Honey just walked up behind me and said, "that's not your blog." It's true, I was laptopping in the living room, but I'm still obsessing about my bike, so I was looking at stems. (Don't ask). There's an implicit promise in a blog. You're supposed to post. I didn't yesterday and I was surfing rather than posting just now. Honey wants to read my blog. She's probably looking for deep insight, but I think I need to effort it more to provide insight. The blog is a contract.
Speaking of which, there's a guy in our house right now. He's a nice fellow and is from a local drywall contractor. I'm not skilled at the whole homeowner thing. Honey does the taxes and the mortgage. We've had work done before, the roof was replaced, the yard's been worked on.
The guy is redoing our ceiling in the office. I found the contractor on a web site called Angie's List. My Dad is VERY enthusiastic about Angie's List. It's a place for people to report their experience with contractors. The contractors can do nothing about it. They can't get themselves listed and they can't change their rating. It's a little like ratemyprofessors.com. I agree with Dad about Angie's list, but confess to a deep loathing of ratemyprofessors. I'm not on Angie's List, I am on ratemyprofessors.
I am not thrilled with this contractor. The work his guy has done is good. But his communication has been weak otherwise. Twice someone was supposed to show up and hasn't. There have been 6:15am phone calls that are very passive aggressive. I'll be honest on Angie's List. I'm not interested in playing games and this company is.
Ratemyprofessors is a small step from the neocon bozo at UCLA who has a hit list of "radical" professors. He's withdrawn the offer, but was at one point offering $100 for audiotapes of leftist political lectures. One of my favorite folks at UCLA is on his list. She's one of the great minds in her field and a lovely person besides. His description of her is inflammatory but fairly accurate. He's taken out a contract on her.
So, to summarize:
Contracts I like: ones I sign and agree to that provide me a service. No 6:15am phone calls.
Contracts I don't like: derivatives of the contract with/on America
Websites I like: ones where I comment on others
ones where I comment on myself
Websites I don't like: ones where others comment on me and I can't comment back.
5 comments:
Ooh, I love the use of "laptop" as a verb! Would it make you feel better about being listed on RateMyProfessors.com if I rated you at Angie's List? What service would you like to be listed as offering?
Sheesh, you have great ratings at RateMyProfessors.com! I have no ratings at RateMyProfessors.com and they misspelled my name.
I got through page 2 before I was barred from going any further, and til that point, your ratemyprofessor.com stuff is amazingly positive, Sporks. I get why you don't like being there, but hell, I'm wishing I had taken your Anthro class based on the raves it garnered. Next time I see you, I'd like to hear about the "despair" joke, okay?
See, that's how they get you--a few good ratings, you start to feel that, hey, it's not so bad being on there, and then, BLAMMO!! they're hauling you off to Gitmo. Don't be swayed by good reviews; if the concept is bad, it's bad. Sandra, being misspelled on a site like that should be a badge of honor! [/rant]
I'm glad enough I suppose that my rating is ok on rmp, but I hate that I can't control it and that only the truly unhappy and turly happy comment. The good news is that the negative comments are old enough that they've sunk into the "registered user" section. Bry's right, Sandra, revel in the obscruity that "poset" provides.
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