They have this fancy website and lead you to believe they can help you get a construction loan in any state. We’re about to build a home and just trying to find someone to help us through the construction piece of it.

I call our local credit union and they refer us to their ‘partner’, “Nationwide Construction Loans” who says on their website,

Nationwide Construction Loans is the ultimate source to obtain a construction loan to build a new home in the United States of America. No matter what city you live and reside in the USA you can obtain the best construction loans from the best American banks nationwide.
Nationwide Construction Loans, Inc. is approved with all of the major banks and Investors. Our experience and reputation along with our nationwide construction loan volume, has allowed us to develop strong relationships with all of our lenders over the years. We have positioned our business to pass these benefits from our access through our wholesale channels on to you.

So I complete their form that says “Get Your Construction Loan Quote Here!” and has a picture of America, where you click your state your project will be in, then complete the form. They also say this,

STEP 1:
Receive Quotes From up to 4 Top Lenders in your area.

It’s easy! Just complete the form and our home building specialist will call or email you up to 4 different quotes from the top lenders.

And here is a screenshot of what I was talking about regarding the map:

Nationwide Construction Loans Horrible

I submit this form early on Monday morning. I don’t get a friendly email saying “we’ve received your info” or anything, but whatever. I wait. I wait. No call. No email. Nothing! Finally, today (Wednesday afternoon), I call them to see if there is any sort of status or if the form info made it.

Before I could finish saying I had submitted a form and haven’t heard anything, this rude son of a bitch cuts me off and says, “It’s probably because you don’t qualify or we just don’t work in your particular state.” Well, I know I qualify, because my credit is awesome with no bad marks, but I haven’t even given them my personal info yet…so it had to be something about my state. He says, “what state is your project in?” I say, “Texas”. He says, “Well that’s why, because we don’t work with every state and Texas is one of them.” Then he continues with, “look, we get over 3,000 emails every day so we can’t respond to every request. If you don’t qualify, we won’t respond to you.”

Excuse me? I can understand you lie about working with every state, but why waste “OUR” time? If I click “Texas”, put a big red message saying “Sorry, we are currently not working with projects in Texas!” Or if I click “Texas”, disable the form. But don’t give attitude and paint yourself as this real popular website getting all these requests daily when you could have been polite about it. All that made me want to do is prove that you are also full of shit! Unfortunately for this douche bag, I’m in the internet business and can research claims like that…so I did!

He says they receive over three thousand (3,000) new quote emails every day. That would be roughly 90,000 requests per month. It doesn’t make much sense that the same person would submit a quote form more than one time, so let’s see what a couple analytic 3rd party services say about nationwideconstructionloans.com:

Compete.com:

This is a full year of traffic to their site. Total number of visitors for 12 months? 32,291. A full year of visitors don’t match the one month of new visitors he claimed they receive.

Another source is Alexa.com:

Nationwide Construction Loans dot com

Alexa has been around for a while and they have zero data on them. This usually translates to not enough traffic for them to store data.

***Noteworthy disclaimer***
These 3rd party sources aren’t 100% reliable with their stats. The rule of thumb is, the more traffic a site has along with a high ranking from these analytic websites, the closer to reality it is. In other words, if this site was really as busy as he claims, they would rank pretty high on these analytic sites.

For example, we can compare their chart to my company’s chart.

The numbers just don’t match up. He claims Nationwide Construction Loans dot com gets over 90k unique visitors per month, which is about 75% more than what our company’s website receives. I can tell you that this guy is full of shit. He probably gets less than 300 emails per day. The fact he “can’t respond to all of them” just tells me that this is a shitty company with horrible service.

One last point I’ll make to Nationwide Construction Loans pulling the bait and switch, is straight from their website.

Nationwide Coverage

We provide the best residential and commercial construction loans in all the 50 states if the United States listed below:
Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), Arkansas (AR), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Connecticut (CT), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HI), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), West Virginia (WV), Wisconsin (WI), Wyoming (WY)

And just in case they read this and decide to remove and claim they didn’t have it up, I pulled a screenshot!

To sum up me wasting my time on this blog post, I just want to warn anyone that reads this interested in working with:

Nationwide Construction Loans, Inc 3940 Hancock Street, Suite 111 San Diego, CA 92110
Phone: (619) 222-1059 Fax: (866) 231-7303 E-mail: loanisapproved@yahoo.com
Nationwide Land and Construction Loans

Nationwide Construction Loans SUCKS!

My company is a huge believer in Dell products and our entire office is decked out in almost everything Dell related. They’re so much easier to work with and customizing a PC to what you need is just a genius thing. I rarely have a gripe about anything of theirs but recently we purchased a few new desktop computers for new employees and I was hit with a very interesting issue….the computer just stopped connecting to the network.

