A bunch of MD and VA schools are already closed. There’s a dusting of snow on the ground. I’m at work in VA, and I’m pretty sure the snow emergency is going to trap me here for at least six days.
Where’s your global warming now, Al Gore? Snow in March! It must be a new Ice Age.
Seriously, the snow is just annoying at this point. I’m ready for spring. This winter had a nice run, but now it’s time for flowers and birds and walking around in flip flops.
When I was trying to sell my old condo, my home phone number was posted to whatever real estate sites list this sort of thing. That was fine when I was trying to sell because realtors would call me to tell me they were going to show the place.
Now, however, we’ve bought a new place and took the old place off the market so we could rent it. We’ve rented it, so we have no need for a realtor. Even if we did, we have two already.
Starting a few days ago, I’ve been getting calls from realtors (What do you call “ambulance chasing” if it’s a realtor and not a lawyer?) who want to help me sell my home. My number is on the Do Not Call list because I really, really resent telemarketers interrupting me.
After about five calls, I finally remembered the Do Not Call list, and so this evening, when Marjorie from Remax called, I wrote down her number. She asked me the usual questions.
“I see your home is off the market. Are you currently working with a realtor?” I told her we were renting the home. “Oh, have you found a rentor?” I asked her if she knew this number was on the Do Not Call list. “Oh, I forgot to check, I’m sorry.” Click.
So I filed a complaint at donotcall.gov. They told me this:
YOUR COMPLAINT HAS BEEN ACCEPTED Thank you for filing your complaint with the National Do Not Call Registry.Do not call complaints will be entered into a secure online database available to civil and criminal law enforcement agencies. While the FTC does not resolve individual consumer problems, your complaint will help the agency investigate the company, and could lead to law enforcement action.
So, basically, “Hi, we collect complaints, but don’t do anything about them. Thanks for wasting your time!”
I’m going to contact Consumerist and see what they suggest. I want Marjorie at Remax to pay the fine.
goats: Goats News forum: POLL: Thanks A Lot, Intelligent Design
This is an awesome, awesome shirt. I may preorder it later today. I already own three or four Goats.com shirts. In fact, I’m wearing one right now.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80
“He was born in Colombia, but all of us who speak Spanish have in him a referent of perfection and the creation of beauty,” Colombian Ambassador to Spain Noemi Sanin said in Madrid.
A referent of perfection. If I ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is on my list of things to do, I hereby promise to to close my acceptance speech by screaming, “I am a referent of perfection! You will all grovel at my feet!”, and then drop the microphone and walk off stage, where I will pull a flask of very expensive scotch from my pocket and proceed to get very, very drunk.
Seriously, I read 100 Years of Solitude in college, and I really liked it. My Spanish isn’t strong enough to appreciate the original, but my translation was enjoyable. I’m sure it loses something, so that means the original must be really, really good.
I mean, the guy is the father of magic realism. Anyone who’s ever taken a Spanish class has probably heard their Spanish teacher gush about “realismo magico”. This dude started all that. That’s pretty cool.
So, go read on of his books. I’ve only read the one, but I figure the rest are good, too.
Well, we have my neighbor’s internet. The couple who live in Unit 4 have had their cable installed, and have graciously given out the password for their wireless network until we can get cable. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.
Comcast, meanwhile, has been less than helpful. One would think that they would be eager to get four new subscribers all set up. We’re all but begging them to let us use their service. Yesterday, two days after the Comcast install guy cut through my condo (With permission) to get to the back of the house, the Comcast CSR I spoke to was almost rude when I told her that Unit 4 had cable already, despite the fact that we still show up in the system as one unit. “Well, I don’t see how THAT’S possible.” She said.
Still, rudeness from Comcast aside, we are that much closer to having our very own internet connection. I’m, obviously, thrilled.
NIN Year Zero: Too Much for the RIAA – Gizmodo
Oh my gosh, he’s realeasing free MP3s! Now all the artists will starve!
Oh, wait, what? The free tracks are creating tons of buzz for the upcoming album? That can’t be! That flies in the face of everything the recording industry has told us.
Could it be that the RIAA is wrong?
During the big snow last week, we discovered that my wife’s car wouldn’t start. She doesn’t drive very often, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but she would have liked to have driven that particular day, so it was a little annoying. Then we moved, and didn’t really have a chance to take care of it. So, yesterday, I went to take care of it. I borrowed jumper cables from a coworker, figuring I’d try that because it was free. If that didn’t work, I’d see if the guys at the repair shop across the street would come look at it, or else I’d get it towed.
I got there, and there were cars on either side of hers. I would have had to park in her trunk to get close enough to jump it, so I went across the street to the repair place. They were unhelpful and wouldn’t go off-site, so I called AAA. They were very quick, and sent someone in about 25 minutes. 23 1/2 minutes after I called, the car next to my wife’s pulled out. When the tow truck driver arrived, he pulled out a little thing that was probably a battery in a case with cables attached, and he jumped the car. It started just fine.
It’s nice that it’s the battery and not the starter or something worse, but it’s annoying that I could have done all that myself if only my wife had backed in to the spot, or the lot had been less crowded.
Oh, well. Didn’t cost me any money, at least. And now I’ll go get a battery today and put it in, and then we’ll figure out where we’re going to keep her car, or if we’re going to sell it, or whatever.