BillSaysThis

Here’s an email that came in today, apparently in response to this entry about the fun I’ve had with my HOA work, followed by my response. Was I too polite? Anyway, I quote verbatim, bad spelling, grammar and such intact, but will leave him nameless:

Why do you defend HOA’s? Oh thats right you are the pres of one. home come only board memebers love HOA’s and noone else does? HOA’s violate the Consitution and our American freedoms. They sicken me, defend them if you want after all your part of the problem but that will not change the fact that what you are doing to your fellow homeowners is busy body evil work. Do you pay their mortgage? NO, so why get in other peoples business then? We live in the USA, a great country. HOA’s are trying to take our freedoms away. Fine you might say then don’t buy a home in one. Almost all new homes come with a HOA so where is our freedom of choice? Oh and taking homes away from 70 year old homeowners, WOW don’t you feel good about that one! And HOA’s are in bed with laywers, you keep such good company. I thought Microsoft was evil but HOA’s take the cake!

——- end of his email

G,

I’m curious, you claim HOAs are unconstitutional but as far as I know there is no court decision ever handed down that makes this so–can you give me the citation? We have only five board members and 23 other owners, so obviously the non-board member owners could outvote or replace us if they had any interest in doing so. Yet in the three years or so I’ve been on the board, the other owners have not even attempted to overturn one decision or oust one board member.

You also say that these days almost every home is in an HOA so that homebuyers choice is an illusion. But in my neighborhood, not counting rentals, the single family homes by my informal count outnumber HOA units, so excuse me if I disagree.

Personally my reason for living in an HOA, other than financial considerations, is it makes my life easier. I have a management company that handles a lot of chores that my parents had to take care of for themselves.

And as for the homeowner in the story you read, that person bought into this development well over 20 years ago, when HOAs were far less common than they are today and certainly had plenty of SFHs to choose from if that’s what that person really wanted. If this place was considered truly as bad as you claim by the people who own the homes, there is even a process in the bylaws to dissolve the association but not even that person has suggested we start to dissolve.

Finally, when you pay MY mortgage, you are welcome to some small say in my living arrangements. Until then, get your own blog and post your opinions there. There are plenty of sites that will give you the software/service and hosting at no charge, I used to work for one of them–isn’t America great?

Regards,

Bill

One of my hot buttons, I guess you’d say, is companies that attempt to hype their offerings in stupid ways. Case in point is this weekend’s FX Network movie Redemption, an original production that tells the life story of Crips gang founder Stanley Williams. I don’t know much about Williams beyond the bare facts and an apparently astonishing reformation after spending years on Death Row, but I do know that all the advertising (and even the one newspaper review I’ve seen so far) make a huge deal about Williams having been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Woopty fucking doo! Tons of people are nominated every year for that award and being nominated and $1.35 will get you a medium cup of coffee at Clocktower! Now perhaps Williams has come to understand how sad, bad and tragic his younger life was, how much harm he’s done to other people in this world for so little good. Maybe he does regret all this and wants to spend his remaining years trying to put some good back into whatever he can.

But the FX executives ought to be ashamed of themselves for hyping the quality of this movie, or the story behind it, based on something as meaningless as this.

However… here’s one comment: Is TV Guide turning into TV Gossip? Nearly every issue over the last few months has featured an article that was worthless nattering and this week took the cover with speculation over how long the Simpson/Lachey marriage will last. The feature articles rarely rose above puffery–I’ve been reading or skimming for probably 35 years more or less regularly–but this is just sad and I’m glad the current subscription runs out in a few months.

All the while I was job hunting, I wondered what would happen to my blogging after work started. Now I know–I’m tired and way less inspired to do the writing. I don’t know how, say, Scoble and Garret do it but props to them. Maybe after an adjustment period things will snap back.

I haven’t followed hockey enough to make predictions for the playoffs this year. Of course I’m rooting for a Finals matchup of the Sharks and the Devils and, for a change, I think this is not completely out of the question. Of course some of the SpoFites are picking both teams to be upset in the first round, so no certain thing either but room to hope.

I’m watching the second half of the Detroit-Nashville opener and seeing why the Red Wings won this season’s President’s Trophy. When I turned the game on, about halfway through the second period, Nashville was up 1-0 and looking strong. But Detroit was dominant during an end of period Nashville power play and then in the first minutes of the third scored two goals to take the lead; they just have such depth and power that they can never be counted out. Sharks against Red Wings in the Western Finals would be a great matchup too.

A Few Minutes Later… Robert Lang gave the Wings a third goal a few minutes from the end and it was a beauty, a breakaway with only one defender on him in front of Nashville’s Voukun. No matter that the defender and Lang were falling down tangled in each other, Lang poked and prodded as he was sliding and twisted Voukun out of position and put the puck where it wanted to go. These guys are going to be tough to knock out.

At least I think so. No nudity but sex is the topic. Check for yourself…

At least now we know why Grum is called grum!

