Explosion at 8:50am?

Regardless of how big or small the screwups might be, there's an issue here with the contractor ignorig his call after the job was supposed to be completed.

Reporting fairly on what a contractor did, and providing a context for it, is not the least bit unethical or unfair. It's not name calling to let others know who is he, and to update this post with a followup if he resolves it.

Posted by: ceolaf at December 2, 2008 3:37 PM in response to HUGE Problem!! help!

Question #1: Does it matter what the terms used to mean, or can they be redefined?

Quesiton #2: If they can be redefined, but should the basis for refinintion be?

Posted by: ceolaf at November 10, 2008 5:15 PM in response to Closing Bell: Where Does Park Slope End?

1) If this is all coming via cable, the cable mode and/or the phone source can go whereever there is a cable jack. Period.

2) Internet cabling is a little complicated, but phone cabling is simple. So simple, in fact, that you can put your phone-cable converter anywhere that you have access to the phone lines. Sure, the old phone line might have come in at the basement, and then spread out from there, but the new one does not have to originate at that point. You can put it at the end of one line, and then let the signal go down to the basement and spread out to the other points from there.

3) You either want your wireless access point to be centralized (perhaps a bit closer to higher use area than lower use areas), or use multiple points. Let me say that again, "Multiple wireless access points." You don't even have to do this lots of network cables or digging into wall.

Powerline networking allows you to send a network signal through the powercables in your walls. Pretty cool, eh? So, if you have trouble with the wireless signal reaching everywhere, you can have more than one access point by connecting them with powerline, homeplug or whatever it is called.

It appear obnoxious to spend money on more equipment, but if $100 can save you 10 hours of frustration over the next year, ain't it worth it?

4) As has already been said, never discount laziness of cable, phone or network installers.

************

What should you do? Knowing rather little about your setup, this should work, though there could be a better answer.

A) Move the cable modem/phone line stuff to the living room. I am sure there is both a cable outlet there, and a phone jack. Hook everything up there.

B) The network can be centered there, too, as you likely want to use your laptops in the living room.

C) If your wireless signal can't reach places you want it to reach, get a homeplug -- or powerline or whatever it is -- to extend your network to another wireless access point. This is, no question the easiest way to do.

What _I_ do is actually run network cables, but that is much harder. Another thing that I have done is use multiple wireless access points that will repeat a signal, and therefore together cover a bigger area. The power cable networks, however, are the easiest thing to do.

Posted by: ceolaf at October 13, 2008 8:44 PM in response to Extended range wireless router?

Look at the floor plans before votings, if you can. The Lincoln Place apartment is much better laidout, and every room is bigger.

Obviously, the if you have a kid to send to 321, you need to factor that in. But if you do not, or you think that 321 is overrated, this is not even close.

Posted by: ceolaf at October 7, 2008 1:22 PM in response to Co-ops of the Day: Head-to-Head In The Slope

Two issues:

* Should the commission approve something?
* Should it approve this design?

The answer to the first issue is obvious. These are not buildings worth preserving. Bad use of space, and unattractive, too.

But, as much as I like the design, I do not think that it is appropriate.

It is good looking, there will be a lot of light inside, it reminds me of a place I used to work in Boston. But it doesn't fit. The beautiful big windows are not Park Slope. There is no other building on 7th Avenue in the neighborbood that looks like that.

And therefore, I would have the commission tell him that if he wants approval, he needs to make the building fit in much better.

Posted by: ceolaf at October 7, 2008 10:53 AM in response to Big Plans for 79 7th Avenue

To answer the question in the post's title: Yes.

In fact, your bathroom door, bedroom door and closet door all belong to everyone in the coop. So does your toilet, your light switches and any ceiling mounted lights or fans.

Posted by: ceolaf at October 1, 2008 2:46 PM in response to Does Your Front Door Belong to Everyone in the Co-op?

OK, there are two issues here.

