COMPUTER COLONICS

I was walking back from lunch today and a bird poo’d on my shoe. I figured the day couldn’t get much worse … and then this happened.

From Barbara Vey’s

With those pearls of wisdom, CBS cancelled Moonlight, the brightest new show in their lineup. But I have to know…did they ask any women about this? What about giving it some time to build an audience?

Grrrrr! Why?? Why would they DO that? It was one of the few shows I liked! I even emailed them that I liked it and to please keep it.

*droop*

Nobody talk to me for at least a week.

Now we are just getting silly. Read the article below.

Do you have any idea how often mini-power skirmishes happen like this every day - especially in Little League? Baseball parents are fierce! Do not piss them off. Give me soccer any day of the week. They have wine and cheese. Everybody is tailgating it in their SUV’s. Relaxed. The game’s gonna be about an hour and a half max and you can plan a day around it.

Baseball? One inning can last 45 minutes and if it does, the side that is losing contemplates evil evil things for the other team as each of those minutes tick past. I think the kid league is seven innings and you could be there half the day for a single game. If the game is close, parents of kids on the same team turn cannibal on weaker players and their parents. Remember the short story by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery? It’s like that.

Jodi Hooper is lucky to be alive. Seriously. Parents guilty of lesser crimes just sold their home and moved.

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Little League Player Benched Because Mother Failed to Work Concession Stand
Thursday, May 15, 2008

A 7-year-old Massachusetts boy was benched during his Little League baseball game because his mother failed to show up to work the league’s concession stand, and the mother isn’t happy about it.

Jodi Hooper of Freetown said she was unable to fulfill her obligation at the concession stand because she couldn’t get time off from work, according to MyFOXBoston.

Dave Brouillette, head of the Freetown Youth Athletic Association, told MyFOXBoston that the concession revenues are necessary to fund the league’s programs and that he has to enforce the rules, which require parents show up for their assigned concession stand shifts or risk suspensions for their children.

Brouillette told the station that he wasn’t able to see his own son play because he had to cover the concession stand shift for Hooper, according to MyFOXBoston.

Hooper told MyFOXBoston that she believed she could make up the assignment at another time if she missed one.
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About time.
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Mom indicted in deadly My Space hoax

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor girl who then committed suicide.

Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on the girl.

Drew allegedly helped create a MySpace account on false premises to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, who turned out not to exist.

Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan.

MySpace is based in Beverly Hills. The indictment noted that MySpace computer servers are located in Los Angeles County.

Due to juvenile privacy rules, the U.S. attorney’s office said, the indictment refers to the girl as M.T.M.

Each count in the indictment carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Last month, an employee of Drew, 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” she created the false MySpace profile but Drew wrote some of the messages to Megan.

Grills also claimed Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what Megan was saying about Drew’s daughter, who was a former friend of Megan’s.

Grills said she wrote the message to Megan about the world being a better place without her, which was supposed to end the online relationship with “Josh” because Grills felt the joke had gone too far.

“I was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could get rid of the whole MySpace,” Grills told the morning show.

Megan’s death was investigated by Missouri authorities, but no state charges were filed.
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The news yesterday of the collapse of Marlin Bay in Marathon and Cristal Clear here in Islamorada got me wondering what must be going through the minds of all the people who were heaved out of the trailer parks where many had lived for decades. They were hoping to retire in peace but were being shoved out to make way for “progress”. For the past few years there has been story after story of parks selling out to developers to build million dollar homes.

The company that bought Holiday Isle and tried to call the new development something like “Ocanos” with letters turned backwards (there was even a HUGE ad in Vanity Fair for it) wen bankrupt and Holiday Isle is a wreck of have shut down shops and rooms in need of repair. That cute little development I wrate about a few weeks ago isn’t selling and when one DOES manage to sell it’s for cash. Banks aren’t risking it.

Now that those developments are failing to sell, how bitter sweet is it for the working class Joes who are look on at the irony. Now? No one will live on that little spot by the ocean, at least not for awhile. It’s gotta suck the life out of them. Nobody won. So much for dreams of sugar plum fairies and dollar bills eh?