Of course the day after I post a note about how the work is draining, what would you expect to happen? Only the longest working day so far and a request from my boss to move to (near) full time status. The time off was fun while it lasted but I’m lucky (and glad to say) Intransa is great for me so far.

The one thing about working again that bugs me is being tired at night. We don’t have to get up any earlier, yet, but the emotional energy level is so completely different.

Watching hockey can be fun but not being able to see the puck or understand the rationale behind certain penalty call decisions hurts. OTOH, seeing the Sharks score two goals in the last 19 seconds of the game today, to force OT in the last regular season game, and then win on a massively aggressive effort in the extra period is suh-weet.

Released in 1973, Time Enough for Love is a massive work by SF grandmaster Robert Heinlein in which he combined two fairly different goals: a novel that covered much of the temporal territory of his Future History series and that also served as a forum to make clear his politics and morality. Especially the latter, which mainly says that all politics is about power over others, all religion is based on fear of the Great Void or, again, power over others, and that any and all sexuality is good as long as the interpersonal aspects are based on friendship and love (as opposed to, yes, power over others).

Though not as highly regarded or widely read as his 1960 modern messiah masterpiece Stranger in a Strange Land, this novel would be my preference between the two. The protagonist is Lazarus Long (I admit their might be some unavoidable bias due to the name), a man over 2300 years old as the story begins, and the book basically covers some biographical stories that allow Heinlein to indulge his sweet tooth in some transplanted Westerns and rebellions against authority. The last part of Time is a novella in which Heinlein apparently tries to relive his childhood with his mother as lover and inserts a time travel mechanism into his fictional multiverse. The connective tissue is how Long’s compadres renew his desire to live.

Heinlein continued exploring this basic character set in most of his books written subsequent to Love: the sequels include The Number of the Beast, The Cat who Walks through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. M.E. Cowan put together a very complete Heinlein Concordance, hosted by the Heinlein Society, including an entry for TEfL.

surely recommended

Despite all the hype 14 year old phenom did not start for DC United, though props to him for the cool Sierra Mist commercial with Pele. First game for us with Dominic Kinnear as head coach, no major changes to the squad though Brian Ching is back from injury and Cliff Ronier out for the season on a bad ankle.

Sloppy first half by the Quakes, no shots at all for Landon Donovan and goals by Moreno on a header off a free kick and Eskandarian on a defensive blunder for DC and Ronnie Ekelund scored San Jose’s on a penalty kick.

Disappointing job by the referee Kevin Scott, who stopped play on too many foul occasions when he should have allowed the advantage to play on and who missed a couple of obvious yellows to DC players. ABC’s coverage was mediocre, they must have mentioned Adu, shown him on the bench or mentioned/shown his Mom at least once every 60 seconds, and I didn’t care for the play by play by JP della Camera nor for the in-game interviews with the coaches either.

DC United blew two empty net opportunities early in the second half, Convey the first time and Stewart the second. Good goal work by Onstadt to make up for defensive blunders.

Adu came on around the hour mark for second goal scorer Eskandarian, getting a standing ovation from the home crowd. Donovan finally got a shot off about the 65th, a blast which Rimando was able to leap and block off to the side. Quakes actually seem to finally be getting a rhythm, putting pressure on the offensive third. With just under 20 minutes left, Brian Ching comes on for Ronnie Ekelund and Donovan will drop back to let Ching play in the box.

Almost immediately after, Quakes defender Craig Waibel (the guy with the multi-colored goatee) gets sent off for a late harsh tavkle, a really bad call, even the color guy is saying the ref blew another one. Have to play the last 15 or so with ten men. After some sloppy play Scott called another red, this time on United’s Kovalenko, for a nasty elbow to the face which the league has warned are going to be called every time; Kinnear put on another out and out striker, Jamil Walker, now that the sides are even at 10 men.

Adu got alone in the box in the 83rd and went down under close marking but didn’t get a foul called–welcome to MLS, Freddy! Fouls and physical play all over the field, a yellow to Ben Olsen. Four minutes of stoppage time, giving us some hope but DC has had much of the last few minutes’ possession. Donovan not playing well at all, bad passes and dribbling. Nerves, nerves, can we get the equalizer??? NO, dammit, the second half whistle blows and we go down.

Following up on the Sun-MS deal, the oft-criticized Orlowski presents a well-developed, interesting perspective that essentially boils down to: What is Sun’s defining mission going forward? There are some rumors that one outcome of this will be Sun adding Windows, at least the server versions, to its price book!

The money’s nice, and I’m not sure the legal challenge presented any better future for the company, but this doesn’t bode well for Sun’s future that I can see. HP has its PC, printing and digital media businesses and IBM has its Global Services group accounting for more than half of revenues but Sun has none of that. Especially damning is that a few years ago, when stock prices were still high and shares could be used like Monopoly money for acquisitions, both of those server competitors bought major consulting practices but even though many were urging Sun to do the same, McNealy refused and I think now the company will be paying the price for his arrogance.

