Hrm. Where is the love. I know it hasn’t been here.  Ahh well.

So.. No major updates. The dragon that was supposed to challenge my D&D group went down like a bitch.  The spell “slow” sucks if affected. This is the second challenge my group mowed through with no problems. I wonder if it has anything to do with party balance, or if I’m off my game, or just bad strats on the part of the DM. I figured placing them in the position I was able to place them in would kill them dead, at least one of the bastards. Ohh well… off to the drawing board, I guess.

I have resigned myself to the idea that a GM will most allways lose. If you don’t kill the characters, you lose. If you challenge the PCs and nearly win, but don’t win.. you lose. If you kill a PC, then you get angry puppy eyes: and you lose, yet again, (though secretly your a little happy you got one of them).

Awesome laptop mod. Daddy likes!

 You may catch me on IMs a bit more often now. I’ve loaded light-weight Pidgin IM Client and am sweet on keeping it up now.

Been catching up on Dr. Who with The Woman. Damn fun. Started some Torchwood as well. I got to get something I can watch on my own without The Woman needing to be there. Been pushing myself to write a bit as well. High fantasy sort of stuff. No real literature. Maybe I’ll start and post some of my mind fruits online.

Finishing up the semester. 3 more to go. 13 classes. I’m smelling freedom in 18 months time.

I have resigned myself to not having a puppy until my dad’s dog has pups in about a years time. I can’t wait.

Replacing the truck next year. Need to work on a down payment.

Gonna build a new PC.. Any suggestions. Its been a while since I paid attentions to hardware and pricing and shit.

Started hanging with A-ron again. Its been good so far.

Lici now owns a handgun. We’re going for our CCW (Concealed Carry) permit on the 10th. I kinda want my own.

Went gun shopping with A-ron on Saturday. Hes going for a 9mm. Much more sensible than the .45s he started looking at. It will be interesting to go plinking with him some more.

Got a look at some bolt-action rifles on sale when we went gun shopping. I looked longingly, but didn’t ask to pick one up. No temptation with out fundation. Or something.

Other than that: work sucks. Anyone got a line for a management position in a technical field, or a WAN/LAN adminsitrator with Voice Over IP experience? Looking for a room mate too. Anyone interested, or got a line on someone who doesn’t suck?

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=en|es

Type in “Heath Ledger is dead.” and see the result. (ala the pic below…)

Ok.. so .. stolen from Fark user “Despairagus” in This Thread

Sorry you knew how to quit yourself man.
This one goes out to all the homies who done gone before.

My schedule…

Monday:
     Work: 7:00am - 4:30pm

Tuesday:
     Work: 7:00am - 3:30pm
    School: 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Wednesday:
     Work: 7:00am - 4:30pm
    School: 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Thursday:
     Work: 7:00am - 3:30pm
    School: 5:30pm - 10:00pm

Friday:
    School:  8:00am - 10:00am
     Work: 10:am - 4:00pm (telework)

Saturday:
        Whatever’s clever: 11:00am - 2:00AM

Sunday:
        D&D: 11:00am - 8:00pm (PayDay Weeks)
        Brother Sister Bonding Night : 7:00pm - 10:00pm  (Off-PayDay Weeks).

LAME! Not much time for hangin or doing stuff. Just an FYI.
School should be fun this semester too. This is the first semester of 300 level courses. Hopefully something challenges me enough to get me interested.

No Major changes to the site. I did modify the commenting policy feel free to comment all you want, my authorization is no longer required.

I in fact ENCOURAGE commenting.

no.. not a question about WHO will watch the watchmen movie.. mostly WTF?!

Did you ever want to become a “real life Super Hero”… Hrm.. maybe this guy could help…
http://articles.citypages.com/2008-01-16/feature/superheroes-in-real-life/2/

(bonus: I got the wacthmen reference prior to it being mentioned in the article).

