August 2007 – Page 4 – Complaint Hub

Any Oriole fan could have told you this

Do you have a favorite sports team? Have they spent the last five years or so kicking you in the teeth and expecting you to like it? If so, you might be an Orioles fan. Ever since Cal Ripken saved baseball after the strike, it’s been nothing but a string of bad moves. I had thought earlier in the season that bringing in Aubrey Huff was the worst thing they’d done, but that’s because Jaret Wright has spent so little time in uniform that I forgot about him.

So, the Orioles gave up a promising young pitcher who is now working in the Yankees minor leagues. What did we get in return? We got a guy with one good season (15-8, 3.28, 159 K’s in 2004), only 60 career wins, and a history of injury problems.

Not only that, but we took an aging, overrated starter off the Yankee payroll, and replaced him with a young reliever. It’s like Angelos is a Yankee fan.

And what have we gotten out of Wright? Three starts. Twelve hits, nine walks, and eight earned runs in 10 innings while losing all three games. Wright should be ashamed of himself. There’s not a human being on earth who couldn’t lose all three of his or her starts this season. He should return his paychecks.

What’s especially discouraging is the Orioles have been showing some heart lately. I watched the game the other night when Bedard and Dice-K battled for seven, then the Red Sox went up 5-1, then the Orioles actually came back and won. They came back again against the Sox last night, and they’ve tied it late against the Yankees tonight (Game’s still going, tied 6-6 in the ninth. Although Bradford may be blowing it as we speak, hitting Cabrera in the middle of the back then giving up a double. Shoot. I didn’t even finish typing that sentence before Jeter knocked in the winning run. Still, they put up a fight.).

In conclusion, Peter Angelos is a jerk.

Like rats from a sinking ship

Top Bush Aide Karl Rove Resigns, White House Confirms Bush Political Strategist Is Heading Home To Texas – CBS News

He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009.

So, Rove is resigning rather than sticking it out for the last sixteen months or so. Maybe he wants to go work for another campaign. Maybe he’s about to get indicted for something really nasty and was told to distance himself. The above article says it’s very common for top aides to get burned out and leave before the eight years is up, but I would have thought he’d have gotten out before now if he was going to. Although I suppose sixteen months is a long time.

Anyway, it can’t be good for the White House if he’s leaving. It can be neither good nor bad, but I can’t think of a scenario where this is good news.

I hope the next time he’s in the news is when he announces his retirement from politics to pursue his true calling – pulling the wings off of flies.

I hate computers

I booted up Windows today for the first time in a while. Firefox is not working in Ubuntu. I mean, it is, sort of, but it hangs constantly, and it’s driving me insane. I imagine I broke something, but it’s a little strange that it only seems to be a problem in Firefox.

I’m hoping it’s just a problem with Wubi running on this piece of junk computer. I want a new computer with a full Ubuntu install.

Update: I booted back into Ubuntu and started up Open Office, which is notoriously resource-hungry, figuring that I could determine if it were simply a Firefox problem. It’s not. Open Office never opened. I waited a few minutes and then killed it. I think I need to find a career that doesn’t involve computers. I seem to break every one I touch.

Renovations to begin on Harvard Street

Construction is set to begin tomorrow, according to the contractor. They’re going to put a dumpster in our driveway for a couple of hours. While I’m not looking forward to the noise and mess and whatnot, it’s exciting that something’s going to happen to the house. I would much rather have a renovated house on the block than a boarded up one. It means we’re going to have to put up the blinds in our bedroom. Currently, the only way to see in is through a boarded up window, but that probably won’t be boarded up for long.

ColumbiaHeightsNews.org back from the dead

Columbia Heights News – Washington, DC – Two Retailers Sign Lease With DC USA

Peter Mallios of Newmark Knight Frank, the leasing agent for DC USA, was equally mum about Ellwood Thompson’s. Mallios informed us that he is no longer allowed to speak with after the backlash from the whole Ross Dress for Less. See Whole Foods Or Ross? This is unfortunate as Mallios had been so informative. But perhaps this means Ross is backing out? We will keep you updated as we learn more.

This is what you’re missing out on by not reading the Columbia Heights forum and the mailing list. Locals got so upset that Ross was coming to DC USA instead of Whole Foods that DC USA has cut us off. It was quite a heated response, I suppose. I don’t actually read the mailing list – the forum is heated enough for me.

Although occasionally a little heatedness can have positive impact – the site linked above has come back from the dead after a forum member made a replacement site. They hadn’t really updated in a few months, but now they’ve been posting more or less regularly. The site owners claim to have been busy with having a new baby. Mind you, they have not yet produced this baby. Although, I don’t actually know them in real life, so maybe I just missed it. Nevertheless, it can’t be considered a real excuse until I see a baby.

The unfortunate part is the supposition that Ross might be backing out will undoubtedly renew the discussion on the merits of Ross. I’ve never actually shopped there, so I can’t really comment. I suppose I’ll have to give them a shot when DC USA opens.

More baseball geekery

I’m making some progress with my baseball game. I’ve switched from Gedit to Anjuta, which I’m pretty happy with so far. Very lightweight, easy to use.

I’m fooling with pointers now, and remembering that I never really understood them when I was doing C++ before. So I’m figuring it out now. Slowly. I knew there was a reason I liked Java.

Anyway, it’s been going reasonably well. I need to get over a little hump in general C++ knowledge, and then I should start making better progress.

Is this good or bad for me?

