Anyone want to move to Vegas?
Written on 10 December 2007 by Spike McAwesomeJamie and I are trying to rent one or two of the rooms in our house. You’ll have your own bathroom, shared storage space both in and out of the house, and access to all the toys we have (wireless ‘net, DirecTV with just about every channel, my 46″ DLP, our puppies, whatever). Seriously.
I suppose I should do a real update too.
Been a while, eh?
Written on 20 August 2007 by Spike McAwesomeThis is just a quick message. I get about 3 comments a day from ad bots trying to post shit in the comments here. I don’t know if there’s a real person behind any of them or not, but if there are, and if you’re reading this… really, don’t bother. All comments must be approved before being posted, and I mass-moderate all spam posts, and generally ban the IP and email addresses. So really, you’re not helping yourself by posting here.
I bought a house
Written on 31 May 2007 by Spike McAwesome…
fuck I’m broke.
House-hunting bonanza
Written on 22 May 2007 by Spike McAwesomeBah. I’m supposed to do a post about our house-hunting adventures, but it’s too fucking annoying.
We found a place that we really like, put an offer in, but the owners wouldn’t negotiate on the price whatsoever.
Then we found another place that we liked, but before we could move on it, we found out it’s a foreclosure and someone has already put an offer in on it.
At least our realtor is a funny guy. We decided to not look at a place based on the community (aka, the trash heap). He called and said “Hey yeah, we’re not going to make it to see the property. Yeah, turns out, I got a flat tire… and now my truck’s on fire. Bye!” *click* Jamie and I were laughing our asses off at that one.
Fuck. I don’t even have anything else to say about it. We’re meeting again on Thursday to look at places that should be well out of our price range. Whoopie.
Sorry
Written on 25 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeI loved the old theme, but the constant lag time was really bothering me. I’ll probably fuck around with a few more before I settle on one. I think this is the best of the lot I have installed so far.
Cutest dog ever
Written on 18 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeMolly really is the cutest dog on the planet.
Linked to avoid breaking tables.
And breaking hearts.
But mostly the tables.
Short rants, one post
Written on 12 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeRather than clog the front page with a bunch of short rants, I figured I’d make one post with a bunch of small ones.
Of course - The nameless pussies who have left comments so far haven’t bothered coming back to either respond to my comments, or leave their name/contact information, or really anything. It was like a drive-by commenting, with no reason to return. Pathetic. Maybe I should just disable comments altogether, and push people to the forums.
Of course - ESPN fantasy baseball can’t get their shit together in time for the start of the season. They tried a new scoring and roster system this year that was untested at the beginning of the year. It sucked balls and wasn’t working properly. Instead of just cutting the first two weeks from the record books, they decided to reset all rosters to opening day, and use the stats from the last 11 days of the season. The problems with this? What about trades? What about waiver wire pick-ups? What about starting pitchers who were on the bench opening day? What about players who got injured and ended up on the IR? Yeah, in all those scenarios, you just had to eat the results. What a shitty, hackneyed way of doing things.
Of course - This whole Imus thing. How can ANYONE think that his firing is a good thing? I can understand hating the guy. I’ve heard maybe half an hour of his shtick, and it was never interesting, but you always knew he wasn’t a bigot. He was just a fucking moron. But to think that his comments were racist (they weren’t) or damaging (they weren’t), you’re only kidding yourself. I have two problems with this: 1. the leadership of “Black America” calling for his firing and tightening up what can and cannot be said over the air. Do they not understand that freedom of speech works both ways? Your rappers and your radio hosts, talking about degrading women and hating white people have just as much of a right to say their hateful, racist shit as a white guy. And to limit what people can say on the air? You’ve got to be shitting me. How can someone, in this country, in this day and age, think that this is a good idea? 2. the hypocrisy of the black community. Where’s the outrage over the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rapes? Where’s the outrage over typical rap lyrics? Where were the calls for removing Jesse Jackson after he called part of New York “Himey Town”?
Of course - No one is talking about the Duke Lacrosse players, except to say that they’re cleared. I heard the Rutgers women’s basketball team say that Imus’ comments would damage them for life. So the three men accused of rape, who had their pictures posted on “WANTED” signs across campus, their lives will just go back to normal after this?
Rant, part 2
Written on 10 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeFuck, I meant to post about this last night, but I got caught up.
I’m a goon. And along those lines, I’m very into being a goon. I’m not basing my entire life around it, but dammit, we try to help each other out when we can - goonerocity, if you will. Plus the goons here in Vegas are incredible, and Jamie and I have had a ton of fun with them, and they really helped make the transition from Boston that much easier.
That said, there are some people who are just dicks. I don’t even know why this is bothering me so much, but it is. Hear me out.
My job is rather specialized (international education), and therefore, rather rare, especially on SomethingAwful. I found out that one of the other goons is an immigration lawyer. Fucking excellent. We happened to have a weird case in our office the other day, so I wrote to this dude and asked what he would suggest. He gave me three or four scenarios, and we chatted a bit about the validity of one (the one I was leaning towards before I found out he was a lawyer).
Just yesterday, we had yet another weird issue in the office that had my boss baffled to the point of anger. I called UNLV to see what they would say about it, and got an answer. Then I decided to write to my newfound buddy to see what he has to say. His response?
