Ok, this review is completely pointless because it has already been reviewed about a billion times since it has been out for almost a year, and NHL 10 is coming out soon. But since this game took a TON of my time over the last 6 months, I wanted to give a quick review and some spots I think they could do better for NHL 10. Then I will get into the game that is currently stealing my sleep...]]>
This is old news by now, but it was something that riled me up a while ago so I created a post for it and never got around to it. Obviously the economy is not doing well, and many companies, if not most companies are having to lay off employees and cut costs. It bothers me though when companies use the down turned economy as an excuse to be able to cut costs and stream line things. For instance The NFL is cutting 14% of its staff . Really? The NFL, a multi-billion dollar business has to lay off some staff members because of this economy? The NFL's revenue last year was 7 billion dollars. I realize that is revenue and not profit, but do you really think they need to cut 150 jobs because they may only make 6.9 billion in revenue this year?
I feel bad for the people that got laid off and their families. The layoffs were early - mid December, perfect timing for the holidays. I am sure the top execs in the NFL were happy though, no better way to cut costs than to cut people. Business as usual I suppose....
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A few months back we decided to get new windows in our house. Our house was built in the 1950s and the windows in the house were still original, so as you can imagine they were a bit drafty and inefficient. So we began the process of getting estimates and had some really poor experiences, and a few fair ones.
First of all our worst experience was with Castle Windows. They seem to like to use guilt as their main selling tool, and would recommend you look elsewhere if you are looking for new windows. I could go into this estimate in great detail with a lot of ranting and raving... perhaps another day...
Come to think of it though, I don't have a recommendation for you since the company we decided to go with, Home Remodelers Group seemed like a good choice at the time, and the windows are nice, but their customer service is absolutely horrendous.
For anyone that has been lucky enough not to have a window estimate, let me fill you in on one thing. They all take 3-4 hours. Seriously. These sales guys come into your house and want to put on a complete show. They go into detail about their competitors, how great their windows are and why their competitors are no good, warranties, service and so on. My first consultation ran close to 4 hours, and 2 family members of mine received consultations from separate companies and also ran over 3 hours each. So after our first horrible experience we would tell the sales guy we already knew all of those things and wanted to get right down to it, and were able to get through our next couple of estimates in under an hour.
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The Home Remodelers Group sent a sales person out to our house we were ready and willing to buy windows and just wanted to get a fair price. The sales guy was very nice and extremely helpful, and the company was painted in a very good light. With a little haggling we got to a price that we liked and we ordered new windows. We were very excited and in only a few weeks we would have new great windows... right?
In the beginning of September the installers came out and in 1 day they installed our new bay window and 12 double hung windows. Thankfully for us only 9 of those 12 double hung windows would have to be later replaced. Actually only 8 frames were replaced, it should have been 9 and depending on who you listened to at the company it could have been as many as 12. Let me explain...
Amanda is at home with Emily while they are installing things so by the time the day is over Emily is getting restless and we don't really get a good chance to look over all the windows and we take their word that everything is done. So when I get home from work I start checking the windows and it turns out that most of the windows are having issues locking correctly, and just about every window has the screen holes drilled completely wrong so the screens don't close properly. At this point we are a bit upset, but everyone makes mistakes and the windows have a lifetime warranty, so it should be a cinch to fix right? Well if you want to call a cinch countless phone calls and 2 months of waiting, then it was a cinch.
Here is a quick time line of what happened following the install:
*Several phone calls were placed to The Home Remodelers Group in between each of these steps.
1. Placed calls to project manager about complaints.
2. Company sent someone out to inspect the windows, who said they all had to be replaced.
3. Company sent another person out who really just wanted to ask us which windows were bad instead of inspecting them himself and we ended up with 10 of 12.
4. Same guy had to come back out again because apparently he didn't keep track of the serial numbers of the windows.
5. Window company gets upset with such a large reorder and sends their rep, who says "all but 1 would need to be replaced".
6. Several phone calls are made to find out when the reinstall is going to happen because we seemed to be lost in the cracks.
7. I took a day off from work and the installers show up with 8 frames to reinstall (no idea where the 8 came from, and no one else seemed to know either).
8. 8 Frames were reinstalled and a 9th was modified so the screen would lock properly.
