Coffee heat rising

Angst

Stuff Done, Stuff in Progress

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“In Progress”: I have no idea whether this post will go online or whether it will stick once it does. Beloved Web guru Jesse, now constrained (by a job, of all things, poor guy!) to the weekends to perform his magic for the clientele, worked into the night to move the blog empire to WestHost and reported, sometime after midnight, that he would be spending a fair amount of today in pursuit of the same goal.

So today’s idle post may be being scribbled while he’s roaming around the site doing whatever it is that Web Magicians do. Oh well. It all goes off into the Internet Ether anyway, I guess.

Yesterday’s frenzy, the one that produced NINE major jobs all of which occupied Slot #1 on the priority list, did eventually produce a little forward progress. To wit:

1. I studied the Calibre user manual and thought holy shit! Decided to go through KDP for most of the Magnum Opuses, with the possible exception of the diet/cookbook. The cookbook has a relatively complex layout. Friedman’s user manual for the Word templates I purchased claims that if styles are used assiduously, even something with lists and tables should transfer into the enormously arcane Calibre software. But I’ll believe that when I see it.

If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to hire my friend the e-book builder to prepare that one.

The smυt, though, is extremely simple and should fly through the process with no problem. I hope.

1. And I studied Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing tool. It looks extremely simple.

Okay, we do know looks can be deceiving, and that where things digital are concerned, 99.998% of the time looks are deceiving. But at least I have an idea of what I’m supposed to do.

1. Tina’s edits are now entered in the diet cookbook MS and some final layout polishing has been done. The thing should be ready to convert to PDFs today. The e-book conversion is more problematic; see above.

1. I realized the PoD version of the cookbook could and probably should be coil-bound, since those who don’t buy its e-book incarnation probably have in mind opening it out on the drainboard so they can follow recipes while cooking. Coil-bound cookbooks work better for that purpose than perfect-pound, because they lay flat. This is good, because it  will be much simpler to convey the cover to the Snowflake Press. So the cookbook and the PDFs for Slave Labor go over to the printer today.

1. Though I did not start a month’s subscription and start downloading cover images, I did go through all my notes (with URLs for the images already spotted) and transfer the relevant data into a spreadsheet. This little ledger will show where stock art was acquired, the vendors’ stock number for each piece, when it was acquired, what work it was used for, and when it was published. Today if I have time, I will start the subscription and begin the downloads, a chore that will take some hours.

1. Though I did not create a second mock-up cover in PowerPoint (I’ve done that in the past and see that it seems to work, but whether it gets past Kindle and Nook’s gatekeepers remains to be seen), I did ascertain that a color image converted to a JPG by PowerPoint does convert in RGB, thank God. So, if the guy who says he makes his covers with stock art in PP is right, creating covers for the p0rn will be down-and-dirty easy, since nothing very artistic is required for those.

1. And finally, I managed to add a few words to the current Bobbi and the Biker bookoid, in which BillyBob finally calls Bobbi (whose lust for his magnificent body can best be described as “overheated”) and invites her to go line dancing at his favorite country-Western sh!t-stompin’ bar. This should be interesting…

 Today I’d like to start with a sample chapter a prospective contributor sent over. Looking forward to reading that more closely — took a brief look at it yesterday but became swamped with yesterday’s frolics, which occupied almost every living breathing moment until about 9:00 p.m., when I crapped out. So probably that will be priority number one, after a bunch of Life Maintenance chores:

1. DONE Feed dogs

2. Check pool chemicals, restore balance; clean pump pot; backwash if necessary; shock-treat if necessary.

3. DONE Pour vast quantities of Bayer Tree & Shrub evil chemical around the paloverde and climbing roses in attempt to damage and kill off as many evil paloverde borers as possible.

The “beneficial nematodes” that I bought from Arbico last fall and this spring seem to have helped some, but another dozen of the monsters emerged from the ground, meaning hundreds if not thousands of root-eating grubs reside under the surface, where they’re working at killing the magnificent paloverde that shelters the west side of my house from the blast-furnace afternoon sun. Seeing their exit holes (which go about 18 inches underground), I got the idea of pouring borer-specific insecticide directly down those holes, on the following theories:

a) the fertilized females often return to their hole to lay their eggs…laying the things in a bug-killer infested hole can’t do the babes much good; and

b) applied in this way, the liquid will go directly down to the level where the damn grubs are chewing on my tree’s roots and presumably, by capillary action, soak into the soil where the little horrors reside.