Bloomberg.com: Investment Tools

“We are experiencing home price depreciation almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression,” Countrywide Chief Executive Officer Angelo Mozilo said during a conference call with investors last month. He said it would take all of next year for the mortgage market to “turn this battleship around” before demand rebounds in 2009.

So Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the US, is in some fairly significant trouble because of the subprime mortgage market implosion and related fallout. It’s never good when you hear the current market compared to that of the Great Depression.

I won’t pretend to really understand what’s going on here beyond what’s covered in the article and a general understanding of the subprime implosion, but I understand enough to know that this problem looks to be expanding a lot more than anyone initially admitted it would. It’s not just small lenders who took on too much risk who are in trouble.

I don’t expect this will have any effect on the mortgage I have on our rental property out in Falls Church, which Countrywide bought from a smaller lender. I mean, I can’t imagine that Countrywide wouldn’t be able to find someone to take on that loan if they were going under (Which I don’t think is likely – they’re just missing earnings and having to tighten up their belt).

I’m actually more interested in what it’s going to do to the rental market, and to the value of the place where we live and the place we rent out. I’d really like a strong rental market in Falls Church. I’m not so concerned about the real estate market right now, since we have no immediate plans to buy or sell or take out a home equity loan. But that doesn’t mean I want the value of our home to crash. We will need a bigger place eventually.

I’m also wishing I had some spare cash lying around. Like maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars. When you have problems like this, there are ample opportunities for people with money to make more money. Unfortunately, my savings account doesn’t have that many zeros.

New construction on Harvard Street

There are two buildings on our street that have been abandoned since we moved in last February, and it looks like renovation has started on both. Work on the abandoned row house will begin this Monday, according to the developer. And there is a work permit hanging on the side of the apartment building, although I didn’t really read it because it was starting to rain.

I’m curious how the housing market is going to look in a year or so when these places are finished (hopefully). DC USA should be open by then, but so should the surrounding apartments and condos.

Still, it’s exciting that the eyesores will be going away. The first thing I would do with the row house, were I the developer, is paint over the profanity that someone has spray-painted on the front steps. I think that would go a long way towards making the place look a little nicer.

I’m going to take some pictures of the buildings this weekend so I can compare them to the finished product when construction is complete.

You there! You use too much electricity.

EERE Consumer’s Guide: Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Audits

You can easily conduct a home energy audit yourself. With a simple but diligent walk-through, you can spot many problems in any type of house. When auditing your home, keep a checklist of areas you have inspected and problems you found. This list will help you prioritize your energy efficiency upgrades.

Via Lifehacker, the Department of Energy is offering tips on increasing your energy efficiency at home. This is especially pertinent to me after getting a $174 electric bill from Pepco. Our house was profiled in the local DC paper not long after the condo conversion, and the writer gushed about the environmentally friendly principles of the condos. Aside from meaningless EnergyStar certifications (Nearly everything meets the requirements these days – there is talk of making them stricter) and pretty good natural lighting, there is very little about our place that is environmentally friendly. Sometimes I wish we had thought more about that when we were buying, but we really fell in love with the place, and it wasn’t until after we moved in that I really thought about it.

Anyway, I think our electric bill is high because Pepco is not actually reading our meter. They are doing estimated meter readings, and I think they are way off. I think they are doing a real reading at the end of this month, so I don’t really expect to pay anything for electricity for a month or two. I went and looked at the six meters – one for each condo, one for common areas – and ours was turning much, much more slowly than any but the common areas. We don’t run the air as much as we might, and we set it higher than many people would, so I think we use a relatively small amount.

I do actually have a point here, and that is that you should check your house for wasted energy. You could probably save money on your electric bill, and you could probably help lower greenhouse gas emissions and all sorts of things that are generally good for the planet. And you can probably do all this without any lifestyle changes or great expense.

No more four car trains at rush hour!

Don’t get me wrong, four car trains are great if they save a little energy at off-peak times. But how can you use them on the Yellow line at rush hour? The Yellow line, unlike the Orange line, actually has seats available most of the time. But not this morning. This morning, I was waiting as usual at Mount Vernon Square where the Green line dropped me, at my usual spot. My usual spot is near the back end of the train, because that’s where the Columbia Heights escalator drops me, and I’ve never really had a need to move. The end cars are usually empty compared to the rest of them.

This morning, the WMATA powers-that-be decided that they’d just skimp a little and send a four car train. I have no idea why. It’s quite possible they had a really good reason, but I frankly don’t care. This means that everyone standing in front of where they expected cars five and six to be has to run down the platform and get onto the last car. This makes it somewhat crowded. The fourth car was full by the time a few people pushed on at Archives, but it didn’t get really bad until 300 clowns going to the Pentagon jumped on at L’Enfant Plaza.

I’ve been riding the Green and Yellow line since the end of March, and this is the first time been jammed into a train like this. Yes, I realize I shouldn’t complain. But when there is plenty of room on the train for five months, and then suddenly one day I have a sweaty Marine pressed into my back and a large shoulder bag pressed into my groin, someone is wearing really bad cologne, and people are making dumb “stuck in an elevator” jokes, then WMATA has failed. Perhaps they were too busy playing with their new maps to notice.

But I notice. And fear not, WMATA, I will continue to notice, and to complain.

Also, a note to people who pile on to an already full train at rush hour – there will be another train in six minutes or less. Seriously. You can wait. You’re just going to work.