A personal note: I have a feeling that this new round of layoffs will pretty much cost all my remaining friends their jobs. Hey, Intransa’s hiring!

By day of the week, more or less:

• Las Vegas
  

• Red Cap
  

• BBC America Mystery Monday (Wire in the Blood, Waking the Dead, Rebus)
  

• 24
  

• NYPD Blue
  

• The Shield
  

• Nip/Tuck
  

• Enterprise
  

• Smallville
  

• That ’70s Show
  

• Angel
  

• Law and Order
  

• South Park
  

• Friends
  

• Tru Calling
  

• Tripping the Rift
  

• Without a Trace
  

• Stargate SG-1
  

• Joan of Arcadia
  

• Monk
  

• Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
  

• Trust
  

• SNL/Mad TV
  

• Sopranos
  

• Deadwood
  

• Carnivale
  

• The Wire
  

• Six Feet Under
  

• The Simpsons
  

• Alias
  

• Arrested Development
  

• The L Word
  

• Jeremiah
  

• MI-5
  

• English Premier League

Iffy:

• Charmed
  

• Scrubs

Laugh if you got’em!

Liv Tyler is who Sherilyn Fenn wanted to be.

Scoble alerts me to news I find simply shocking: Sun and Microsoft have settled their legal differences. Slashdot has a discussion and The Register has an article. Biggest parts of the news to me are that:

• Sun gets $2 billion cash from the nearly bottomless MSFT coffers;
  

• Sun drops all outstanding litigation–meaning their very significant antitrust lawsuit–pending against MSFT and neither company will sue each otherover patent issues for the next 10 years;
  

• Sun is firing yet another 10% of its employees, meaning it has now dumped over 14,000 employees (out of what was 44,000) since 2001 and I truly wonder what this will mean in terms of product development; and,
  

• Sun promoted software head Jonathan Schwartz to president and chief operating officer, giving McNealey a bit of support he hasn’t had since Zander left and announced preliminary Q3 results of a loss in the 6-8 cents per share range not counting extraordinary items, below Street expectations.

On this news, MSFT stock is up 2.31% (58 cents) while SUNW is up 19.81% (83 cents).

Internet infrastructure: how does the physical infrastructure of the internet cross oceans? Big ass cables! (AskMetaFilter, I just wanted to put big ass cables in the blog.)

The Summer will see a lot of big matches. The top European national teams will try to take the quadrennial contental title at Euro2004 while most of the Western Hemisphere’s national teams will begin their 2006 World Cup qualification rounds (the US plays a home and home with Grenada in mid-June). So in a day for international friendlies, 21 in Europe, how did we do?

Well, for starters, I watched as the Americans pitched a 1-0 shutout over Poland, who beat them in the previous, more meaningful 2002 World Cup meeting. Brad Friedel made a decent showing in goal (where was Tim Howard?) though he was rarely challenged and did not handle a couple of late balls as well as one might desire and in a more important match would probably have led to problems. DaMarcus Beasley was really strong, scoring the only goal and showing nice maturity and width. Coach Bruce Arenas used most of the Americans playing in Europe in this game and is still trying to choose the best 18 or so for the qualifiers, with only an April 28 game against Mexico and a still to be settled opponent June 2 to prepare.

A lot of the Liverpool players were in action but did not fare as well. England lost 1-0 to Sweden and this put Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerard and Emile Heskey down in a game they really wanted to win. Jerzey Dudek was another loser, handling the goal for Poland, though except for Beasley’s shot through Dudek’s legs he answered what little power the US showed. Milan Baros scored a goal for the Czech Republic but his squad lost 2-1 to Ireland; this was the Czechs’ first loss in 20 games, so perhaps a good time to losen up a bit ahead of Euro2004. Bruno Cheyrou played the second half of a goalless draw for France at Netherlands. On the brighter side, Dietmar Hamann scored for Germany as they defeated Belgium 3-0 and Harry Kewell played for an hour in Australia’s 1-0 victory over South Africa.

Because some people refuse to go GUI: DR-DOS 8.0 ships [via Larkfarm]

The WB unveils the new Batmobile and boy are those tires big! Is it me or does the new bat logo seem awfully LotR-influenced?

Why is ManU new boy Louis Saha proclaiming that Arsenal’s Henry is better than teammate Van Nistlerooy? Trying to put a spur under his man’s heels ahead of this weekend’s FA Cup semi-final where the two will matchup and in which Saha cannot play? One can only hope. Then again, Saha is Henry’s teammate on the French national side and perhaps looking to help his place ahead of Nicholas Anelka.

The decline of Western Civilization is nigh: a Harvard professor was so caught up in a 419 scam that he raised over $600k from his fellows allegedly for SARS research that actually fed his own predators! Prof. Xu refuses to admit he himself was being victimized though he did admit his own fraud; guess that’s typical of almost any ego.