Tag Archives: Justin

A Foul Furnace Fumble

Posted by on September 4, 2008 2 comments

In today’s computer age, referrals and customer loyalty are the keys to success.  Small and Large companies alike rely on word of mouth advertising.  Hence the insurgence of viral marketing.  While this can provide tremendous benefit to some companies, it can be a veritable minefield for others.  Such is the case with McQuillan Brother’s Plumbing and Heating.

As some of my readers (Hello all 3 of you!) may know, my best friend Justin recently purchased a home.  He lives there with his wonderful new wife Amber.  There couldn’t be a kinder couple on the face of the earth.  They were looking forward to married life and enjoying the company of each other in their newly purchased house.  They took all the right steps and precautions in purchasing the house.  They had help from experienced home buyers and were fortunate enough to be buying the house from a very nice couple.

During the routine inspections, they had the furnace inspected.  Part of the closing agreement was to ensure that the furnace did not need to be “red tagged” (read: replaced).  The inspector from McQuillan gave them the green light and the house was eventually closed on.

Fast forward a few months.  The furnace has since the inspection not been used and we find ourselves in a frustrating situation.  This is because in an unrelated incident the A/C unit had gone out.  A different company was brought in to replace the A/C unit.  At no cost, the new company performed an inspection of the furnace.  It was at this point that the furnace was “red tagged.”  Keep in mind that the furnace had not been used , if even touched, since McQuillan inspected the furnace.

McQuillan is now fighting tooth and nail to try escape responsibility for poor quality of work.  It’s down right offending to find a company who has no customer loyalty or honor.  They must take no pride in the work they deliver.  If they can’t back up every inspection they do, they don’t deserve to be in business.

If you want to read more about this, make sure you head over to Justin’s site where he gives a much better explanation of why you and anyone you know should avoid ever doing business with McQuillan Brother’s Plumbing and Heating.

shatter terrible business practices

Goodbye 2007

Posted by on December 31, 2007 No comments

2007 is coming to a close tonight.  We are one year closer to the end of the world.  An event that some would say is not too far off if you follow the Mayan calendar or wear a tin foil hat.  It was a pretty good year.  It saw me learning lots about love. It saw me finish out my undergraduate education.  It saw me spend lots of money and hold my only job to last longer than a year.  It was in summation a wonderful year and a truly blessed year from a taoist point of view.

Justin’s gift arrived yesterday.  It was a collection of all the posts for The Onus.  The Onus was a comic that I had put out for about 6 months.  I’ve always dreamed of resurrecting it and maybe this gift is just the nudge I needed.  It is a truly awesome gift and I thank him very much.

My dad and I have a trip book to go to Ski Paradise this April.  That means I have 3 months to get in the best shape of my life.  It’s sad that this happens to coincide with all the folks who will make a resolution to lose weight.  Luckily Any Time Fitness is open 24hrs.  I’ll just have to go at slow times.  Elizabeth has decided that she also wants to start working out.  This mean that the two of us should be able to motivate each other.  She already motivated me to go today.  This will be our first trip to the gym and I hope it won’t be our last.  I’m making a workout sheet to provide a means of immediate gratification.  I’m hoping to turn it into a web application so that I can put it up on the site to provide another means of accountability.

Well it’s time to go get ready to celebrate the new year and say farewell to 2007.  A toast to 2007!  May 2008 be a continuation of a wonderful life and may it see me through to 2009.  Be safe tonight everyone.  A $100 cab is worth your life.

The Great Christmas Wrap Up

Posted by on December 28, 2007 No comments

…or Boxing Day if you have government funded health care.

So Christmas is over (or almost, Justin says he has something in the mail for me. He shouldn’t have, but it’s very nice of him to get me something and I’m excited to see what it is.) I’d like to thank everyone who went out of their way to gift me something and at the same time I hope everyone who received gifts from me enjoyed their gifts. I wish I had the funds to buy gifts for everyone and the time to spend the Holidays with all the people in my life, but sadly the world doesn’t work that way. In an effort to appear non-materialistic (ha!) I will now see how the list faired (the one’s in red are still missing):

-Needs-

  • Men’s Ware House Gift Certificates (Received some for Graduation)
    • Received a wonderful dress shirt and tie from Elizabeth’s parents, Thank you!
    • Dress Socks from Mom and Dad
  • Electric Blanket (Thanks for that already Mom.)
  • New Cellphone
  • New Slippers
  • Those fancy ear muffs that don’t mess up your hair

-Wants-

  • Nintendo DS Lite (Uber shocked to cross this out. Elizabeth is the greatest girlfriend ever.)
    • +Games!!!! (The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hour Glass, came with the Limited Edition Zelda DS)
  • Music CDs (Secret Santa: Uncle Craig got me $40 at iTunes.)
  • New Computer
  • Hockey Goalie Equipment
  • Spare Xbox 360 Controller (I purchased these items shortly after I put up the list.)
    • Rechargeable battery pack for Xbox 360 Controller
  • 2 More Wii Remotes
  • Digital SLR Camera
  • New earbud headphones

I received some gifts from Mom and Dad that I had mentioned earlier in the year and completely forgot about come list time. Most notable is a Makita Hammer Drill and Grinder set. After working at O’keef’s I’ve grown to love Makita products. In addition they gifted me more construction related tools and utensils. I’m pretty pumped because I find myself in need of tools and it feels like a sign that I am growing up. Purchasing a house doesn’t seem so far away. My sister bought me a pretty sweet zip up hoodie from Buckle. Look for me to be wearing it often. She also bought me some Jägermeister that, because it was a gift, came in a pretty cool metal slip tin. Now before you get all up in arms because she is underage, she had someone else purchase it for her and I am of age. Now all we need is some red bull.

To follow suit, I ‘ll do what Justin did and write what I got for others.

Elizabeth: 3 Different Types of Scarfs. She asked for a scarf for Christmas and not knowing what else to get her and not having the funds to buy what I really want to get her, I went over board and got her multiple scarves. I bought her a University of Minnesota scarf first because I knew the moment I saw it that I had to get it for her. I realized that it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for work so I figured I would get her scarves to match whatever she wore. I went with a fancy black scarf and a big fluffy white scarf. She seemed to be happy and I hope she likes them. I’ve already seen her wearing the Minnesota one. (After her gifts, though, I felt that my gifts just didn’t match the awesomeness of hers. She totally won this year and at the same time I win because of that.)

Melissa(sister): I got her $20 at Buckle because she loves that store. She is also going to Mexico for school this January so I tried to get her a CD that contained popular Latin Musica. Wow. Shopping for music in a different language is hard. I’m not terrible when it comes to Spanish, but I still struggled. I was able to find a CD that said it was the winner of 4 Latin Grammys. It was either that or one of the bajillion mariachi bands present in Wal-Mart’s Latin Music selection. So you can guess which one I went with. When we popped the CD in on Christmas day we were all pleasantly shocked. It was a pretty sweet CD. Juanes – Un Dia Normal, if you are interested.

Mom: Our family is big on “TV on DVD”. Mom is always hard to shop for. It seems that women are much harder to shop for than men. I think it is because women don’t like to express what they like and would prefer you guess. So I picked up that my Mom and Dad like Boston Legal. My Mom even told me that they really liked that show, so I purchased the first season on DVD for my Mom.

Dad: Continuing the theme, I purchased Battlestar Galactica Season 2.5 on DVD for him. This one was pretty easy. We already own all 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1 on DVD, my sister was picking up Stargate Atlantis Season 2 for him and we own Battlestar Galactica Season 1 on DVD. However, this is where I erred. I thought the extra “.5” meant it was season 2 with bonus features. Silly me. When I eventually bothered to check, I found that they split the season up. Those capitalist bastards. So today I actually went out and got Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0 on DVD so that we can watch them in order.

Secret Santa – Cousin Mike: He didn’t put anything down on the list. So I got him the multipass of gifts; a Wal-Mart gift card. I also made him a card with the following poem I wrote the morning of Christmas Eve:

Santa’s confused this Christmas Eve,
For on his list your name he does not see.
He’s checked it twice,
and he’s sure you’ve been nice.
It must be that you’ve asked for naught.
Now you’re stuck with what he bought.
Lucky for you, he’s a nice guy,
And left it up to you with what to buy.
A golden ticket to the land of lights,
Where they never close for holidays or nights,
A land of toys, games, food and mead.
A land with everything you may need.
Santa hopes you’ve learned this year,
Forget again and you’ll get a kick in the rear.

That is all the giving and receiving I was involved in. Christmas Eve was spent with the family at Andy and Theresa’s. We managed to set the house on fire only two times. We had to open all the windows, get the air flow going and clear out the smoke. It wasn’t so bad when we did it before most people arrived because the sun was still up and it wasn’t too bad outside. However, when it happened right before dinner it was dark out and much colder. To be fair, I think only one involved actual fire and that was with the ham in the oven. The earliest incident was just turkey juices spilling over in the oven and being turned to steam. The rest of the evening was a run of the mill family event with everyone playing their normal parts. The most unlike normal role goes to Tigger (Andy and Theresa’s cat) for actually being playful with so many people around. He was pretty good until people took his playfulness for granted and got him all ornery again. Dakota was in heat so we had to keep her penned up (don’t worry she has a nice heated garage.) It’s too bad too. She is such a wonderful dog and it has to be hard for her to be excluded. It doesn’t help that her new friend in life, Chase, is away at training.

Everyone stayed for a pretty long time. Eventually we all made our way home and the night drew to a close. I couldn’t read the book I had read on the way up, Negotiating for Dummies, so I decided to sleep .

Christmas morning, I woke up at the bright hour of 10:00am. It wasn’t long after that we opened presents. Santa brought the family Scene It Deluxe Movie Edition 2 so we played that a bit and watched Christmas movies on TV. The day was spent relaxing with the family and it was very enjoyable. Elizabeth stopped by late at night after her family event had concluded. She stayed pretty late which was surprising considering we would be going skating the next morning. It’s a family tradition of hers to go skating the day after Christmas. Braving the winter weather she headed home around 2:00am and I was relieved to get a message saying she had made it home safe. My Christmas 2007 came to a close then as I went to bed to get some well needed rest.  I would need it, for the next day we would play hockey and skate.

And there you have it! The great Christmas wrap up of 2007. The culmination of a month or so of shopping and hours of preparation and cooking. I hope everyone had a wonderful time, I certainly did.

Importastic!

Posted by on December 13, 2007 No comments

A huge Thank You goes out to Justin for his invaluable assistance in pulling all the old entries.  I may have had to do the dirty work, but without his guidance I would still be twiddling my thumbs.  That means that all the old posts are in the system as well as the associated comments.  Now it’s time to take a break and take a drive.