Not That Naive

Not even I'm dumb enough to fall for this scam artist on craigslist.com:

Thanks for your reply...

I will be paying using USPS online money order... you will be notified by USPS when the payment is made, approved.,... the money order would have been approved by USPS.. then your CASH would be mailed to you.

Fedex will come pick the item when you receive the email notification saying the money order has been verified / approved and your CASH is about to be mailed out. You dont need to pay anything... it's all at my own expense.

Please reply with your full name and address to send the payment to.

The Real Excitement

While Apple's Boot Camp has generated a lot of buzz, Parallels Workstation 2.1 for OS X is what really interests me. Dual booting is necessary if you play games or need Photosohop to run at maximum speed. For me, however, I only need to run Internet Explorer, Dev Studio, Access, and Yahoo! Music. Virtualization (not emulation like Virtual PC) provides more than adequate performance for these applications without the inconvenience of rebooting. Moreover, the ability to have a complete deployment environment (Windows 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Server, etc.) readily available makes my life easier. Dreams do come true.

It's Hard to Find Good Help

Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic, but every service person/company I've hired to prepare my house for its new life as a rental has performed unsatisfactorily. First, there's the handyman I hired to install a new garbage disposal. He forgot to punch the hole that connected the dishwasher to the garbage disposal. Consequently, the dishwasher wouldn't drain. It took a puddle of water and 45 minutes of investigation before I discovered the problem.

Then, I contacted someone from craigslist to install 2 deadbolts. The handyman calls to cancel at the exact time he was supposed to show up. He then asks to reschedule and promises to make that appointment, short of ending up in the hospital. Well, he missed that next appointment. I hope he's doing OK, because he's fired.

I then contacted another handyman to install these deadbolts. On the front door, I wasn't able to turn the deadbolt when the door was closed. That's a bad installation in my book. He finally fixed it, but there's wood filler and other hacks involved. Then on the back door, his drill bit started to exit on the other side. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but these are one-sided, keyless deadbolts.

The following day, I contracted with a service company to powerwash, paint, and clean my house. The powerwashing went well. That's pretty hard to screw up. The paint job was haphazard and represented something I could have done. As for the cleaning, they neglected to clean the inside of the oven, the workshop, the garage, and didn't bother with any of the blinds. We had a verbal agreement for all those things.

Where are all the good service people in Austin hiding?