Acid

So, last night, the demo guy assures us that he’s almost done and that he’ll come back and finish up in the morning. Not a big deal, that sounds ok to me, but I go over to check on the job anyways, mostly because I’m the curious sort. Turns out that instead of using a scraper like any normal person would, he decided to pour an acid on the floor to remove the old glue that was underneath the linoleum. Hydrochloric Acid!

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When I arrived I knew something was wrong. All the kitchen windows were open and I could smell the fumes from the street. This was also a big problem because it rained at 3:00 that afternoon and apparently the windows had been open long before that. Everything was soaked. That wasn’t the bad part. When I walked in it was pretty apparent what they had tried to do. They got lazy and didn’t want to scrape up glue anymore and decided to go get something to eat away at it. In theory this might not have been a bad idea. Too bad we don’t live in Theory, although I hear it’s nice there. No, they went out and found Muriatic Acid, a 30% solution of Hydrochloric Acid and something else.

All over the bottle it says “Do not use indoors”, “For exterior use only”, “Will react with woods, metals and other natural materials”, “Caution, fumes are corrosive”.

Apparently they can’t read.

When I walked into the kitchen I was floored. Actually, the floor was “floored”, I was in shock. There was super corrosive acid everywhere. The counters, the cabinets, and especially on the appliances.

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The brand new, $1200 refrigerator that I just had installed on Sunday was covered in acid. I could hear it sizzling and eating through the metal. It was creating huge pits in the doors to the fridge, in the washer and dryer, in the back of our also brand new freezer, everywhere.

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I freaked out. I took pictures, screamed a lot, and rushed home so that we could call him and have him explain himself (I would have called him directly, but didn’t have a phone with me).

He gave us some line of bullshit about how he had done it before and it would be fine and that it wasn’t a big deal. Then we told him how it had completely ruined the fridge and all he did was offer to replace the door.

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Not good enough.

I wanted to be there when he got there this morning, so my wife and I got up early and hurried down there to meet him. He was supposed to be there at 6:00am. We got there just before 8:00 and he’s nowhere to be seen. I went inside again and not only had the acid completely ruined the fridge, it’s started ruining everything else. Anything metal in the kitchen is now covered in pits and rust. The fridge, the microwave, the other appliances, the KitchenAid mixer and it’s bowl, the toaster, everything.

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This is a complete and total fucking tragedy. It’s completely ruined our entire kitchen, all the appliances and probably stuff further into the house that I haven’t even discovered yet.

When we called him this morning he said he was “on his way”, which is complete BS to begin with, but he said he called a “Kenmore Parts place” and would “make it right”. He’s got one shot to make this right, and by right I mean a complete new fridge, otherwise I’m taking his ass to court.

I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. We saved and worked and saved for these things and then, 3 days after they’re in the house, they’re completely ruined by some asshole who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

I don’t have proper words for my anger. I’m literally blinded by rage. The only words I want out of his mouth are “I’m sorry, I’m going to make it right, here’s a check”. Anything short of that and he’s going to hear from my attorney. There’s not really much else I can do. He’s ruined my house. I wish there was some form of punishment allowed by the courts that could result in him getting a beating, but there’s not. All I can do is try and recoup the cost of the damages.

I lost sleep last night because I was so mad. So did Lauren. We’re both so upset that we don’t want to talk about it.

I don’t know what else to say.

It’s like I bought a brand new car, parked it in my driveway and someone slammed into it with a garbage truck.

I. Am. Pissed.

Blockage

I have this terrible problem in that I can’t actually make decisions about the design of my own website. Every single wordpress theme I look at has potential but there’s something major about it that just rubs me the wrong way. Or, it has a lot of potential but there are so many little things that need to be changed that it’s not worth the effort. Then there are the themes I start designing myself, which always fail to match up with the picture in my head. I’ve done 6 PSD layouts in the past week. I’ve yet to finish one. I did a new/tech/sleek looking one but it was too “corporate” feeling. Then I did a grunge one but I don’t know if I actually like that style. Then I started a “space” one but nixed that because it was too trendy. So, I can’t find what I want, I can’t customize something to be what I want and I can’t make what I want from scratch. I don’t know if it’s “artists block” or what but it’s driving me up a wall.

