You are here: Home / Archives for idiots
Apr 1, 2013

It’s Not Funny If It Makes Me Panic

April 1, 2013 By

I’ve never been a fan of April Fool’s Day. Pranks just aren’t my thing, and fake stories aren’t much fun for me, either.

There are some April 1 jokes that I know and expect now, and because I expect them I can laugh and enjoy the joke. I always expect Google to release some wild new feature that is completely impossible to do at this time. (Today’s Google Nose is pretty funny.)

I also usually expect my favorite online geek store, ThinkGeek, to send out an email showcasing some amazing new products that really don’t exist. And they delivered again this year. I was especially fond of the Batman family car decal set:

The Play-Doh 3D Printer was also brilliant.

However, one prank this morning left me nearly in a panic. As I settled into my morning routine, I glanced down at the clock in my computer’s taskbar to see what time it was, then briefly continued checking my email for a few seconds before the realization hit my brain: it was 9am!!

(In the morning it takes my brain a few extra seconds for processing.)

I was stunned it was already that late in the morning. Wasn’t it just 7:50am when I was in the kitchen making breakfast? How did I lose an hour of time? I frantically started re-arranging the day’s schedule in my head, trying to make up for the lost hour.

I turned around to check the clock behind me and realized it showed it was 8am. Now I had a dilemma – which was the right time? Did Aaron change the clock in the living room to play a joke on me? (Unlikely, he knows about my strong dislike for pranks.)

Grabbing my iPhone, I silently hoped it would settle the issue and not provide an entirely different time. It matched the clock: 8am. And since it had been with me since my alarm went off, there was no way it was tampered with. My computer had changed its clock to set the time forward an hour on its own. The time was correct last night, when it confirmed it was too late and I needed to shut the computer down and go to bed.

Having my time changed on my computer was NOT funny at all. A quick search of Twitter showed I wasn’t alone in the mysterious April 1 time change. Others have had their systems set forward an hour as well.

I haven’t figured out the cause yet, but I’m blaming Windows 8, just because it seems like the most likely choice. I’ve heard it didn’t change for some Window 8 users, but others did see their clocks advance by one hour.

Operating systems should not be allowed to participate in April Fool’s Day pranks. Internet services like Google, sure, but not your own computer. What’s next? Hiding your My Pictures folder for April 1 so you think all of your photos have vanished?

I’m not laughing.

Filed Under: rant Tagged With:


Aug 7, 2012

What Happened At Home While I Was In NYC

August 7, 2012 By

While I was on a plane to New York last Wednesday, this happened:

severed cable/internet line

That’s the buried cable line for our house, no longer buried and no longer intact. The idiot apartment builders behind us (Ardent Communities, for those who would like to know), having no respect for us or our property, trespassed onto our land and ripped up the top layer of the back property line, about four feet beyond our property line. The grass was torn out, and they cut the cable line, leaving Aaron with no ability to work from home that day.

Why did they do it? They told me yesterday that they had to clear space to put up the fence that should have been in place months ago. This is of course the complete opposite of what they told me several weeks ago, when they promised that nothing on our property would be affected by putting up the fence. They also told me that the cable line was cut because it wasn’t buried, which is a lie – I watched the cable company bury the line years ago. And you can still see where it disappeared into the ground before it got ripped up by their machinery.

They didn’t ask if we could clear our land. They didn’t ask permission to come onto our land. And they didn’t give any notice of doing it. It was trespassing and willful destruction.

Yesterday they tried to say that I was wrong about where the property line was and that really most of what they took out was their land. Um, this stake below? It’s labeled Property Line, and they were the ones who placed it there. I see a hell of a lot of dirt and missing greenery on the left side of that stake, also known as OUR LAND.

(We won’t even get into the health issues I’m suffering resulting from their unwillingness to follow the rezoning guidelines. If I’m forced into another sinus surgery because of the dust, I’ll be providing their address as the responsible party for billing.)

