Useless Conversation

[IainC]

Buy her one of these. I use it for cutting airbrush stencils and masks but it would work just fine on cardstock, felt or pretty much anything that an x-acto will go through.

[Selby]

So my wife just bought this thing called a Cricut Expression 2, which is apparently some sort of die cutting machine that will get you your etsy cred.

My mom had one of those that was a much higher end than that particular one (she and my dad didn't screw around with technology, it was always high end) and she loves hers.  An x-acto knife can do much, but sometimes a little extra help can really make the difference in the shapes and pieces you can turn out.

[ghost]

If it worked it would be pretty damned cool.  But it doesn't.  I would love to talk to their corporate marketing.  Who do they think their target market is?  The people that buy this shit are typically stay at home moms and retired women over the age of 60.  If you can't just plug it in and have it work, you're hosed. 

[Salamok]

Isn't there a fairly large vinyl sign + DIY crowd that mods old plotters to do this?  Imagine her etsy cred when she starts cranking out those d format printer sized designs.

[ghost]

That looks pretty cool, but it also looks like it would have to have an excess (meaning any) of my involvement.  I can do a USB port, but I'm not about to start jury rigging stuff. 

[Yegolev]

We are looking for contractors who can read documents ...

My first reaction was   

Then I realized you probably meant contract workers.

If the only available jobs were in construction, I'd probably just hang out at an interstate ramp with a cup and a sign.

About Cricut, don't get me started.  My wife started in the architecture program and completed with an interior design degree, but she uses one of these.  It's fast and accurate, and the designs are "cute".  Downside is the expense.  Actually another downside is that there is no competing product and the Cricut people are generally incompetent.  Filthy rich, but incompetent.

[ghost]

We're actually going to try a Silhouette machine, Yeg, probably the Cameo.  It doesn't require the cartridges that the Cricut uses, so hopefully the expense will be less.  I'll let you know how it goes, but it appears that there are at least some competing devices out there. 

[Yegolev]

If you think I'm going to point out a new scrapbooking expense to my wife, you're crazy.

[ghost]

Hey man, it might save you money, if you don't have to buy the cartridges.  It's like I'm making you money, bro. 

[Yegolev]

I think she will just have another machine.  That Cricut isn't going anywhere.  In fact she's on her third one, I think.  I've been meaning to check if she can get a discount by converting to the LDS Church.

[ghost]

Is Cricut made by mormons?

[Ironwood]

Yeah, listen up Dumbass;  when you type a name in and it automatically fills in the e-mail address, that's not your 'contact list'.  That's the mail client learning who you like talking to.

Yes, in getting a new mailbox you've lost that.  Because you were a Dumbass and thought that life would just revolve around your pretty little self.

Dickhead.


In related news, I have no idea what you chaps are talking about ;  what is a die cutting machine ?

[Salamok]

Code:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERID\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.nk2

[ghost]

A die cutting machine is something folks can use to cut intricate designs in paper quite easily.  Women (almost exclusively, I'm assuming) use these to work on scrapbooks and to do fancy little cards, etc.  My wife just spent all day doing fancy valentines day cards for our son's class.   

The one the wife got is nice.  The $50 plus cartridges will never have to be bought with the silhouette, and it worked flawlessly. 

[Cyrrex]

You all need to tell those wives of yours that if they truly had any skill or talent whatsoever, they would be doing that shit the old fashioned way with a pair of rusty kitchen scissors.

[Ironwood]

Code:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERID\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.nk2

Yeah, I know about it, but Fuck Him.

[Chimpy]

So Ironwood. I know you work a bit with Office365. Quick question (as MS's site does not go into much detail on this) do the office web apps have the ability to open local docs or does everything have to be in the 365 cloud already?

[Ironwood]

Fairly sure the WebApps only let you fuck around with things on your Skydrive and Sharepoint sites.

That said, a local doc is merely a doc you haven't yet uploaded to Skydrive.

In their minds anyway.

[Yegolev]

Is Cricut made by mormons?

The LDS are very into ancestry.  This has led many members being very into scrapbooking and paper crafts.  Most papercrafting tools or products of any merit will originate in Utah.  This includes Cricut, as far as I can remember.  For your next ski trip, you can drop off the wife in a town to purchase lots of paper while you slide down a mountain.

[Chimpy]

Fairly sure the WebApps only let you fuck around with things on your Skydrive and Sharepoint sites.