9. More phone calls are placed about a discount because this is getting a little ridiculous.
10. A whopping offer of 2.2% is offered.
11. The whopping offer is countered with a huge increase to 2.7%
And that is where I currently stand.
I am really upset with the The Home Remodelers Group overall, and they have definitely lost repeat business since we will soon be looking at redoing our kitchen, but there really isn't much I can do in this situation. I have thought of bringing the BBB into the mix to try and get what I would consider a more fair discount, but that would require more time and energy from us. So at this point I feel a bird in the hand is definitely worth 2 in the bush, and I will take the 2.7% and run.
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The title of the picture to the right is "Houston Has A Big Heart", and I find that very fitting with everything that has transpired over the past week.
As I mentioned in an early post, my parents flew out to Houston so my dad could have a "procedure" to fix a leak in his heart. As with most things in life, there were a few speed bumps in the process. Once my dad got out there, they ran some tests to get an idea of what they were dealing with before they jump into his heart. When they did these tests they found what turned out to be tissue from one of his original valves that was removed years ago. With this tissue in the heart, the doctors weren't sure if they could preform the procedure as they planned and it looked like we were heading toward another open heart surgery...]]>
So all of the doctors and surgeons out there got together and went over all the results.... and they determined that they could do the original procedure. This was a big relief for us all since we were looking at a couple of days of recovery time vs a couple of months. So they preformed the procedure on Friday afternoon and the doctor was very happy with the results. The leak in my dad's heart was so big that they had to put 2 patches in, and the doctor was thinking about putting in a 3rd, but he didn't want to risk dislodging the first 2 patches. Overall 75% of the leak was blocked by these 2 patches. As my dad's heart accepts the patches they will be coated with blood and actually get a little bigger, so the doctor was very optimistic about the patch blocking even more over the next few weeks.
My dad came home from Houston on Monday, and I am very happy to say that he has been doing extremely well. He sounds better, looks better, and feels better. He is more optimistic about everything, which is really refreshing. I am happy to say that my dad, and Emily's Super Pop will be around for a long time to come...
Many of you that have known me for a long time know my father has had some heart issues over the past 6 years. For anyone who hasn't known this here is a quick recap of what has happened so far.
About 6 years ago (not exactly sure on dates) my dad wasn't feeling well and ended up going to the hospital. They ran tests and found out that there was bacteria growing on one of the valves in my father's heart. Since there was risk that the bacteria could break off and cause a major stroke, he needed open heart surgery the next day. Everything went well and we were out of the hospital and on to recovery. Then a year or so later they found that he had bacteria on another valve, so once again we were off to the hospital for a second open heart surgery.
My father has had a few issues or side effects from the two surgeries, including some memory problems and fatigue. The fatigue continues to get worse since one of the valves in his heart is leaking. This leak is a condition that normally only people who have multiple heart surgeries get, or as we like to call them, the lucky ones.]]>
For the last few months, or even longer, my father has been going back and forth to the doctor, undergoing tests and taking medication to help control the leak in his heart. The medications may be helping a bit, but no where near enough as he still feels tired all the time, which makes him frustrated (and if you know my family, a frustrated Mancusi male is not one you want to be around) so it trickles down and everyone has a tough time with it.
Now my mother has never been very computer savvy, but she had been doing her research on the internet about my father's conditions (he is lucky, she is one of the best nurses in CT, so he is in good hands) and she found information on a hospital in Houston that is specializing in procedures to fix these types of leaks. They have 3 different procedures I believe, and I think it is something like 1000 successful surgeries since 2007. There are so many numbers and dates floating around that I am sure I am getting all of this wrong, but at least you get the general idea.
So armed with this new information my parents head back to their doctor's office. My father's doctor had never heard of these procedures and everyone was very optimistic. That was last week. A couple of days ago they heard back from Houston and my parents are currently sitting at the airport, because their 1pm flight ended up canceled and now they are shooting for an 8pm flight, which is delayed to 9pm.
Eventually they will get to Houston and my father will have one of these procedures, which is very non-evasive compared to open heart surgery, and only has a couple of day recovery period. So he will be flying home by the end of the weekend.
Anyway that's where we are now and hopefully the plane will be in the air soon. Please keep my father in your thoughts and prayers this weekend (and always for that matter).
Thank you Houston!