If you have a Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower and it all the sudden stopped connecting to the network, this might be worth reading.

How to fix Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower Network Connection

The symptom would be the computer was connected just fine one day, then the next it cannot get a connection. Almost like your ISP is not working or maybe a bad cable or even worse, a bad NIC (network interface card) chip. Cards are easy to replace, but when it’s a chip built into the system board, you’re screwed. But this might help you get past all of these pain in the ass issues.

Step 1: Open DEVICE MANAGER

Vista Users:

• Click START button to load your menu
• Right-click on COMPUTER button and select PROPERTIES
• In the computer properties window, you should see a left side column with menu options, click DEVICE MANAGER

XP Users:

• Click START
• Right-click on MY COMPUTER and select PROPERTIES
• In My Computer properties window, click the HARDWARE tab
• In the Hardware tab, click the button labeled DEVICE MANAGER

STEP 2 - View Network Adapters

To do this, find the listing labeled “Network Adapters” and click the little “+” sign to the left. It will look like this:

STEP 3 - Update Driver

Right-Click on your Adapter (if more than one, pick the first one listed) and select “update driver software” or “update driver”

Then tell the wizard you want to “Browse my computer for drivers”

Then on the next screen, look for the option that says “Let me pick from a list of device drivers”

Final Step - Pick Alternate Driver
This is where you need to pay attention. In the several situations I’ve had, there are two identical drivers listed for my network adapter. When you get to the list, it will initially highlight the driver you are currently using, as seen in the screenshot below. As you can see, directly underneath the one highlighted, there is a 2nd IDENTICAL (word for word, number for number) device driver listed. YOU MUST MAKE SURE IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME!

If they are identical, select the un-highlighted one, or the “other one”. Then press NEXT and it will update your network adapter with the 2nd device driver software.

Once it’s completed, close out the wizard and restart your computer. If you have this same situation, especially if you have the same network adapter as shown above, it should connect when you reboot. If you do not have identical drivers, then there’s a chance you’re dealing with one of the other issues I mentioned in the beginning.

Hope this helps someone! I stumbled across it and it’s repaired 5 different computers in my office. All 5 were Dell Vostro 220s Slim Tower running windows Vista Business edition.

One of the worst parts of a pull over, polo style shirt is the collar. The shirt itself may last for years, but the collar’s days are numbered. It will ultimately be the fate of your favorite shirt.

The easiest part of the shirt, is everything except the collar. It just hangs down or fits over your arm. The most difficult part of a shirt is the collar. It has to rise upwards, then gently fold over in a nice manner and lay down nicely on top of the shirt. Sounds simple, but after one wash, it gets hairy!

So how do you save a man’s shirt collar from wrinkling beyond repair? Great question! I have a few invention ideas, but nothing I’d want to broadcast to the world at this point. I can give you some suggestions on how to preserve the collar, though.

The shirt collar gets destroyed in the wash/dry cycle. In the wash, the collar will get set in it’s ways. Maybe an awkward fold on one side and a flip up on the other, but it sets the wheels in motion. Then you throw it into the dryer and the hot air pretty much cements your imperfections into place. Once this happens, you’re screwed! Your shirt will NEVER be the same. No matter how many times you try to iron out the wrinkles, or take it to the dry cleaners, your shirt collar will never be the same.

Anyhow, so I’ll give my tips on how to save your shirt collars. Not 100% proven, but they’ve worked for me.

• Wash your shirts inside out with the collar standing up
• Let your shirts air dry with the collar up, then iron the collar and fold over while hot
• If drying shirts in the dryer, make sure the collar is standing up so no wrinkles can form. The normal collar fold is easier to create if the collar has no wrinkle or fold pressed into it.
• Always take your collar shirts to the dry cleaners and emphasize that you want the collars preserved.
• ***MOST IMPORTANT*** - DO NOT WASH YOUR SHIRT (this is more of a joke, but if you never wash it, you’ll never have to worry about the collar screwing up)

If you have a hint or tip on how to save the emphamis shirt collar, help us, help you, help others. We’re all in the same boat, so hopefully we can come together to create the best shirt collar solution we’ve ever seen!!!

Felix Figuereo, from Nicasio Design & Development, has one of the more interesting approaches in earning business. I was looking for someone who could help turn a web design into a wordpress theme. I found the Nicasio Design site and thought their design portfolio looked crisp and clean. I inquired, he (Felix), responded and I didn’t have time to immediately talk on the phone, so I asked him to email any questions that I might be able to answer until we spoke on the phone. He basically told me unless we talk he didn’t consider me a real customer and the comment ultimately made me go elsewhere.

