Random Giant » General

Thanks a pantload St. Luke’s!

TheGiant — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:40:23 +0000

So Monday morning we discovered that my grandmother was having trouble speaking. My mom took her to St. Luke’s because it was the closest hospital. While there they ran some tests, and they nearly refused an MRI until one of my co-workers explained to the nurse practitioner, that my grandmother’s memory issues were NOT because of her age. They kept her overnight and gave her an MRI. The next day, they sent her home. The following morning (today) again she was having trouble speaking, and again was taken to the hospital, this time my mom insisted they take her to Mayo Clinic. Mayo got the records from St. Luke’s and it turns out she had clearly had a stroke. Did NO ONE even look at her records? HELLO, did no one think of contacting her or her family. Sorry, but that’s common sense! I don’t think I will EVER again go to St. Luke’s Hospital here in Jacksonville by choice. What if my grandmother died because they weren’t paying attention. IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like I said, Thanks a pantload St. Luke’s! Now she’s in a better place (as in hospital, Mayo Clinic which sadly used to own St. Luke’s)

Next time, before you send a patient home, LOOK AT THE MRI!

False advertising in product names

TheGiant — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:25:30 +0000

Have you ever noticed that at some restaurants, particularly fast food, that even the names of some of the food items they serve are false advertising?

Take the “Grilled Cheese Thickburger” at Hardees’ it is no better than a REAL grilled cheese sandwich by any means. The bread, is barely grilled, and has no crunch, and the cheese is not melted, it’s a cheese sauce, which means it doesn’t qualify as a grilled cheese anything.

Or how about places that serve “melts” the Arby Melt or whatever it was called, does not qualfy as a melt, in order to be a melt, it must have MELTED CHEESE, again, it had cheese sauce, it’s easy to tell the difference. Real melted cheese is thicker than the junk they use. Though, strangely, the ham melt tastes more like a real melt. Of course, on the value menu it appears they replaced it with the “Ham & Cheddar” .

Please, just be honest folks, if it’s a melt, then MELT the cheese, if it’s supposed to be grilled cheese, the bread has to crunch a little, and the cheese has to be MELTED.

Conventions and stuff

TheGiant — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:42:34 +0000

So this morning, half-asleep I was thinking about the conventions in my area, gaming, anime conventions, stuff like that. I yet again was reminding, how MESSED up Janicon was, and I never posted about that here. Yeah, I was very careful, for just over a month to save enough money to be a founder, what wound up happening pretty much ruined the idea of being a founder of any convention for me, thanks alot! All that and all I got was a t-shirt. Yeah, no $5 Ninja badge I paid for, or any of the other stuff I was promised. No tote bag or whatever else I was told I would have. None of it. I won’t lie that it wasn’t fun, of course it was, but not the kind of fun that was worth what I paid. Apparently it continued to exist as part of another convention in Orlando for a time, thanks for letting me know that folks. Honestly, thanks a pantload for running off with my money!

Government wastage & Stupid Florida law

TheGiant — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:33:19 +0000

In the state of Florida, in order to get a replacement driver’s license, or make any change to it, you are required to basically prove you exist. Two forms of ID are required such as birth certificate and Social Security card. Has Obama proven he’s a citizen yet? Why do I have to?

Well being that I could not locate my Social Security card, and my Passport is currently expired, I figured, best thing to do was to apply for a replacement card, but I made one small mistake on the application, I didn’t write the date, so what did they do, oh well, they highlighted the date, and mailed it to me with a letter, stating that they couldn’t process the application because the highlighted part was missing, could someone not have just filled in the date? Instead of wasting 44 cents on postage? Imagine how many times they waste 44 cents on mailing such a thing back? If it was ten people, that would be $4.40 wasted! If it were one hundred, $44 wasted! You get my drift, I also imagine that even though it’s a government agency, everybody still has to pay the post office. Oh boy, imagine how many thousands of dollars wasted, because SOMEONE FORGOT TO WRITE THE DATE!

See, how messed up our government is, how WASTEFUL?

Comcast situation update..everything works.

TheGiant — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:16:56 +0000

So after in total talking to 7 different people, and two service centers, I now have a functioning DVR box, and my mom’s old box has been returned. Everything is fine.

The “my own lameness” reference, was because really, I should have done what the third guy said, and return her DVR box and get my own, would have been easier, and her’s was an older one anyway.

The only real problem I noticed, is it seems sending commands to my box is delayed, probably just because of the wiring to my building, but it all works, I’m done. I was frustrated, but that’s only because all I wanted was a functioning DVR, which I now have. Done and done.

Comcast and my own lameness…

TheGiant — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:59:35 +0000

So, I wanted to see if I could transfer my mom’s DVR box to my account, I went the route most comfortable and chatted with an online support person. I was then told to stop by a local service center,so I did. When I walked in, I walked toward the counter and was told to wait, while the one person who wasn’t serving a customer fiddled with her paper address book. Then after a few minutes, let me asked what I needed and I told her, she then explained to me that I needed to call the local office and give them the serial number on the bottom of the box,the only local number I can find isn’t actually always a local person, it’s like dialing the 800 number. I finally got around to doing that, and was told, my best option was to just drop off her box, and ask for one for me. Well, fine, that’s what I’ll do, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to go through three different people and waste my gas to find that out, the first person should have said that, so I am back to square one, awesome.

South American tea beer?

