our privacy policy

Good ol’ California. Not content to legislate their own state into the ocean, they’ve now come up with a law that says that any company whose web site does business with Californians and collects personal information needs to have a pricacy policy posted. Not such a bad idea in itself, but another example of our proclivity to compensate for common sense with ever-more-labyrinthian rules and arcana.

We used to collect email addresses for our newsletter, but we don’t even do that anymore. Andy stopped writing the newsletter and started blogging. And while we think that “blogging” sounds like something he should probably see his internist about, he informs us that it’s ever so much more cool and hip and fab than newsletters. And who are we to argue with a cool, hip, fab blogger.  So even though our previously pittiful privacy policy was, while alliterative, pithy, and is now, unnecessary, if, in the future, we start up another newsletter, though, here’s our policy:

1. We only need your email address. We ask about name, company and city because we’re interested. If you prefer to be anonymous, except for your email address, that’s fine.
2. We only use the information to send out the newsletter. Usually it’s monthly. If there’s something particularly interesting, maybe it will be more often. When we’re on vacation, it may be less frequent.
3. If you want off, let us know. We can either remove you from the list, in which case you can jump back in at any time, or we can “blacklist” your email in our main database. In that case, you’ll never hear from us through that channel again. Our IT gnomes do tell us that “blacklisting” may have some negative side effects such as “the wasting disease,” a complete inability to form emotional attachments to pets and blurred vision.
4. That’s it. We only use your email to send you the newsletter. We won’t sell the information, lease it, loan it, stare at it until we enter a trance-like state, play anagram games with it or poke fun at your chosen e-handle.
5. We reserve the right to package other marketing communications as a “Special Edition” of the newsletter.We expect that you’ll see right through these thinly-veiled advertising schticks, and we will use our best judgement when deciding how often to bother you. We will try to balance our desire to impress you with our sense of restraint. If we fail to achieve that balance, we understand that you reserve the right to un-subscribe and bad-mouth us to all your friends and colleagues.
   
   Here endeth the policy