I told another person about the site yesterday, but this time it’s a bit different. This is a fellow I met on Twitter, and there were very few things we ever were able to agree on, but that’s good. The important thing about our interpersonal relationship was that we challenged each other’s ideas and had debates, but we did so respectfully. Going into any discussions with him, I always knew the likelihood of me changing his mind were slim to none (and I’m certain he felt the same about me) but we did so anyway because the conversation was always respectful and we were able to learn about the opposing viewpoint. It kept us from locking ourselves in an echo chamber of just hearing our own ideas repeated over and over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had pretty much left Twitter after the Elon takeover, and that was after I had switched accounts for my campaign and pretty much just kept using it instead of switching back, so we haven’t had the opportunity to have these discussions like we did in the past. Hopefully that will change, so Jim, if you’re reading this, welcome frenemy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On to the more mundane…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My bathroom is in shambles. It has been this way for over a year now. What started out as a quick weekend project for a contractor turned into a year-long pain in the ass, and it still isn’t resolved. The contractor keeps saying it is all the fault of Home Depot, and yes, they do share some of the blame for shipping the wrong set multiple times, but I still see the contractor as holding the majority of the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
See, we had picked out a set to be installed that was specified in the contract. The contractor went and got something that was not the specified set from Lowe’s, ripped out our tub and alcove, and then tried to play off the mistake as, “oh I thought you just wanted a deeper tub, this ones deeper than the one you picked out.” Well, yes, we did want a deeper tub, but there were also other things about the set we picked out that we wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It turns out the bath\/shower set we wanted is a Home Depot exclusive but online Home Depot is a different company than in store Home Depot, and each region of in-store Home Depots are a different company from each other as well – and it seems those companies don’t talk much. The online HD originally lost the shipment, found it, and delivered two wrong tubs. They were pretty fancy but not what we wanted, and we needed a tub and alcove, not two tubs anyway, so the contractor took those and HD shipped again – lost again and when finally delivered, they were the correct pieces but one was broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could go on for hours about the minutiae of this whole situation, but the bottom line is, one year later we still don’t have out bathroom back to normal and I still have a tub set sitting outside. A bit over a month ago, he had said he had the situation figured out and we’d have our bathroom in two weeks. That obviously did not pan out, so after a full year, we went to Lowe’s ourselves and checked out some options. I sent those to the contractor and told him we needed this finished and we’d settle for one of these other sets. What does he do? He starts making excuses and saying that we should have just taken the first one that he installed then had to rip out – except that he didn’t actually install the other alcove as it had the wrong parts, and the tub is still here. On top of that, the original alcove he had brought didn’t have the shelves we wanted and are part of the sets we looked at. What’s pissing me off the most is his inability to accept that this whole fiasco was because of his initial error – had he checked the parts to make sure they were correct in the beginning (you know, doing the thing that we novices hire so-called “professionals” for) and not ripped apart our bathroom, we would still have our old bathroom while waiting for the right set to arrive. But because he fucked up, that put him off balance and we were pushed into a situation that ultimately ended up with us in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now I’m torn – the conversation with the contractor has pissed me off to no end and part of me wants to make him rip this out too and replace everything with a set we pick out. The other part of me wants this whole thing behind me and just let him install whatever and find someone who can do the job right to install what we want down the line or just live with it. We’d end up eating the money we paid already, but is that just a small cost for our sanity and the lesson learned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have guests coming to visit later this summer, so I think we’re going to just take the easy path this time and chalk this up to a lesson learned. Investigate the contractors better, especially if you live in a small town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Trump administration is trying to block politically inconvenient government data<\/a> – “Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast because it predicts an increase in the nation\u2019s trade deficit in farm goods later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anthropic Researchers Warn That Humans Could End Up Being “Meat Robots” Controlled by AI<\/a> – “Researchers at one of the world’s leading AI labs are warning that humans may soon be little more than ‘meat robots’ for near-future artificial intelligence systems.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holy Grail has been ‘found’ and the fabled chalice of Jesus is buried in St Albans<\/a> – “An expert claims he’s tracked it down to St Albans and now wants permission to excavate the priceless relic from a secret tomb hidden in the Hertfordshire town”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canadian judge rules that flipping someone off is a ‘God-given right’<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n