That said, a local doc is merely a doc you haven't yet uploaded to Skydrive.

In their minds anyway.

Oh, I know. And I am by no means against moving these particular files. Problem being the people at the company get bent out of shape about, well, anything.

The main reason we are even entertaining going to 365 from the free google apps account we use is because the lady in charge refuses to delete ANYTHING from her inbox, even junk mail she never reads. She has something on the order of 15000 unread messages in her inbox. Thus we had to sign up for the free trial of the paid version for expanding her storage over the quota.

[ghost]

Anyone got any ideas on  how to find a decent real estate agent?

[Ironwood]

Fairly sure the WebApps only let you fuck around with things on your Skydrive and Sharepoint sites.

That said, a local doc is merely a doc you haven't yet uploaded to Skydrive.

In their minds anyway.

Oh, I know. And I am by no means against moving these particular files. Problem being the people at the company get bent out of shape about, well, anything.

The main reason we are even entertaining going to 365 from the free google apps account we use is because the lady in charge refuses to delete ANYTHING from her inbox, even junk mail she never reads. She has something on the order of 15000 unread messages in her inbox. Thus we had to sign up for the free trial of the paid version for expanding her storage over the quota.

Then she's a fucking clown and moving her to 365 won't help that.  Seriously, don't do it.

I have to transition and migrate people and the fucking nightmare that is mailboxes over 2Gb you wouldn't believe.  I'm currently looking at this 12Gb mailbox from all angles and, frankly, my solution is going to be 'I'm Not Doing That'.  They can fucking carve it into a million different PST's if they want, but I'm simply not taking responsibility for someone elses fucking stupid hoarding habit.

E-mail is a communications medium.  This is like recording every conversation you ever had on VHS and storing the fucking tapes in your garage.

Tell her to knock that shit off.

[Merusk]

Problem with that is the folks most likely to do it are the ones who would have gotten burned in the past but still had the email communication that showed they were told to do things the wrong way.   If folks are doing that it's a management problem and you probably need some form of mail/ project archiving.  We use Newforma here.

If it's a random front line interchangeable person with that many.. yeah, fuck 'em.

Anyone got any ideas on  how to find a decent real estate agent?

Ask around, expect to get fucked.  There's no such thing and your only saving grace is it's a down market so the really shitty ones left.  Of course so did the ones with any talent who could move in to another field. So you're left with the mediocre crop of folks who were either lucky enough to have areas that continued to move or were willing to bust their ass for every possible sale.  You're at a crap shoot as to which one you'll get.

[Nebu]

While a good real estate agent will minimize your workload, it's still secondary to a good home inspector. 

[ghost]

That's what I was afraid of.  I've only had one good experience with an agent, and my guy moved.   

[Ironwood]

Problem with that is the folks most likely to do it are the ones who would have gotten burned in the past but still had the email communication that showed they were told to do things the wrong way.   If folks are doing that it's a management problem and you probably need some form of mail/ project archiving.  We use Newforma here.

I don't disagree.

But don't keep it on a live system.

[Lantyssa]

Anyone got any ideas on  how to find a decent real estate agent?

Ask everyone you know.

I've found two great agents through friends and co-workers.

[Hammond]

12 GB mailbox?  Gah what the heck is wrong with people.  Seriously I know people with 7 years of email that can keep it under 2 GB no problem.   

On a side note what are people using to transfer large files these days?  FTP, Dropbox, yousendit, box.net, sharepoint really do not fit our requirements.  We want something that integrates into outlook like yousendit but we can host ourselves. There is a cisco one which is god awful expensive http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac0/ac1/ac259/ironport.html and one by ipswitch  http://www.ipswitchft.com/Products/MOVEitDMZ/AdHoc.aspx  which is also god awful expensive. 

[TripleDES]

After my stepdad died 1.5 years ago and my mom finally managed to get the bullshit around the inheritance sorted, she's trying to sell the house.

A realtor presented with some scatterbrainish guy. Googling him already presented some fine whine about him painting himself as mobbing victim royale. Anyhow, my mom didn't exactly care, as long she had a chance to get rid of the house. A contract was prepared at the notary and then he got silent. With some trouble, my mom got his attention back, giving him an ultimatum to coax over a deposit and evidence that he could afford the house. He acknowledged and that's that. You'd think.

