SwimFinsSF

City of San Francisco is a PAIN IN THE ASS

So we’re going through this crazy condo conversion – don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before or not… Anyway… One of the parts of the process is having inspectors come in, inspecting the house, giving you a laundry list of things they want you to fix, and then proving you’ve got that all done.. Well we did that.. For the last 6 months or so we’ve been dealing with getting all the pidly shit changes they wanted fixed done… It has been a royal pain in the ass dealing with this all… But Saturday we got the ‘Certificate of Final Completion and Occupancy’ for the work.. I”m thinking ‘whew… the long part of the process is FINALLY done’… So I call our lawyer thinking I can just send this off to him and that will move the process along.. Well, it turns out, the city STILL hasn’t even gotten to the point where they need it – after a year and a half… And.. What’s worse is that my lawyer tells me that the next stage is for the city to ‘request mylars’ and THAT is the half way point… FUCK… so we could have another year and a half of waiting – just cuz the city is too backlogged to do what they’re supposed to do..

MAN… the longer ya live in this city the more ya realize how much it can REALLY SUCK some times..

Anyway.. Sorry for the rant..

Happy Friday… :):)

Yes… I’m alive

And we’re back from Tahiti and back to reality.. I’m uploading the pictures as we speak and I’ll write more once they’re up there..

oh.. yea… and on a work related topic – did y’all catch this? CRAZY huh? If ya ask me its gonna be a good thing! 🙂

Anyway.. more to come! 🙂

Pete out!

Props for MSFT after all

So it seems Microsoft decided to do the right thing after all. In response to growing critism for backing off its support for state civil rights legislation, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer said in a letter to employees “After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda”. Its unfortunate that they didn’t do this in time to save the bill but better late then never. Thanks Steve! 🙂

Yet another reason

Its not like I needed another reason to avoid Microsoft Products – but they’ve given me yet another reason anyway.

In this article on theStranger it appears Microsoft has bowed out of supporting a bill which would guarantee basic civil rights (we’re not even talking marriage – just the basics) to GLTB folks in the state of Washington. After a meeting with between Ken Hutcherson (pastor of a church in the Redmond church near Microsoft’s headquarters) and a senior Microsoft executive Microsoft withdrew its support for House bill 1515. I have found a statement from Steve Blamer regarding this position thiat is interesting however i’m not buying it as articles such as this one seem to back the article in theStranger though in a more neutral way. Another very well put piece on this was this one by Nicole Brodeur.

There is plenty to debate here as to whether or not corporations should be supporting legislation which support their corporate policies and how this relates to their business but the fact remains that Microsoft has a history of political activity on any number of fronts and for them to choose this issue as an example of a change in their legislative policy strikes me as disingenuous. The fact of the matter is they put business interests and the interests of religious conservatives before human rights and any way you dice that its just wrong… it just is…

The bill was defeated in the state senate by 1 vote.

By the way

Did I mention we’re going here (staying here) and here (staying here) on vacation in a couple of weeks? Learning to Scuba Dive and i’m going to learn how to relax a little bit… I’m so excited I can’t even tell ya…

Gay in the Heartland

I heard a really good segment on NPR on the way to work today (yea – I know… on the way to work on SATURDAY… Don’t get me started).. The segment was called Gay in the Heartland and was done by a woman who’s lesbian mother lives in small town Kentuckiana (southern Indiana / Northern Kentucky). Its worth a listen.