Trying out wordpress

I recently started a new blog at http://spugbrap.wordpress.com, which may replace both of my blogger.com blogs soon. I'm trying out wordpress, comparing it with the new blogger beta, and will decide from there.

At this point, I will probably be posting all new entries over there, so you may want to go ahead and subscribe to it via the Entries feed, and possibly the Comments feed. I may cross-post a little bit, for the sake of comparing blogger beta vs. wordpress, but the wordpress one will be my primary outlet for all things geeky/personal/both (sometimes it's hard to draw the line).

Does Michael Jackson like Irish midgets?

From a post [last week] on the Dilbert Blog:

Today I heard on the news that Michael Jackson is going to open a leprechaun themed amusement park in Ireland. Seriously. If you don’t believe me, go Google yourself.
[...]
I won’t accuse Michael Jackson of being a child molester. You can never fully rule out “disturbed weirdo of galactic proportions with astonishingly bad judgment.” However, the question I wonder about is what would happen if someone such as Michael who enjoyed sleeping with children (as friends) suddenly couldn’t do it anymore. What would he do?

Well, he might start a business that has a perfectly good reason for hiring hordes of midgets. They’d all be over 18-years old so there are no legal problems. As far as I know, you can hump the living crap out of a midget all day long and it’s totally legal, assuming the midget is onboard with the plan. Or you can just share your bed with midgets as friends. That’s legal too.

I flagged this in my feed reader last week, because it's one of the first things I've read recently that actually made me laugh out loud at work. I was sick, so I was trying extra hard NOT to laugh, because I knew it would hurt my throat and make me cough, but every time I read one particular line of that post, "As far as I know, you can hump the living crap out of a midget all day long and it’s totally legal, assuming the midget is onboard with the plan", I just couldn't help it!

Finally, a contractor that doesn't suck!

First, some info about the contractor, taken straight from his business card:

Mountjoy's Remodeling
Carl Mountjoy
Cell: 540-379-0324
Email: mtjoyremodeling@aol.com
Decks, siding, windows, etc....


Now, the story behind how we found this guy, and why we're so glad that we did:

For quite some time, now, I've been meaning to post about companies that I've had good/bad experiences with. I've been trying to avoid bitching and moaning too much, though, so I've shyed away from posting about companies that have screwed me over (although I do intend to, in due time, but want to do it right when I do).

Anyways, pretty much everyone I know has been screwed over by a contractor doing work on their house, at one point or another. We've had our fair share of bad contractors, which made our recent search for a good contractor to repair our flood-damaged basement very difficult. Finally, after about 2 months of trying (half-heartedly, though, because we're so paranoid that it takes a lot of motivation to actually deal with finding a contractor), Lacey's parents hooked us up.

They're friends with a guy, who used to run a contracting company in northern Virginia, but who now lives in southern Virginia, somewhere near them (I think). They've known him for a long time, and he has done work for them several times over the years, and they even have him over for dinner from time to time. Apparently, a real good guy, who is trustworthy and does high quality work. Well, he's got a son, who currently works as a home inspector for Centex Homes (and evidently, a good one), but who has also been working on getting the family contracting business going again on the side.

He came over, gave things a thorough look (both from a home inspector and a contractor's perspective, I presume), talked to us for a while (and was not pushy or shady in any way), and wrote us up an estimate. He gave us a very reasonable price, and said he could get it done in a week.

Being skeptical, based on past experiences of getting screwed over, I still made him sign a modified version of a 6-page contract addendum that my lawyer wrote for me several years ago. However, based on our meeting wit him, we could see his friendly nature, vast array of relevant knowledge, and attention to detail. Those qualities, plus the fact that he and his father are friends of the family, made it pretty clear that this was an honest guy we were dealing with.

He was able to start the work a day earlier than he originally expected, and finished it within the quoted time frame, despite running into a few surprises (not his fault, it was the house's fault), which he handled very well, and with very minimal additional cost to us. The work was done very well, and we're determined to refer some business to him, because we were just so impressed. We're going to have him do some more work for us in a couple weeks, too.

* edited 04/23/2007 to update contact info