I understand the purpose of a homeowner's association (shaking my head in disagreement). As I understand it, it is to make sure that every house in our subdivision look exactly like every other house in our subdivision. It also provides a community based feel to bring you close to your neighbors. It also provides me my community swimming pool and trash and snow removal services.

I pay $53 per month for this over and above my principal, interest, taxes, and insurance of which has gone up nearly $700 per month over the past 3 years. This is due to the taxes part.

Where do I start with the homeowner's association? The community swimming pool? Sure. The pool opened a fews months after we moved into our house. I don't swim in it for multiple reason. First, it is packed full of arrogant, inconsiderate, belligerent teenagers. Any time I have stepped foot near the pool it is dirty. The tennis courts / basketball courts are no better. They are combined. You can shoot a net or hit a tennis ball into the basket. It is much like full contact tennis.

I would place a pool in my backyard, but I can't because it is against the rules. Much like having one of those blow-up pools for my 4 year old to play in. It lowers the value of the property. Because the 1900 houses for sale, that aren't selling, in Plainfield isn't enough to lower the value.

Next is the trash and snow removal. I have to admit, that the snow removal in Northern Illinois can be daunting, but it happens all the time here and snow is not a shocking event as it is in Southern California. For some reason, snow plows the association provides take great ease in removing part of my lawn every single year because they can't determine where the road is located. Add to that the shredded curbs due to snow plows themselves reduce property value on my lot.

Trash removal seems pretty simple, unless you live near the windy city. We have wind here. The association does NOT provide the matching trash bins for our matching houses. So people place their light plastic trash barrels out to the curb, the trash man empties it, and watches it tumble over the next 4 miles of his route. He laughs. On windy trash days, the trash bins populate the roads like the tribbles infested the Enterprise.

So, we received a letter today from the homeowner's association again saying that our lawn needed to be mowed. I realize the letter was probably sent right before Andi mowed the lawn, which was not easy because our grass hasn't grown, but there were a few stalks of grass that were about 4 inches high that she ran the mower over and taught a lesson to never grow again. But to spend the postage (yes, mailed) to tell us that we needed to mow is neither neighborly, nor smart when you send it verbally vindictive people such as me and my Queen.

This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one, today two). We need to nix the association. If you want to use and maintain a pool, buy a membership. Pay for your own trash removal...or better yet, recycle. If I am being taxed for city services, that must mean I am on a city street, use city snow plows. I want to build a fence all the way to the sidewalk, not to the edge of my house. The edge of the house loses a LOT of good yard that I am paying out the nose in taxes for.

The second point is this, before an association starts throwing stones, they better live in a cave. I will be drafting up a rather curt reminder to the association that they planted DEAD trees when the came through. The snow plows removed 50 square feet of my lawn and damaged the curbs. The pool is dirty. The trash cans are all over the neighborhood, and the fence around the pool is too high and extends beyond the edge of the clubhouse.

I will of course provide a seperate letter for each item. I doubt they will ever fix the infractions, so I will probably have to do this repeatedly. I may even hand deliver it to be more neighborly.

Clublands of Joliet homeowner's association is a farce. By the way, want to buy a house?

The Queen and I went to Clinton on Saturday to look around since my office is going virtual. We miss Clinton. When this opportunity came about, it only made sense since the cost of housing, gas, etc is substantially lower there than it is in Plainfield.

We cruised down in the viniman and by the time we arrived, everyone was whining about starvation. I don't really think they were THAT hungry, but they wanted to have some Monical's Pizza.

We arrived, sat down and after a few minutes another couple came in with a mother and sat down at the table not far from me. The man looked familiar.

After about 20 minutes, he said hello and I responded in kind. This quickly became one of those awkward points in a conversation where you think you know the other person but don't really know the name. So, I am the first to make the awkward situation worse and try to stall for time while I tried to figure out who he was. I asked him if he knew who I was.

In the back of my mind, I knew he couldn't put my name to my face, but it was fun watching him squirm. Meanwhile I am biding my time running through the yearbook in my head trying to figure out who he was. Finally, I asked him what year he graduated, and he replied with "I think you were a year ahead of me." Well, that didn't go as I hoped. Clever...this man was clever. He played his hand the same way I would have.

Finally, after going through the torment of trying to kick in brain cells that have long remained dormant, one of us gives in and says our name. I really can't remember who went first, but after all was said and done, it was an old friend. We sat there and talked and caught up very briefly while the wives talked amongst themselves. They got along famously since my wife is a scrapbooker and his wife is a scrapbook supplier.

