Taipei from Elephant Mountain (Taken with instagram)
If you are too busy to read this whole post, then please just skip to the bottom where you can find the phone number for your state delegate and call them to ask them to vote for Virginia House Bill Number 1119.
One day last summer my friends and I were doing what we do every Sunday during the summer: wakesurfing. However, this day would be different.
If you don’t already know, “wakesurfing” is a water sport where a person “surfs” in the wake behind a slow moving boat. Initially a rope is used to pull the surfer upright on the surfboard, and then after they get their balance they throw the rope back into the boat and “surf” the wave as they would in the ocean, that is, using only their balance and the momentum of the water.
So on that Sunday last summer we filled up the boat and truck with gas (around $100 total), drove an hour to the lake, then put the boat in the water and prepared it for the day. However, after about 45 minutes of surfing we were flagged down by two officers from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. We weren’t really worried because we always drive the boat with great care, and always have all the required emergency equipment on board, including extra life preservers. There should have been no problem.
Instead, and to our great surprise, one of the officers issued us a citation and told us that wakesurfing is illegal in the state of Virginia. He referenced a law about operating a boat above wake speeds within 50 feet of people in the water. He told us that because the surfer behind the boat wasn’t holding a rope that he was considered a swimmer, and that the driver of the boat was endangering the swimmer. The boat we use has an inboard motor, which is located near the middle of the boat so it’s nearly impossible to come in contact with the propeller.
We have been wakesurfing in these same waters for years, and have passed by many officers who have even waved at us while we surfed. This guy was stretching it a bit. The other officer in the boat tried to add further justification by saying that surfers are so close to the boat that they’ll get carbon dioxide poisoning.
This really was depressing for us because it’s a very safe and fun sport, and we spend nearly every Sunday of the summer at the lake on the surfboard.
But the depression turned to anger and then motivation to get this law changed. The court date was pushed back twice, finally to January 2012. My friends Tate and John went to court to fight the citation, and won. Next, they urged our local delegate Tommy Wright to sponsor a bill to make wakesurfing “lawful” in the state of Virginia.
Delegate Wright did his part and Virginia House Bill Number 1119 is now submitted and ready to be put to vote. If it passes then we can go back to having fun in the summer.
The bill is being voted on in the Agriculture Subcommittee and is scheduled for sometime before the end of January. We would really appreciate it if you could help us out by calling your delegate and asking them to vote for House bill 1119.
Here, I’ll make it easy for you.
If you don’t know who your delegate is, you can use this Virginia state government webpage to locate them. Or, if you already know who your delegate is you can find their phone numbers here.
If your delegate is one of the following members of the Agriculture Subcommittee then we would especially appreciate you calling them:
Please call!
“Texas Rangers Fried Chicken”
This restaurant is near my apartment in Taipei. The menu includes items such as “New Orleans Hot Wings” and “Texas Crispy Fish Tender Sandwich”
A few weeks ago I bought my first one-way international plane ticket.
On September 7th I will be flying from New York to Taipei to begin a new challenge. I am enrolled in a three month “intensive” Chinese language course with classes three hours each day, five days per week. If I survive this quarter then I intend to enroll for another three months, and so on, until I’m ready for something new.
As a traveler, I’ve always admired people who are multilingual. It’s so cool to see someone switch languages to negotiate a better deal, or get recommendations from a local. Nearly a billion people speak Mandarin, including my girlfriend, so that seems like a good choice if I’m going to pick one.
I’ve also always wanted to spend some time living abroad. While visiting Taipei earlier this year I really fell in love with it and realized I could probably live there. Great food, friendly people, reasonable prices, modern infrastructure, and a safe environment make Taipei a really attractive city for a foreigner.
I’ll be taking a backpack, two bags of clothes, and a ukulele. At this point I don’t have a place to live, but I’ll work on that when I get there. I arrive on September 8th, and school orientation is on the 13th, so I’ve got a few days to figure it out.
It’s been a while since I did something that made me both nervous and excited. I enjoy that mixed feeling. Quitting a comfortable job and buying a one way ticket to the other side of the world is certainly one way to experience it.
So, who wants to come visit?
In front of the Taipei 101 building in January 2011.
One reason for this confusion is that we’re often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work. The distractions come along with the productivity.
- Are you making something?
I’ve had a lot of success selling things on Craigslist. When I lived in Houston I sold nearly everything I owned on there, and for reasonably good prices as well. Lately though Craigslist has caused me quite a bit of frustration.
I really enjoy writing detailed listings and experimenting with what causes items to sell for the best price. I normally take lots of photos of an item, choose the best four to upload to craigslist, then post the remaining photos in my gallery in higher resolution formats. This way I could link to these higher resolution photos from the listing. I’ve done this for nearly every item I’ve ever posted.
Back in August I listed my iPhone 3GS on Craigslist, along with links to the additional photos in my personal photo gallery. Evidently, this triggered some sort of flag in the Craigslist filters, because since then nothing I post ever shows up on the site.
Now, when I post something the whole process looks perfectly normal and I pass the captcha phase and get a confirmation that my listing has been posted. I even get the email they send you with a link to your post, and the link works and displays your post. But it never shows up in the listings on the site, nor does it show up in any search results. This practice is called “Ghosting”.
At first I thought it was the fact that I included a few links in the post, or that maybe my listings were too long (I write very detailed listings), so I simplified the posts and included no HTML. But after failing to have my posts show up on the site, I asked Sandy to try posting the exact same items, using my same text, and the posts show up for her with no problem. The issue seems to be with my entire account.
Several other oddities have happened since the issue began in August. Three or four times since then Craigslist has asked me to re-verify my phone number, and has also requested that I change my password a few times. I certainly don’t mind doing this if it helps get my account back in good standing, but it doesn’t appear to make any difference.
I understand that Craigslist has to deal with more scammers, spammers, and sleeze than I can even imagine. They have to be proactive and handle the issue so that the site doesn’t become overrun and useless, but by silently blocking regular users the site is also becoming useless. My real issue is that there is no way for legitimate users to contact Craigslist to try to get these issues fixed. They direct you to their community forums for support from other Craigslist users. I posted my problem there and essentially got canned responses and some minor trolling. Not at all helpful.
Hey, Jim Buckmaster, how about trying one of these options:
- Charge for a few more categories so you can hire some more support people to help out with situations like this.
- Allow me to pay you an annual fee to get avoid being ghosted.
- Implement better filters that result in fewer false positives.
“But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America,” Sela said.
“First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you,” said Sela. “Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that’s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.”