The ABSOLUTE best 5 minutes of television EVAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQwXOCKNLY

William Shatner Singing “Rocket Man” ZOMG.. WTF?!

So its been a few days since I was all angstified about the stupid HOA management company tagging my truck. My vehicle has not been towed.  I still have my truck (a fact that Alicia grudgingly regrets). The property manager’s office haas  recieved, and probably deleted all my voice-mails without contact.

No one bothered to show. It is at this point that I must let my true feelings be known. The lady who I spoke to was a beligerent, presumptuos power-enboldened bitch who would not listen to customer’s perspective. The moment someone with any sense and legitmacy confronted her she backed down.  Heres to you idiot lady at the “Real Property Management Group” offices in Las Vegas Nevada.

I hereby replace the word “bitch” with the words “fucking bitch.”
I hereby replace the words “fucking bitch” with the word “cunt.”
I hereby replace the word “cunt” with the words “smelly disease-ridden cunt”
I hereby replace the words “smelly disease-ridden cunt” with the word “cucumber”.

That is all.

I drove to work on Friday in Alicia’s vehicle. Her vehicle gets better gas mileage, and Alicia was still on winter break, (to return today). Friday I came home to find a nice, bright orange, huge Sticker on the driver side door of my vehicle.

It noted that my tags were lapsed, and that my vehicle was going to get towed on 11/07/2007, at 2:30pm. Initially I was confused. The tags for HOA’s registration sticker don’t have a date. Then it dawned on me: they were referring to my DMV registration tags that go on the rear license plate.

The HOA has a rule against inoperable vehicles being parked or cinder-blocked on the premises. I am aware of this rule, and a supporter of it. The rule, however, can not discriminate against a vehicle that is legal, yet not pretty. For those of you who are unaware, my vehicle has at one point in the past interacted with the bumper of a school bus. I have not bother repairing the cosmetic damage as I am frugal, and couldn’t care less. Thus, we start to understand the motivation behind placing the sticker on the “crashed vehicle with expired registration.” To say it plainly, my vehicle was singled out for scrutiny based off of looks. More interestingly, the person inspecting the vehicle had to go through marked effort to determine that the tags were expired.

The story here is simple. The tags expired December 31. As money was tight this December, I didn’t have it until the last few weeks of the month. I also didn’t bother registering the vehicle whilst I was on vacation. I registered the vehicle on the 29th via the Nevada DMV Website. The lead-time on the tags being mailed is 7-10 days. The vehicle in the mean time is a registered and fully legal vehicle the proof of which I printed out, and can present to any one who requests it.So, despite the vehicle being fully legit, my vehicle was going to be towed. By my HOA. They were going to do this under the (false) assumption that the vehicle was not legally allowed to be driven. This assumption was based off unverified information.

Concurrently, the time frame to resolve the situation was less than 8 business hours. Not days. Hours. As in, the situation was given a grand total of 8 hours to be resolved by me from the moment an infraction was noticed. The draconian nature of the time schedule meant that even if I was in the wrong, and had wanted to resolve the situation that I would most likely not been able to resolve the situation in time to avoid the vehicle being towed. As a minor note (not really all that pertinent but still intensely annoying), the sticker they placed on the vehicle is extremely difficult to remove. This made the whole insulting and injurious proceedings even more infuriating in that I need to spend the better part of an hour removing the sticker, the bits of sticker paper left, and the adhesive from my window.

Needless to say, Brian was upset. Very, very upset.

The sticker did not say who to contact about the issue. You can not believe how frustrating this point is. If you are ever in a similar situation you will commiserate. I hoofed it over to the front of the complex where the bulletin board for notices, and HOA information is located. There was no listing of Board Members, or anything to file a grievance with. there was a business card for the property manager from the Property management company “Real Property Management Group.” A google search yields no results, so no linky for information on the business.

