Privacy Policy
Unless expressly stated otherwise, all pages within the scope of the Ball/Cavallini website are copyrighted by either Mario Cavallini, Sondra Ball, or Robert Ball Cavallini, as noted in the footer of the page in question. All rights reserved.
Other websites are encouraged to link (it's the Way of the Web). While not required, we would appreciate it if you would send a note to either Sondra (sjball@mindspring.com) or Mario (marioc1@mindspring.com) if you do link in.
If you are interested in publishing any of the poetry or other contents on this site, please send us e-mail describing your publication and providing a postal (regular mail) address and phone number. Don't call us; we'll call you.
We don't do any e-commerce here at sondra.net, else we would've registered sondra.com (besides, somebody else got the dot-com first). You don't have to worry about us spamming you to sell you stuff. We don't have stuff to sell, and we won't sell you stuff on anybody else's behalf, unless you consider our affiliate link to Amazon.com selling, but we've never seen a dime from that.
We don't collect personal data from anybody here at sondra.net, either. However, we do like to keep in touch with our friends. When anybody sends e-mail to Sondra, she hangs onto the address. Then, when a new issue of Autumn Leaves comes out, she sends a brief note to her hundreds of best friends. If you'd rather not hear about our new issues (two per month), drop Sondra a line at sjball@mindspring.com and she'll leave you alone.
We do like to see how popular our site is ("winners love evaluation," and all that). So, through the good graces of our site host, we get an analysis of our server logs. This does not identify individual users, but profiles the aggregate traffic (what pages get visited the most, average user session length ... that sort of happiness). Unfortunately, our host puts this report in a password-protected area, so we can't let you see the numbers for yourselves.
For several years, we kept count of the traffic to Autumn Leaves with a service called HitBox, which gave us free reports in return for our running banners at the bottom of the pages. However, in October 2003, HitBox terminated the service. So, we can't show you those nifty traffic reports any more, but then again, we don't have to bother with silly online casino banners. Just as well, actually.
More recently (Summer 2007), we've tried out another monitoring service, Quantcast, which also compiles aggregate information about visitors (not specific about individuals) – you can see what we see at quantcast.com/sondra.net. Previously, I had griped that Quantcast was showing less information about Sondra.net once we became "quantified publishers." My bad; it was a case of temporary inconvenience. They now show much more about the aggregate nature of our visitors. And they gave us code so you can look in the mirror, sort of:
Back in November 2001, we adopted a new search engine, courtesy of FreeFind. The advanced features include a what's new service that tells you what's been posted since your last visit, and thus may involve cookies to remember your visit. But we don't know anything about who you are due to this cookie. Apart from that, FreeFind does give us a tally of the terms people search for in our site, but they don't tell anything about who searched for what.
Of course, like every other entity in the U.S.A., if law enforcement authorities demand to see any records related to this site, we and our Internet Service Provider are required to cooperate. Although we would not be allowed to tell you if this were to happen, so far this has not occurred. If this note goes away, well, you figure it out.
That's the extent of our snooping. Honest. If we take it any further in the future (which we don't plan on, but fate's pushed us into new paths before), we'll spell it out here.
A colophon is something of an antiquated practice. Book publishers used to reserve a final page for details about the production of the book: the type specifications, paper stock, vendor acknowledgements, whatever they felt was noteworthy about the physical entity. It's not done much anymore, and I (Mario) think that's one more sign of the Decline of Civilization. Well, I've had quite enough Declining Civilization for one century.
All webpages at this site have been prepared using HoTMetaL by
SoftQuad. I have been a fan of this editor
since version 1, even though they did bend over backwards for Microsoft in
version 5 and then gave up on the program in favor of an overly complicated XML platform.
Alas, I don't recall where I got the applets that provide the navigation and display mechanisms for metered haiku. Incidentally, accessibility is an important issue for me. I am fully aware that some people rely on slow modems or text-to-speech converters. So, rest assured that I strive to provide low-tech alternatives for everything that I throw an applet at.
As noted above, we have the generous folks at FreeFind to thank for our search engine. Yes, there is another player beside Goo-know-who. If you're stuck in your search habits, try a few others. As great as the Big G is, other engines have their own advantages.
The environmental graphics (backgrounds, divider bars, pagetop navigation buttons) are homegrown, using PhotoShop, PhotoImpact, LView, whatever came to hand at the time.
However, the newest addition to the Projects, Snaps, is powered by Picasa, a remarkably versatile, free photo management program from a company perhaps better known for its search engine.
And we can thank the Bush Administration for finally pushing me off my butt. Yep, Mario is now a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