4. UNDER WAY Wash and dry the bathroom rug and the puppy-dirt-collecting rug by the side door. Clean the dirt out of the washer and utility sink (a larger job than it appears, involving use of a shop vac and repeated running of the endlessly annoying washer’s “rinse” cycle.)

5. DONE. Find a place to store stacks of notecards indexing research for Boob Book. Get that stuff off the family room desk so the desk can be dusted!

6. Read contributor’s creative work; respond in something that resembles a coherent manner.

7. Upload Slave Labor to Snowflake Press.

8. UNDER WAY Write back cover copy for print version of diet/cookbook.

9. Upload diet/cookbook to Snowflake Press.

10. Continue writing the latest installment of Bobbi & the Biker.

11. Get to the 36 unread emails on the server.

12. Write job description for proposed intern, in connection with internship/apprenticeship initiative planned by members of Scottsdale Business Association.

How exactly I’m supposed to explain to some college internship coordinator that candidates must be 18 years of age but preferably over 21 remains to be seen. Oh well. Tomorrow’s another day.

 

Gotta Take a Break

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Oh, wow! What a morning! I’ve been going since 4:30, with so many things demanding attention right this minute that I’m falling all over myself.  Gotta take a break and think about something else.

You know, I need to prioritize the jobs I’m trying to do so that at any given time I’m working on ONE of them, not trying to juggle them all at once. With a three-ring circus in progress, all it takes is a single disruption to set you to spinning off-balance.

Today’s disruption comes from WordPress.com, which has decided to gouge me a series of fees for the “free” website I set up for Writers Plain & Simple. These demands, in which they threaten to shut the site down unless I change the settings so they can “upgrade” at will, come exactly 11 months after I started that site, meaning that if I did sign up for paying services, a full month should remain. Meanwhile, I’ve been nagging my back-end guy to move the Blogging Empire off his server to WestHost and to take the WordPress.com site with it. All this was supposed to have happened last week, but because it didn’t happen (again…), now I have THIS hassle taking up my time.

Goddamnit.

So as I was trying to eat my miserable breakfast and sip my stone-cold coffee around various chatline operators, none of whom would come online (finally I got a message saying they were busy and if I’d like to file a support request maybe someday in my lifetime they’d get back to me), I tried to list the things that need to be attended to right now, right this minute:

1. Learn how to build an acceptable e-book cover image.
1. Learn how to use Calibre.
1. Learn how to post to Kindle and to Barnes & Noble
1. Finish the current Biker Babe bookoid, started yesterday.
1. Download cover images from stock photography sites
1. Get blogging empire moved over to WestHost
1. Figure out how to cope with that
1. Enter Tina’s edits and upload diet/recipe book to Kindle and B&N via Calibre, assuming I can figure out how to use Calibre
1. Upload print layout of diet/recipe book to PoD printer.

Notice that they’re all prioritized, all right: as No. 1.

Not a single one of these needs is going to happen today. One of my clients, a guy who seems to need a lot of hand-holding, called and urgently requested a meeting. I don’t know what he wants, but

a) I do know it’s going to absorb at least half of today; and
b) I suspect it has to do with his desire to set up his book in PoD format, which he’s been having about as much luck with as I’ve had in my project to move the blogs to WestHost.
c) If that is true, I do NOT understand why the design firm that I sent him to has not just made it so, since I happen to know they have an account with Snowfall Press and there’s no damn good reason they can’t just upload the PDFs to Snowfall and charge him for the privilege. And then some.
d) Because there is no damn good reason, that means whatever the reason is, you can be sure it’s no damn good.
e) And finally, what that means is that no damn good is about to pour onto my head and absorb the next week or two of time that I need and want to use to get my own enterprise up and running.

I am so damn tired of having to DROP EVERYTHING to do stuff for someone else, to the point that nothing I want to do to make my own life better and to position myself to earn a living without having to teach miserable freshman comp courses EVER GETS DONE.

I’m seriously thinking about dropping the editorial business altogether and telling clients they’re going to have to find someone else to read their copy. That, however, would he highly counterproductive. I’m spending the S-corp’s money like water trying to get this enterprise up (and do NOT appreciate WordPress engrossing some of it for nothing!), and will need at least some income to keep afloat until we see how the racy book enterprise works. If it works. Yesterday enough money came in to cover the cost of two hours’ worth of one-on-one lessons in using PhotoShop, which I happen to know is the best tool to create ebook covers.

