I saw a clip on the youtube the other day of one of the republican debate, the candidates were spouting their crazy as shit (almost fascist) pandering to the christian conservative assholes and the subject of the end of dont ask dont tell came up.

Since it had just been FINALLY repealed, a gay soldier asked a question as part of the story and the audience booed, then applauded aggressively as the question was answered with some bullshit about how we are trying to inject a “social experiment” into the military (the answer was basically “fuck those fags”)

Really? hmmm fuck you! Say that to all the black soldiers that were let in to the military, the same thing was said by the last generation of crazy bigots regarding blacks, take your narrow minded bullshit and shove it up your fucking ass.  Its a shame you have never actually read the constitution considering how much you like to talk about it… there is some crap about being “created equal” but apparently not the gays.  Only self righteous right wing christian assholes like you are “equal”!

Republicans are some really vile human beings.

http://goo.gl/bT2Uv

If the New York times no-knead bread recipe inspired you to give baking your own bread a try, as it did me, you know one of the secrets to making it work is a cast iron dutch oven.  So I went searching and it turns out there were only a few options available that offered a decent balance between price quality and result!

When it comes to purchasing most anything I tend to be just the tiniest bit obsessive, maybe obsessive is not the best word… let’s go with very through about finding the best product for my dollar, mixed with a healthy dose of frugal.  I am a big believer in you get what you pay for, and always look to balance a good price with long-term value, if something is going to cost me 50% more it needs to of high enough quality so I will not have to replace it for at least twice as long as the lower quality item or you don’t earn my dollars!

I always prefer to buy from my local merchants, but lets face it sometimes they either can’t or simply don’t want to compete and in the global economy “local” starts to become relative.

Amazon is always my first stop for product information, not because I prefer them as a store but because they have excellent product reviews and their site is set up to suggest alternative products, just the thing for some great comparison shopping. If you want to know if a product is crap or not I really suggest reading the reviews on amazon, they don’t always have the best prices, and their website can be a bit annoying, but for honest feedback from people who have actually purchased something you are thinking of purchasing, can’t beat it.

After doing just a small bit of reading it was apparent that I wanted an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, I didn’t want to have to mess with seasoning one or maintaining a seasoned one, lest we forget I live in an apartment & seasoning a large bit of cast iron will be a smoke-fest… you are welcome neighbors!

After a couple of hours searching on the interweb the 2 best alternatives appeared to be, the Le Creuset or the Lodge Dutch Oven, there are a couple of other brands on amazonland but after reading the reviews I narrowed it down to these two, the reviews of the other brands were a mixed bag ranging from good to really bad and way too many poor quality control comments, it seemed like a crap shoot, you either get lucky or you don’t.

I also did some searches on google products and a couple of other shopping comparison sites, most of the same brands came up that I had found on amazon and not much more. The only other real contender I came up with was one from walmart, it had pretty good reviews, was about the same size and the price was about the same cost as the lodge, but the deal buster for me was the fact that the walmart product was a Chinese import and the lodge was made here in the US by a company that’s been around a 100+years (founded in 1896).  I do prefer to buy locally as I mentioned, but its all proportional these days, compared to china “Made in the USA” is local!  Result, I pass on the walmart knock-off, but being the cheap bastard I am if there had been a really big difference in the price I would have gone in that direction, but price being pretty equal, “Made in the USA” it is.

Le Creuset is the cast iron you see on all the cooking shows, the cooking vessel of choice of the celebrity chef.  Based on all the reviews I have read and some interweb based research Le Creuset always seems to come up as the best, but not by much at all compared to the lodge, and by far it is the most expensive as you can see from the link you would be lucky to find one for around $200.00 on-line + shipping and around $300.00 if you are shopping retail.  If you are someone who wants the best and have the budget to support it, then by all means buy the Le Creuset, but if you are someone like myself who needs to balance quality with budget, then it is time to do a little common sense decision-making.

I am going to way in here with a bit of opinion though, even if I had buckets of cash, I can’t see buying the Le Creuset, we aren’t splitting the atom here, we are talking cast iron, just how big a difference can there be when it comes to baking off a loaf of bread for gods sake.  If you really need to spend $300.00 and are seriously thinking of buying the Le Creuset don’t, get a Lodge Dutch Oven and donate the extra $250.00 to your local food bank!

This Lodge is the 6-Quart Dutch Oven I purchased, it was under $50.00 and came with free shipping (that’s a real gift considering the weight of the thing).  No-one could compete with Amazons price and even if they were a few dollars less the shipping cost was high enough (in a couple of instances almost $25.00, seriously!) to take me right back to amazon.

I have been using it for about 6 months now and frankly I love it, it turns out loaf after loaf of lovely crispy bread and I have ended up using it for so many other things that I just ordered a second one, I find myself wanting to use it to cook with at the same time I want to bake bread.  Do I think I would be getting a different result if I had popped an additional $250.00 for a fancy French name?  Not for one second, I am very satisfied with my purchase.

Lets Talk Knobs!

When you bake bread like this you need the dutch oven as hot as possible, depending on the recipe you preheat the oven to 450-500 degrees. The knobs that come on the dutch ovens (regardless of brand) are some sort of high heat polymer, but they can’t take much over 350-400 degrees without breaking down or off-gassing.  The knob needs to be replaced with a stainless steel one before you can use the dutch oven to bake bread in.

On the amazon product page for all of the dutch ovens it will suggest the purchase of the Le Creuset stainless steel Knob for $10.00.  I found one for $51.35 on ebay (I kid you not, Click Here for a photo).  I was in such disbelief I had to screen cap it, look in the lower right corner of the photo and notice it shows 1 Sold, and even better the feature graphic right next to the photo shows it ON SALE at 29% off, can you say: dumb-ass bought himself quite a knob! Clearly someone with far more money than brains.

HELLO…… let’s have a little common sense, it’s a fricken steel knob!  I picked one up a stainless steel cabinet knob on ebay for $1.00 with free shipping.  Then I headed off to the local hardware store with the knob in pocket to pick up the proper size screw and washers to attach it . Total paid $1.27 for knob and hardware, job done, and it works great. Here is a link to steel knobs on ebay, I picked up a “T” shaped one.

Bottom Line

If you want a great quality  fairly priced product, get the Lodge Dutch Oven (buy it on-line for your best deal)… If you want an unfairly priced import that will do your ego more good than it will do your loaf, get the Le Creuset and buy it full retail, after all reality is, it’s about your ego and feeling special, so might as well spend $300.00 rather than the $200ish you might get it for on-line so you feel extra special and elite.  I’m being a bit sarcastic about the french pot, but honestly for baking bread or really most anything will the extra $250.00 get you better results, I would be hard pressed to believe it!  If you really need to have something french, then get a La Cloche.

As I get a little older my eyes are not as optimized as they used to be for reading and the basic up close tasks, so last November I dumped my blackberry.  It has those tiny little buttons and it was a pain in the ass grabbing reading glasses every time I needed to use it, I ordered an iphone as a replacement mainly because of the larger everything, bigger letters for texting and big easy to read keyboard when I did need to manually dial a number.

I was looking at getting the google phone at the time but it had only just come out & wasn’t well-developed enough yet for me to be willing to commit, and I would have had to change carriers and since my business line is my cell phone, I really did not want to deal with that either, so I went with the iphone (3gs).

I regret (understatement) choosing the iphone, looking it as a phone only and nothing else (85% of my usage of it is just as a phone), the iphone is not a very good phone, in fact it really should be called the “idontphone” since it drops so many calls.  I am in the same places I have always been in when it comes to making calls, mostly from home and the entire time I had the blackberry it never dropped even one call (neither had the previous phone), the iphone drops calls constantly or as often as not does not even connect when dialing out, I simply get a “call failed” message, I would say at least 20% of my calls get dropped, or do not go through and I am being pretty generous with 20%.

As a Speaker Phone – It blows!

Most of the time when I am at my desk I prefer to use the speaker phone and the speaker phone on the iphone sucks mainly because most of the time I can’t turn up the volume up high enough to hear the people on the other end.  Once in a while I will get a call and its loud and clear coming through the speaker, but more often than not I am holding the speaker up to my ear almost as in it’s not on speaker… just as an FYI… if I switch off the speaker it’s usually too quiet on the regular phone as well…. so let’s go with it generally sucks as a phone. My eyes may be going, but my hearing is just fine, and again it is a problem I never had on my blackberry or the previous phone either.

How is the iphone battery life?

The iphone battery life sucks as well, my last phone I would only have to charge every few days, this thing is like a newborn that needs feeding every few hours, god forbid you should get it too far from the tit, or you are screwed.  Of course you can extend the battery life by turning off most every feature on the phone (the biggest power suck being 3g), and that begs the question then what’s the point of having a smart phone in the first place.

How about the fast 3g connection?

I can’t complain too much about 3g making my battery too dead because if I turn 3g on at home I will drop up to 70% of my calls instead of 20% as it usually does, since I have a home office and my cell is my business line, it is a bit of a problem.  So I have to turn 3g on when I’m away from my desk to get ok reception, but off when I am at my desk, a task that is buried in the phone settings and wastes enough of my time to piss me off…. I know shocker, me pissed… lest we not forget that when I do change the networks, my phone is unusable until it picks up on the different signal, something that is usually not instant!

Since I am usually out and about when I have the 3g turned on (when I remember to) I can’t bitch too much about its speed, but it really doesn’t seem to much faster (if at all) than whatever the connection was on my blackberry.  So is 3g all that, no it is not, it is more an annoyance than a feature for me.  The photo is a screen capture of my iphone in my living room and the signal strength when I use 3g, impressive isnt it.

Lets talk iphone apps!

One of the major selling points of the iphone is the vast number of apps available for it, big whoop, once you actually get the thing and look at the apps available about 90% of them are pure shit or they are so laden with advertisements that they are almost unusable (I have removed more than one because of that).  I do understand the app developers need to make a living & a free app usually has ads all over it so the developer can make a little cash, with most of the apps once you buy it the ads go away, fair enough but at least make it usable in the mean time.

Regardless you have to wade through an ocean of garbage to get to the occasional gem, I was looking forward to getting the iphone and the availability of all those apps and the rewards of having them, the reality is 70% of the time I install them and never use them again until I finally delete them off the phone, or they do not live up to what they say.

Example: I purchased an app called gpush, the idea of this is to help save your battery… and you already know why that is a must have, you install gpush tweak a few settings and instead of your phone having to make the trip to gmail every so often to see if you have mail, gpush sends your phone a notification that you have mail only when you do, and then you tell your phone to pull your mail.  Seems like a great way to save a little battery and its only a $1.99, so… I’m in.

Well it worked “most” of the time, then it didn’t work most of the time, then it worked sometimes, but mostly not, then it stopped working all together. I email the people who made it, no reply… I get onto their site and try every email address on the site…every single email bounces back… in the mean time there is a fairly old note on the site saying that they are aware of the issues and are working hard to resolve them..translation, we just gave up….bummer about your two dollars.  If you go to the app store as of the date I am writing this, it’s still for sale, but with a mile of complaint reviews below it. I wonder how many people still purchase it?

Not everything is bad in the app world there are a few I have downloaded and used quiet a bit, the main one I use more than anything is the one I keep my shopping list on, do I need a smart phone for that, not hardly!  There are a few games I use when I am board and stuck waiting somewhere for whatever & I usually do not pay for games I get the free ones listed on lifehacker’s deals of the day section.

Overall the apps can come in handy, but most of the time they go unused, if I were stuck on a train every day for a commute I would probably be more into them, but as a busy person, they are mostly “just there”

Regardless of what I install I usually use: phone, texting, the occasional email, and my calendar and reminders, and most any cell phone can do those things these days. So don’t be fooled by the  amazing life-changing apps, they are not amazing or life-changing, it’s mostly just toys.

WOO HOO, I got itunes!!!!!!!  Can I sync that for you?

If you have an iphone you are forced to use itunes, a piece of software I have come to quickly despise. You must be a windows or mac (bummer if you are a Linux) I am BTW, a linux user…. I knew the phone required one or the other to be installed, and I have windows (both xp and 7) installed as a virtual machines within my linux computer.  Just by my saying that you might get the impression I am a bit more tech savvy than the average cranky older person and I like to think you would be correct.  I’m the old guy the young guys call when they can’t figure it out, so It’s not like I do not know my way around a piece of software.  I also have a sweet powerhouse of a laptop (running xp), that I run the itunes software on, it became quickly apparent that itunes was a bit too high-strung to cope with virtual usb ports and other such nonsense.

I am also not a big giant blackberry promoter, it was just my last phone so it’s the easiest to compare the iphone to it, the other part of it is, it simply worked without any hassle or bullshit or hoops to jump through.  If I wanted to add music onto the blackberry or remove it, I plugged it into ANY computer dragged the music into the folder on the BB and job done, same thing with the photos or data.  It was simple straightforward and just plain worked, no software to install, no accounts to open, not restriction about what computer I need to use, no bullshit sync gizmo that constantly deleted what I didn’t want deleted and ignored what I wanted added.

As you might have guessed by now I’m no itunes fan either, what a needy pain in the ass piece of software that is, I get apple is the new microsoft, and its all about getting into your pocket and tying you to their music store and locking down the player so only they have control…. but OMG do you have to make it such a giant pain in the ass!!! Seriously! I can’t tell you the amount of time I have wasted dicking around with this fucking crap software, it is a nightmare.  I would be here for an hours if I were to write a litany of all the time suck bullshit I have endured just to get a photo on or off or add a goddamn piece of music to my phone.  You might be getting the slight impression by the dirty mouthed tone this has taken….well more  dirty mouthed than usual anyway… that I am a bit intense about this awful software and rightly so…. if you want your time WASTED  OFTEN… by all means… get some itunes love.

Ease Of Upgrade! MY ASS!!!!! Fuck You Apple!

This one is related to the itunes bs…  I sometimes astound myself at my blundering willingness to believe, in this case it was that if I upgraded my iphone to the os4 I MIGHT finally get better reception.  I officially confess I am a dumb-ass, I plug-in my idontphone, then itunes says….hey dumb asshole I have an update & would really like to hose you, can I?  Of course I agree after all its itunes, what could possibly go wrong.

It is supposed to work like this, you plug it in, it backs up your phone, installs the new os, restarts your phone, installs all your data back from the restore it took at the beginning of the process, job done.  Well in my case not hardly, it did everything up to the point where it restarted, then it tossed some non-informative error number onto the screen, and said it was done….. hmmmmm…  Doing a bit of googeling and I found out that error code was indeed, useless… there were thousands of hits about it and no answers, apparently it officially means… “something fucked up, bummer, and I am not going to help you fix it”.

Im not going to list the step by step, but it took 5 hours and 2 different computers to get my phone to boot up, and actually be usable again & for a while there I seriously thought all was lost, well in a way it was lost, because it did LOSE ALL MY INFORMATION.  I got it running and managed to get the apps I had back on it, but every single app lost its data, my contacts were all gone and all my photos were gone. I had to buy a $25.00 piece of software to extract my data out of the backup file it took… yes, that backup was good and all my info was there, it just wouldn’t actually reapply it.  So I had to buy this software, extract my contacts and info and photos then import them into my google contacts, then export them into my phone.  Except for the photos of course, we covered that drag and drop thing earlier, the simple solution there was (after setting up my ALL email accounts… ALL OVER AGAIN) was to mail the photos to myself then download them onto the phone, and no, as you are most likely thinking, that wasn’t time-consuming at all!

Of my photos, some were totally lost, apparently it did not backup all of them. Every single app was like I had never used it before, so I had to slowly over the next couple of days reconnect EVERYTHING, the one thing that totally pissed me off was I have an app that keeps usernames and passwords locked down, like a little secure vault.  It Erased EVERYTHING, and the next day I get a push notice from the app letting me know they had heard there was a bug and if I upgrade I might lose all my data…. oh… wow… thanks for that heads-up!!!

Upgrade bottom line: this is the LAST ONE my phone is ever getting, I am modifying the old saying “If it works, don’t fix it.” for my phone and going with “Even if it works badly, it’s better to go with that than the bullshit you will have to go through if you try to fix it and if you fail, your screwed out of a phone at all.” I know that’s just a tiny bit more verbose, but I’m going with it for now, I think I am going to print it out and tape it to the idontphone cable.

Summary:

This thing sucks kinda bad! If you are thinking about purchasing an iphone I suggest you rethink it, get most anything else, that is of course you would rather look good holding it, since you cant actually make a phone call most of the time… I am pretty convinced that the apps are only there to keep you busy while you wait to get some place you can find a signal! Android, here I come!

I decided a while back to learn how to bake bread, for a couple of reasons the biggest being I am a cheap bastard and it seemed a stupid waste of money to be spending $5.00+ every time I wanted a halfway decent loaf of bread, that most of the time turned out to be mediocre from the local grocery.

Only once before in my life had I taken on the task of producing a loaf of bread (the results were WAY less than satisfying) more accurately it was pretty awful and I haven’t tried since, I needed it simple and with as little hassle as possible.

Right around the time period I had been pondering becoming a baker… lifehacker.com had a story on no-knead bread & well, right place, right time.

I played around with it at first trying the no-knead recipe that has been floating around for the last few years published by the NY Times. This is a video of the original recipe.

Before you run off to make that, below is a version from Americas Test Kitchen that I find to be much better, the dough is way easier to handle. They add in about 30 seconds of kneading along the way, it improves the rise & frankly 30 seconds, who cares… that is miles better than standing there kneading for 15 min. I like it with just a touch more salt than the recipe calls for, if you use kosher salt as I do normally, double the amount in the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 oz), plus additional flour for dusting work space
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 3/4 cup, plus 2 Tblsp water(7oz), @ room temperature
• 1/4 cup, plus 2 Tblsp mild-flavored lager(3oz), such as Budweiser (I use ginger ale instead)
• 1 Tablsp white vinegar

Directions:

Whisk flours, yeast, & salt in a large bowl. Stir the honey into the water, then add the water, beer, and vinegar to the dry ingredients. Using rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until shaggy ball forms.

Cover bowl w/ plastic wrap & let sit @ room temperature 8 to 18 hrs.

Lay 12 by 18 inch sheet of parchment paper inside a 10-inch skillet and spray w/ nonstick cooking spray.

Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead 10-15 times.

Shape dough into a ball by pulling edges into middle.

Transfer dough, seam side down, to parchment-lines skillet and spray surface of dough w/ nonstick cooking spray.

Cover w/ plastic wrap, sprayed w/ cooking spray, and let rise @ room temperature for 2 hours.

About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven to lowest position, place a 6-8 qt. heavy-bottomed Dutch oven w/ lid on rack & heat oven to 500 degress.

Lightly flour top of dough, and using a razor blade or a sharp knife, make one 6-inch long and 1/2-inch deep slit along top of dough.

Remove pot from oven, remove lid, & place dough (by lifting parchment overhang), & lower into pot.(Let any excess parchment hang over pot edge).

Cover pot & place in oven.

Reduce temperature to 425 degrees & bake, covered, for 30 minutes.

Remove lid & continue to bake until loaf is deep brown & instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers 210 degrees, 20-30 minutes longer.

Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack & cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.

Makes 1 loaf, and is best eaten the day it is baked, but can be wrapped in aluminum foil and stored in a cool, dry place for up to 2 days.

This is a great way to get into baking your own bread without a lot of time suck, basically 10 min, and you have bread the next day…. I double or triple the recipe and toss the dough in the fridge, it will keep up to two weeks. Whenever I want bread I pull a chunk off leave it out to rise, pop it in the oven …yum!

When did training people to robotically and insincerely apologize over and over (in monotone) become a substitute for “actual” customer service?

I called chase last week to get them to lower the interest rate on my credit card, its a card I have had a long time, it has a zero balance and like most of America I got screwed just before the new credit card laws got put in place, every company I had a credit card with raised it’s  interest rate (notice the key word in that phrase HAD).

I dont keep that many credit cards and I am lucky enough to have pretty much no, or a very low balance of them all, but the ones that went insane, I closed the accounts… I had a visa card that actually raised the interest rate to 29% and change.  Seriously, do you really think I would keep that card, or better yet not notice?

Anyway I called chase & after being on hold way too mane times, and transferred a few too many times (I am  a bit tenacious when it comes to this sort of thing, just because the first tier person says no, I dont generally stop there).  I have found most of the time with larger companies all you have to do it ask…. PERSISTENTLY.

Not the case with chase, I have my banking with them and can manage my card and accounts from the same on-line interface, so if I’m going to keep a card I would prefer it be with them, just for that reason.  Chase waited until the very last second to raise the interest rate on my card, all the other companies raised the rates and sucked up any additional cash they could extort as early as possible.

I had been watching the interest rates on my card statements closely knowing this was going down all over the US, and I had thought, maybe these people are going to be smart enough not to jump on the ” let’s screw our customers just a bit more” bandwagon and were going to be forward thinking enough to realize they could snap up alot more customers if they were one of the few that didnt.

Well….. not so much, they were not as bad as visa at trying to extort money, but the interest rate I had went from 8.99% to 16%, not quite double.. my, how fair of them! So, I called and I cant tell you how many times I was apologized to, its not be any stretch of the imagination the only company its happened with.. but they did take it to an all new high… literally every other phrase was, please let me apologize for that, or I’m so sorry…. all said in total monotone and with out even a small amount of sincerity, they might as well have just played a tape.

Even the logic “you can have 100% of a zero balance card to earn interest from”, or you can lower the interest rate and I will actually USE the card… got me no-where, they were trained to not see the logic in, “you want something, or NOTHING”… and, yes after the last person I was willing to deal with, I closed the account.

They got nothing, and I put another company on my list of, “think you are ever going to get a single dollar out of me again, FUCK YOU” companies.

So, these days I have a cable internet connection, the last month or so its been intermittently quite slow… so I do the ordeal of calling comcast…. now called xfinity… because well, we aren’t smart enough to realize its still the same company with the same crap customer service.

Here is a link to a story about how most folks in the know are poking fun at what a joke it is. The name change was taunted by blogs and now Time has taken the mocking one step further, placing it at number one on a list of the “top ten worst corporate name changes” (even worse than Syfy!) even though technically Comcast isn’t changing their name. “Xfinity is infinite potential,”

Comcast executive David Watson tells Time:

“Comcast hopes the new moniker will help customers forget the high prices and poor customer service for which it has been criticized in the past.”   Hmmmm, changing the name and not the quality of the service totally works for me. I have already forgotten why I started writing this!

He totally earns the category, Yes, you are an asshole! Seriously I’m a month in and 3 different service guys, 100% lack of follow up and at LEAST 5+ min on the phone (every time) navigating through insanely annoying and never ending phone trees before I even get to be put on HOLD for a level one tech.. who then wants me to disconnect everything and run through the same bullshit tests I have done before… when the problem is CLEARLY happening before it even gets into my place….or hmmmm… why would all the neighbors be having the same issue.

So, now I just go … “why yes I have now bypassed the router and plugged the computer directly into the connection, no, no change… now what would you like me to do” while sitting there in reality playing a video game and telling the service tech the proper answer on her list of questions to get to someone that knows more than they do, not that it has done much good up to this point regardless! Comcast you Xsuck!!!!!

