Author: RonTopofIt

RonTopofIt is a complex personality, as are most of the small breed of modern day renaissance millionaires. He wishes more people were like him and yet believes that it takes all kinds. You've met RonTopofIt many times, you just don't remember him.

The ought six

Tonight is the night for you to hit the town and act the fool. If you missed St. Patrick’s Day, now’s your chance. SacTicket.com offers a comprehensive listing of activities. For those of you who tend to lean toward the road less traveled, myself included, I think I’ll take the Ticket up on bullet number two under “LET’S STAY HOME ON NEW YEAR’S EVE”:

Spend an evening with the most curmudgeonly of the curmudgeons and watch a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” marathon on HBO starting at midnight.

In addition, The Sac Rag also wishes to thank you for making our little blog/ezine/website thingy a mild success in 2005. The powers that be here at the Rag had no idea it would be received at all. Look for new features in 2006, some of which hopefully rivaling the popularity of the Rag Board.

On the road

I recently returned from a vacation to Southern California. There are many annoying things about SoCal (starting with that overused term, but we NorCal’rs are just as guilty) but there was one thing that really sent me over the top and made me miss good ole Sacramento; the local news.

For example, have a look see at the news team over at abc7.com. Seriously, are these broadcasters or the current cast of the Bold and the Beautiful. And the weather people? Put on your darkest oversized sunglasses and check out Dallas Raines. Haven’t seen teeth like that since that episode of Friends when Ross had the blacklight going, huh? Oh, and wait til you hear him speak. Mark Finan, take me away!

The first thing I did upon returning to the 916 was flip on channel 3. Edie and John welcomed me back and caught me up to speed on the flooding situation and shared a wonderful of story of a rescued cat. Not once did Edie or John mention themselves or make some snide personal comment.

Appreciate what you have, Sacramento. Sure this city has it’s share of faults (as noted here daily,) but, overall, I loves me some Sacramento and am glad to be back.

P.S. Props to SinghCity for minding the store while most of us were out of town. Looks like the folks over at heckasac took notice, too.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you

So the Elk Grove Police is issuing yellow warnings to folks who leave their cars susceptible to burglary. An idea they received at a conference from a town in Texas that experienced an 85 percent drop in burglaries after issuing the tickets. 85 percent you say? Hmmm.

The officers write out a yellow ticket-type warning and place it on the windshield. If the vehicle is unlocked, officers put it on the dash and lock the car.

A few thoughts I have about this. Let me know if I’m off base.

Did this town in Texas also publicize the warnings on the local news? Because I’m wondering if the police are not making the job easier for would be burglars by identifying the at risk vehicles for them by placing a yellow ticket on their windshield.

What if I don’t want my car locked for me? Maybe I left my keys in the car hidden for my friend who is going to borrow it for a few hours while I shop and now I am locked out of my car and have to call AAA? And my buddy is horribly pissed off and can’t make his court appearance? What if, you know?

All snark aside, do try to take heed from this article and protect yourself as best you can so that you don’t receive a yellow card and/or have your car burglarized. Believe me, it can happen to you.

Bow to your sensei

This is just too good to pass up. And, as usual, the details are golden.

Unbeknownst to the robber, Petrossi is an expert in martial arts. He assumed a “ready” stance, then grabbed a pair of scissors and box cutter from under the counter and told the man to “bring it on.” Petrossi said the man dropped the beer and fled.

If you get a chance watch the surveillance video paying close attention to the voice in the background.

Petrossi continued after the suspect, who looped back, got into the van, and attempted to drive away. His problems weren’t quite over, though. Petrossi grabbed a rock and threw it through the driver’s side window, shattering it.

No word yet on whether the store was robbed with no one, literally, minding it.

Go Manteca, it’s ya birthday

News10.net reports of a stolen car in Manteca. Big deal, right? Ok, so the car was a rare Ford GT that retails for $160,000. Still, it happens, no big. Read on…

That wasn’t all. Waterford said that in order to start the GT, the thieves found the battery charger and jumped it. They pushed a Mustang belonging to rapper 50 Cent out of the way and from the damage that was caused, probably fished-tailed the GT out the showroom’s double doors.

Hey, Manteca, rapper 50 Cent parks his Mustang on a showroom floor in your town, get that news to the chamber of commerce! Give those waterslides a run for their money. And while you’re at it, your town has sold 5 of the only 500 GT’s made each year. That’s….one second, 500 divided by 5, oh wait, 5 divided by 500, no 5 times 500…a decent amount of fancy cars sold in an otherwise small town. Well done.

Online map wars

The online map game is getting competitive. As is the case with most online firsts, Google presents a beta product only to have Yahoo! follow suit shortly thereafter. When Google Maps debuted last year it was very exciting. Coupled with Google Earth, I quickly became a daily visitor. However, Yahoo! recently introduced their beta version of a map product and I must admit I’m impressed. If not only for the easy to use interface, I find myself visiting this site more and more.

Basically, Yahoo! took a few of the features that Google Earth offered and implemented them into their web service. That is, you don’t have to download and install the Earth product to sort by categories, for example. And the category listings are very helpful. After entering “Sacramento, CA” into the “Get Map & Directions” field I am able to search by categories such as Restaurants > Italian or Entertainment > Movie Theaters (it’s a beta remember so maybe they’ll remove the listing for the Pussycat Theater?). The real bonus for me being that each listing offers up the address and phone number along with directions to and from without doing more searching. And in a crazed phone number search that is very handy.

And with their API product your very own Sac Rag might be coming at you with some cool new features in ’06!

The red zone is for loading and unloading only

I’ve always maintained that the coolest thing about the Internet is having the ability to interact with business accounts without having to interact with human beings. I think we can all agree that the less we deal with people the better. Or maybe only I can agree. At any rate, businesses have recognized this, too, and have implemented the IVR ( interactive voice response ) system in an attempt to satisfy the needs of the consumer. It simply doesn’t work. 9.5 times out of 10 we all wish we could just hit a button that would bypass the automation and send us to a real person. In the past simply pressing “0” did the trick. Today, however, it is next to impossible to figure out the special number combination that will free us from the IVR hell that we created. That is, until I was sent this link the other day. Some tricks are simple ( press “0” twice) while others are bit time consuming ( Say “I don’t know it” then “technician” ).

With this in mind, I think I am going to start my own 916 IVR Cheat Sheet (Surewest, Comcast, SMUD, etc.) Feel free to comment with any local business IVR system shortcuts you may have. We can do this Sacramento, one #, 0, 0, *, * at a time.

Freedom of…

I know many of our Sac Rag readers are lawyers and/or highly educated. As such, please to explain why a person can be fined for having a boat on his property (CC&R I would assume) but not for spray painting a message on his garage door?

Constitutional guarantees of free speech will make it difficult for the city to order Fredrick to remove the painted message. In fact, Fredrick said his visual protest may be expanding soon.

So couldn’t the boat parking be this man’s way of expressing himself to all those lilly livered land lovers out there that refuse to enjoy the many wonderful waterways our great state has to offer?