I finally reached my limit yesterday when I watched a Bobcat pick up a few pallets of wood from a spot about 10 feet from my property line to then drive them onto my land and dump them there. A gift of wood? I considered going outside to thank them for the peace offering and asking them to help me carry my new wood planks into our garage, but decided that sarcasm would likely be lost on these guys.

Is it our 5th anniversary already, Ardent/Village Communities? Aww, you shouldn’t have.
(Property line stake, you ask? Hidden behind & to the left of the guy in the photo.)

So instead I took photos and then emailed the City of Columbus contacts I’ve corresponded with before (two city council aides and a person in zoning) asking them for guidance on who to contact to report the damage to our property, the failure of the company to meet yet another deadline that has long passed, and to have the wood removed.

I’d also like to take the time to call out the City of Columbus as a collection of cowards. I continue writing to them for assistance in this matter, considering that’s part of what we pay our taxes for. And instead of responding to me, like I asked them to do, they forward my emails on to the apartment developer, like they did yesterday.

Stay classy, Columbus government – nice to see you’re doing your part to look out for and help your citizens. Or is it your political contributors? I’m fuzzy on the details. If I had more money to donate for election campaigns would I at least get an email response? I’ve got $10 – could that even get me an automated response?

And so Ardent Communities continues to “apologize” for screwing up over and over, when it’s obvious they are doing it on purpose. For a company that claims to have been in real estate for so many years, either Ardent Communities is utterly incompetent at what they do (making me wonder how they’ve been doing this for so long) or they’re simply evil bastards who are too used to getting their own way and will trample, ignore and try to destroy anything in their way to get what they want, with no respect for others. I’m betting it’s the second option.

Too bad (for them) that they had to build next to me.

I can’t stand seeing companies (with some unwise opinions about race) break the rules at the expense of everyday people just because they have more money and power. This is about waaaaaay more than a strip of land and a fence. This is about homeowners’ comfort, safety and health in their own homes being disregarded for the wants of the privileged.

Had I not complained as much as I already have, there would still be a 30ft deep pit on the edge of our property with nothing to prevent children from falling into it. There would be no partial fence on the other edge of the property line already. And they wouldn’t have even started this side of the fence.

Had I not complained and rallied the neighborhoods before the rezoning, they would have crammed even more apartment buildings into the space, with no attempts at providing any privacy screening or rules preventing convicted sex offenders from renting those apartments. We were unable to prevent the rezoning, but I was leading the community to get a few demands from the neighborhoods into that rezoning. (Which the company is still partially ignoring. Hence my continuing to shout loudly.)

The company is acting like a spoiled child who has never been told no. They drag their feet at what they’re required to do and do it poorly in the hopes of making us sorry we even demanded it in the first place. Fortunately, I have two children who have tried these tactics and been shut down before it got out of hand. Someone needs to tell these guys no as well. They need a time out and they need their toys taken away.

I don’t look kindly on entitled asshole businessmen who are so shady they renamed their company after earning a bad reputation and had an F rating with the Better Business Bureau. (The new company name has a C- so far.) They have a track record for trying to screw the average person, and that’s not right.

It’s on like Donkey Kong.

Filed Under: rant Tagged With:


Jun 26, 2012

Hate Wrapped In Claims of "Progress"

June 26, 2012 By

For the past few years our subdivision has been locked in a vicious battle with the developer of a subdivision directly behind us. The neighborhood that was originally started was single-family homes, wedged in a narrow strip of land between two other neighborhoods, and about three streets worth of homes were built before the housing market crash.

After the crash, the developer quickly sought to rezone the remaining land (the land that specifically borders my neighborhood) into large apartment buildings. To cut the backstory short: all surrounding subdivisions were against it and fought the rezoning, but elected city officials didn’t care and voted it through with no issue because money talks and the developer offered a lot of talking.