I’m so tired

I’m emotionally and physically drained, with no vacation in sight. I’m so tired that I’m letting weird things get to me.

What I heard on the radio this afternoon made me so pissed off that I came right home, sat down, and started typing what you’re reading now. What I heard were two things, both Obama related. First, that FISA had passed easily, and that Obama had not only not filibustered it like he had said he was going to but that he actually voted for it. The second was a sound bite in which he says we shouldn’t worry about immigrants learning English, but that all our kids should be learning Spanish.

Now, I should preface my opinion by saying that over the past few months, he had been growing on me as a candidate. Hilary was scary, and McCain is downright crazy, which left only Obama as someone to vote for. Sure, I didn’t agree with a few things here and there, but in general, he wasn’t too bad and I could see myself going that way in November. Now I’m not so sure.

FISA is a huge deal. If anyone talks to you about it and says it’s nothing to worry about, check them for wires or a high fever because something isn’t quite right with them. It’s not so much a big deal that it gives the government more freedom to wiretap whoever they feel like, because lets face it, they were going to do that anyway. We’ve all seen enough suspense/conspiracy movies to be totally convinced that they were going that direction anyway. What is a bigger deal is that they gave wide sweeping and total immunity to any of the companies helping them, retroactively. Again, we all knew they were doing it, but under things like the Freedom of Information act, we could find out about them. Now, not only can we not find out what they’re doing, but we can’t find out what they’ve already done. They’ve already built rooms for sifting through all our phone calls and data, but now we can’t call them out on it. It’s complete bullshit from start to finish. Complete crap and Obama voted for it. Most pundits will say that he did it so that he wouldn’t give republicans ammo for the general election about how he was “soft” on terrorists. Too bad this has about as much to do with terrorist as an ice cream cone and, more importantly, he should be confident enough in his own record and (most importantly) his beliefs that he shouldn’t have to worry about what the big bad republicans might run in a TV spot against him. Fine, he doesn’t look “soft” on terrorism, now he just looks soft on civil liberties and protecting The Constitution! Way to go Obama camp.

Secondly, I’ve listened to the full sound-byte about him and learning Spanish about a thousand times now. I’m not as pissed about that as some people I’ve heard talking about, mostly because radio fuck-tard pundits are running the shortened version of that which cuts out the end where he actually ties it together. He’s saying that the Mexican immigrant should learn English and that we should learn Spanish to be more multi-cultural, just like Europe. That all our kids should be “multi-lingual” because it’s important to understand other cultures and be more “worldly”. I’m not saying it’s ok, just that the actual meaning of his comment seems to have been skewed from that to “they’re coming anyway, so you might as well learn Spanish”. That’s not what the man said, and shouldn’t be taken that way, as some in the media will no doubt do anyway.

Having said that, I have a problem with his actual message. I was going to say that we can be as “multi-cultural” as we want but then I realized that we already are. We have every kind of restaurant in the world, the supermarkets have food from all different places, our book stores carry things in dozens of languages, classes are offered in public high-schools to speak those other languages. Let me say this very clearly.

We are already diverse.

We’re more diverse than any European country you could name. What’s worse is that we A) don’t realize it and B) are afraid when people criticize us for not being diverse enough. We’re pussies. Sorry to be blunt about it, but we are. I don’t know when it happened or when it’s going to end, but somewhere along the way we became more concerned about making everyone feel welcome and making everyone else happy that we’ve bent so far backwards that we’re losing our identity as a nation. We are the melting pot country. That’s what makes us great. But we’re already that county, we don’t need to try and become that country.

Let me tell you something. In Mexico, when you call a business or a toll-free number, there is NO option to “Push 1 for English, Push 2 for Spanish”. It’s 100% Spanish. I know because I’ve called them. Our company has offices all over the world. There is no other country that gives a shit that you don’t speak their language. More importantly, if you talk to someone who’s actually from Mexico, which I’ve had the chance to do on thousands of occasions, they are extremely patriotic. They love their home country. They wear the flag, the hat, go to soccer game to cheer on Mexican teams over US teams. When the World Cup was here, 95% of the people living in Houston cheered for the Mexican football team when they were playing against the US. They love their county and are extremely proud of it. The reason that they are here in the first place is to get ahead because the economy in their country sucks, and they’re trying to create a better life for themselves, and I can respect that. But you could never ever ask one of them to give up their love for Mexico.