It can be done in PowerPoint. But the resulting quality remains unclear to me. I’ve seen some ebook covers allegedly created in PP, and I’ve tried it and found it fairly easy. But in fact, PhotoShop is much more versatile and allows one to customize stock art so as not to have a cover that looks like all the other covers of men’s torsos armored in abs.

I’ve taken two courses in PhotoShop, back when we thought the university’s Journals office might need to do some degree of design work. Bored me stupid — listening to some guy explain how to do it for eight hours at a time is not conducive to learning. And because as it turned out all our journals had their own graphics people, we never used either PhotoShop or InDesign. The only way to learn to use software that works for me is for me to USE it. To use it for days on end, until its methods and works become second nature.

One thing is for sure, it’s dead right that if you want to get something done right, you have to do it yourself. Yea verily, if you want it done AT ALL you have to do it yourself. I’ve been waiting on the cover art for some of this stuff upwards of a year. I’ve been waiting weeks and weeks to get the blogs moved. And that’s one reason why everything I need to do is now parked at the top of the priority list: because NOTHING HAS GOTTEN DONE WHEN I ASKED (PAID!!!!!) TO GET IT DONE.

Cripes. I’ve got to get dressed to go meet the client.

Bookkeeping Blues

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ledgerIf it has numbers in it, I hate it.

So…any excuse in a storm! And over the past few months, I’ve managed to find quite a few. Soooo… About two-thirds of the giant dune of paper that’s piled up on the desk is four months’ worth of bills and bank statements for the Copyeditor’s Desk and for me.

Plowing through all that was going to take half the day, I suspected. And…yup! Exactly right. Got home from this morning’s early ayem meeting and grocery shopping on the way home. Sat down to work around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. , after filing final grades for what I hope will be the last freshman comp course I ever have to teach. Finished wrestling with the figures shortly before 5:00 p.m., reduced to a bundle of aggravation.

I think I’ve entered all the credits and debits. I seem to have reconciled Quickbooks with the credit unions’ statements. The bills are paid and nothing is pending.  And QB says I have just about $3,000 less than the credit union thinks I have.

Well. Okay, so I’m glad it’s not the other way around.

But still. It’s frustrating.

Really. I’ve got to keep up with these little tasks.

In the process, though, I made a couple discoveries:

1. WordPress.com is quietly charging me $38 for something undescribed, even though I supposedly have a “free” website t here and even though the theme is not a premium theme.

2. Slave Labor a book that few have ever heard of and fewer still would care to read, is selling, in a very, very tiny way. Revenues on this obscurity average around eight bucks a month.

That’s for one book with a readership best described as “limited.”

So…let’s say each of 100 p0rn0graphic books earns all of ten bucks a month — probably a conservative estimate. Now we’re talking about a thousand dollah. That’s only $120/month less than I need to replace the teaching income. Hm.

That would require five people to buy each book per month, on average. Doesn’t seem out of reason.

So: onward with the stories!

 

Week, Interrupted (Endlessly…)

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BEFORE I FORGET: Go here and check out what our Web guru, Jesse, is up to. It’s not like he doesn’t have enough to do, with a full-time job and a growing family. Let’s try to help this bunch meet their goal. 🙂

Jesse is about to get even more busy trying to wrangle Funny and the rest of my blogging empire onto a new server, now that gainful employment has made his freelance business redundant. We’ve selected WestHost, because for less than he’s been charging it provides significant support and all the blandishments he’s been providing. At any rate, if the site goes down briefly (again 🙄 ), watch this space. It should stabilize, and I hope that all the email & RSS subscriptions will come over with it.

It’s already Friday and I haven’t finished the second risque novel. It’s within a few words of the end, but it ain’t there yet. That’s because every time I turn around, here’s something else I have to do.

Today I have to take the car down to Chuck’s, there to get the side-view mirrors replaced. When my son drove it home from the ER parking lot, alas, he noticed that the Gorilla Tape doesn’t really keep the mirrors very stable at freeway speeds. He became unnerved and insisted that they have to be replaced.

{sigh} The young will be served. I suppose.

But there’s another time suck.

Yesterday I ran out of propane, after I left the burners on to incinerate the grease. Another time suck: traipse to U-Haul to refill a tank.

Also yesterday I had to deposit a check from Social Security and one from Medicare. Not wanting to traipse way to hell and gone up to the credit union, halfway to Wickenburg, I tried to use the new printer to scan the things. Under the best of conditions, scanning and depositing a check electronically can take almost as long as driving all the way to the CU and back. Yesterday’s were NOT the best of conditions.

