Rants

A co-worker came up to me the other day and said, “Check this site out, Realtors are mad because they have to pay for this, and it’s out there free now.” Riiight. Check it out for funzies.

Zillow.com Your edge in real estate.

I typed in my address and it said my house was worth $126k. It says that a year ago it was worth $99k. It also says I have 3 bathrooms and 1887 sq. ft., when we only have 2 baths and about 400 square feet less. Plus they show my house about a 1/4 mile away from its actual location.

But at least that explains the $239k starting price on a house about 6 further down the road. They must have checked Zillow.com, which says $193k or a similar service and then jacked up the price to allow for negotiating. I hear that after the open house and a month on the market it is down to listing for $199k.

Sprouting out of lawns everywhere are another indication that spring is here – For Sale signs. On our street, in the 1/4 mile to the stop sign, there are 3 houses for sale. Well, technically only two because when the realtor put up their sign at one house, it already had the cute SOLD banner across the top.

What’s up with the blue lines in the snow? I can almost understand the ones that are marking a corridor down the hill, but if you don’t get points off for skiing outside the lines, why bother? And just what purpose do the ones perpendicular to the course serve? The lines are all fuzzy too. This is the Olympics, man, every 4 years, big worldwide audience, couldn’t you get them a little sharper?

Super G? Is there a Regular G?

Giant Slalom, same question? (And is it just me or does the word slalom look misspelled?)

Curling. Enough said.

If Skeleton is the opposite of the Luge, why don’t we have Backwards Bobsledding?

I’m thinking that those women’s ice dancing costumes might be sexy with all that “skin” showing, if they didn’t look like they were designed by the eliminees of Bravo’s show Runway.

Who designed the medals? They look colored CDs on a ribbon. And why does it take 6 people 10 hours to make one?

So far the coolest thing about the Olympics was in the surreal opening ceremony, red-clad in-line skaters with specially designed flame-shooting helmets. I gotta get me one of those. Wait here while I go check Ebay….nope, but it is only a matter of time.

Since rejoining Netflix on New Years’ weekend I have viewed and returned 6 discs. Every time I have mailed one back it has been received the very next day. The same day they have received a returned disc they have mailed one back to me. Four of the six have arrived in my mail box the very next day. The other 2 spanned a weekend, one of which was a 3-day holiday, which made the disc’s arrival a little late.

Movie #7 is another story, the sixth disc got back them the next day, a Wednesday, but the email informing me my next selection was shipped didn’t come until the next day, Thursday. The email informed me that I should expect my movie on or about Monday, not the expected Friday. So has Netflix started throttling me already?

In my quick research tonight on the subject, it seems that most people are experiencing this “smoothing” in relation to New Releases. That is definitely not the case with my next selection, Written on the Wind from 1956. But I also read that Netflix was aiming at keeping it’s subscribers cost to rent at around $2 a disc. The throttling is well documented, with the internet publishing of a customer service rep’s reply to a subscriber and the class action suit settlement. The $2 limit is hearsay for now, but seeing as I’m on the $10 a month plan, it appears that this slowdown for disc#7 is about right to keep me at that magic number.

First we added bread sticks. Then it was stuffed crust pizza. Then two crusts with one on top. We’ve had Thin, thick and deep dish. Square shapes. Four separate pizzas in the same box. Two for Two. Three for three. Five for five. They keep inventing new gimmicks to get you to keep ordering their pizzas. The latest, unveiled using a Super Bowl commercial is break free cheese stuffed bits of bread around the edge.

They just don’t get it, make a good tasting pizza and people will come back without having to resort to trickery.