If you told the Mexican people that they could come here in droves, freely, BUT that their country had to stop speaking Spanish and be 100% bilingual, they’d never do it. They have such pride in their culture that they’d never change it’s roots. That’s something we don’t have any more. That kind of national pride to keep heritage no matter what.

They’d never change, Europe would never change, Asia would never change but everyone is asking us to change. “Open up your culture and your languages and your borders” they say, when they’d never do the same if our rolls were reversed.

I believe that too. Somehow we’ve gone from a culture of “embracing” other cultures to “changing for” other cultures. Please, by all means, come here, stay, enjoy. Share with us your cooking, your culture, your music and your languages, but accept ours as well. Americanism isn’t “a collection of cultures” it’s become a melded culture of it’s own. A culture that started diverse but has blended over time to become the great country it is today. The language of our country is English. It’s the common ground that everyone here can get to.

I’m all for being worldly and learning new things and new languages. But we should be proud of heritage we have. The Russians, 1 language. The Chinese, 1 language. The French, 1 language. Canada? 2 languages, and the French Canadians walk all over those people because they think they have a right to. Is that what we want? McDonalds menus in two languages? Stop signs that say “Stop/Alto”. I don’t think so.

So, the next time someone tells you to “be more diverse and accepting of other cultures”, ask them to change their culture instead. And if you meet a snooty European that thinks we’re all intolerant bigots, just tell them to go see if the Arabs want to learn Hebrew to “be more diverse” and see what happens.

Fuck political correctness and any candidate that bows to it (that’s all of them). I’m not voting for any of these assholes.

What’s wrong with people

I know most of you know about the “pour shot” saga by now. This kid took one of my photos, edited it, claimed it was his until I called him on it and got DeviantArt involved, it got pulled down, he begged an pleaded with me not to sue him, I was nice and let it slide and ever since it’s run wild around the internet and I can’t seem to stop it.

The image is of course this:

RIPOFF

Which is an inverted and recolorized version of my photo here:

Real Version

The only reason I mention this is because it just showed up again under “92 Must See Photographs” over at “Just Creative“, which is a feed I happen to read from time to time. Saying I was shocked is a little of an understatement. Then again, it’s been on Worth1000 as well, which is kind of an honor in an of itself. In this case, not even the ripoff was properly credited, so I don’t even know where this tiny version came from. It’s been included in wallpaper packs, posted in forums, all over the damn place. I’ve gotten past the “people are stealing my stuff” because professionally I’ve grown past it and I’ve done a lot better work since I took that shot, but it still kinda irks me to see it float around in this fashion. What’s worse is that this isn’t even the “real shot”. This was one of my test shots before I took what I considered to be the final version. For reference sake, I put that photo up on Flickr. I had to dig through hundreds of old backup disks to find the originals to resize and post, but this incident spurred me on. So, it’s up on Flickr in a reduced size, and you can see that here:

Some days I don’t understand the internet. Then again, maybe it’s just Monday.

Forthcoming Drought

If I hear one more website put forward the notion that the new GTA is not only better than sliced bread but in fact redefines the loaf, someone is going to have a substantial loss of blood. I think I’m the only one that realizes that we’re heading into the summer video game season and summer is always dry and crappy. There is nothing more transparent than the summer video game release schedule. It’s the polar opposite of the movie schedule.

It’s simple. Games that didn’t make it for the holiday sales push, get released in the first two retail quarters of the next year. Everything else either has an unannounced release date or is slated for winter.

This doesn’t stop the more, shall we say, monetarily influenced media outlets from decrying that this year is going to be the best year of all time for video games. This is going to be such a fantastic year.

Horse shit.

While the video game as a medium of entertainment may do very well this year, the upcoming release schedule is a bit lack luster.

