How to Block Telemarketers

November 21, 2016

...t comes free with Spectrum VoIP service) for around six months and in that time not a single telemarketer has made it through. Not even an election related call! Nomorobo offers a version for iPhones for $1.99 a month that I’m considering using to stop the student loan calls (I don’t even have student loans!). If you’re a Spectrum/Time Warner subscriber you can activate Nomorobo through the web interface for your account under “VoiceZone/Peace and...

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Do I Need Books?

Mr. Homegrown

May 30, 2018

Domesticus, Tidying up

24 Comments

...as well as some new ebooks that the library makes available for free. Sometimes one’s personal library can devolve into a kind of virtue signaling, a way to seem smart when visitors drop by. In my case it’s definitely time for a book winnowing and, yes, I will still have a bookshelf populated with books I use for reference. Kelly has her own books and shelf. Of course books have a tendency to accumulate and I have no doubt that I will have to go...

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What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

Mr. Homegrown

April 13, 2018

Transportation

13 Comments

...isis seriously enough. Rather than make our streets safer they spend their time pondering presidential runs and virtue signaling on issues they have no legislative authority over. When my own councilman Mitch O’Farrell’s hypocrisy was pointed out to him (he halted a road diet on Temple street where 5 people have died and 34 have been seriously injured between 2009 and 2017), he responded with this terse and arrogant Tweet: Between Frazier’s death...

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Stickley’s #603 Taboret

Mr. Homegrown

March 14, 2018

Design

17 Comments

...’s #603 Tabouret is not really complex, it has occupied way too much of my time in the past two weeks and I haven’t even gotten to all the possible confusing finishing options. By way of excuse let me suggest that with screen time averaging 10 hours a day for the average American, perhaps 2018 is the year we all might consider taking up a few arcane, overly complex and silly projects. It could be sewing, gardening or any other activity that takes...

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I Ate 100 Power Bars

Mr. Homegrown

March 12, 2018

Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

...make the Stasi blush, one company I met promised to provide me with, “real-time shopper behavior intelligence” with a database that goes back, “35+ years of every UPC scanned in store.” (1) When I asked if this information is tied to me personally, the rep said that it’s all connected to my credit card information before abruptly cutting off the conversation when, I think, he noticed that I was wearing a media badge. Speaking of that media badge m...

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