Then I had to call the Mayo and fork over the $80 Medicare had dribbled out to me (here we go again: another $11,000 dribbed and drabbed out in payments of $80 to $150, each of which I have to fiddle with interminably). To get someone on the line to accept a credit-card charge, I had to sit there and listen to their ENDLESSLY INFURIATING machine tell me over and over “thank you for waiting blah blah blah blah blah”… That sucked another ten minutes on top of the time suck involved in scanning and depositing the damn checks.

The handyman is supposed to come over to fix the leaking kitchen faucet. As of this morning, of course, it’s stopped leaking. So I have to deal with that somehow, one way or another.

Student papers are coming in, God help us.

We rigged a trick to get some of them to turn in papers early, so we wouldn’t be SO hopelessly swamped next week when we have to read 20+ pieces of long-form drivel on an impossible deadline while we’re both struggling to survive. They get 20 points of extra credit if they turn the final paper in early. So a couple of eager beavers have in fact done that.

This is good. But it means I have to drop what I’m doing to turn those around.

Met at length with my associate editor/bidness partner and her sister to discuss the porn publishing scheme. It really is a frighteningly promising scheme. The number of people — mostly women — who read this stuff defies belief. Porn is a multi-billion-dollar industry, most of it conducted by small-timers working as much under the radar as they can get. We believe it’s a huge, HUGE pie and we should be able to cut ourselves a slice of it.

But it will require focus, which is not something I seem to be doing well with just now.

Shifting the websites over to WestHost is a huge endeavor. There’s NO way I can do that myself, and Jesse has his own hands full. So this is going to be another time-sucking challenge.

The way this thing has grown — by topsy — has left me with a passel of individual sites, some of which I would like to combine as subdomains to just a few main sites, thereby relieving me from having to keep paying GoDaddy stupid amounts of money for domain-name renewals. We have…

• The Copyeditor’s Desk, a freestanding affair

• Funny about Money, also freestanding

• Plain & Simple Press, under which I’d like to see the following subdomains

• Writers Plain & Simple, the blog for P&S Press

• Fire-Rider, which will market 19 installments of the Fire-Rider series, if and when the artist ever gets the covers done and I ever learn how to get them onto Amazon all by my little self

• 30 Pounds in 30 Days, to market the diet/cookbook, another MS that’s been ready to go for a year and gone effing nowhere because of my illnesses and others’ foot-dragging

• Adjunctorium, the blog for Slave Labor, which probably will go away in the near future but needs to exist awhile longer

• Camptown Races Press, site for the new imprint through which we plan to run our pornographic works of art

• Camptown Ladies Talk, blog for the new racey publishing imprint

If Camptown Races Press flies — and I mean really flies, as in earns enough to replace the teaching income and then some — I’d like the editing business to go away. Not because I don’t enjoy reading some of my clients’ work. A few are truly interesting and worthwhile. But because I’d like to be able to devote all my time and energy to getting the sexy book business up and to keeping it running over the long haul. That is going to be a full-time job.

At any rate, umpty-umpteen gerjillion years of writing blogs have, at least, suggested a simpler way to set up the new imprint’s marketing blog. Do not do not DO NOT create blogs or static websites for new series. At the most, do subdomains for the most active and largest of them. Otherwise, use the sidebars to mount thumbnails of new stuff that comes out as it comes out, and set up pages for the series holding galleries of thumbnails for the backlist. Et voilà. A much simpler structure, much cheaper, and far easier to manipulate.

Two or three months’ worth of credit union statements and bills are sitting on the desk waiting for me to enter into Quickbooks and file away. Another huge time-killer.

It’s almost seven. I must fly to get the car to Chuck’s by eight. And so away, to watch another day be sucked into a black hole.

 

One of Those ARRRRGGGH!@#$%^ Days

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Have you ever noticed how everything always happens at once? Wonder why that is…

This has been one of those uphill-haul days, wherein every single damnfool thing you want to do has to be done the hard way, and you have a LOT of damnfool things to do.

That’s because you’ve left the damnfool things to do another day and, yes, this is another day.

I cruise back into town after this morning’s networking group meeting, having heard an excellent presentation and been the target of a rousing pep talk, after the meeting, by the presenter himself. I’m hot to get to work and full of ideas. But first…

But first, I  have to go by the electric supply house and pick up the lamp that was left to be rewired by way of repairing Ruby’s latest cord-eating depredation. It looks nice, and they charge me less than a quarter of what the last predator charged.

But…

Yeah. You get what you pay for. Twelve dollars and change does not enough wire to reach the outlet purchase.

