rant - why keep records

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Please Note:  Disclaimer:  This is a work of fiction only.  I am not an attorney.  This is not legal advice.  This is not medical advice.  This is not any kind of advice.  If you want legal advice, you should get your own attorney.  This is speculative fiction only.
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When you say, "I saw Jack pet his dog." or "Jack told me, 'I enjoy petting my dog.'"  This is called "direct testimony" because you are saying something that you, yourself, observed or heard.  This is allowed in court.

When you say, "Jill said she saw Jack pet his dog." or "Jill told me, 'Jack said he enjoys petting his dog.'"  This is called "hearsay" because you did not see or hear Jack do these things.  Hearsay is not allowed in court.

But there are exceptions.  

One of these exceptions is called the "business records exception".  If a business does something regularly in the course of doing business, then that (piece of paper) will be allowed as evidence without the need of someone testifying about its authenticity.  This is best explained with an example:  If a business always stamps "received on [date]" on each piece of paper that comes into the office, then that information can come into court without testimony – and this might be very important:  If a business says, "we did not get such-and-such until March 3 even though you said you mailed it February 25:  and here is the proof."  

This is further important because it is likely that the receptionist who date-stamps the piece of paper likely has no memory of that particular item – which means there is no direct testimony available about when that paper was actually received.

I don't know if this Activity Diary would be considered a business record.  What I do know is that it will not be if items are not recorded.  Then it has no chance of being considered as evidence.

I also know that people forget.  Maybe your memory is great, now, but things change.  And having your knowledge in your head does not help anyone else in the community.

Let's take an example.  A child scared and almost bitten by a pink dog.  Police are called.  Owner of the pink dog says this was a one-time mistake and that the dog has never gotten loose before.  (a) Outcome A:  Child's parents know no different and dog is released to owner with warning.  

(b) Outcome B:  Now let's look at a different outcome.  Now let's look at when people reported on this Activity Diary when they saw, over the past six months, those three or four times they saw a pink dog running without a leash across their yard with no owner in sight.  Three different residents, three different times – each of these times not very significant standing alone – but when they are added together:  Then that child's father can tell the police that the dog owner is lying - this is Not the first time - here is a printout of other times - and the owner clearly has not taken proper precautions to secure the dog.  The police officer can then issue a citation to the dog owner – and maybe if the previous events are bad enough, take the dog until the owner demonstrates that the owner has a secure pen for the dog.

A record of "historical" events might become very important.  What I do know is that it will not become important if it is not recorded and accessible to others.

Thank you.

solicitation note

Thursday
26 February 2015; 4:24 p.m.

"Weed Man" gentleman stopped by door, going door-to-door, North on Mauri's Lane, selling lawn care services - let the record show, it's a cold day outside

historical note

Wednesday
25 February 2015; 12:13 p.m.

just saw Oshtemo Township official vehicle go South on Mauri's Lane

historical note

Wednesday
25 February 2015; 9:51 a.m.

Just saw fire truck go North up Mauris Lane then West on Mickey's Trail

historical note

Tuesday
24 February 2015; 3:15 p.m.

Just saw a bus go North on Mauri's Lane

Previously saw a bus:

Going South on Mauri's Lane, today at 2:37pm (which is consistent with my note to myself that I saw a bus yesterday at 2:38 pm)  I believe these two bus notes for two buses are reasonably consistent within a reasonably small window of time for this school session.  There might be an additional bus (or two) not yet recorded.  Having now made a note of these two buses, I will not make the note again (probably).

Thank you.

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historical note

Monday
23 February 2015; 12:00 p.m. (noon)

Best Way Disposal just picked up my rubbish.  This is a pretty typical time for them (noon-ish, first Monday of week).  I intend not to make further notes regarding my rubbish pickup.

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historical note

Monday
23 February 2015; 11:38 a.m.

saw "gale" insulation truck going East on Mickey's Trail

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historical note

Monday
23 February 2015; 9:44 a.m.

a few minutes ago, saw Kalamazoo police go down Mauris Lane

(some folks, if I remember correctly, wanted additional patrols - we don't know what is additional if we don't know what regular is)

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Activity Diary Introduction - Amendment

Activity Diary Introduction - Amendment

Sunday
22 February 2015; 1:18 p.m.


More Options!

E-Mail sent to [address will be provided to residents] will be posted directly and immediately to this Activity Diary/blog.  (Resident's email address will not be known to SKM.)

E-Mail sent to skykingmeadows@gmail.com will be reviewed first – before being posted (and if it will be posted).  This will not be immediate.

Tweets will still go directly and immediately to this Activity Diary.

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Much Ado About . . .

Sunday
22 February 2015; 12:44 p.m.


We can post from different email addresses directly to this Activity Diary!  Aaarrrggghhh!!!  If only I had tested this option before!  I could have eliminated sooo much fuss!  :-)

Alas.

I'll need to give this a think and maybe update things a bit.  But we'll still with what we've got until updated.

Cheers,

John

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Activity Diary - Technical Notes

Activity Diary Introduction - technical notes

Sunday
22 February 2015; 9:21 a.m. - 11:24 a.m.

A few more-technical notes for those who might be interested.

From my limited amount of testing, I have found:

Comments

It appears that (anonymous) comments posted to the blog will not be sent to subscribers of the blog.  They can be sent to email subscribers of the blog (if I remember to specifically sign them up to receive both changes to the blog and to any comments made to the blog).

Google Email

On the Google email side of things, it would be possible to "subscribe" to changes to the blog by receiving forwarded messages from skykingmeadows@gmail.com (since all SKM mail is published to the blog).  Some direct messages (like my messages, for example) go straight to the blog, so this not all-inclusive.  I expect also, there is a limited number of people to whom Google mail can be forwarded to.