So we sat and waited for the ugly big-box buildings to be erected. Our only concession is that we did get the developer to agree to build screening – in the form of a 6 ft hill with a 6 ft fence on top of it – before starting any construction, to help shield surrounding communities from the noise and dirt and mess. It was written into the rezoning.

Fast forward to last week.

They have over half of the buildings going now, with no fencing or hill. Dust clouds blow through our neighborhood regularly. And it’s loud. OMG, it’s loud, from sun up to sun down, seven days a week. At the urging of other community members, I’ve been sending weekly emails to the city council, upset that the agreed on fence wasn’t in place first like the zoning agreement stated. The city, unwilling to get involved or enforce anything at all, punted each email to the developer, who punted back a useless response from their lawyer.

Then last week, the general manager of the company, likely tired of my constant emails to the city offices,  sent me an email directly asking to meet with me privately to discuss the issue. This surprised me, because A: it didn’t come from his lawyer for once, and B: he confirmed he wanted to meet with just me and not others in the community who I had been speaking on behalf of and who are just as upset (or more so) than me. I almost hoped that he might try to bribe us for our silence (since throwing money at problems seems to be their style) but honestly just wanted them to do as they had promised.

He arrived with the site’s project manager on Wednesday and I ushered them out to our backyard patio, a spot we haven’t been able to use all summer due to the constant noise and dust behind us.

As expected, he began by explaining the delay was due to a change in the water lines and that they would have the screening installed by early July – which of course would mean nearly every building would be at least in the framing stage by then. I responded that this was unacceptable, since the “new” plan had been approved many weeks ago and they should have been focused on getting it done to comply with the zoning instead of continuing with putting up buildings.

I then said the best course of action at this point was to stop all construction until the water lines could be installed. (If that really was the issue – considering I live and work here all day and haven’t seen ANY water lines installed along the edge of the property yet.)

And this is where the conversation turned, well…appalling.

The general manager of this large home and apartment real estate development company responded that it would be impossible to stop on the buildings because if they took a break their “team” would move on to other states to work and they would have trouble getting them back. He gave a slimy, knowing grin while he explained that “Hispanics” aren’t as easy to find for work anymore, since so many have gone “home” due to our country’s sluggish economy. The Hispanic workers who have remained have their pick of work right now. I felt like he expected me to feel bad for his hard luck in finding cheap labor.

Put off by his explanation, I responded by saying that I knew of many people in our area looking for work, including skilled construction workers who would love a steady job. He waved my comments away, saying, “Yeah, well, that’s the problem. Too many Caucasians [yes, he said Caucasians] wanting jobs now, and we just can’t work with that.”

Wait, what? No really, WHAT?

As my eyes were still fixed on him, my brain had gone into overload, trying to process the things he was saying to me. Was he telling me he only wanted migrant Hispanic workers for his construction, implying they were cheaper (illegal maybe?) than others who might want a job in this area, or could somehow be worked in a way that others could not?

I sat in stunned silence, unable to think up even a small collection of words to express what I felt in that moment. The topic quickly shifted away again, this time to telling me how lucky we were to have these apartment buildings towering over our backyard, because it’s so much better for home values than an empty plot of land. Progress! he claimed. (I strongly disagreed with him on this, and our real estate agent would happily back me up.)

 Oh yeah, those huge buildings 30 feet from my backyard will REALLY improve my property values when compared to all of those boring old trees and deer that used to be there!

Then the topic of the disturbance of the natural wildlife came up. It seems cutting down the trees revealed a few coyotes in our area. I’ve seen them several times now, and they steer clear of people, so I don’t mind them. The project manager asked me if I thought animal control would come get rid of them. I said I didn’t know.

Then the project manager chuckled and said, “We’ll just tell the Hispanics that if they can catch ’em, they can have ’em for dinner. That’ll take care of the problem.”

Ahem…WTF?!?! Again, I was rewinding that in my head, trying to double check if I heard him correctly. Yep, that’s what he said. Every single word.

