I actually don't love trash -- but Oscar the Grouch claims he does.
Sunday morning the kiddos and I took our good friend to visit a new park very close to us. It was hot. I had totally under estimated the weather change overnight. A family was setting up for a graduation party in the shelter house. The breeze would keep them cool, but it was going to be a hot day.
As we walked towards the playground, I noticed some soda cans. I picked them up, then I happened upon a plastic Walmart bag. Then I found some random water bottles. Then I was on a mission. I cleared the playground area of litter with the help of my friend. We filled the bag and then some. The playground area is not that big.
Seriously. There are trash cans in the park, are they every two feet, no but my thought is if you can carry it into the park, you can carry it back out with you, or to the nearest trash can. How lazy are people?
I think litter and littering is the sign of a less than intelligent person. I can excuse many flaws, littering is not one of them. It is just plain lazy. Honestly, if you are picnicking and the wind carries away a napkin, then that is one thing, to drink a soda and just throw the can on the ground, well that is just lazy.
I think littering speaks to a person's character and it says nothing complimentary. Littering shows a lack of respect for yourself, others, others' property and public property. The City has spent big money (our tax money) to create a green space for us to enjoy, the least any of us can do is be committed to keeping it litter free.
In fact if you litter, I am inclined to think you are a stupid girl (or boy.)
H and I were busy today, minding our business and tackling house projects, planning a nice lunch out, when bang, bang, bang - this horrible noise shook the pipes in the basement.
I was downstairs hanging laundry and yelled up at him to go see what was causing that banging outside. It was a random guy. This random guy told H he was surveying the gas lines.
H came in to call the gas company.
I marched outside and told the guy he cannot be on my property without first knocking on the door and introducing himself and telling he plans to bang the shit out of my gas meter.
He informed me if he had to knock on everyone's door he wouldn't get anything done.
I told him he had no right to be assaulting my property with my permission and he needed to move it along.
At no point in time did he offer to show either H or I his ID or his work orders. His truck is basically a beater with stick on signs.
No PUCO permit numbers, no phone number... not helpful in the verification process at all.
H held with Columbia I am a Pain in the Ass, oops I mean Gas Company for a bit but when he found out it was going to be a 30 minute wait and the guy had left, he hung up. I posted the above photo to the Homeowner's Association Facebook page and tried to google his company. I contacted a company from Fairfield, Ohio who while they have the same name ARE a different company, as they sent a guy out to check on us. He also saw this truck in the neighborhood and assured me my random guy was not with them. This is a good company folks - they were genuinely worried one of their employees had gone rogue... They get an A+ in customer service from me, and let's face it, I seldom hand those out.
This made me feel worse NOT better.
I tried again to find a number for the "Premier Utility Services", who visited my house today. No luck. I nosed around the BBB, PUCO and Columbia Gas's website. Nothing. No mention of a project in this area, nothing.
As I left the development to run errands, I spot the truck and I stop and take more photos. (I love my iPhone. It's camera is powerful.)
Then at my mom's, I try yet again to locate a phone number for this company. Nada.
I then called the police and file a report. What other resources did I have. He was behaving in a suspicious manner. He offered no ID, no work orders and no project specs and fled when I ordered him off my property. You hear about these scams all the time. People posing as utility workers, who aren't. The PUCO did a public service campaign urging people to only allow people with IDs into their homes and onto their properties.
Just tonight a Facebook friend posted that her neighbor's A/C unit was ripped off their house, leaving all sorts of exposed and live wires. Who is to say this guy was not casing my gas meter, with designs on stealing it for its metal content.
It really would have been so much easier had this guy been polite, knocked on our door, warned us he was going to be making some noise as he surveyed the gas lines. (Maybe he could have explained why and how one surveys gas lines. Please if you know, the comments are open.)
I am not holding my breath, that I will ever really know if this guy was legit or not. I have alerted the authorities. I am sharing my story in order to alert other people near and dear to me, I have photos. Should the PUCO, Columbia Gas, or the police contact me, I will gladly share my photos.
If my gas meter malfunctions, I have proof that it was not H or I who messed with it, I can prove that I attempted to verify with the proper people, who was messing with my meter. Columbia, I am a Pain in the Ass, I mean Gas Company cannot pin this on us.
It just isn't good business to enter someone's property and then do stuff with their gas meter - without telling them first. On so many levels this guy was raising suspicions and making it appear that he was not legit. So it is one of two things - he is legit but very poorly trained, employed by a company with zero interest in customer care OR he is not legit and I hope he gets caught, before he hurts himself or someone else.