Neither one of them is actually the flag itself -- and certainly not Jessica Palin.

The first issue is the common problem of people who live in coops thinking that they own their apartments. Like it or not, they don't. They own shares in the corportion that owns the building, and usually have exclusive rights to live there. They don't own the apartments or the the fixtures. That all belongs to the coop. Unfortunately, very few people think about what this actually means.

The second issue is understanding tradeoffs. A coop's board is responsible to its shareholders (i.e. the owners), and if those shareholders live in the building their interests are different than if they don't. If they don't live in the building, perhaps they might want the clearest and least contraversial doors, as that would help sale and even rental values. But if they DO live in the building, it might be in their interests to give up some of that sale or rental value in exchange for some amount of improved lifestyle.

The officers report to the board, who are accountable to the shareholders. And if most of the shareholders disagree with you, then you need either to find a way to deal with it, find another coop or find another kind of housing entirely.

Posted by: ceolaf at October 1, 2008 2:43 PM in response to Does Your Front Door Belong to Everyone in the Co-op?

BarKeepers Friend (something like Ajax) works for just about everything I've ever tried it on. It's what high end cookware manufacturers recommend for their products, and you can get it at a supermarket.

That would be my first attempt.

Posted by: ceolaf at September 26, 2008 4:44 PM in response to Removing Paint

If there were plenty of parking spaces, I might agree with your point.

But as there are fewer parking spaces than vehicles, I don't see how anyone can claim dibs on any of them. Street parking is first come, first serve. It is not a seniority system.

If you want your own space, pay for it. Find a place with a driveway, or use a garage.

Otherwise, realize that street spaces are public property, and that they are there to be used by whomever comes across them first.

Posted by: ceolaf at September 23, 2008 4:01 PM in response to Ethics-free Parking?

I was not blaming "snootiness." Rather, I was adding particular dimensions of the problem to the discussion. In particular, I was trying to mention some of the factors that lead to stress and tension in these kids.

Do these explain violent incidents? Of course not! Do they help to explain them? Of course they do.

It is not merely a case of absent parents. It's not that simple.

As for why I assume that the kids involved in the stabbing were not from Park Slope? Well, I taught in one of the schools in the John Jay building on 7th Avenue. In the whole school (700 students), the only kid who claimed to be from Park Slope lived on 17th St. That's not an assumption, Biff. That's a fact. Kids in the Slope tend NOT to go to these schools. The odds are that the kids involved were not from the Slope. That's not an assumption. That would have been a deduction, had I made it.

I din'td deduce anything about those particular kids. Rather, I spoke to the tensions and stress they feel -- as a group -- when they come out of school. Even those few from the neighborhood can still feel it in the air. As I said, I don't know the particular kids involved, so I didn't say anything about them.

When thinking about the students in Park Slope, keep in mind that they older they are, the less likely they are to go to school in the same neighborhood that they live in. That's a trend, not an absolute.

****************

As for Far Rockaway, Legion, you are missing quite a few imporant points.

* SES and economic class are the same thing. Socio means something. Too often we say SES and we really just mean economic class. Too often we are trying to find real SES and can only go by income, and therefore use it as a proxy. What do I mean by that? Well, imagine a poor starving graduate student. Very low income. Very high SES.

Immigrant groups often have people of low income but high SES. So, "middle class" or "working class" can be misleading if not properly used and properly understood.

* We close schools down for different reasons that we used. Heck, we never even used to close schools down.

But the big different is in what we expected from schools. In the 30's, 40's and 50's, it was ok if all the minorities and low SES students dropped out before graduating -- or even before high school. Then, the high schools could focus on the better prepared students, the ones easier to send to college. Even when the lower track kids did not drop out, much less was expected of them.

In recent years, we have looked more at equity. On of the few good things to come out of NCLB is attention to kids across the spectrum. Minorities and low SES kids are not dropped out like they used to, decades ago. But they have not been graduating, and often schools have not make proper efforts to teach them.