Even if I gave a shit about Grand Theft Repetitive, which I don’t, what exactly am I supposed to look forward to for the next 8 months?

Ninja Gaiden, maybe, we’ll see. Metal Gear? There’s never been a more over rated franchise. Killzone and Far Cry? No thank you. Fable 2? I’ll buy it but it won’t be earth shattering. Spore? Starcraft 2? Ha, if those games even get released this decade I’ll be surprised. The only, and I mean only, games that I’m really looking forward to this year are the Jason Bourne game and the new Soul Calibur. But those are games with limited replayability and limited depth, respectively. The latest Jedi games (Force Unleashed) looks promising as well but it won’t be out until the end of September. That’s it. 3, maybe 4 mediocre titles? That’s pathetic.

They’re not really any triple-A titles this year. No Halo, No new Mario, no Half Life. They think they’ll be able to pull off a Gears of War 2 release by November, but I doubt it. Just you wait. It’ll be “Christmas or Q1 2009” by the end of the summer, I guarantee.

“And although the gaming business has been booming for years, 2008 will surely prove to be its breakout year.”

This statement was apparently written by either a CNN corespondent or someone who just “figured out” how to play Peggle… or both. Maybe I’m too involved in my own hobby to have an outside perspective, but I’d say that 2006 was gaming’s breakout year. Unless I’m mistaken, all three major platforms we launching, game sales were up 200% and people were lining up to get there hands on’em. If that’s not a breakout hit for an industry that had the reputation for corrupting the minds of children, I don’t know what is.

So please CNet, save your ill conceived declarations that this year will be so huge for gaming that it will eclipse all others before it. When we get a Halo 4, GTA5, Guitar Hero 6, Rock Band 2, Half-Life 3, Doom 5, Call of Duty 5 year, THAT will be a breakout year for gaming.

2009 might be that year. We’ll have to see. There are certainly enough big franchises working on their next incarnations for it to happen. I doubt we’ll see any major releases like that this year, so that chance of them happening next year are pretty good. But for now we have to endure a long, dark, video game free summer. Be prepared my friends. The drought is upon us.

Street Date Bullshit

What good is a street date if I can’t walk into a store and buy a game ON that date? What good is it if the stores themselves don’t physically get the game until days later? Why the fuck would every major retailer state that the “release date” for R6V2 is 3/18/08 when they know damn well that that’s the “shippping date” TO them. Stores won’t have the game until tomorrow, or at the very earilest, some advance copies tonight.

Sure, you can “order” or even “preorder” the game online. I could do that right now. I still won’t have it until tomorrow. The Walmart, Target, Circuit City, EB and Gamestop websites ALL say that the game was released yesterday. When you click to see their inventory however, it’s a completely different story. Walmart and Circuit City say “not available in store”. Target says it’ll be in the stores tomorrow and EB and Gamestop simply list the local stores stock as zero. The kicker is that in some places there are in-store only promotions. Circuit City for example, says litteraly the following:

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 – Preorder Now – Available 3/18/08
Not Available for In Store Pick-up
Limited Edition : Free gamer’s energy kit and fuzzy dice only available in-store.

Well, isn’t that nice. I can go get a copy, travel back in time and get a RedBull and fuzzy MF’ing dice.

Seriously. The street date for DVDs is the day that it’s printed. I Am Legend’s street date was 3/18. Was it in the stores last night? Yup.

Why can’t game publishers play by the same rules? A date is a date is a date. A game comes out on the 18th, then it needs to be in the backroom of stores by the 17th, ready to be put out the next morning.

I called Target this morning and talked to my guy and he told me they didn’t get the UPS shipment last night and that they usually get it by 4pm. To make matters worse, if you buy the limited edition at Target, you get a free $10 giftcard (probably since you won’t get any fuzzy dice), but they only have 20 to give out and they’re not supposed to give them out after 6pm. I know my guy will save me one, but still, that’s complete crap too. Retailers using the gayness of game publishing schedules as a lure is pretty shitty too. “Here, come get free shit if you get it early, which you can’t”. WTF?

… on the upside. I had a chance to finish Army of Two last night. Now it’s all R6 goodness from here on in…. once I track down a copy of course.