Opinion: Do Not Hire Long Island Custom Builders or John Crovello

/

Given that my blog enjoys rather nice treatment from Google and many of the other search engines, I figured I'd post a PSA. Those who know me well know that I'm currently in contractor hell. I don't want to get into the details here, given that I don't want to weaken my legal position. However, I will say the following:

It is my personal opinion that, should you be approached by someone named John Crovello from a company called Long Island Custom Builders to do any sort of work on your residence, you would be better off running away screaming than hiring him.

I'll say that again, for the benefit of y'all (and for the benefit of greater relevance to key search terms): It is my opinion that hiring John Crovello or a company called Long Island Custom Builders is a bad idea.

In summary, should you ask me, I would recommend emphatically against hiring John Crovello and/or Long Island Custom Builders.

Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.

p.s. - I would not recommend hiring John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders.

p.p.s. - If you choose not to believe me regarding whether or not to hire John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders, I recommend you visit the following links:

Suffolk County Department of Consumer Affairs List of 10 Worst Unlicensed Businesses

August 29, 2005 Story (Follow-up) on Long Island Custom Builders and John Crovello (Registration required)

p.p.p.s. - If you feel so inclined, I would appreciate any inbound links or Trackbacks on this post. Thanks much.

Justice Miers?

/

Honestly, I think I can make the claim that liberals have lucked out. When it first became apparent that Shrub would have to fill two SCOTUS vacancies and not one, I feared the ramming through of two Scalia-like Huns. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that didn't happen. I'm not entirely happy about Roberts, but I don't think he's the anti-Christ either. I'm reserving judgment on Meirs until I get more facts.

Don't take this to mean I'm not wary or fearful. I'm VERY concerned about what could happen to Roe vs. Wade and the separation of church and state. Those are my two biggest issues likely to be confronted by the court in the short- to medium-term.

What I am saying, though, is that it could have been a lot worse.

I am curious, however. It's obvious that both Roberts and Miers are Bush loyalists. (Miers seems to think GW is the most intelligent person she's ever met. Quite scary.) It will be interesting to see how their loyalty pans out once Bush is out of office.

Weekend Recap

/

I did have a good deal of work to do this weekend, but I needed some time to relax. Saturday was spent doing some minor chores around the house and then experiencing the Zen of car stereo installation. Last week, I opted to cash in some of the Membership Rewards points on our American Express account and I got a Sony CD player that was waaaaaaaay more expensive than anything I would buy with cold, hard cash. So I spent Saturday morning putting it in. Most of the time was spent trying to figure out how to get the factory radio out of the dash. No one seemed to have any info on this online, save for this site. I ended up paying $3.95 just to figure out how to get the dash off my truck. It was totally worth it, though... I was looking for bolts that didn't exist, and it would have taken me forever to figure out that most of the dash is held together with clips that need to be popped off. Once the factory radio was out, the job was easy, particularly after I went to Best Buy and bought an installation kit and wiring harness.

The new stereo sounds really, really nice. One other thing I did was to run a line to the Aux inputs on the back of the deck, so that I could plug my iPod into it directly. That's right - goodbye iTrip. Perhaps next weekend if I have time I'll upgrade the factory speakers, but for right now they sound fine.

Saturday night I went to a party at Craig and Jen's, but I was home by 9 PM and went to bed early. (I was tired.)

Sunday, most of the day was spent taking care of some minor things around the house, plus trying to figure out where Town of Riverhead residents can take construction debris now that there's no landfill to haul junk off to. I also took Dan out in Coram so he could walk door-to-door and talk to some of his constituents.

I procrastinated a bit, but then made some headway on a media strategy that's a couple days overdue for one of my clients. All in all, the weekend was way too short.