Then he emails a few weeks later with this little diddy…

Ron it is imperative that you take some time to discuss the project details one on one. In over eight years of doing this - I have yet to see a project succeed based on email exchanges.

Let me know if you have the time - and we can set up a time / date.
–
Thanks,
Felix Figuereo - Managing Director
Nicasio Web Design & Development

Now, I can appreciate the pushy sales approach, but at this point, I a good friend do the work quickly and it didn’t even require a phone call! So I thought I’d send a little reply…

How you doing Felix…. Appreciate you following up, even though it seems a bit pushy. Anyhow, I went with someone else that embraced email and didn’t make me feel like I was wasting their time. It took 2 emails, a few IM’s and a couple of hours. Project done.

I guess Felix didn’t like my reply because he followed it up with this…

You are my idol..

Felix Figuereo
Nicasio Design & Development

It’s just confusing to me why someone would be such an idiot. Why burn bridges before they’re built. We refer business all the time related to web design and blog design…why be such a jerk?

Last night I had to pull over and fill up with gas. No, not the gas I have right now, but gas to make my sports utility vehicle (SUV) run. I usually get gas at Tom Thumb because each dollar goes towards my American Airlines reward miles, which I usually like to use to upgrade to first class when flying. (free drinks)

Anyhow, I stopped at the Tom Thumb on the way home and started the whole pump computer process. After entering my phone number, it asked me if I wanted to use my “rewards” and it was showing a discount of .90 cents! Of course I selected “yes”. Well, let’s just say I filled up my empty gas tank of my SUV for $18!! Same tank that has been costing $80 for the past year or so. Here’s the pic to prove.

If there is one thing that I hate most about any company, it’s shitty customer service.  Look, I understand you can get busy, you can have a bad employee, might be overwhelmed with work . . .whatever.  Other than having a superior product, the only thing that will keep a business in business is the ability to give superb customer service.  Well guess what,

CERTEGY CHECK SERVICES SUCK BALLS!!!

Our company was hit with some freaking thief that decided to rip our banking information from our checks and start printing their own checks and cashing them. While we did catch it immediately, there were still quite a few checks that were being presented at banks up in the northeastern states. One day we had a call from a bank stating there was a lady trying to cash one of these fraudulent checks asking if we would approve the transaction. We told them she needed to be arrested but nothing was ever done.

Fast forward a couple of months and we learn of one small check cashing place that decided to cash the fraudulent check without validating it. Since they didn’t get their money, they turned in the unpaid check to Certegy Check Cashing Services. Oddly enough, this isn’t even the companies name. The real company name is Fidelity National Information Services. Which means I need to follow up this with another bold statement:

Fidelity National Information Services SUCKS BALLS!!

This is the most unorganized, worthless group of people I have ever dealt with. We had to complete an affidavit and fax it in. We did so, as requested, then I started getting more notes at our office AND at my home address!!! So I called them up and they claim the fax never made it. They tell me to re-fax and give me a completely different number, then tell me to call a specific number and enter an extension to verify the fax made it.

I follow the directions, fax goes through successfully and call the number to verify it made it. The menu options tells you no way how to enter an extension, so I just enter it and I go into hold mode. Luckily, I’m at the office and can put it on speaker while waiting. The office phone also shows how long you’re on a call. I finally gave up holding after FORTY FIVE MINUTES!!!!

I decide to give it a few days and then tried again today. Like before, the “on hold” music began. After 25 minutes, I wanted to get a cup of coffee and got up, went to the other side of the office and poured a cup of coffee. On the way back, I stopped by and had a little chat with a co-worker and we joked about how long I would be on hold. It then became the office joke. I step back into my office and yep, still on hold. At exactly ONE HOUR THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES (1:38), someone answers my call. It took me by surprise and I stumbled on my words.

I explained to this woman how long I had been on hold, then explained the first time was 45 minutes, totaling 2 hours 23 minutes of hold time, just to see if my fax showed up. After giving information to pull up my account, she promptly tells me she couldn’t see any faxed information until 2 weeks after it was received!!! I just laughed, then told her the previous lady I spoke with told me to call immediately after I faxed and they would tell me if it made it. After I said this, she simply said “It’s not in our system, call back in 2 weeks”. Certegy Check Services Sucks.

If I can do anything with this post, it’s to turn at least a few people away from using this company. Certegy Check Services or Fidelity National Information Services, whomever they really are, is the worst company when it comes to customer service I have ever dealt with. If this blog post isn’t enough to prove how much Certegy Check Services SUCKS, I figured I could back up my comments with some other reading for you. But before you leave, if you think Certegy Check Services sucks balls, PLEASE leave a comment below.