H picked this movie and we watched it Sunday night. If you follow my Twitter Stream, you likely know I was pretty fired up. For those of you new to the blog, I worked for Merrill Lynch. I held a series 7 license (which is issued by the NASD - a self regulatory body) and I now have an MBA.
I have been critical of Wall Street and US corporate practices for years. Even though I used to read the Wall Street Journal and Barron's cover to cover, I had no idea, until I watched this movie, that many of the key players and architects of the 2008 Wall Street Meltdown, are now serving in President Obama's cabinet or on various economic counsels. They aren't in jail, which is where they should be, they are now, currently making money, writing rules or more correctly prohibiting rules from being written, which could realistically prohibit this kind of criminal conduct from happening again.
I remember listening to this interview with Obama during the blooming crisis and thinking, yes that is what we need. Finally, someone who is going to limit the fox guarding the hen house practices. I was wrong. He did nothing, actually he did worse than nothing, not only has our President not pushed for targeted reform, he has put in positions of power some of the key players, who either should have done more to prevent this implosion or who were active participants in the implosion, those who profited from the implosion, into key power posts.
Furthermore - one of the reasons this should be unacceptable to all of us, is WALL STREET is a rigged game. I will tell you how Lehman and Merrill and AIG, ended up with investment grade credit ratings of AAA and A2, it is because it is a secret society based on the you scratch my back, I will scratch your back. The regulators are FRIENDS with the heads of these investment banks, as the film points out, the cycle of regulator, to BIG NAME BANK POWER BROOKER, to BUSINESS SCHOOL PROF is a vicious cycle, throw in board member or two and you have profitable cycle for these clowns.
Just as the narrator in this clip points out, it was not true that the regulators were aware of this mess, they weren't aware because they weren't looking. They trusted their friendships and likely were grooming those friends for future personal gains, like jobs and board appointments when their stint as a public servant was complete. What was good for the US tax payer and investor was the last thing on their minds.
Now I am sure you are all wondering - what is a CDO or a CDS and why is Susan all upset that they were being rated AAA and why is this such a big deal.
I will tell you, or more correctly I will let this movie clip sum it up for you...
I used to work with some debt and here is the deal AAA is the best rating, CREDIT RATING (think credit score) a company or in the debt world - Issuer can get. Government securities are AAA. Investment grade paper is in the A ranges. Anything less than that and it gets riskier. Anything much less than a B, and it is junk... Not as in no one should buy it, but junk as in, it is low rated paper, HIGH SPECULATIVE. You might get rich with junk bonds, but you might also lose the entire investment. Junk Bonds are not for pension funds or little old ladies. Junk Bonds are alot like the roulette table in Vegas.
These credit swaps - were less than junk. They are crap. As the clip points out - the underlying mortgages were high risk mortgages, made to people, who were likely not going to be able to make the payments and with no equity in the house, it was like renting and they would just walk away. This is what happened. This is not a AAA rated recipe for investment success.
The entire movie made me hopping mad, but I honestly think this is one part that really made me crazy.
Credit ratings are NOT just OPINIONS. They are a basis for entire system of investment. They define what is salable to certain segments of the investing public. More than once I or one of my colleagues got called on the carpet for selling someone a bond, with a questionable credit rating, based on some industry agreed upon conventions. I mean in the manager's office, defending my choice. Once, the sale was voided and the lose in price from day one to day two came out of my paycheck. I have known brokers who have been fined or lose their jobs for selling customers securities, which were deemed unsuitable, based on credit ratings. They are not just opinions.
It is my opinion that these lying sacks of shit, should all be on a garbage barge in the North Atlantic. These Credit Swaps were a HUGE ponzi scheme and we threw Madoff in jail for life and in the grad scheme of things he was but a bank robber in a sea of what amounts to full on, systemic and planned fraud. Not one of the architects of this mass implosion, which was felt around the world, has gone to jail, gone to trial. Likely they are all still working on Wall Street in some capacity.
This is wrong. The feds took down Eliot Spitzer, I think, in part to shut him up. What he did was wrong, no doubt, but no different from what Wall Street power brokers have done for years. Is it really any surprise to anyone, that the defacto "red light distract" of NYC is so bloody close to Wall Street? The issue is Mr. Spitzer burned through his cache of power, while the Wall Street hot rods still hold all the power, up to and including the President of the United States of America.