So, the job of schools has gotten harder, with the more challenging kids staying in longer. And expectations for succeeding with those kids have gotten higher.

So, this school had 3 nobel laureates graduate back in the day? What % of the kids who were zoned for the school in those years actually graduated? How does that compare to the equivilent statistics today? And what kind of choices did those three have when came to selecting a high school? We have massive school choice now, in a way that the city did not back then.

I could go on and on about all the reasons why the the far rockaway high school of the 40's is not comparable to the far rockaway high school of this decade.

Posted by: ceolaf at September 19, 2008 10:15 PM in response to More Troubles with Teens

I have taught middle school and high school, in the burbs and the city. In Manhattan and Park slope.

These kids are socially all the same. The kids you speak of from the middle and high schools here in the Slope, however, deal with things that many others do not.

* Narrow sidewalks for the hundreds or thousands of kids who are getting out of school around the same time.

* Their need to release their teenage energy after being cooped up in school all day is confronted by the distrust that they feel aimed at then when they walk down the street.

They KNOW that none of their classmates are from this neighborhood. They KNOW that they don't look like the people who live in this neighborhood. They know that the loud. And they know that you are fully aware of these facts, too.

In short, they know how the neighborhood feels about them. And like all teenagers everywhere, they are much more sensative to distrust and disrespect than most adults are.

I don't assert this because it must be true. I assert this because they told me.

As for knives, well, I've seen any many in burbs as in the city. The issue is not simply knives. The issue is the climate combined with the knives. Give them more space and more respectful acceptance, their tensions wouldn't be so high.

Not that this excuses violence. There is a big difference between excusing and explaining. Frankly, I don't know the kids involved in these particular incidents. I don't know what happened. And therefore, I cannot draw any broad conclusions from them.

But I do know the broader context. And I know that those of us who live and/or work in the neighborhood have something to do with it.

Posted by: ceolaf at September 16, 2008 1:59 PM in response to More Troubles with Teens

You need a wireless range extender (or two). I use this one: http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1130267578138&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper. If you don't like Linksys I am sure other manufacturers have similar products. It's the same concept as a repeater.

Posted by: geekspice at October 14, 2008 7:40 PM in response to Extended range wireless router?

My father always applies the maxim "How would you feel about what you are doing today if it were to appear on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow?"

You should describe the person & situation accurately - good & bad. How else can other people make informed decisions. The notion that you should only say good things in life is strange, if that were the case we would never ever know about the bad work done. Everyone can get at least their mother to write something positive about them so if the internet were only positive reviews it would be impossible to discern good from bad.

As for the idea that nobody looks at bad reviews in determining who to work with I completely disagree. I needed a roof hatch replaced last week, I used Angie's List, I found a great contractor after reading many reviews and they did a great job. I just wrote them a sparkling review that explained all the good & bad I found in working with them (overwhelmingly good). That allows the next user to know what they're getting into. If this person did a great job but isn't calling you back now about a small problem. Say that - maybe it will matter to someone and maybe it won't to others but it's honest.

I get the sense that you think it may be your own fault and thus you are hesitant to say: J'Accuse!

:)

Posted by: homerklese at December 3, 2008 5:43 PM in response to HUGE Problem!! help!

I think Homerklese is absolutely right. Contractors only give you names and numbers of the people who are going to give glowing reviews (or are somehow related or paid off)They are never going to tell you about the problem jobs. Forums such as this are the only way to inform and protect your fellow man--that at reporting the ahole to the attorney general, the city, the better business bureau etc. The reason why contractors can get away with this sort of thing is because everyone is too afraid to call them out on it. That said, its important to be honest about the good and bad in any relationship.

Posted by: HomeSweetstuy at December 4, 2008 8:42 AM in response to HUGE Problem!! help!

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Posted by: chrome009 at August 9, 2009 7:49 AM in response to Extended range wireless router?