-6055
F: 818-637-3131

Dear Overworked Support Center Staffer,

You have my sympathies. Do I have your attention?

Tonight I went to the IHOP on Middlebelt Rd. in Livonia, MI and, in the process of ordering, asked about the availability of dietary information. After consulting with the manager, the waitress told me that I could find the information on your website. But when I got home and online, I found this instead:

http://www.ihop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=5

» Is nutritional information available?
Currently we do not offer this information on our website.  IHOP offers a wide variety of food that should allow most people to choose a meal that suits their dietary needs. 

Oh, really? How? Psychic readings?

Without this information, THERE IS NO WAY to choose a meal that suits my dietary needs. I don’t know how much salt was in my dinner, how many calories, fiber, protein, carbohydrates … NOTHING! My nutrition books don’t list “little pieces of beef floating in some kind of brown liquid”. Do yours? Nor is there an entry for “some dry-looking mashed potatoes” or “a little corn”.

IHOP is not a small company … it has the resources to provide this information. And, for that reason alone, if for no other, there is no excuse for NOT making it available.

I have a couple blogs (readership ~30,000) that I will be posting this (and any response from you) on.

So, no, you probably don’t want to just crumple this letter up and pretend you never got it.

To paraphrase your website: “The Metropolitan Detroit area offers a wide variety of restaurants that should allow me to choose a meal that suits my dietary needs.”

Too bad that IHOP isn’t one of them.

You are the only restaurant I know of that seems to have too many customers.

Sincerely,

December 6, 2009

Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. If any of you want to write them a consoling letter or even mirror my sentiments, go right ahead … their contact information is at the top of the letter. I couldn’t find an email address on their web site, but I’m sure that at least some of the 30,000 readers who stop by here from time to time have fax machines.

– Bill

The Irish are known as generous charitable givers. This sometimes makes me feel, as an Irishman born in America, like I am letting the team down.

Here is what I am going to do about that. Click here to read on, my friend.

E-Commerce News (with whom I have an on-again / off-again relationship), posted a list of 10 business technologies that ‘just work’ for small to medium businesses.

I’ve summarized their list here, but I want to ask you which technologies you have found useful but were left off the list.

Click here to read on, my friend.

In this often hectic world, as we scratch out a living with all the other chickens, it helps to have lists of things that will, if practiced often and well, bring about an all but certain financial success.

Click here to read on, my friend.

(794 words, a little scare in the public service.)

Many people neither know nor care what happens to their personal data. That is why they take no steps to protect it.

This series begins by examining the frightening range of data about us that is no longer in our control. It will continue by considering ways in which that data makes us vulnerable as individuals and as a civilization and conclude with proposals to rein in at least some of that data. This series is no more than a simple primer on a very large and complex subject. Do not concern yourself that you do not grasp all of it. It may well be that no human being on the planet grasps all of it. But do read along, grasp what you can and take the practical measures suggested toward the end.

We’ll begin by considering the roots and the scope of the problem.

Click here to read on, my friend.

(1,794 words, no links, serious stuff)

Recently my wife found herself being lured into giving out too much information to a bogus online job company. I overheard the tag end of the conversation and gave her the ‘time out’ hand signal. Although neither one of us watches much sports, she understood and closed out the conversation. Don’t you just love how one thing leads to another? Here are some tips for staying safe online and on the phone line. The interplay of the two can crush the unwary.

Click here to read on, my friend.