I’m not sure why they were saying these things in front of me. Maybe because I’m white they figured I’d feel the same way? Well, bad news for them: I don’t. These two men in high positions spoke in such a way to make me certain that they see people of Hispanic origin as nothing more than cheap labor to be exploited. Being struck over my head with…racism, I think?…in my own backyard was an absolute shock and left me feeling sick to my stomach and angry.

And sadly…silent. I was stunned into silence, unable to speak up to the men on either side of me and tell them that what they were saying was wrong on so many levels, that I didn’t appreciate their characterization of Hispanics, and that they should get out of my yard because I won’t support their hate. I’m still angry with myself for allowing them to shock me, but who says things like that? And openly?

These are your “job creators” everyone! They don’t want to hire your out-of-work neighbor, they think little of the people who do work for them, and they have no plans for helping to boost the economy except for their own personal bank accounts. They’d rather hire a migrant worker that they can treat poorly, work from sun up to sun down, and pay little for rather than provide a good job for local workers who are just as skilled and demand nothing but the chance at a fair wage to support their families and decent working conditions.

More money for them, at the expense of everyone else in the community, all with the blessing of the City of Columbus. Progress! It’s disgusting.

The meeting ended almost right where it began, with no plans to do anything to honor the rezoning agreement, only now I see the head of the company and his project manager for the horrible human beings they are. Laughing that whites are too expensive while lamenting how hard it is to find cheap Hispanic labor now proves to me that everything I have done to fight against this company is justified, and probably hasn’t been enough.

Beyond playing by their own rules and ignoring the comfort and safety of surrounding communities, this real estate development company also has no concern for using their position as a local employer to help promote good, honest jobs for the workers of this city, and instead would rather laugh at the idea of their migrant Hispanic workers eating coyotes for dinner.

Everyone – regardless of color or ethnicity or gender or anything – deserves a chance at a fair wage and the right to be treated with respect by their employer. Looking out my back window, as I gaze on those apartment buildings casting shadows over my yard each morning, I will always be reminded of the words of hate spoken at my patio table.

Edited to add: In case you’re wondering, I won’t post the company name here. From my dealings with them I’d guess they’d much rather spend money on their lawyer than a decent wage for a local worker. But I will certainly speak the truth to everyone I know in Columbus, privately urging them to avoid any dealings with this company.


And if they are reading and considering a lawsuit despite no information linking this post to the company, allow me to pull out my handy-dandy blogger full-disclosure: all opinions expressed in this post are my opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others (unless they choose to share my opinion in the comments below) aside from the passages in quotation marks, which are direct quotes and I might even have a somewhat muffled audio recording from my iPhone in my pocket to prove it.

Filed Under: big issues, politics, rant Tagged With:


May 4, 2011

Do You Trust Your Mechanic? Are Your REALLY Sure?

May 4, 2011 By

(I don’t like to do this, but I’m totally calling out a company for bad service. Actually, make that dangerous service.)

We are a family of two cars – one small sedan and one SUV. The rule is that we run them until they die, and then we replace the dead one with another similar in style. That means we usually only have one car payment to worry about, although we are often playing the game of “When will this car decide it’s done?” as we squeeze the last drops of life from it.

Our current sedan is the very first new car I ever purchased on my own. It’s a 2000 model and currently has 189,000 miles on it. Yes, I’ve tried to take good care of it to get it to this point. The dealer is fairly far from our house, so for the last year or two we’ve been taking both cars to NTB (National Tire & Battery, a division of Tire Kingdom) for minor services because it’s just down the road.

A few months ago, I had taken the sedan to NTB for service, and while there they told me the brakes would need to be replaced soon. I asked if it needed to be done that day, and they told me it could wait a little longer. Having no money to get it done at that time, I was glad to hear we could wait a little longer.