For all of you who are loyal, die hard readers, you obviously noticed the new addition to the site since the last time you visited. OK, I am not fooling anyone I really don't have any die hard loyal fans.... yet :)
I just signed up for Plurk a couple of days ago because Barry wanted another friend sign up to help him get a red star in his profile. Anyway, after joining I figured I would give it a go for a little while to see if I could understand the fascination behind it. Applications like Plurk and Twitter have become very popular lately. For anyone who is unfamiliar with either of these services, they are basically away messages (think aol instant messanger) on steroids, or another way of thinking would be its like mini blogging. You can update what you are doing at any time during the day and other people see it comment on it and so on. Yet another form of communication to reach all of your friends that are sitting behind computers all day long.
Since most of my family and friends don't spend their entire day behind their computer, I don't have a lot of friends on Plurk yet, maybe I will make some new ones... But anyway, I figured I would add it here so that anyone is interested can see what random things I do or what random thoughts I have throughout the day. As long as I am plurking, might as well blog the plurks. Did anyone catch that?]]>
Lately work has been taking up most of my time. Thankfully I enjoy what I do, most of the time. For anyone that doesn't know I am a PHP and MySQL engineer. Say what? Just a fancy way to say I am a Web Developer, or a Web Programmer.
One great thing about my occupation is there is no need to be in a specific location to do work. Everything is done with computers, and therefore you can be anywhere as long as you have internet access. This also provides plenty of opportunities for side work, which is a great thing and a horrible thing all at the same time :)
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Office Space? If not, come out from under your rock, but if you have that would so be me if I didn't have to work. Sleeping and relaxing constantly.
Not only does it cut down on my personal free time, but it also cuts into quality time I get to spend with my wife. She will let you know that I still play too many video games, even though I don't play nearly as much as I did even a few months ago.... I digress.
One thing I would never let it come in the way of is my time with Emily. Everyday when I get home I hang out with Emily until she goes to sleep, which is currently around 7 so its only an hour and a half at most per day, but I cherish that time, and I know she does too.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is there is definitely a fine line on the work life balance, I have always preferred to be more on the life side, but with more benefits (house, family, etc...) comes more responsibility...]]>
Over a year ago now I put up a site for the lacrosse team I play for every summer, Juiced Moose. The team was started almost 10 years ago now and I have played in the Glastonbury CT summer tournament every year. When I put up the site, I did so very quickly with intentions of making things prettier and more functional as I went along, but life has been so hectic lately that I really haven't had much time to do anything with it. Well finally I took the first step toward making it the site I want it to be. Thanks to Mabe, our fantastic designer at RustyBrick, the site got a much needed make over. If you had seen the site before you know it was UGLY. Now it actually looks like a real website.
I even left out a few of the touches that Mabe added, so as soon as I can add those the site will look even better. I wanted to get the information out there since the tournament is at the end of this month, so I had to rush a bit. I also have plans to redo the entire picture section (which I left out for this rush launch) and add a content management system so that I am not the only one with the ability to update the website.
Hopefully these changes will come over the next couple of weeks but between RustyBrick and a few side projects I am working on including JuicedMooseLax and a site I am building for the Edison Cares charity, I certainly do have my hands full.]]>
So at some point during Emily's party I started jumping into the pool with my niece Cady, at first mimicking the jumps that she would do and somehow it lead to me doing belly flops for the amusement of my family and friends. Last year I tried a couple of times to get the perfect picture right before impact on a belly flop and came up a bit short, so I figured I would try again. After 2 or 3 flops with my dad trying to snap a picture with his camera (I will add this pictures to flickr soon), I remembered that my camera had a multi-burst mode which takes 16 pictures in a couple of seconds. It was still really hard to get the perfect picture since it was normally to early or to late to get everything, but I think they came out pretty well. You can see in the picture above I had pretty good form on that one, unfortunately the 16 frames wasn't near enough.
Another picture after the break and a little more after math...]]>
In that picture obviously we have impact, but I wasn't really happy with my form. My left leg is really off and I am sure the Russian judge would have given me a 1 or a 2.
Try as I may to keep the form all the way into the pool its a bit of human nature to brace for impact, and apparently I always turn a bit to my right side, which left me with a few bruises on the right side of my stomach from the impacts. I guess thats the price to pay for a dozen or so belly flops.
However my brother in law did end up owing me 10 bucks because I did hold my form pretty damn well on a few when he said I wouldn't. Easiest money I have ever made! :)]]>