Turns out that he needed to justify himself in an email. It goes along the lines of (paraphrased, it's in German and from memory since she doesn't want to forward them to me) the banks being a bunch of fascists, colluding against him, because his grandfather was apparently a judge condemning jews to the KZ, and the grandfather of the bank CEO was one of the jews that were gassed thanks to his grandfather, so said CEO's holding a grudge, locked down his stuff and hired a bunch of neonazis trying to off him and his wife, which happens to hang out in Russia (and is listed on a mail order catalog), but he's now in hiding and hired several public and private organizations to protect him and his wife, among those the Mossad, BND and Blackwater, and he could prove that his grandfather wasn't responsible, because thanks to the national archive there's proof that his grandfather handed in sick leave for that day, but he had to lay low now and would need a reprieve to get the money.

Yeah, he also wrote this story in one sentence, with more details and less commas. There's probably more stuff, that I forgot by now, because I was kind of between   and  .

Meanwhile, during that silent period, he also tried to scam himself into a lease and intended to squat the place for free. He scrammed before the police could get to him and left a similar story with the landlord, but written down on paper.

So yeah, I glimpsed into the mind of a schizophrenic person today, it seems.

[Merusk]

Problem with that is the folks most likely to do it are the ones who would have gotten burned in the past but still had the email communication that showed they were told to do things the wrong way.   If folks are doing that it's a management problem and you probably need some form of mail/ project archiving.  We use Newforma here.

I don't disagree.

But don't keep it on a live system.

Oh hell I thought that was just their archived .pst file.  I've always been locked at 250mb-500mb at various jobs so I've never hit that outside of an archive file.  Wow.

12 GB mailbox?  Gah what the heck is wrong with people.  Seriously I know people with 7 years of email that can keep it under 2 GB no problem.   

On a side note what are people using to transfer large files these days?  FTP, Dropbox, yousendit, box.net, sharepoint really do not fit our requirements.  We want something that integrates into outlook like yousendit but we can host ourselves. There is a cisco one which is god awful expensive http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac0/ac1/ac259/ironport.html and one by ipswitch  http://www.ipswitchft.com/Products/MOVEitDMZ/AdHoc.aspx  which is also god awful expensive. 

12gb is easy to hit if you're storing attachments as well.  Which they probably are if they're saving every damn piece of mail.

I'll recommend Newforma again.  It does both of the things you said you're looking for.  The Outlook hook replacess the send button with "Send and File to Newforma"  It also has an FTP leg attached to it called "Info Exchange" in addition to the email and project stuff.  It's designed for AEC companies though so take a look and see if it'll work for you first.
http://www.newforma.com/

[Hammond]

Newforma looks interesting do you know the licensing cost?  Quite a bit of it would not apply for us I think since we are a manufacturing company not a AEC company.

[Merusk]

I don't know, but according to AEC Mag it's $5-$10k startup with seats in 50-license bundles annually.

http://aecmag.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=442

[ghost]

Anyone got any ideas on  how to find a decent real estate agent?

Ask everyone you know.

I've found two great agents through friends and co-workers.

Part of the problem for us is that we really aren't from here and don't know a ton of people that I would trust to give us a good recommendation.  We're essentially hermits.   

[Sky]

While a good real estate agent will minimize your workload, it's still secondary to a good home inspector.  

And lawyer. If you know your market, a real estate agent is just an expensive non-essential. When I was at the closing with the two lawyers (just us), I made the comment that it's sickening that my agent was paid more than borth of them combined, and all he did was fill in some blanks on a contract in his childish scrawl that wouldn't have looked out of place in crayon.

If you know your market, just use a local MLS website and call the listing agent directly. If they're pulling the 3% split with the buying agent, you might be able to knock an easy 2% off. Tell the listing agent you're just going through an attorney and they can pocket an extra 1% if they knock the 2% off the price...after all negotiations are done.

As far as good home inspectors go....good luck.

edit - Ah. Well, learn the market :)

[Salamok]

Anyone got any ideas on how to find a decent real estate agent?

Go get your own license, hang it on the wall of one of the $500/transaction type of brokers.  Some of the fees are quarterly so you can just pay them take care of business in 3 months and then go inactive until you next need it.  

Fun part is the "savings" scale and the more money you are spending on a house the more worth your while it is to do it.

Of course I am mostly joking, still pisses me off knowing that 85% of the effort of being a Realtor goes into finding clients and somehow they have finagled their rates up enough so that the 15% of the work they actually do on your behalf supports the 85% of the work they do that has zero benefit to you.