Fast forward to mid-week last week. The sedan had started making a grinding sound when braking (aka: we may have waited a little too long), so we took it back to NTB and asked them to replace the brakes and rotors. They took the keys and told us it would be done by the end of the day.

When Aaron came back to get the car, they told him that they didn’t change the brakes because the brakes were fine. We were completely puzzled by this – didn’t they tell us last time they needed replaced? And if they were fine, what was that grinding sound? The mechanic told Aaron that the pads were fine and the brakes just had a rust ring on them that was causing the grinding noise. He advised us to “ride the brakes hard” to help clear off the rust and said nothing more needed done at this time. We trusted this assessment and left, happy to save some money.

But the story doesn’t end there. That grinding sound? It only got worse. In fact, braking seemed to get harder – I felt like I had to shove my foot through the floor to brake. I couldn’t be reassured by the diagnosis that our brakes were fine. I’ve been with this car for most of its 189,000 miles – I know when something feels wrong.

Being the constant worrier, I asked Aaron to take it to a different mechanic for a second opinion. On Sunday he took it to a different local shop, asking them to check our brakes. At that point an entirely different story about our brakes was relayed to us. The brake pads still had thickness on the outside, but the inside of each pad was shot. We could see the rotors were damaged, and the calipers needed replaced as well. We were lucky that we hadn’t suffered a complete brake failure before bringing it to them.

So one day and $640 later, my little sedan was fitted with a new brake system that doesn’t make a peep (or grind) and kicks in with the smallest amount of pressure on the pedal. And at 189,000 miles, it runs like it’s barely at 100,00 miles. I didn’t like spending all the money on it, but I’m so thankful to the second mechanic (Firestone, if you’d like to know) for taking the time to properly inspect the brakes and show us exactly what the problem was.

I can’t say for certain if NTB carelessly neglected to do a full inspection of the brakes and instead only took a quick glance at the outside of them, or if they lied to us because they were busy that day. Either way, I’m horrified that such neglect for safety was displayed by NTB. We trusted them to keep our car maintained so that it was safe to drive, and they let us down in a dangerous way.

What would have happened had we continued to listen to their advice? Would we have continued being hard on the brakes, trying to wear off that rust, until one day we press the pedal and get no response as we slam into whatever is in front of us due to brake failure? What if our daughters had been in the car with us? We could have been hurt, could have hurt others, could have been killed…

There are certain occupations that we must place our trust in for our safety. We trust our police to keep our neighborhoods safe. We trust our doctors to make the right diagnosis to keep us healthy. We trust cooks to prepare and handle food safely to keep us from getting sick. We trust engineers and architects to design safe structures for us to dwell in and travel on.

As a nurse, were I to give the wrong medication to a patient that risked a life-threatening reaction, you can bet I’d have to deal with some serious consequences. I could lose my job or even my license. I could also be sued if I caused harm to that patient. But I know how important my job is, and in that case I’d check and double check to make sure I had the correct medication for the correct patient, because that person’s safety is in my hands.

Mechanics are part of that trusted group as well. If our vehicles aren’t given proper safety inspections, our lives are at risk. We trust those mechanics to properly service our cars and tell us when something is a safety risk.

NTB destroyed our trust last week and I’m still very upset at the risk they exposed my family to through their neglect. Small mistakes are forgiveable, but life-threatening mistakes cannot be brushed aside.

I’ll be blunt: we will never use them again, and I caution others to think twice before you put your car and your safety into their hands. Just because it’s close by and convenient doesn’t mean it’s safe.

Filed Under: big issues, daily life, rant, reviews Tagged With:


Feb 14, 2011

Behaving Badly

February 14, 2011 By

Over the weekend, I made my weekly pilgrimage to Target, shrine of everything-you-need and even more that you probably don’t need, but hey, it’s cute and in the dollar bin!

The first game at Target is always finding a parking spot. I cruised down one aisle, but all of the spots were taken, so I decided to take a right and try the next aisle over.