Something must be done to prohibit regulators from moving into business schools, to corporate boards and high level investment bank positions, people who once held high level positions in investment houses have no business being regulators. It is a fraternity (with a few woman thrown in), with secret handshakes and armies of lawyers, who do not have the public's good at heart, they want to enrich themselves.
And we the tax payers - gave them more money to play with...
So Regina - comments negatively on parents wanting her to move so they can sit together on the travel blog I mentioned in the previous post:
Pick your seats when you book so that you all sit together! Wow, I really had to wrack my brain to come up with that one! As is so often the case, people with children think the whole world revolves around them. If they can’t be bothered to choose their seats ahead of time, tough luck. Don’t expect others to give up their seats for you. Flight attendants should not buy into that nonsense and it’s appalling that they would try to guilt people into it. I totally agree with Raven – I choose an aisle seat for a reason and I’m not giving it up.
Thanks Regina - I never would have thought of that. That is why I actually did that when I booked my full fare tickets on Continental's website. I did not go discount, I did not look for the cheapest fare - I bought my ticket directly from the service provider, providing the service I am buying. I even took care to book seats in the back of the plane, the seats no one really wants. It was a 737, I booked ABC and yep, Regina, I was going to spend the three hours in dreaded middle seat.
Here is the deal, there are some parents out there who are clueless and insensitive to those also traveling. Flip the coin? There are some travelers who are really clueless and insensitive about kids. News flash, those kids paid the same fare you did. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Children are not plague. Nor are they put on this earth to make your life, Regina or those like you, miserable.
Let's go back to my example. I did not create the travel bru ha ha. Continental did. They separated me from my children. It was not sloppy planning onmy part. I was not looking to sit with my kids, because I want to be difficult. It is for safety reasons first and foremost, that I sit with my children. L and E are little children. I would not allow them to ride in a car with a stranger. I would have children's' services on my case of I put them on the bus alone.
Let's think this through, in the event of an emergency is a stranger really going to want to deal with my hysterical child, while I am 10 rows forward. I think not. Is that same stranger going to want to deal with the spilt apple juice, crushed crackers, or other issues, which are NORMAL for children to experience?
This is my response to Regina and other people commenting on the blog:
@Regina – I did. I picked my seats with CO. I was traveling solo with my kids ages 5 and 7. Due to an equipment change, we were scattered all over the cabin. Not acceptable. Southwest is cattle call and you take your chances. When I booked with CO, I selected seats together. Ergo in my mind, I paid for seats together.
@ Everyone else – Really? On a 3 hour flight, late in the day, who but me, wants to fly with my kids??? Do you, Mr. “I want the aisle seat” want sit with my tired, hungry and now SCARED 5 year old. Being over 10 rows from mommy is a panic inducing moment for most 5 year olds. Do you Mr. “I plan to stretch out and nap with my leg room” really want to sit next to my chatty 5 and 7 year olds, separated from mommy? Both of my kids talk a mile a minute, which I try to mitigate for the sake of those around us, if I am separated from them, there is little I can really do. I cannot shush them from 10 rows away and you - just don't have the authority or right to be rude to my kid. Let’s not even talk about kicking the seat. Again if I am next to them, I am there to nip that in bud. 10 rows away, what am I going to do to stop that. Do you have their toys, their lovey, their mp3 player, crayons or books. No I don’t think so.
Had I not booked ahead and selected seats together – I could see this being my “problem” the reality is – families with small children do not just “want” to sit together – it frankly is the only things that makes sense.
Did I mention that I called CO twice the day prior, I tried in CMH and IAH repeatedly to get us reseated appropriately, safely and sanely (cuz I gotta tell you a book and nap has a certain appeal, but my kids are my responsibility and no one elses’) and then having failed, appealed to the lead FA, who ignored me. So yes, my crying kids clinging to me, did manage to get us back together again. But really? It SO did not have to be like that.
I was not asking for special treatment. I was asking for sensible treatment, which I had paid for and dearly. Furthermore, I reached out to the service provider - Continental - asking them to correct their error. They changed the equipment or merged flights or something and as a result, they busted up our seating. Don't ask me to pick seats and then sprinkle us around the plane on a whim, knowing full well I am traveling with small children, to the detriment of everyone. No one, certainly not Regina it would seem, wants to sit with or near my 5 or 7 year old but nor do they want to make the sacrifices to get us back together, so that I can care for them properly on the flight. That is my role. It is no one's job but mine to care for them during the flight. That said, I cannot care for them properly if Continental makes such egregious errors in judgment and then refuses to correct it. No less than 7 Continental employees failed to provide any of us with the correct and sensible level of service. This was a process failure at its finest.
So next time you want to jump on the parents traveling with children and wanting special treatment - let's take a deep breath. Sometimes they are boneheads. Sometimes they are getting the screws put to them, by companies who want to take their money and not deliver on the services promises.
Susan, calling St. Michael's and getting hung up on. (bonus points if you know the book title I am playing with here.)
For my new readers, my mother in law passed away November 2006 after nearly a year long battle with congestive heart failure and renal failure. She was a parishioner of St. Michael's and until she was too ill, she sang faithfully in the choir.
That said she has been gone almost 4 years. H and I had her mass at his home church in his home town and then as she had requested, we made a donation to St. Michael's and asked that a mass be said in honor of her death.
It should be noted that H and I currently do not practice any particular faith for a variety of reasons.
Yesterday in our mail, was a letter from St. Michael's, on St. Michael's letterhead, addressed to my mother in law, requesting her pledge to the Bishop's annual fund.
Are you kidding me? She is dead, if her faith is to be believed, she is hanging out with angels and singing a heavenly tune. Furthermore, for us mere mortals, I distinctly remember both H and I calling St. Michael, in 2006/2007 - informing them of her death. I might have actually written a letter. I did alot of letter writing on her behalf that winter.
I found yesterday's letter to be in extremely poor taste and insensitive. This is not the first time in four years St. Michael's has solicited a dead person for money. With reincarnation, this might actually make sense, but given that she is dead and I am not counting on her coming back, the polite and sensitive thing to do is remove her name and our address from their mailing list(s.) One would think there would be a procedure for that.
In my mind it would work something like this -
1. Get notice of parishioner's death
2. Delete name from master mailing list
3. Once a month, update all committee lists.
In the world of email and word processing, it is really that simple. Four years hence, there is simply no excuse.
So I called.
I spoke to who ever answered the phone. I explained that I found it to be insensitive and rude for them to soliciting money from my mother in law who is deceased. I explained that we have contacted them a few times in the past.
She began to make excuses and I cut her off. I explained that their administrative inefficiencies were not my problem, but that I wanted us removed from the any and all mailing lists. Before I could finish my sentence, she hung up on me.
Yes, let's type that in BOLD.
THE WOMAN AT ST. MICHAEL'S WHO ANSWERED MY CALL AT ABOUT 2PM on APRIL 28, 2010 HUNG UP ON ME.
Where is her grace and humility is what I would like to know.
So I called back (but then you all knew I would.)
I called back and asked for the priest and instead got his voice mail, so I left a very clear message as to how I felt about being hung up on and how I felt about getting a letter on their letterhead, four years after my mother in law passed away asking for money. I shared with him we are not members of his church, nor do we intend to be and could he do the right thing already and get us off the mailing list(s). I also suggested that whoever was answering his phone needed to look deep and find her humility and grace.
It is bad business to solicit money from dead people and it is rude to hang up on people. If you want to run a campaign asking for money, then you need to scrub your lists and make sure it is accurate. You wanna play in the big leagues. Act like a big league player.
I have no patience for excuses or people who are rude. She should be fired and St. Michael's should have to pay a fine, that is what happened when I worked at Merrill Lynch. If we solicited someone who had asked to be removed from a calling list or a mailing list - we got fined.
And no, I am not in a charitable mood, thank you for asking.
Oh no, stop the presses, Black Friday Deals have been leaked. (So says the Yahoo headline and I say, "Like I care.")
I would not go to (Insert favorite retailer) at 4 am or 5 am or anytime on Black Friday. It could all be free (and we know I am totally opposed to paying full price) and I still would not go.
The entire concept of Black Friday is stupid. It is a bad strategy I think to hang your entire years profitability on one day or a single season.
I refuse to drive anywhere on that day. When I worked downtown and had to work the day after Thanksgiving, I walked the long way or took the bus. When I worked in the burbs, I did not have much trouble, but the mall parking lot was always full.
It is well and duly established that I am more "Bah Humbug" than "Merry Merry" and this is part of the reason. Normal, reasonably rational people, lose their minds this time of year and it all starts on Black Friday.
My shopping is more or less done.
I plan to be home with the kiddos on Black Friday and if the weather is nice, we will go to the park. It is my aim, to spend nothing on Black Friday, just be contrary and bucking the trend!
My idea of a perfect holiday season. It starts December 21 and ends December 26. There that would be more than enough "season" for me.
I am already over the Christmas music and it is not even Black Friday yet!
But how successful the settlement will be remains to be seen. The New York law firm Grais & Ellsworth is organizing a coalition of mortgage investors to contest and possibly sue Bank of America over the plan. The plan, the law firm said on its Web site, "will violate the rights of the investors in the securitizations of (Countrywide's) loans."
Greed. Greed. Greed.
I have stated the bail out is not going to work and this is why. Humans are naturally greedy. They want what is "theirs" despite the potential problems associated with that GREED.
While I think everyone should pay what they owe on their mortgages, and they need to be held accountable for their actions and this includes signing on the dotted line for a mortgage, there is some value in working with them to get the mortgages paid and keep them in their houses.
Having a million people default on their mortgages is WAY bad all around. It is bad for local communities (hello the down side of property tax being the financing method for state and local government and school distracts.)
It is bad for real estate professionals - who pay big time taxes for each sale they are paid on.
It is bad for communities because if people lose their homes a good number of them will enter the ranks of the homeless.
I could go on and on.
I admit the bailing out of these people, some of whom did not qualify for a traditional mortgage is egregious, but the alternative is unpalatable also.
For the folks who are now going to get reduced payments out of their CMOs - the people you should sue is not the banks trying to work out a payment arrangement, which sure cuts into the return of your investment, but it creates cash flow nonetheless. The people you should SUE is the jackass who sold it to you and the dishonest guy who packaged the bad debt right along with the good debt!
These mortgage pools - are a nothing more than packages of crap and I still do not see anyone getting carted off to jail because they committed fraud and let's all be honest - it is fraudulent to sell pools of mortgages in which the top line items are clean A rated paper and the rest of it is not even worthy of being toilet paper. They who bundled it, organized it, sold it, rated it and so forth need to spend some time in a dark hole, with the prospectuses they printed for the CRAP as their only source of toilet paper and then I might feel vindicated. I might be motivated to say that their punishment was sufficient. MIGHT!
As always the rats on Wall Street, those who played fast and loose with the rules are laughing all the way to their bank in the Caymans and that my friends - is the real shame of it all. We pay so they can continue to play.
Remember the adage - K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid. Well someone in the school distract forgot what the hell it meant. They are on their 3rd new math curricula in less than 5 years.
I fail to see how hard it is to teach kids math. I am NOT a teacher, but I am good at math, I have always been decent at math - until like Calc 2 and the numbers suddenly aren't real and frankly I am only into MATH that involves things I can count. I hated Geometry because my brain just does not work that way. I can do percentages and simple calculations in my head and I get what numbers mean, when presented in fancy charts and graphs.
Well the geniuses in the central office of our school distract have blown a ton of money on yet another useless math program. This one involves US at home spending a ton of time trying to sign onto a website - which is poorly designed and just plain crappy. It does not show the kids which letter they clicked on to answer the questions (yeah does not darken the circle - did these people not learn anything from the years of taking tests using a scan tron answer sheet?) It does not record their work and on the work sheets and practice "pages" you cannot type the numbers but rather you have to draw them free hand with the mouse! WTF? Did I mention it does not work with any number of browsers.....
It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to A) try to get us signed on using any number of browsers. B) try to find the homework, C) try to figure out how you do the worksheets and D) to draft an email to the teacher telling her that this program IS crap and L will not be doing her homework on the computer. I learned MATH with pencil and paper and L will too! I can sharpen pencils - this piece of shit the School Distract paid big bucks to adopt - well one of them can come over here and waste 1 hour and 45 minutes trying to get it to work or they can write me a check for $55 - roughly what I charge my clients when I write for them. Because I am done wasting my time and L's frankly. We lost a ton of nice weather and daylight fighting with that stupid website.
The kicker - there is a help desk - open M-F 8 am to 4 pm - the same hours she is school. Right - hardly helps those of us trying to use the crappy site. Oh wait - they knew it was crap and set the hours accordingly.
The kicker - I downloaded the Amazon Video on Demand player and a movie in my first try and we watched the movie tonight. So I have to say - that the problem lies with the crappy math curricula and website and not my technical prowess.
Still all itchy and now I have a reddish rash.... not full blown hives but damn near close and OMG am I itchy and cranky and bitchy.
Seriously I have not changed soaps, started eating anything new and excited, eaten anything from the rather lengthy list of NOs, and God damn it I seriously cannot stop eating anything else!
