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?

How to Make a Sale

True Story:

While searching for a bike shop, I encountered a Mattress Firm retail store. As I needed a bed for my new place, I walked in and spoke with the saleswoman. She was the only one in the store, cute, and not more than a few years removed from college.

I summarized my bedding needs succintly, "I'm a light sleeper and want a queen-size bed that minimizes motion transfer." To demonstrate the effectiveness of various beds, she bounced on the bed as I lay on the other side. I tried not to be a lecherous shopper and look over, but I couldn't help myself. With one hand, she was holding her top up to prevent from coming out of it.

So I had an idea: I would test about half the beds in the showroom for their motion transfer dampening effects. An hour later, she made the sale. America is such a great country.

Landlord

I have renters!  A lovely couple has signed on for a 13-month lease of my house.  This marks my entrance into the landlord realm.  Watch out, Donald.  I'm gunnin' for ya.

Now What?

With the help of craigslist, I was able to sell my 27" TV and DVD player. I have no immediate plans to replace them. This will be the first time since 1993 that I haven't had television to keep me company.

How will I replace my TV watching time? Well, there is that pile of books I've paid for but never actually opened ...

I'm Doing Something Right

I received a handwritten letter from my 6 year-old niece today:

Dear Uncle R---
I miss you! I hope I will see you at Auntie's wedding. I love you a lot.
Love, Shannon

She's still my favorite (and only) niece.

Switch to Gmail

The ability to access all of your emails and contacts with a web browser is a powerful concept, especially if you use multiple computers throughout the day. Moreover, having someone else responsible for backing up your most important data removes a huge headache. I've been a paying Yahoo! Mail Plus customer for the past few years. Last week, I switched to a better alternative, Gmail.

Gmail is now the gold standard in web-based email solutions. Here's what distinguishes it from its competitors:

• Fast and snappy interface. Google has invested a lot in AJAX, and it shows in Gmail. At times, Gmail feels like a desktop application. Yahoo's new interface is still clunky, slow, and flaky.


• Keyboard shortcuts. Vim is my primary development environment, so it's no surprise that I'm a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts.


• Threaded conversations. How did I previously live without this?


• Tags. I can categorize conversations into multiple buckets. For example, a converstaion may be related to ClientX as well as AJAX. Now I don't have to choose just a single place.


• 2.7 GB of storage and growing. Wow.

The big feature I'm waiting for is Google Calendar. Hopefully, it will adhere to the iCalendar standard, have the rich client interface of Gmail, and of course, be integrated with Gmail.

We Don't Need This

While I believe in euthanasia, I'm not thrilled about my homeland as a suicide destination. Cambodia has had enough problems from which it's trying to recover. While I didn't find Cambodia to be as lawless as this account, I did find that sex, drugs, and even rocket launchers were within the reach of a $20 bill.

Weird Al Rules

This is pure genius (All About the Pentiums):

Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?
You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller

Sleep, Where Are You?

So many things to do, so little time.  Life was easier as a slacker.  I need sleep.

Checks Written

My condo offer was accepted. The checks have been written. The financing has been arranged. The only thing that can derail my move now is a bad inspection.