Normally I’m a pretty self-starting guy. If I say I will do things, they will get done. People are always amazed when I come through and are generally delighted. Being the kind of person who like praise, I continued to do things.

What I have noticed since I started not automatically doing things is that most people don’t follow up. While people are very appreciative after the fact, they don’t seem to really need or want volunteer assistance enough to spend 30 seconds getting it.

Our recent annual homeowners’ meeting was a great example. Lots of different problems were discussed and I had complete or partial solutions to several of them. For example, the Board complained that they did not know who owned some homes. As it turns out, I obtained a copy of all the title records from the County so I could send Christmas cards to neighbors. I wrote a program to do it and would be happy to run it again. There were questions about security (cameras, guards, locks, etc.) that I had experience with. One person wanted their old mailbox back. The HOA replaced them all last month and I snagged the old ones for an art project. I gave my email address and phone number to at least five people, and not one of them followed up. I’m certainly glad that I didn’t spend time actually getting information for people or doing it for them.

There have been a dozen other times I have observed the same effect. People actually follow-up less than 5% of the time. I’m not sure why this is the case. I’m hoping that it’s just because people get distracted by other things. In the worst case people have just been telling me they like my idea and would appreciate it because they wanted to be polite. I’m not sure that is the case, or at least all the time.

The experiment has certainly been worthwhile, however, as it has saved me a lot of time.

• Holiday sales seem to be up and retailers are unprepared. I’ve placed several orders for business needs and they are all being shipped late.


• Shipping companies are delivering things late. I currently have an overnight UPS package that is two days late and some Express Mail that is late. My customers are showing a higher-than-normal late-rate on Federal Express as well, though not as bad as the other carriers.


• Some of the web sites I was planning to order from already have notices to expect delivery in 2-4 weeks!


• Amazon is actually out of some rather mundane items (not just PS3 and Wii machines)

So, get your shopping done now, call vendors to make sure they have your items in stock and will ship quickly. Don’t bet on express carriers saving you this year. And most of all, don’t overspend :).

The on-line thing it still doesn’t allow you to do a change of address, but I was pleased that I did not have to enter any information about my insurance or my emissions inspection – it pulled that up automatically. The system even allows you to purchase the “special” tags on-line, although I did not see an option for vanity plates.

The system does require you to enter a number from your registration papers, so if you didn’t get them you are shit out of luck and get to stand in the line on your birthday. Well, it’s progress even if it isn’t perfection. Best part for them… there’s no way to pay with pennies over the Internet.

It’s kind of retro to think I now have to wait for my photos, just like when we used to “develop” our pictures.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting thought to step backwards like that.

I’m very pleased that the public is interested enough in this type of film for it to make it into mainstream theaters. Maybe there is some hope after all.

I think they did a good job explaining what global warming is and how we can use ice core samples to judge temperature and CO2 levels back thousands of years. While the film focuses on “consequences” of our inaction, Gore does remind us that there is plenty of time to act and that we have reversed our environmental damage before – the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons, for example.

The visuals do a good job keeping the audience’s attention, and I was excited to see them using an Apple computer. At the same time, there were several statistical flaws. The flaws are relatively minor, but this film is going to become the Fahrenheit 9/11 and you know that people are going to attack it. Whether Gore planned on it or not, he might end up being a poster child for the film. I can already see the oil industry saying “Al Gore says he invented Global Warming.” Among the errors I thought I caught:

• list of deaths did not add up to the same number Al Gore says in the narrative (35,000)
• Some of the temperature graphs indicated a range of only two degrees. The temperature in the theater probably fluctuated more than that.
• During the end sequence about technology, photos of the Very Large Array, a radio telescope, are used to represent “satellite communication”

I would feel better about the representations if they put the charts and graphs on their web site. Many of them fly by faster than you can read. “These are not the statistics you are looking for.” To make this even funnier, one of the commercials during the previews was about subliminal messages.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, I think it is easy to see that our society’s pollution is not a good thing. If you don’t understand what us environmentalists are talking about, seeing this film will help you understand our perspective. I recommend it, but you might want to wait for it to come out on DVD. Hopefully they will fix the above errors, plus you will be able to pause and back-up.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the “follow-up” movie Who Killed the Electric Car? that was advertised during the previews. I don’t think electric cars are the whole answer, after all we create carbons and nuclear waste to make our electricity, but it seems to me that it should be a commercially available option at this point.

• Unlike an apartment, they don’t repaint between tenants. They don’t clean either. Oh, and furniture tends to cover damage to the walls and carpet. So far, I’ve spent more than 25 hours cleaning. The place wasn’t a disaster or anything. The sellers were not slobs. But it did take a long time.