TheGiant — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:56:51 +0000

So, I’ve been curious about Yerba Mate tea for quite some time, haven’t got around to actually trying any yet, however, the other day on Facebook I discovered something that caught my eye. It’s called MateVeza… As in Mate beer! No joke, someone had the idea to brew Yerba Mate tea, into a dark lager beer “that won’t let you down”

MateVeza was conceived in 2004 by homebrewer Jim Woods after he fortuitously followed a sip of freshly brewed yerba mate with a hoppy pale ale in his San Francisco apartment. No stranger to creating his own beer recipes, sparks flew for Jim, as the contrasting flavors of yerba mate, hops and malt came together to create a delicious and truly unique beer drinking experience. Woods had first learned about yerba mate from his cousin and later experienced the yerba mate culture firsthand when he himself had the privilege of traveling to Argentina.

Sounds interesting! If you’ve read my blog in the past, I am always curious about strange lesser known beers and microbrews.

Sadly though, right now I can’t get it in Florida.

They also have an Ale, which is actually what I found on Facebook.

More thoughts regarding Jeff Jarvis

TheGiant — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:27:17 +0000

I was thinking today, Jeff Jarvis is all about openness, and transparency, in most circumstances I understand, and agree, but as far as real estate agents go, if the MLS was as open as say, Craigslist, and anyone could post a listing on it. That would be a bad thing! Why, you ask? Simple, another thing he does not seem to take into consideration, a little thing that is ALL OVER Craigslist called fraud, Craigslist is FULL of not just real estate fraud, but all kinds of fraud. Not that there isn’t fraud that happens in real estate anyway, but it would be A LOT worse if just anyone could post a listing on MLS. Of course, just because there is fraud, doesn’t make it right, and people who commit fraud should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The reason Mr. Jarvis that real estate agents charge commission, has nothing to do with MLS, it’s because of the work they do, which is far from “little work”.

In his book, he says that he knows there are good agents out there, and he would work with one that would charge a flat fee like the discount brokers instead of a commission. That isn’t always up to the agent Mr. Jarvis, that is the company, and it is true, that most real estate companies take most of the commission. That’s not the case with Magnolia Properties.

My Beef with Jeff Jarvis part 2

TheGiant — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:56:03 +0000

There are also several things, that Jeff Jarvis fails to take into account when he refers to real estate agents, is the fact that most real estate companies, actually take a large cut of the agent’s commission, so they don’t make nearly as much as he claims, and honestly the 6% he refers to is nothing, if you take into account, that the company that holds the agent’s license takes a large cut of that.

He also does not take into account, the various fees that an agent also has to pay, to the association, to insurance companies for Errors and Omissions insurance, plus a lot of companies even charge them for desk space and their use of office resources. So in the end, the agent does not get nearly as much as Jeff Jarvis claims for doing “little work”.

I’d like proof Mr. Jarvis, that my mother working from dawn to dusk everyday, is doing “little work”.

My beef with Jeff Jarvis

TheGiant — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:52:08 +0000

The last day or so I have been listening to, yes that’s right Leo Laporte, I said LISTENING TO, because you do not READ audio, the audiobook version of Jeff Jarvis’ book “What Would Google Do?”. Even though I have yet to listen to the entire thing, I would still highly recommend this book, It’s an interesting look at the changes companies like Google have brought to the world, thanks to the Internet, like Dell and Starbucks putting up sites for their customers to voice ideas.

Now, compared to Jeff Jarvis, who also blogs on his own site BuzzMachine I am pretty much a nobody blogger, who rarely gets any real comments left on the blog. That said, I have had companies like Belkin actually put two and two together with an issue I had with an iPod case breaking when I fell down the stairs, and made good on it by calling me and offering to send a replacement case as long as I edited my post. Wow, me nobody blogger me, people from Comcast have reached out to me too, once when I had a problem with my wifi and my Xbox 360 due to bad weather though I had not explained that the wifi router was actually above the garage detached from the house. I don’t live there anymore, I live in a condo now.

Now on to the meat of this post, which is my beef with Mr. Jeff Jarvis. A few times on This Week in Google and in his own book, he has stated that real estate agents make commission for doing little work. I challenge you Jeff Jarvis, to come down to Florida and spend a day with my own mother, or one of the 200 some odd Magnolia Properties agents, who work every single day, from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to bed. I am the IT department for that company, my paycheck was made possible by that company, and so therefore the thing you seem to state as fact, when it’s not, has even made it possible for me to buy your book. All you’ve done is ride around in the car with an agent, you do not see the work they do when you are not around. My mother is what we call a “working broker” not only does she have her own company, but she also has to sell houses herself in order to pay the bills and put food on the table, but she can’t do it all herself, and because she also runs the business, she has office staff that sometimes make appointments for her. My mother has not had a single day off of work for years. She has no real weekends! When she’s in the car, watching TV, eating dinner, doing anything else, she’s working.

Sorry, but I am going to tell you that from experience, of being around the industry as long as I have, living in it, but being slightly separate from it because I am not an agent myself, that you are wrong. I am sorry to even say this to you because I respect your views on the changing economy, and I love how things have changed this day and age.

Also, when you say that discount brokerages now having access to MLS is a good thing, I disagree with you there as well, because they take business away from the hard working agent. I yell at my TV every time a Buy Owner commercial is on. It is not a good thing at all.