“Hey, I’m not just here to answer your questions.”
What the motherfuck is that all about? What a little turd, telling me that he couldn’t be bothered to even just say “No idea, sorry” or “That falls outside my area of expertise”.
Then I looked at his profile. He’s from NYC. Fucking figures. Just one more reason to hate New Yorkers.
Oh well. So he’s the third goon to make it to my ignore list. The other two are Vegas locals (one for shitting on my musical tastes when I was excited about my all-time favorite band for reuniting and putting out a new CD [editor's note: I heard his band the other day and it might be the worst piece of garbage on the planet], and one for trying to turn an “Ask me about Las Vegas” thread into a debate over the new smoking ban), which is odd, since we’re trying to be as accommodating to locals as we can.
I really wish someone would just sever New York from the mainland, and let it sail away to the middle of the Atlantic.
Short rant
Written on 10 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeI decided to go on a short (pun lol) rant before I get to today’s full content post.
Does no one in this fucking city understand the concept of voice mail? Whenever I answer a call for a co-worker and they’re not at their desk, I ask “Would you like to leave them a voice mail?” Invariably, and I mean every fucking time I do this, the person starts talking and leaving their message with me. This would be fine if a) I had given them that option, and b) if I had paper and pen to write down what the fuck they were babbling about.
Maybe I shouldn’t even give them a choice from now on. I should just say “They’re not at their desk, hold for a moment while I put you into their voice mail,” and then the person can hang up if they’re really that opposed to leaving a message.
I help answer the phones when we’re short staffed. That doesn’t mean I’m a fucking secretary.
And it just happened again! These fucking people…
Apartment, redux
Written on 4 April 2007 by Spike McAwesomeDid we think that the issues with my apartment complex were over? Silly geese.
I came home for lunch today with a notice on the door. Last time we got one of these, it was to indicate that they were going to charge us an additional $10 a month for renter’s insurance in case of catastrophe (meaning, if the place catches fire, floods, blows the fuck up, etc… but not theft or any protection for our personal possessions). I figure that, since we’re moving out June 1, there’s no real sense in going through another company to get the insurance quite yet - though typing that sentence out made me realize that I probably should look into it, in case something happens during the move.
To continue, I came home and found this note. I opened it up. Without copying the legal jargon here, it basically told us that we hadn’t paid rent for April, and if we didn’t pay the full rent + late fees within 5 days, we’d be evicted and/or taken to court for the late fees. Now, the funny part about this whole story is that we did indeed pay the rent. In fact, I checked my bank account about an hour before this incident and noticed that the rent check had cleared.
When I first read the letter, my initial thoughts were “Kill. Maim. Destroy.” With these all-inclusive thoughts, I marched down to the office. It’s important to note that the people in the office aren’t exactly the friendliest people in the world. I mean, they’re nice enough (aka, they’re not outwardly cockmongers to people), but they rarely crack a smile and “customer service” is not high on their list.
However, on my goose-stepping march over to the office, something in me kind of cracked. I ended up toning down my attitude, and really went in with a “What happened?”, borderline disappointed attitude. It’s sort of like when your little 5 year old cousin spills some shit on the carpet - you’ve yelled at him before about this same fucking issue, yet he just doesn’t seem to get it, and there’s no use getting upset since he’s too feeble-minded to be able to understand what he did wrong in the first place.
I went in there, and I said “What is the meaning of this?”
The woman, almost snidely, said “You must not have paid your rent.”
“Oh yes I did, and the check already cleared my bank.”
I think at that point, her expression went from cockiness to a bit of “Oh shit-”.
“Oh? Well let me pull up the log book.”
“Tell ya what,” I said. “If I can borrow the computer for a second, I’ll pull up my bank record. There’s a scanned copy of the cashed check there I can print out for you, if you’d like.”
“Oh. You can do that?”
You bet your untouched-for-70-years-ass I can. “I’d be happy to, if it helps clear this up.”
I printed out what I needed to, and the woman dug through their receipt book. Sure enough, she found the copy of the check I submitted. I know they’ve been having issues with their billing software. I also know that, for the first few weeks of it’s implementation, they (in the management office) didn’t have access to change anything. So when our rent jumped $50 when the lease expired, they had to call the corporate headquarters to have it fixed.
I have zero problems with anything that I’ve listed above. Fuck it, my office had a MAJOR software malfunction for about two weeks that left us virtually handcuffed; our ability to do work and help our students had greatly diminished and we were, for lack of a better term, fucked. My problem came when the woman called me at home to let me know it had been resolved.
I went to the apartment to enjoy a quick lunch and play with Molly for a bit. Goddamn that dog is cute. Anyway, about a minute before I left, the phone rang. The woman in the office called me back to let me know that somehow, we had been charged rent not once, not twice, but three times. Fortunately, the third time was for $0, so it didn’t show up on the balance sheet. And the reason I had a problem with this - The fucking office manager, the one who looks over the balance sheets to see who paid and who didn’t, and the one I gave the rent check to, was the one who signed the fucking papers threatening legal action. Because of that dumb cunt’s carelessness, we were harassed and caused undue stress.
Fuck it. I’m calling a lawyer tomorrow. I shouldn’t have to take this kind of shit.