The damn wire is about four inches too short.

I call. They agree to rewire it.

But this entails trying to get across Conduit of Blight Boulevard AGAIN. As you may recall, the city is building a ridiculous lightrail line up Conduit of Blight, making the entire corridor nonnavigable and rerouting rush-hour traffic through the middle of our neighborhood. You cannot get across Conduit of Blight at Main Drag South at all. So you have to drive up to Main Drag North, taking you way afield of the electric outfit, or else you have to drive two miles to the south and one mile back north  — three miles out of your way — to get around the construction horrors. Make that three miles x two, if you have any designs on coming home.

Either way, the environmentally chummy public works project converts a four-mile drive into a six-mile drive. One way.

I decide to drive up to the Depot and just buy a damn extension cord. There I pay almost nine bucks for a six-foot piece of overkill.

While I’m there, I return the hose connector that the very nice sales clerk told me was a set — male and female — and that was not. Whatever it was, it was not what I wanted. It was unusable.

I hate shopping in Home Depot. Hate it hate it hate it HATE. IT. Today there’s not a soul, not even an incompetent wretch who has no idea what she’s talking about, to help. I find the paint roller I need (only because past safaris have taken me into the Veldt of Paint) but have a bitch of a time finding the extension cords, which are nowhere near where two of the worthy employees pointed me.

When I get the eventually found extension cord home and discombulate its intricate packaging, I see it has a connection that would accommodate enough plugs to light a half-a-dozen Christmas trees.

Come ON, guys. This is for ONE freaking LIVING ROOM LAMP. And I have to tape it to the floor, the table, and the wall so as to keep Ruby from eating the lamp cord for the fourth time. A big honking clunky umpteen-plug connection does not lend itself to discretion. Or to transparent packing tape.

Two choices now: Take the lamp back to French Electric and wait another week to get it rewired again, or take the lamp cord back to HD and try to find one that works.

I believe the Depot does not have regular lamp-cord sized extensions, because two HD Dudes tried to help me find the same. We all failed.

Finally I decide to check the local TruValue and, if I can find a normal 1950s-style lamp cord with one count it (1) plug on the end, I will keep the short cord on the lamp and defer returning the ridiculous extension to a day when I’m in the vicinity of an HD for some other constructive reason.

Over to the TruValue. Yes, they have such a thing: four dollah.

Climbing into my car, it occurs to me that Home Depot is upselling by quite deliberately NOT STOCKING lamp-sized extension cords.

It is hot, and it is humid. By hot we’re talkin’ upwards of a hundred degrees.

As per usual, every moron in the county gets in front of me on the road. How the HELL do they KNOW when I’m out?

The last time Ruby ate the living-room lamp cord, I moved another lamp in there and used transparent packing tape to stick the cord to the inside of the table leg, the floor, and the wall between the lamp and the light plug. This a) worked and b) was very easy.

Not so today.

It may a) work, but it was b) incredibly NOT very easy. I ended up with broken fingernails from trying to peel the damn tape off of the damn roll and wads of stuck-together tape strewn all over the living room floor. By the time the job was done, my hair was yanked and my teeth were ground.

While I was at the electric supply store, we tried to remove the lamp shade. The finial was frozen on. None of us could get it loose. But we did succeed in ripping the fabric.

This lampshade was purchased back when I had a job and could afford nice things.

I get on Amazon to try to find something comparable. The cheapest selection: Seventy-five dollah!

Holy shit.

I take a more or less functional lampshade off another lamp (which now goes naked) and put it on the repaired lamp. It looks like what it is: a cheap piece of junk from Target.

Lurking at the back of consciousness: Pay the $1,588 Medigap premium! Find out how far in hock you are to AMEX! Figure out where the money to pay these extravagant bills will come from!

AMEX? Exactly $1,000 over budget. That is twice the amount I paid on the shoe extravaganza. We will have to wait for the itemized bill to arrive to figure out the other charges.

The Medigap premium, surprisingly considering the past year’s medical misadventures, is inflated by less than $100 over the 2014 gouge. And of course, it’s allowed for in the annual budget. But still. Fifteen hundred and eight-eight dollars is fucking painful.

Because I had a meeting halfway across the city at this morning’s crack of dawn, I have not cleaned the pool pump pot, which must be cleaned every morning because the fucking palm trees cannot be trimmed because DUCK has taken up residence in the tree trimmers’ direct line of fire. DUCK is absent this afternoon, it being afternoon and the time at which she forages. Does she not KNOW about the damned garden slugs that overrun the yard at night and that are turning the basil plant into a skeleton of itself? Why is she not doing her DUCK job out there? And where the Hell is she, anyway?