As soon as I heard that, I could tell they would get along famously and we would be much poorer because of it.

This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). In a small town, you can go home after 23 years of being away, and you are still home. That sense of community is unique and cannot be duplicated. One more reason...to move...which appears to be happening.

My company is considering changing our company structure to practice what we preach. We have downsized enough and consolidated applications enough to be able to actually use virtual office.

This excites me in multiple ways. First, I can officially work from home full time. Second, it is very good for the environment and for our company financially. No office space means that there isn't a lease cost, utilities, infrastructure costs, or commute costs thus saving money on a personal level.

It also means that when we go to hire more people for support, marketing, etc., they can be anywhere in the world. This again saves the company money because a security engineer in Rapid City, SD costs much less than one in Washington, DC.

IceWEB creates and markets hosted Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint for companies to reduce their internal costs and not have the headaches of maintaining and monitoring servers that they don't have the expertise to manage. Additionally, the company (big or small) can be located in a single location or all over the world and will still be able to connect.

"Yes, but I can do that with my current Exchange and file servers" you say.

You are right. You can. Here is how much it will cost you for 12 mailboxes and 4 of those people have Blackberry devices:

Exchange Server hardware and software (first year): $9,040
Blackberry Enterprise software and support: $10,380
Backup Server and software: $3,000
The IT guy to set it up and manage it part time: $20,000

Total: $42,420 for the first year, $23,660 for each year following until you have to upgrade.

Using IceWEB:

12 Exchange mailboxes with 4 Blackberry connections: $1,810.44 for the first year, and every year after.

Yeah, yeah...so you don't work for a small company, you have 5000 employees and only 150 have Blackberry devices. Ok the quick numbers are:

In-house Exchange will cost $1,191,347.00 the first year and $746,987 each year until you upgrade.

IceWEB will cost: $581,814 per year every year.

Sales pitch over...back to me.

In this common sense approach, the company decided that since most of our clients are working virtually, we should as well. The home office and telecommuting are becoming the norm in this age of inflating energy costs and global warming. Granted, I will still have to come to Virginia every so often to install servers or something, but most of my time would be spent at home. How cool is THAT?

The Queen said I would drive her n-n-n-nuts. She plans to stick me in a closet to do my work. That is fine. It would be the shortest commute ever.

This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). Tell your finance officer or IT guy to buy IceMAIL! It will keep me working.

On Monday, April 23, I wrote an email to customer support at Days Inn corporate:

I was booked in your hotel by my company. I already planned to stay in Holiday Inn, but my company found a better rate at this hotel. Hotel. I am not intending to go on a tyrade about the word hotel but as for me and many people I know, a hotel is an enclosed building with a restaurant, meeting rooms and stores. This motel (what I consider the proper word for a place with doors facing outdoors) has meeting rooms.

As for my room (that I am currently in), the vinyl wallpaper is holding together the wall. I have killed multiple flies, and my non-smoking room smells like smoke. As I was outside my motel room door, another customer was complaining because the room had makeup all over the room assigned to her. I figured I would at least take a bath...nixed that after finding hair (very possibly pubic) still in the tub.

When I arrived in the room, there was an overpowering smell of deodorizer. I now understand why. I unfortunely am stuck here until Friday. I just thought you should know how your franchisee is doing with your brand label.

I gave up on the email after a day with no response.

On Monday, April 30 (one week later), I received a response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for contacting the Days Inn Customer Service department concerning your stay at the Glen Burnie, MD hotel. We sincerely apologize that the property did not meet your expectations of Days Inn's high standard of guest service. This property is independently owned and operated under a Days Inn franchise, and its management is responsible for meeting Days Inn standards.

The information you provided has been forwarded to the General Manager of this franchised hotel for review. Please allow a minimum of 7 business days for the General Manager to investigate your concern and respond.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for not meeting your expectations. We place a high value on your continued patronage of Days Inn facilities, and we hope that you will stay with Days Inn again soon.

Melissa Huber
Customer Service Representative
Case #2000463

HUH?! Didn't I already allow 7 days for YOU to respond? Are you the ONLY Days Inn Customer Service person? Were you on vacation? Did you say HIGH standard? This is the second Days Inn I have been stuck in over the past and both times were the worst.

I responded in minutes, not days:

Melissa,

Seven days to respond. You lost my business.

John

This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). Do these people just miss the boat? What good did they think would come from responding a week after the email was sent? Do they have their wires crossed? Her title says customer service, right?

Did you know...

In Chicago, the statue of Ulysses Grant is in Lincoln Park and Abraham Lincoln's statue in Grant Park.