As I made the turn, a middle-aged couple were walking from the store out into that aisle. They were walking right down the middle of the aisle, to be specific. I wasn’t in a hurry, though, so I slowly inched forward behind them. The woman drifted over to the far left side, but the man remained in the middle of the aisle, clearly planning to keep his course.

He did start to drift to the right side, though, leaving the middle of the road open for me. I guessed that they must have different cars, since they were on different sides of the aisle and he had fallen behind her in pace, so I slowly drove between them (with plenty of room on each side) and then pulled into an open space on the left, pausing to make sure the woman wasn’t going to cross the open space. She instead went to the car just before the space.

As I put the car in park, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the man beside my window. Apparently they were taking the same car. He was opening up the passenger door of his car, and in that side-glance instant, I caught him peering into my window, his eyes attempting to bore holes into me with hatred.

I was immediately uncomfortable and turned my head to the passenger seat, taking extra time to gather up my purse and put away my keys. Did I really see that or was that side-glance misinterpreted? Confused, I turned back and prepared to get out of the car, knowing he was still likely right there.

As I opened the door, my eyes trying to remain anywhere but near a human being, I was aware that he was already in his car. But my eyes again drifted up and there staring right at me from the passenger seat in the next car over, was a man I’d never met before, with a look on his face like he was about to jump out of his car and beat me. In that quick glance, his eyes, his body language communicated that he hated me. I’ve never seen so much negative energy coming off of a person before, especially towards someone he didn’t even know.

I quickly closed my door and walked away, still unsure of exactly what happened and not wanting to wait around to give the guy a chance to speak. What could I have done to make this person so angry? I kept my car well behind them when they were walking to their car, never wanting to be pushy. And if he was upset that I was somehow pushy for trying to drive down that aisle, did that infraction truly deserve that severe of a response? Even if he was just having a bad day, why take it out on me?

I’d like to think this was an isolated incident, but I’ll admit I’m seeing it more and more every day.

Like the person yelling at a customer service representative because they didn’t ring up the right sale price at the register.

Like the guy weaving through traffic, nearly causing accidents because he’s more important than anyone else on the road and deserves to get there first.

Like a parent blowing up at a neighbor for having the nerve to ask her child to please not walk through her flower garden, screaming that no one tells her child what to do but her.

People – we’re losing our ability to interact with each other.When the world around you feels more like a reality TV show and less like actual reality, something is wrong.

Our society is teetering towards a loss of all civility. It’s like people are rebelling from the politically correct atmosphere of the last decade and swinging to the polar opposite. Maybe all of the power of anonymity on the internet is spilling over into our day-to-day behavior? (Note to offenders: when you act like an internet troll to the people in your community, we actually know who you are. And then don’t like you.) 

We’re becoming a Jerry Springer culture, zero-to-pissed-off-and-swinging in 2.3 seconds. If someone does something that inconveniences you, clearly they meant to do it and therefore deserve to be punished. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is unheard of, and if done generally means that you’ll be the loser when the other person chooses to strike first in the war of angry words.

 I’m so sick of it.

Look, I’m socially awkward, but even I know the basics of how to behave in public. Be nice to people. Give them the benefit of the doubt. If you’re upset, bring it up to the person calmly and rationally and give the other person a chance to explain or make it right.

People who get angry all the time intimidate me – I never know when they’re going to blow up next. My coping mechanism is to conjure up the image of screeching chimpanzees: out-of-control and primitive, which is really how these people are behaving. And when you imagine them as chimps, they look ridiculous.
My challenge to all of you is to practice kindness this week. Do something nice at a moment when no one expects it. If you feel like you’re about to yell, pause and ask yourself if it’s really worth it to pummel the other person with all of that negativity. Slow down. Make others smile.
And for goodness sake, show some understanding and love to all of the random people you interact with in public each day. Don’t be the chimpanzee in the room.
Filed Under: daily life, love, rant Tagged With: