Results tagged “Rant” from V2

Hey look, I've been an utter slacker on both blog posting and Flickr updates lately. What excuse can I possibly have?

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Greedy property management company decides to jack up rents by an absurd amount (greater than 11%) on sixty days notice (and that's only because city statue requires that much notice on such drastic increases)... on a piddly 385 square foot studio apartment with poor light and lousy old fixtures. This is their second large rent increase in the past eight months, so needless to say, most residents are furious. Even better? A long history of doing this sort of crap, but they're empathetic to our struggles and always send a generic form letter telling the people about how much they appreciate your residency and hate to raise rents but market forces require them to adjust due to "increased costs for utilities for the common areas, taxes and insurance," all while attempting to keep rates "in line with the current market value."

So to that I say screw you RP Management, and off I go to yet another new abode... for essentially the same rent but with a bedroom, free laundry, deck, parking spot, yard, and so forth. Behold the new Humble Abode, *effective June 1.

Aside from enabling me to garden yet again this summer, this also means the weather station can make its triumphant return from cold storage, and foster kitties can hang out in the large laundry room, earning me a few karma points too.

But the best part? It's on Sunnyside.

Hey!  Ever heard of an awesome website for selling or buying stuff that has the following features:

1. Is free
2. Is easy (no logins required... just a valid email address)
3. Is local, so you don't need to deal with shipping
4. Lets you edit and revise your ad at any time
5. Protects your email address from spam by using a privatized contact form?

Why yes, I have!  Obviously the wildly successful Craigsl-- oh wait, we're talking about these jackasses, who plastered their signs all over Capitol Hill on Saturday? (this one at the northeast corner of E John St and Broadway):
Congratulations UsedSeattle, you've just taken a wildly successful business model and done a much worse job of presenting it, with neither the critical mass nor the site layout that makes Craigslist so popular... and to top it off you managed to advertise in the most assholeish way possible, by plastering big coroplast signs on every signpost and tree in the entire neighborhood.

On the bright side, people in the neighborhood ripped down nearly all of the signs within 24 hours, so maybe all hope is not lost.  One can only hope they're now being offered in the 'free' category on Craigslist.

So as part of my PB&J lunch campaign I've been buying fresh-crushed peanut butter at the grocery store (so much cheaper, fresher, and tastier than the commercial crap that's filled with preservatives and sugar...), and for lack of better knowledge of my jam options I've been buying Smucker's Simply Fruit, which is pricier than its compatriots but really is just fruit, juices, fruit syrup and pectin.  While this is good from the "no extra sugar and preservatives" standpoint, I figured I should look around some and see if there are other options available that better meet either the 'buy local' effort, or are a better price for quantity if I'm going to stick with a large commercial brand.  Besides, it's not as if this stuff is really all that great -- they add fruit syrup (probably pear and grape since those are cheap) to sweeten it and take up bulk, but it is still at least pure fruit and pectin, instead of high fructose corn syrup, when all is said and done.

Imagine my surprise to see this a few feet over on the same shelf...

Admittedly Knott's Berry Farm isn't much better than Smuckers in terms of corporate crap but it's a much larger container for the same price... great, right?

Let's take a peek at the back side of the container, shall we?  (Sorry for the blurriness, but that's my awesome cameraphone at its finest...)

Today's rant:  People who purchase stuff on Craigslist, and then only when they finally arrive to pick up the item do they ask if you'll take less money.

Expect this also to be part of a series... unfortunately.