Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

There is a petition drive now underway to recall Seaside city councilman Jon Wizard. The effort is being spearheaded by two former Seaside council members Helen Rucker and Darryl Choates, both of whom have conservative political leanings. Wizard tends to be more on the liberal side of things, and has openly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. In the interest of full disclosure Wizard, Rucker, and Choates are all three black, so racism doesn't appear to be at play here. I haven't followed Wizard particularly closely, but this recall effort gives me the creeps. As far as  I can see he has done nothing wrong. His only "offense" is that he has floated an idea to take some money from the Seaside Police Department budget (inaccurately called "defunding") and use it for other community programs that could help reduce crime. You may or may not agree with the idea, but it deserves a fair and open debate. This recall effort strikes me as a way to prevent...

I haven't posted any Mental Notes for about ten months now. That's because I've been busy. I started a project one year and three weeks ago. I thought I'd have it wrapped up by Labor Day. Nope. But I should be done by Thanksgiving. Nope. Christmas, definitely! Nope. But now I can finally announce to the world that it is finished. I have completely rebuilt my website, The Monterey Peninsula Toy Box , from the ground up. It is the first major overhaul of the website since 2008. The Toy Box now has a clean, modern look, and unlike the old version, it is mobile-friendly s o it looks just as good on a small phone screen as on a big desktop monitor. This is important because Google had been penalizing me in search rankings for not being mobile-friendly, and my ad revenue had dropped significantly since they started doing that.   I have been wanting to do this for about three years, but I lacked the technical know-how to build a responsive website. After a lot ...