Jimmy Mancusi Dot Com

Home Remodelers Group - Customer Service, or lack there of

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:10:22 -0500

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.

Long Time No Blog

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:16:16 -0500

It has been a very long time since I blogged about anything, over 2 months. The problem isn't that I have nothing to blog about, its that I have too much to blog about! To many things are keeping me way too busy and I haven't had any time to update this site. I think I am going to try to post much shorter to the point things for a while and see if that can get me going again. I have a lot to say so hopefully getting the juices flowing again will help! Anyway... I am back! At least for a couple of blog entries :)

Houston Update

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:10:24 -0500

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...

Houston has a solution

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:09:14 -0500

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.

Plurk!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:46:31 -0500

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?

All work and no play

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:52:35 -0500

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 :)

Surprise! Happy Birthday Sheryl

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:30:41 -0500

Surprise!

This weekend we had a surprise birthday party for my sister in law Sheryl. The party went really well and we think she was surprised but I haven't heard the verdict on whether or not we really got her. I wont tell you how old Sheryl is, that wouldn't be nice, but if you were to say take 20 and double it, you would be on the money ;) The surprise plan went off pretty seamlessly but I think she may have been onto something. One of her friends was suppose to get her out of the house around noon, and return around 2. We left our house with the intention of getting there to help set up around noon, but we ended up circling random neighborhoods in the area waiting for a text message letting us know she had left the house. As soon as she left the house we had to circle a bit more to make sure she passed us on her way out. This is when Amanda got a call from Sheryl asking what she was up to today. We found out later that she had placed a few of these calls to different friends trying to figure out what they were doing today/tonight, which is why I think she might have been onto us. Even if she was onto us, I still think she was surprised. We had all the cars parked off site, and shuttled everyone to the house. So when she pulled up there were no cars. She opened the garage to park, and we were all standing there waiting for her. Either way we all had a blast so it was a success. Happy Birthday Sheryl.

New Look for JuicedMooseLax.com

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:18:14 -0500

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.

Belly Flop 101

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:15:58 -0500

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...

Emily's First Birthday Party

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:06:38 -0500

Emily, my daughter, had her first birthday on June 26th, and we celebrated with a party this past Saturday (28th). We had the party at my brother and sister in law's house, which turned out to be a fantastic idea since it was over 90 degrees and they have a pool. Even though they have a very well heated pool (maybe I will get into that later, my brother in law thinks the pool is too cold if its under 88!) it was extremely refreshing and I spent most of the day in the pool. This was made possible simply because of my nieces, since watching them in the pool was considered helping I got away with this scott free! We had a very good turn out, and most of my extended family made it down even though they had to drive an extra hour or so past my house, so thank you for making it out. I am still in the process of collecting pictures, we actually didn't get that many with our camera but my father and my mother in law were busy with their as always, so I will have more at a later date. For now you can head over to my flickr page and check out what we have. We even have a few pictures up there form the day after, enjoying some of the new toys Emily got. Thanks again to everyone that came and to my in laws for letting us host the party at their place!

Busy Busy Busy

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:12:56 -0500

I haven't had much time to post anything over the last few days because my weekend was EXTREMELY busy. I will get into each of these things in greater detail, but here is a quick recap of what happened since Friday: 1. Went sky diving with my sister in law as a surprise for her birthday. 2. Took a Limo into NYC for dinner at Tao with all my in laws for my sister in laws birthday. 3. Celebrated Emily's first birthday with 40 of our closest friends and family. That all took place on Friday and Saturday so I spent all day Sunday trying to recoup.

Keep Your Family Safe For The Season

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:58:27 -0500

I saw an image over at http://www.photobasement.com and while the image it self is funny, the second comment is what put me over the edge. Have a look for yourself.... Keep Your Family Safe For The Season

Teenage Pregnancy... blame movies!

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:07:12 -0500

*Note: This picture is my wife and new born daughter, my wife may look young but she is 25 in this picture. I saw this article, Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High on Time.com this morning, and so many things jump out at me as absolutely crazy. This article is one of the reasons that fathers of daughters everywhere lose sleep. Lets start at the top of the article and work our way down.

Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers.

I don't even know where to start with that quote. The media, and in this case some of these parents, always look for something to blame other than the parents of the children. Usually its video games, which I will get into in depth at some point, but I don't think there are any pregnant teens in GTA IV, so they are off the hook here. So they want to blame Knocked Up and Juno. Instead of looking in the mirror and saying did I teach my daughter about sex? Did I teach her about how much responsibility and work a child is? Have I provided a good example of how my child should act? They would rather say movies glamorous unwed mothers which is why a group of teens have decided to all have babies.

The Turtle Man

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:51:51 -0500

This guy is a true American treasure. I happen to love his victory yell, and he really should have a Gatorade endorsement. "Not just for football, Gatorade is for the Turtle-man!" I found this video via the Elliot in the morning radio show that I still listen to even though I have moved away from the DC area. Enjoy!

Giese Pitches Heart out, Yanks Lose

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:30:28 -0500

Both Amanda and I have been to a couple of Yankees games this year, but we hadn't been to one together until today. Before today's game, when I was in attendance the Yanks were 0-2, and when Amanda has been there they are 2-0, and sadly the record did not improve today. I am now 0-3 this year and really can't remember the last time I was at the stadium and they won. I am pretty sure they won at least 1 game I went to last year, but it's starting to get depressing, and my mother in law is threatening not to invite me to any more games. Anyway, on to a recap of the game. Dan Giese made his first start in the major after a long grind in the minor leagues. Giese is 31 years old and before his time this year with the Yankees only pitched in a 8 games with the San Fransico Giants in 2007. I wanted to find out more information about him so I headed over to baseball-reference.com, a fantastic site for baseball stats, and they don't even have an entry for him yet. The reason he finally got an opportunity to make a start on the big league stage is because of the recent injury to Chien-Ming Wang, and I am happy to say he took full advantage of it. Giese may have ended up with the lose, but it certainly wasn't his fault. Giese went 6 and 2/3 scoreless innings before running into trouble in the 7th. Giese had 2 outs when he committed a throwing error which extended the inning and eventually lead to a 2 run double which ended his day. He ended up being charged for 3 runs, none of them earned. I am pretty sure that I can speak for all Yankees fans when I say, sign me up for that any day of the week. Any time you can get 6 or more innings of quality pitching from your starter you are in great position to win, and that's all you can really ask for. I am very happy for Dan Giese, his work ethic and perseverance paid off and he got his chance on the big stage, and I was among the fans that gave him a standing ovation as he left the field.