Certegy Checks Complaints

More Certegy Check Complaints

Certegy Allows Customer Data to be Stolen

Certegy Complaints Board

Even More Certegy Complaits

Certegy Ripoff Report

Certegy Check Ripoff Reports

If you have a Dell, dude, the recent Vista SP1 update didn’t treat you so well.  I have a Dell XPS 410 and my audio system that came with it stopped producing sound after the update.

I was going to post a fix for the bug, but what I thought would fix it, didn’t.  I was able to use the basic green audio speaker input/output to get a fraction of my suround sound to work, however, if I plug it into the full suite of plugs for surround sound, it stops working.

Anyone know WTF I should do to fix this?

So I’m sitting at home tonight, a Friday night, the 2nd of January, 2009.  I’m watching what there is on television and catch the end of the Jimmy Kimmel show that actually aired on November 26, 2008.  What’s important about the dates?  Well, let me continue.  I witnessed a huge collapse of one of my rock-n-roll idols, Scott Weiland.

If you’re like me, you scroll through the late night talk shows and see who the guests are, but most importantly, you see who the musical guests are going to be.  Being a music dork like I am, it’s really all about what cool band or artist is on these shows rather than anything else they offer.  The artist that caught my eye tonight was Scott Weiland on Kimmel.  The last time I saw Weiland was on some award show where he was presenting some award and he was sooo trashed he could barely say what he had to say.  With his past of addiction with heroin, I was honestly worried about him because he’s one of my rock-n-roll heroes.

Well, Scott Weiland really disappointed me tonight.  Why?  It’s not because he was probably too fucked up to be on live television…but more because the product he was throwing out was absolute shit.  Usually, if you have a kick ass rock-n-roll voice, no matter what is thrown out, you can make it sound like naked angels falling from the heavens above (if that exists) with their naked bodies ready to be violated.  Problem was, this wasn’t happening.  The music was absolutely horrible.  I kept telling myself that the crazy looking bearded guitarist was the one to blame because he looked like a dork, but he was actually really good.  The problem was Scott Weiland and his singing.  He sounded like complete shit and I can only hope it was because he was on dope.  If he wasn’t on dope, that means he’s completely lost his skills.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE fan of STP and Velvet Revolver…but whatever this new incarnation of Scott Weiland is, I’m not a big fan of.  Especially if all his performances are like what I watched tonight.  Hopefully tonight was a horrible performance night and he hasn’t lost it, but I would have to say that performances don’t lie when it happens twice.  Either him and the band don’t click or he just doesn’t hear it anymore.  Scott, if you happen to stumble on this post and read it, go back to what makes you comfortable.  If being high and rockin with your old bandmates make you feel best, then make it happen.  Don’t force your new thoughts on people that don’t know you as a singer.  Those guys you played with tonight seemed more into their own performances than they did the music…which probably explains why you sucked.

Happy New Year Bitches!

What’s more aggravating than chatting with someone over your favorite instant messaging platform and you can’t really show how you feel?  Like someone pisses you off and you want to tell them to “Fuck Off!”, but all the emoticons are happy or not expressive enough.

I’ve seen this from time to time but never really put much research into what it is or how it works, but I really wanted to give someone the bird, or flip them off, but I couldn’t.  Then I remembered seeing someone that used the keyboard characters, or ASCII characters to show a picture.  It’s called ASCII Art, or ASCII Pictures.

Perfect example:

…………………./´¯/)
………………..,/¯../
………………./…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(’(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
……….”…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\…

I think these things are great because they work anywhere.  You just have to copy/paste into your IM window.

For my own use, I’ll start posting them here.  Hopefully they can help someone else show their thougts.

Have you ever wondered what the point of traveling is?  Me too.  But I thought it out and think I have it all figured out.  Rather than just saying what I think, I figured I would bullet things out.  

• Get away from what you know, as life.
• To see new places that you might not have seen before.
• You enjoy planes?
• Local people are out to get you, in real life.
• You want to see porn, but you don’t want to be seen, seeing porn.
• You have an ‘out of town’ persona, so you’re cooler out of town rather than in town.
• Tobacco is good, when the significant other isn’t.
• Dale Hansen makes you naseaus.  
• Being cool means you’re not really all that cool.
• It seems like if you weren’t drunk, you’d be more in control of life as you know it?
• If you’re married, your wife understands shit.
• Shadows only exist if you’re scared.
• Sex toys aren’t quite as cool as Ron Jeremy said they were.
• That previous joke didn’t get any laughs.