(e:inscrutable) and I looked at more houses today. It's actually pretty tiring work, though I'm not sure exactly why. We're

Most of the houses don't have central air or insulation, and a lot of them are slightly smelly and not well kept. There was one we found off in the Kenmore Ave./Colvin area that was really nice. It was actually nice enough that I'm not understanding why the price dropped from $120,000 to $100,000, which is kinda of setting off my spidey-sense. But dammit, the house is nice, at least for northern buffalo. It's well kept, and it has central air, and the basement is rather non-icky. But there's always some kind of catch. It breaks the second law of thermodynamics if there's not a catch.

I've agonized over what the catch and reasons for sudden price drop could be. Maybe it's the school system, and that everyone wants to send their kids to Williamsville. Maybe it's crime. Maybe it's an enormous sinkhole under the house or enormous heating bills. There's so many different permutations of things that could be awful that I haven't found yet.

It probably doesn't help that I'm trying to please my parents a little bit with this decision. My mom can recount from memory endless horror stories about friends and relatives who got more than they bargained for, and my father has kept repeating the mantra "you may have lots of expenses that may make you wish that you were still renting." I'd like to show them the house I found so perhaps they might be more positive if I ended up buying it, but I'm worried that if I wait the two more weeks until they arrive, it'll be snatched up. I mean, the house seems nice enough and cheap enough that only an idiot would pass it up (unless there's a catch).

To get a passport, I had to take half the day off from work, spend $100 in fees, and postpone any trips across the peace bridge in Canada for 12 weeks because I was required to send the government my notarized birth certificate. Yesterday, I get back my passport only to find that my first name is misspelled.

This brings to mind a lot of scary thoughts. Such as being stranded in a foreign country and not being to leave because some overzealous bureaucrat will only let a fellow with the first name of "Nial" leave (Nial is my first name misspelled. (e:inscrutable) helpfully suggested I solve the problem by legally changing my name to "Nial"). I am also worried that Osama Bin Laden will be allowed to enter the country because Osama Bin Lader's passport does not show up on any warning lists.

I don't think that this is how the War on Terror was supposed to work.

Garden Walk:

I have come to the conclusion that The Garden Walk is basically an adult version of Halloween Trick-or-Treating.

Give the middle-aged people (and cool hip young people on 24 Linwood) orange-colored candybags, and they'd look right at home during october.

Strange Logic

Quoting from the story the American Axle factory has a "glut of unused production capacity" and their "global sales prospects are surging". The components maker has received $400 million in new orders". They have tons of "new business backlog" and the place "was busy" filling orders. Therefore, considering how bad things were, it was deemed important to shut the place down.

The article goes on to say that "much of the new work is from ex-parent GM for vehicles to be sold in North America", so one can conclude that American Axle is relying on Americans with money to support their business through buying cars that use their axles. Americans who are laid off are not Americans with money.

In laying off 734 people from the factory, the company has generated 734 additional Americans who do not have money, and therefore are no longer of their customer base and are in no position to buy any cars that use their axles. A logical, thinking person would deduce that American Axle just reduced their customer base by 734, which is not in the company's interest. The point of capitalism is doing things economically that are in your interest, and yet the company is doing something that is not economically their interest. Which seems to completely conflict the capitalist structure of our economy.

Everything seems so contradictory. It's so confusing to be an American these days.

Thursday In The Square



Old '97's. I hope I'm doing my duty to make (e:lizabeth) jealous.

There's a reason why I've spent the last few days with a murderous glare in my eye and thoughts of getting all Voldemort on a few Open Source programmers (and the rest of the software industry for good measure while I'm at it). I've tried and tried to get a piece of software at work functioning, and it's absolutely fucking ridiculous. I'll pretty much leave it at that and defer to a guy who has already adequately described the general source of my ire.



I guess I should also try to find the humor in the situation (from )

"We believe that good documentaiton is probably the single most important thing for a successful project..."

"Getting a Wegman's calzone will be an enormous mistake" my better judgement told me. Two hours later my stomach is doing cartwheels.

Hopefully my body will chill out by tomorrow. I really want to see the Queen City Roller Girls/Harlots match in Hamilton. Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me right befure stuff that I really want to do?