My Letter to the City [update]

The day after I posted my letter to Mayor Villaraigosa, Deputy Mayor Beutner, and the City Finance Director to this blog, I was contacted by Gabriel Sermeno at the Office of Economic and Business Policy to help rectify the issue. Now that's responsive government! Thank you Mr. Sermeno for your time and professionalism. Ultimately, he was able to secure me a full refund for all my late fees and explained that the City permit is actually due by Feb 28, ahead of normal tax filings. Next year, I'll know better, but he also said they are trying to do a better job of notifying LA Business owners about this.

My letter to the City about Bureaucracy

May 23, 2010

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Cheif Executive Officer, City of LA

200 North Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012-3239

Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, Chief Executive for Economic and Business Policy, City of LA

200 North Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012-3239

Ms. Antoinette Chrisovale, Director of Finance, City of LA

200 North Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012-3239

Dear Sirs and Madam,

As a new small business owner in the City of Los Angeles, I did a lot of planning and research before jumping into my sole-proprietorship. I obtained a business license and published notice in a local business journal, got my DBA paperwork in order, and when the Office of Finance paperwork finally arrived I properly described my business and mailed my forms back promptly.

Cut to over a month later, when a notice of tax due arrives. I have no problems with paying taxes, in fact I am happy to do my part. But charing me interest and a penalty (over 17% of the principal) on my first notice is completely absurd. At least give me a chance to pay on time. This is a classic example of one of the City's hands not knowing what the other is doing. There are too many agencies, offices, and too much red tape.

Why was I not asked to file for business tax classification at the time I registered my business license? Why was I not made aware of any taxes due prior to receiving my first notice with a late penalty? This is bureaucratic nonsense. Is a CPA now a matter of course for anyone starting a business in the City?

We are working hard out here (outside of City Hall) and every minute of our time, each dollar in our pockets counts, now more than ever. Therefore I'm asking you to streamline: reduce unneccesary offices, fix the things that matter by making the problem less complicated, cut budgets raised on penalty fees and money from small businesses and put our sales and (high) property taxes into fixing our roads, bridges, parks, and schools.

Study Occam's Razor.

Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,



Adam Fischer, Principal, ComputersWTF

Great job, Jobs.

What a letter!
If Adobe were smarter, they'd start developing products that not only helped/enabled HTML5 developers, but they'd also start selling a converter application to move Flash movies to H.264 so mobile phones could display them.

Ah Geek Squad... how I love you.

An undercover/hidden camera story produced by KPTV in Oregon about different computer repair shops and the honesty/integrity levels of each. Take a guess how Best Buy did. What's really surprising is what they did after this story ran.

I guess just like a Moody's or S&P rating, grades from the BBB can be bought as well.

A great guide to privacy on Facebook

Update: May 2010: Wired has a great and incredibly thorough article on Facebook privacy here.

Stop hiding everyone and use FB's privacy settings to their fullest potential. Personally, I just made a custom news-feed list and I pick and choose who's updates get displayed. But, like everything, there are a bunch of different paths to the same solution. Ars Technica did a great piece on the in's and out's of Facebook's privacy features. What's your favorite?

iPhone battery life

I wanted to know if leaving the Bluetooth setting On all the time was an extra drain on battery life, even if the BT earpiece was turned off. According to Apple, it's a small tax on the battery, but many user comments on the forums I read (and my own personal experience) was to the contrary. Regardless, this is a useful article-

"Paying attention to just a few commonsense pointers will pay off with a longer battery lifespan and battery life for your iPhone. The most important thing is to keep your iPhone out of the sun or a hot car (including the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most."

-From Apple's iPhone battery info page.

Turn your favorite songs into iPhone ringtones

Very easy and useful tutorial if you imported a song into iTunes from a CD and you want to use it as a ringtone for your iPhone.