One of the eggs DUCK has hidden lies exposed. What part of “grackle” does DUCK not understand?

Avian concerns, however, do not form a major part of today’s Day from Hell qualities.

Web Guru’s bill needs to be paid. I try to get online to pay this quarter’s bill. His auto-collect software wants me to sign  in as…HIM!

Naturally.

I crash out of his auto-collect software and reboot. Now it tells me I owe an extra payment, which I happen to know I paid.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to cook my lunch, it being 3 o’clock in the afternoon and only slightly past lunchtime, by a mere three hours. Trusty Kitchen Timer is called into action to remind me when X or Y minutes have passed, so the grill will not carbonize the food.

Trusty Kitchen Timer is killed in action.

I try to revive her by replacing her battery.

No dice. TKT is deader than a doornail.

Why doornails are said to be dead is a question that has always plagued me, given that a) I do not know what a doornail is and b) I can’t imagine why anyone would impute either life or death to such an object.

So it goes.

The work I intended to get done was not, repeat, NOT done by 4 p.m., when I shook off the worst of this miasma. Instead of doing anything meaningful, I guess I’ll spend the rest of the day formatting another Fire-Rider episode.

And so…into the fog.

 

 

 

Big Brother: Not about to quit watching us

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Interesting op-ed article in today’s NY Times: former CIA officer and NSA contractor Edward Snowden rejoices that at last Americans and people around the world are waking up to the ubiquitous spying on innocent private citizens accused of no wrongdoing. He applauds Congress’s move to ban the NSA’s phone-call tracking program and President Obama’s about-face in stating that surveilling every citizen of the United States has done nothing to prevent even a single terrorist attack.

All very nice. But it’s a day late and a dollar short, in my opinion.

In the first place, a huge government infrastructure designed to track the private movements of everyone in the country now exists and has been deployed against us all. Does anyone seriously believe it’s suddenly not going to be used anymore?

And in the second place, Big Brother is not the government. It’s private industry. Note that only the NSA has been told to stand down from spying on us.

Google hasn’t. A few weeks ago, members of our neighborhood association reported that Google mapping trucks were moving up and down the alleys with vehicle-top cameras peering down into people’s backyards. Google tracks every move you make on the Internet. Every time I walk down my home’s hallway, the Nest thermostat on the wall records that I am home and sends that tidbit of information back to a Google-owned server. Nest also records and transmits the details of when I use power to air-condition and heat my home, and how much I use.

Just about anyone who wants to sell you something or to keep tabs on the public is watching you.

• Using cookies, any business on the planet can keep track of every website you visit, every message you post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, every search term you enter in  your browser, every whatnot.

• When you walk through a major shopping mall with your phone in your pocket or purse, curious minds are watching what stores you enter, what food kiosk you visit, even which window you pause in front of to eyeball the merchandise.

• Insurance companies, healthcare corporations (that would include your doctor’s and your psychological therapist’s employers and any hospital or out-patient facility you visit), financial institutions, and credit bureaus gather and store — permanently — vast amounts of private information about you.

• Here in my state, the county sends helicopters aloft to photograph people’s property; the aerial images are stored, and when you go in to ask for, say, a zoning variance so you can build some addition on the back of your home, an inspector studies a picture of your lot. If anything is found to be out of order, the supervisors will order you to take it down. They’re also likely to deny your variance request.

• Every time you telephone your credit-card company, a utility, or many other entities, your phone number is recorded and checked against the number you gave when you started doing business with that entity. This overrides any caller-ID blocking you may have in place.

• Retailers track your buying habits by name, phone number, and address every time you foolishly hand over your private information in exchange for a card giving you a few cents off a store’s inflated prices.

• Facebook tracks everything you do on its site and often uses casual remarks to spin advertisements to you and to your friends.

• Netflix knows what you’ve been watching, reminds you of what you spent time with, and tries to persuade you that you’d like something else based on your viewing habits.

• And by now, you may be sure that some hacker somewhere knows your name, address, birthdate, Social Security number, employment history, and educational history.

Most that information is none of anybody’s business. But in fact, just about anybody can easily make it their business.

That Congress is finally coming around to putting the eefus on the hideous Patriot Act is all well and good. But we’re not going to get our right to privacy back until private enterprises are also prohibited from gathering and storing personal information about us.