I am still doing this "looking for a new place to live" thing pretty aggressively, and it has been a bit of a revelation what people think of the places they have for rent

This for example keeps getting put up on craigs list & it must get reposted every other day.  Who ever owns it wants $700.00 a month for it and no matter what kind of bullshit you hang on the ad, well, just look at it .. if thats a cottage then fairy tales are realy nightmares wrapped in nice text!

Here is the ad

$700 / 1br – Cute Hideaway Cottage in Forest

Very cozy & well organized house with custom interior. Clean. Quiet
Semi-secluded clean cottage-like home in quiet forest setting.
1 bedroom. Full bath (tub/shower). NEW FLOORS.
Full kitchen with full sized range & fridge. Lots of windows.
Central forced air heat = LOW COST . . . Excellent condition.
3 closets, built in dresser drawers & cabinets + storage underneath.
Huge deck (pic only shows half of the deck) + Hidden porch in back.
It's on a private road. Safe & Natural setting.
Rent $700 for 1 person no pets, or $750 for 2 people. Much higher if pets.

Really? Much higher rent, are you that worried an animal could make it look bad?

I'm in the process of looking for a new place to live, mainly because my new neighbors are assholes… I know, you are thinking "your a pain in the ass yourself", so you just think they are assholes, when in fact…they are not.  Nope, I got outside verification on this, they are assholes. its not just me, in fact I am not the only one moving because of them… but that's not my point anyway.

I live in Bellingham, WA, its a killer place to live (but don't tell anyone I don't want the asshole population to increase, its mostly nice people here now).  I have been looking for a couple of months & have had the misfortune to call a number of the local property management companies enquiring about various properties that were available and as a result of that.

I refuse to rent from a property management company, apparently you are not allowed to work for one unless you are rude and abrasive, something I found consistent with virtually each one, it was frankly a bit shocking that they can treat people so badly and stay in business.  I know I can be a cranky bastard, but at least I'm polite and generally courteous.

It never hurts to network a bit when looking for anything, so I have asked dozens of people to let me know if they hear of a rental that might suit me, and NOT ONE single person has had ANYTHING positive to say about any property management company they have had contact with here in Bellingham. So that removes a good chunk of the available rentals from the pile, life is too short to deal with rude people.

Heads up if you are forced to deal with one of these assholes, these are some of the worst offenders in town… just do a 30 second google search and find out for yourself.

landmark property mis-management

This photo is pretty funny really, if you want to rent a total shit hole, these are the guys to call, not only are they about as sleazy as it gets, they manage nothing that looks this good!

chuckanut property mis-management

These guy take the prize for lack of service, bad manners and the general altitude that all the people that walk in are retarded morons, and they will treat you accordingly! Best of luck getting them to return a phone call.

Seriously, it is 2010 do something about your 1987 crap looking website made by somebodys kid, and really, that awful logo.

apex property mis-management

Lack of service, bad manners, and a love for fine print, that gets them into your pocket.. ask them what the $75.00 "administrative fee" is for when applying for a place (on top of all their other charges) and they cant really say…. that's apex speak for "we are just charging you because, well, we can!" My response was, you can put your fee where the sun doesn't shine I will look elsewhere!

I was on craigs list the other day looking for a cat, I'm hoping having a little furry thing around will help me be less pissed off (one can only hope).

Anyway I was browsing the ads and pretty much EVERY ad that was pimping cats asked for a "rehoming fee" are you kidding me? 

What kind of bullshit politically correct term is that… lets call a spade a spade you are SELLING animals, fucking idiots.

As I get older more and more things piss me off, I always assumed the opposite would happen, but no… ! So, being a bit of an old pissy geek…. we get a blog, it wont be all bad pissed off stuff, but mostly.  I will probably be the only one that finds it amusing or even slightly interesting, but that doesn’t matter, we all need to vent.