When you meet the Buddha...

Recognizing when I've idolized something is half the battle. Letting go is the other two thirds.

Zeus in repose

Zeus, our boy Mastiff, is taking it easy after class at San Bruno Dog Obedience School.

To boldly go...

Just signed up for ping.fm as part of my ongoing exploration of social media.

#amazonfail

Made aware via the twitterverse of an apparently ill-conceived action by Amazon.com, I sent the following to their customer service folk:

I am concerned about your policy of removing the sales ranking from books on GLBT topics. Although you have claimed to be applying this policy to adult material, I observed several books that are decidedly not adult do not have their sales rankings listed. These include "The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government," "Why Marriage: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality." and "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940." I can only conclude that you have decided to arbitrarily categorize any book on GLBT topic as "adult". Therefore, although I have been a loyal customer for over ten years and have spent thousands of dollars at amazon.com, I am suspending my purchases from you until you change this policy and publicly apologize.

Thanks and regards,

This afternoon, I received this reply:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.


Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

I'm awaiting the public apology.