It is possible to "send mail from a different account or alias" (link to Google help page).  But you must own the other account (i.e. have that password), so that does not help us in our particular situation.

Email Delegation

It is also possible, and is a far more promising solution, to "[set] up email delegation" (Google help page link).  This means we can delegate access to the SKM Gmail account to another person so they can read, send and delete messages on SKM's behalf.  Email will appear as sender as: Sky King Meadows (sent by [Delegate Name]).  I have tested this and found that blog articles sent by a delegate will be posted without error.

If someone has granted you access to their account, you can access it by clicking on their profile picture or email address (upper-right corner).  Because of this, I quickly created a SKM icon which would be different from anyone's photo.  This can (should be?) changed with something better later.

Limits:  You can specify up to 10 delegates.  Delegatees can access up to 10 accounts.  (Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers (which SKM is not) can specify up to 25 delegates and can access up to 512 accounts.)


Subscribing to Blog

If you subscribe to the blog (which is done from the website only), I don't think I have the ability access to your email address.  However, since I don't care, I have not looked to see if it is possible.  Full disclosure.

Disclaimer

Email (and direct-message tweets?) to a person is generally thought of as private.  SKM is a subdivision, but the name is a ".com" (company).  I would conclude that a reasonable person should know that a message sent to a subdivision will be spread to all members of the subdivision (i.e. made public) in order to be effectively answered/considered; this necessitates copying of that message as well.  Therefore, because it should be understood that the message will be copied and is not private, I believe we need not have any additional disclaimer informing people that messages sent to SKM will be copied and will be made public.  This is my opinion only, not legal advice. – Speaking of disclaimers. ☺

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Activity Diary Introduction

Activity Diary Introduction

Saturday
21 February 2015; 3:09 p.m.

Re:  "neighborhood watch"


It seems to me that the key to a neighborhood watch program (which we can implement ourselves without it bearing an official Neighborhood Watch name) is for activity to be recorded then reported amongst us neighbors.  The ease at which this is possible directly effects whether or not the program will be successful.

The previous attempts at information recording have failed.  They required people to web-browse to a specific page, log in and use word-processor type tools to add information to a list.  This remains the way the Resident Directory is set up.  (At the moment, I've been too busy to think of a more elegant solution for that directory.)  There was also no "push" notification with this system.  Instead, users needed to go to the page and "pull" information from it to see if changes occurred.

I use email.  Simple.  Reasonably universal.  And therefore familiar – people need not learn anything new.  And if they have an email address, they are hopefully in the habit of checking it regularly; so again hopefully, this will not cause any additional burden.

I have recently begun to use Blogger for a personal diary and have become aware of some of its functions.  Blogger allows people to subscribe to receive changes via email.  Blogger also allows us to email up to ten people whenever a change is made.  (These are "push" notifications.)  There might be more elegant solutions, but this is the one I am familiar with.  One benefit is that we can stay within the Google family of products, so we need not open a new account, search for an appropriate name, etc.  Although I could begin a new Blogger account, I am highjacking what I already created to add this Activity Diary.  We should be able to easily distinguish among posts.

Posting messages to Blogger required more research and jiggery-pokery.  Although posting can also be done by email, the email must come from skykingmeadows@gmail.com.  The easy solution is to enable automatic forwarding of all messages, which is what I have done.  This means that all messages received by skykingmeadows@gmail.com, are immediately and automatically posted publicly on the Blogger site.  At this point, there is not enough participation to worry about being flooded with messages – we can only hope to get to that level.  This can be revisited should the need arise or until someone can implement a better solution.

I'm an old man.  So I think the pinnacle of human achievement was reached when we discovered email. ☺  You kids these days with your Facebook and texting . . .  You'll need to set up a Sky King Meadows account on Facebook on your own – and someone else can look for a text-to-email application if you are really into texting . . .

I did however create a Twitter account (@skykingmeadows), more to reserve the name than anything else.  And I think I have it set up so that all tweets, including direct-messages, are automatically forwarded via email to skykingmeadows@gmail.com (and hence, automatically posted publicly on Blogger).  I am not interested in Twitter enough to investigate it further; so this is something else I to leave to others.  Suffice to say, that it looks like you can use Twitter to add items to this Activity Diary as well, but not receive notifications.

And I leave this Activity Diary to be as broadly or as narrowly defined as each person wants.  Each person can create their own custom email spam filters or simply ignore messages they find irrelevant.  (But again for us to be worried about spam, about too much email, at this juncture is way premature.)  Using certain conventions, like beginning each email with "not urgent" or "archive" or "info only", will help people weed out messages they are not interested in.  And for the sake of us older folks, please don't use abbreviations. ☺  Activities might include not only suspicious activities requiring immediate community attention ("that red car has now been around the block three times"), but can also record "historical" information regarding our neighborhood ("first snowfall this season" or "bad wind storm last night" or even non-actionable "car window broken out last night, police report number pending, photo attached").  

I have a some technical notes to write, but I need to wrap this up.  I've spent all day on trying to resolve this to some sort of mildly satisfactory conclusion and I'm getting tired.  Please send me your email address if you wish to receive emails notifying you of activity.  If I receive more than ten, I will try to do some magic.  Otherwise, you are welcome to subscribe to this "blog" at any time.

Thank you.

– John Hofman
johnhofman69@hotmail.com (public email address)


e/c:  Ryan Lancaster (president, Sky King Meadows Homeowners Association)

blind e/c:  to those residents who wish to be kept in-the-loop, for your information and records


time code:  6:18 pm

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