• Landscaping needs water. It looks like the sellers didn’t water for a while and all the flowers and plants are wilting. It also takes a lot of time to stand there and water them. Sprinklers and timers are your friends.


• Follow the directions on cleaning chemicals carefully. For example, I own a steam cleaner, but it was not able to remove some of the stains (probably tea or coffee) from the upstairs carpet. I did, however, find a great chemical called Forex that is getting it out. I sprayed it in and tried to suck it out with the steam cleaner. That didn’t work at all. I guess the chemical doesn’t mix with water because when I followed the directions and blotted it out with a towel, it worked great. The chemical was cheap, in a white bottle, isn’t caustic, and doesn’t smell. I highly recommend it.

The upstairs of the house needs more carpet cleaning (and possible replacement) plus repainting. I don’t have time to do that for several weeks. I finally came up with a great idea. Since I’ve always wanted to try living in a loft, I’m going to put all the furniture on the lower level. That leaves 4 rooms – the bedroom, bathroom, living/dining/office/kitchen, and the garage. That will also allow me to work on the upstairs without having furniture all over the place.

Anyway, I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn this week.

Financing:

• Before you shop for a house, get qualified for your loan. No one treats you seriously until they know for sure that you will have money to complete a transaction.


• Mortgage companies don’t call people back. There are many reasons that a mortgage company might not be interested in your loan. They might not be licensed in your state, might not do first time buyers, or whatever. Bottom line, however, is that if they don’t want your mortgage they won’t be polite enough to call and tell you so. Maybe people whine a lot or something, I don’t know, but if you don’t hear back within one business day you should call someone else. Mortgage companies make a lot of money off your loan. When they do want your business, expect them to call over and over again.


• Get some extra phone lines and email addresses to hand out to people. As a new home owner, you are marketing gold and will want to turn off phone lines and email addresses when they get bogged with crap. Likewise, get ready for a lot of credit offers. Vendors were calling me within 24 hours of closing to sell me alarms and all sorts of other stuff.


• Remember the old saying that “banks only give money to people who don’t need it.” Oh, and also, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” Expect to kill some trees in the process.
  

Home Shopping:

• You’ll need an agent. Your mortgage approval will only be good for so many days and shopping for a home on your own will suck up an inordinate amount of time. Your agent will spend nearly as much time doing background work for you as they spend home shopping with you. You’ll have a ton of questions, and it’s nice to have someone who can answer about half of them. Also, most homes on the market have the little key boxes for people to check them out. Agents have access to those. Agents will also save you a lot of time by checking out listings in advance. A lot of listings are already sold, even though they are still listed. Sometimes sellers take homes off the market, but they stay on the MLS sites. Sometimes there are issues with homes that your agent can tell you about. For example, “I looked at that home two weeks ago with another client. It was a rental and the people renting it wrecked it. It needs $40,000 in renovation and has mold. Do you still want to see it?” Finally, the prices homes actually sell for are substantially lower than the amounts people ask for. Your agent can pull MLS records for the area and find out what homes really sell for and use that as a tool to lower the price. Saving 10% on a home is like getting a car for free.


• If you want DSL, find out where it is available in advance of your search. I wasted two weeks of my time and my agent’s time looking in an area that had no service. I would never have guessed that the nearest CO switch was so far away or that homes in such a nice area would not have DSL service. I know it is very hard to find out where the COs are located, etc., but the hours you spend digging this information up will save you a lot more time later.


• Rent an airplane and fly over your area, preferably during rush hour. Not only is it kind of fun, but you will learn a lot. Expect it to run $200-250. If you happen to be a pilot, hire someone else to be pilot-in-command for this flight. You want to get down to 1,000 feet AGL and gawk, so let someone else be in charge of paying attention.


• The best homes sell in just a few days. Homes that stay listed on MLS, therefore, are not necessarily as good. A good agent watches the new listings every day and will call you. Be prepared to look every day and to put in an offer quickly. Sometimes agents know about homes that are not even listed yet.

I’ve received offers at my current address that are co-addressed to businesses I worked at more than 10 years ago. I’ve moved more than five times.

The most interesting ones are these offers from Chase. First, if you recall the Chase-Manhattan Incident, where Chase imagined a credit card and then sued me when I refused to pay it, it’s amazing that they would offer me credit at all. But more interesting than this is that each of the offers is slightly different. They offer a slightly different rate, grace period, etc. It’s like they are experimenting with their marketing mix to see what will make customers take their offer. Even the phone numbers to call are different.