Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

Driven to Distraction

In preparation for California's new hands-free cell phone law on July 1st, I finally broke down and bought a bluetooth wireless device.

Well, I actually bought my second bluetooth wireless device. I had bought one a couple of years ago, found it to be terribly annoying and not very useful and quite promptly lost it. This time I bought one of the more advanced models, the Jawbone, and I find it to be terribly annoying and not very useful. The good news is I haven't lost it yet.

For the last week or so, I've been walking around with this thing in my ear trying to get used to it. What I find is that I am significantly more distracted using this thing than I ever was either holding the phone in my hand or using the speakerphone. First I had to try two different earpieces and three different earbuds till I got a set that seems to sort of fit my ear somewhat. Then I have managed to either disconnect people who call, call people I don't mean to,  or try to talk out of the phone when the call goes to the headset or vice versa. I can't figure out how to make the volume go up and down in real time, and any advanced features are way beyond me.

This has got to be the law of unintended consequences to the max. Here's the story. I do believe there are some people who are very distracted when they talk on the cell phone, and many of these people talk and drive at the same time. I've seen them and so have you. However, I don't for a second believe that these folks will be any less distracted because they have this thing in their ear.

I also believe that these are the same people who long before cell phones were distracted by everything from the car radio to their kids in the back seat, reading the paper, looking at a map or GPS, etc. In other words, some people are just plain distracted. These are also the folks who probably can't multitask on even simple tasks. That's ok. They can work serially one task at a time.

The rest of us who can multitask fairly well and are even wired to perform better when we're multitasking are now stuck with a regulation that makes our lives more complicated and IMO less safe.

The CHP is supposedly sitting with baited breath just waiting to start citing people who are not hands-free next Tuesday. I just hope they will also take the time to stop all those people who are distracted by other things beyond cell phones, as well as those who are incapacitated and really shouldn't be driving in the first place.  But it might be too distracting to ask them to focus on more than one thing at a time.

The Real Problem w/Senator Craig

It's been hard to miss the ongoing saga of Idaho senator Larry Craig whose recent arrest and guilty plea for lewd behavior in an airport restroom has been a top news story for the last week or so. After being  nearly ex-communicated from the Republican party, last weekend Craig announced his resignation from the US Senate.

Or did he? Today's headline is that Craig may "reconsider" his resignation, depending on the outcome of his "reconsideration" of his guilty plea.

Personally, I don't care whether Craig is straight, gay, bisexual or something in between--that's his business. What bothers me most about this is that the man seems to not have a backbone: he can't make a decision and stick with it.

First he pleads guilty to the bathroom charge. Then after this is publicized, he reconsiders his decision. Then he decides to resign his Senate seat. But a few days later, he reconsiders his decision.

We're not talking about choosing paint for your living room, or which car you want to drive. The decisions Craig has made in the last several months are serious ones. One does not plead guilty to a crime without considering the implications thereof. He had the right to an attorney and appears to have not availed himself of one before submitting his pleas. Before resigning from an elected position, one should consider that it's unlikely they can simply "unresign" later. If the man can't understand the implications and repercussions of making a decision and living with it, then in my book, he should also not be making decisions about topics that impact all of us such as the war in Iraq, government funding or other key issues that may come before Congress.

I don't understand why we as a society, and Republicans in particular, are so obsessed by people's individual sex lives. However, as a long-time member of that party and an elected official representing that party in national office, Craig should have understood how behavior like this would impact his standing with his colleagues and his constituents. He is responsible for his own actions and the consequences thereof.  If he was innocent, he should have not pleaded guilty. If he didn't believe this should impact his ability to serve his constituents, he should not have resigned.

If he had a backbone, he would make a decision and stand by it.

Voting Process Made Easy...for real!

I have been a permanent absentee voter in California for years and years. That way I don't have to worry about where I am on election day, getting to the polls by a certain time, etc. The ballot comes in the mail, I fill it out and return it and everything is set.

Until this year. Somehow I managed to lose my absentee ballot. Actually, I think I may have thrown it out. Here I was less than a week from the election, past the deadline to mail my ballot and ensure it would be received, and dreading the thought of having to go vote in person.

Luckily I live in San Mateo County, where the county government has made these things straightforward and simple. I called the voter registration number (which I found via Google), and told the person on the other end I'd lost my ballot. She said I had 2 choices: go to my normal voting place (which I've never been to and don't know where it is) on election day, or come down to the voter registration headquarters in Redwood City anytime between now and Tuesday and vote there.

I was amazed at how simple and automated the process was at County Center in Redwood City. My first thought walking in to the assessor's office/voter registration office was how clean and neat and organized it was. Real estate related files are all neatly catalogued on cassettes, the mounds of paper that were likely present in this kind of operation previously have all disappeared, and all the service centers in the office are neatly marked. The woman @ the absentee voting station was pleasant, knowledgeable and helpful. She looked up my information on her computer, had me sign an affidavit that I had lost my ballot, then offered me the choice of using a paper ballot or one of the computerized systems they had available.
When I said I'd never used their system before, she said, well it's quite simple and I can walk you through the whole process without a problem. She then proceeded to demonstrate how the system worked (which really IS quite simple and intuitive). It took me about 5 minutes to go through the ballot, highlighting each candidate or initiative to vote for, then I was asked three times to confirm my choices (and given the opportunity to change them), before the ballot was officially cast. I got a receipt with a confirmation number corresponding to my ballot and I was done.  Total time from when I walked in the door until I walked out: less than 7 minutes.

It was actually really simple, effective and efficient. When is the last time you said those words in conjunction with local government? In fact, the most difficult part of the whole process was finding parking in downtown Redwood City.  Well, some things never change...