FlishFun.com

So, to start… I’m sure those of you who read my Blog noticed there wasn’t a “Part 2″ to my nice day. Well, that’s because we got in late after going shopping and to the movies. Overall, it was a great weekend, in fact, a fish I had long thought was dead, turned up alive and well in my tank (he has been missing for over a month)! Yes, my Bulldog Pleco is alive and well living in a pot in my aquarium! Now I just hope that Levi (you’ll remember him from a previous entry) doesn’t try to kill him. Okay, okay… enough about the weekend, I need to complain.

So, Monday started out nice, we went to work, and decided to come home for lunch. Upon opening the door I noticed something was wrong… the apartment was filled with smoke, and I had been pretty sure I hadn’t left a smoke machine running while we were away. Now it wasn’t a normal smoke, it had a “burnt electronic” smell to it. As Jess (my fiancée) gathered up the cats and dialed 911, I checked the house out. The air conditioning was off, smoke was in every room, the kitchen lights weren’t working… but I couldn’t figure out where the smell/smoke was coming from.

Long story short, we had 7 firefighters (in full gear) in our apartment looking for the cause of the smoke. Seems something in the furnace room (beside our apartment) shorted out and caused the problem. Well, after taking a long lunch, the maintenance man finally came back and fixed the problem (he said). Now everything is working, but the smell is everywhere… and now there’s a horrible noise coming from the furnace room. *sigh* Did I mention that I had to stay in the apartment and wait for him to come back? I breathed those fume (and missed half a day of work) just so he could take his time. Grrrr!

We spent all the rest of yesterday, this morning, and during lunch trying to fan out the smell (we had the windows open and bought more fans to help). While the smell isn’t as bad, it hasn’t gone away. Today we’re probably going to have to buy stuff to clean the carpets, walls, clothes, etc. That smoke was everywhere! Who knows how much this is gonna cost us, I swear, I’m ready to beat someone.

I seriously hope the apartment complex does something to compensate us, I mean, had we not come home for lunch, our cats and our fish could have died (from the smoke, fumes, and heat). This also wasn’t the only issue we’ve had in this place. In the last 12 months we’ve had the following issues:

Leaky pipes under the sink
Dishwasher backing up
Heat not working (Winter)
Air not working (Summer)
Roof (possibly) leaking
Constant power outages
And now the smoke, etc

It seems we’re the only people having problems, the management act like we’re just trying to bug them! The sad thing is, they’re not bad apartments! Just apparently ours is out to get us. Jess is thinking about getting them to move us across the hall, it’s a bigger apartment, and it doesn’t have a direct attachment to the furnace room. I honestly think they owe us either free rent, or that apartment at the rent we’re paying now.

So tonight Jess and I get to buy cleaning supplies, take some things to her parents for safe keeping (so they don’t get too messed up), then start cleaning. Tomorrow after work we get to continue our cleaning binge! Whooo! Just what I wanted to do this week. I’m very glad that we get a three day weekend after Friday, we both need it.

Okay, that’s it for now… if anyone knows how to get the smell of smoke out of a house, please drop a comment.

This here, is Levi. He’s not really a lobster, he’s actually a crayfish (Procambarus alleni, to be exact). Why am I blogging about my aquatic pal here? Well, I figured he’d never be able to claw his own blog, so I’d help him out.I’ve had him for about two and a half weeks now, and he is one of the coolest pets I’ve ever had (no offense to the snail, fish, or cats I own). He spends his days under the leaf you see here, coming out at night to dig up all our rocks. So far, he’s left the rest of his roommates alone, except I believe he ate two of our smaller fish the first two nights we had him, but none since (guess the stuff I feed him tastes better than real fish, anyhow).

Well, that’s all about Levi, for now… I’ll be sure to bring him up again at a later date.

Now, about other things!

I have about 40 min to go before I can leave work and go home… and I just can’t wait. I just need to relax (had to format a machine this morning, and currently I’m in the middle of burning 36 DVDs on a 4x burner), plus, my new favorite show comes on tonight!

30 Days

If you haven’t already started watching, you need to. It’s one of the best shows on TV right now, and it might make you learn something (I can hear the groans now). So, if you have FX, you need to tune in… do it! Now*!!

So, I need to do a little complaining about a company I have to deal with on a daily basis. Let’s call them “HouseCube”**… they make a product called “Constructor180″** and it sucks. Now, we’ve been using this product for over 2 years now… and it still isn’t being completely implemented. Why? Well, because it sucks. It crashes constantly, and when it’s not crashing, it’s changing our data… which ties into our accounting, nice, huh? Also, to make matters worse, they have a support staff consisting of 2 high school cheerleader dropouts and one trained monkey. It takes days (if not months, one issue has lasted nearly a year) to have them get back to us and fix the problem. Also, they rarely (if ever) admit it’s their program’s fault. Here are the things they normally blame:

Microsoft Windows (and components such as MDAC)
Microsoft Office (namely Access)
Dell PCs (when blaming software gets boring, try hardware!)

I just don’t see why we still use them. As I type this, they are currently on two different computers, logged in remotely, trying to fix issues that they don’t understand. *sigh*

Okay, I think I’m ranted out for the moment (plus, I have a couple things to do before I leave)… so feel free to drop a comment or whatever, and I’ll try to keep this up to date.

* Not “Now”, at 10:00pm, EST
** The name of the company and product have been changed to protect the innocent.