I call this agency, and ask to speak to the lady who represents my condos. I get sent directly to voice mail. I call back, and ask to speak to her again the secretary says “she is on-site, I’ll send you to her voice-mail” and attempts to forward me again. I had to interrupt her to inform her that I wanted to speak to a live person, and not to a message. I was NOT going to play phone tag with someone at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon: now that’s a losing game.

Another representative of the organization gets on the phone soon after I request an actual person, and we have a conversation. I informed them that I had registered my vehicle. I requested two things from the person:
  A.) An explanation of why the time frame was so short.
  B.) The specific page number from my CC&Rs indicating their authority for towing my vehicle.
They requested from me one thing: a copy of the DMV registration paperwork.

The lady could not, or would not provide this information. I would not provide them with the DMV registration paperwork. Frankly, I exercise my right to privacy often, and on principal don’t provide personal information to people who I don’t know, or who don’t need the information. I don’t care if this information Is a matter of public record or not, I don’t give it out. She kept pushing that point. I got testy. She (in exasperation) informed me she was not the actual property manager, and that the property manager would be back soon. I eventually gave them my phone number, and waited to be called back. Nearly immediately I received a phone call from the actual property manager assigned to my HOA. She informs me that the CC&Rs for my condo are clear in stating that an inoperable vehicle (more on this later…) is not allowed to be hosted on the property (which I knew already having dutifully read the CC&Rs when I moved in I immediately requested the following:
  1.) The Page number and process she was supposed to follow when towing a vehicle.
  2.) The legal definition of inoperable vehicle. (at this point she decided to argue that an unregistered vehicle is an inoperable vehicle. I noted that we had differing opinions on the statement, and that she really should provide a legal definition). She immediately told me to provide the DMV registration paperwork to her. I told her no. As we got increasingly frustrated with the other side voices got testier on both sides. The conversation ended with her making the inference that I was irresponsible. She also communicated that I was “foolish” for doing things the “hard way” because I didn’t feel she as a private citizen needed my registration paperwork. At which point she hung up the phone, but not before promising that my vehicle was going to get towed unless I showed up to her office in person (she revoked the idea of sending it in by fax) with the documentation this morning. (Monday the 7th of January). I am getting off of work early in order to make certain I am there in person at the time they supposedly will tow my vehicle. I don’t want to leave my vehicle there and have it ninja’d.

My contentions, (which I’m seriously considering throwing at small claims court) in this discussion after a little thought and research:

1.) My vehicle does not fit the legal definition of inoperable. As defined by The City of Henderson Property Maintenance Code” (its on page 7). In the least it matches the definition of an unregistered operative vehicle (same page). Towing a vehicle based off of incorrect premise is ethically wrong, and I would construe it as theft.

2.) Lack of due process. A private entity is threatening to penalize me, for a situation that is not a violation of the regulations I agreed to. Furthermore, that same private entity did not undergo any process to determine if their claim that my vehicle was unregistered was true, despite the information being freely and publically available. The entity was, therefore, going to punish a supposed violation of the regulations without evidence of actual violation.

3.) Harassment. The private entity required to enforce the regulations of the CC&Rs that I agreed to, singled out my vehicle because it did not fit their expectations of what a vehicle should look like. The moment they perceived a justifiable “problem” that would remove the vehicle, they utilized their authority. The manner in which they utilized this authority was irresponsible: giving me a very short amount of time to respond and handle the situation before the vehicle was to be towed, and impounded at my expense. Furthermore the lack of aforementioned due process lends more credence to the harassment contention.

4.) Transparency. If you have the “authority” to do something, you should really be able to cite the source that gants you the source of your authority. If you are unable to do that, than you are running the risk of exceeding your authority. Failure to cite your authority, should be a prosecutable offence.

I was going to add in slander to the contentions here, but frankly her opinion about me being irresponsible is baseless, and actually quite funny. Because my vehicle doesn’t fit the mold, and I value my privacy highly, I’m the idiot.

Good times.

More to report once we are through with this afternoon.