People living in the few remaining parks may be suffering through price hikes and other economic hardships, but at least they dodged the eviction bullet for now.

OK. If the news has you stressed do what I do. Watch the cat cam.

Sooooothing.

According to the Free Press, Cristal Clear Rentals, LLC has skipped town with vacation rental fees and deposits. That means that vacationers who put half down on a vacation rental that could run anywhere from two thousand to over eight thousand, are out the money and will have to negotiate with the rental property owner for reassurance that they have a reservation. Also, Cristal Clear had collected rental fees and that money is ALSO gone, meaning the owners who were counting on that money to pay the mortgage are scrambling to get funds elsewhere to cover it.

Cristal Clear sent out an email:

“We regret this situation. We have made every effort to sustain the business through this economic downturn in order to honor all of our commitments but it has overwhelmed us.”

The office is empty. The phones are turned off. Cristal Coleman is nowhere to be found.

The Islamorada Chamber of Commerce is in damage control mode because, if one rental company can fold like this, what’s to say others won’t? Who is going to hand over a grand or more for a week in July if there is no telling that the money won’t disappear? It’s one thing to go out of business and transfer collections and accounts to other rental companies. Its a whole ‘nother ball of wax to just take the money and skip town with no warning.

“We are trying desparately with the Chamber to clear the name of vacation rentals in general so that we don’t get the fall-out” said Alexa Wheeler owner of Realty-World Freewheeler. ~ Free Press may 14th, 2008

They’ve got a major uphill battle in front of them. If the Tourist Development Council has any brains, they will figure out a way to make good on these debts, via loan or something and make it a standard business practice in such emergencies somehow. I’m not a business person, but if this situation stands there is no way to guarantee that it can’t happen again and the Vacation Rental Business in the Keys is D.E.A.D — dead.

We have some shady characters here in the Keys doing business, but I can’t remember any who did anything quite like this. All Keys Insurance (not sure on the name) was taking insurance premiums but never sending the money to the insurance company they were brokering for. They had all kinds of fake papers they sent to customers. We were basically all using the same insurance policy. Why insure twenty homes when you can insure one and zerox, eh? She works for Thrifty Car Rentals now when last I saw her. Hurricane Georges revealed that scam.

There are the T-Shirt shops in Key West. $1020 for a T-Shirt? Were they high? Just because the tourist lived in Japan didn’t mean he wasn’t going to check his statement. The shops were insulted by the insinuation that their T-Shirts weren’t worth that. Custom Key West T-Shirts, man. And it wasn’t just one guy from Japan. They did it to every foreign tourist. They manhandled people off of Duval Street into their shops and would not let them out until they bought something.

The insurance scam just screwed locals, so no one cared much about that. The gift shop thing was bad, but Master Card could unscrew it usually. But this rental heist … this is bad bad bad for business on a hundred different levels. Thinking caps on people. This is a bad one.

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Note: Kinda interesting that the Free Press has that article locked online. First time I’ve ever seen them do that.

Also interesting: They’ve locked their website you can see some of it here.

Just cancel out of the login prompts as they pop up. I guess the Water Sports company is history too.

Contact Us
Cristal Clear Rentals
Your Florida Keys Vacation Home Rental Experts
General Rental Information:
All Areas: General Info

Islamorada:
81581 Old Highway, Islamorada, FL 33036
Phone: (305) 664-0547
Fax: (305) 664-3401

Key West:
701 Simonton St. Key West, Fl. 33040-7443
Phone: (305) 296-0011
Fax: (305) 296-9897

Marathon:
7885 Overseas Hwy. Marathon, FL. 33050
Phone: (305) 743-1919
Fax: (305) 743-8886

www.waterfrontresortrealty.com/islamorada.html Also killed.

Also just in, Marlin Bay is on the rocks. Annonymous source says, “Haven’t sold anything and the contractors walked off the job Monday for lack of getting paid.” So I’d say it’s done. Bad omens all.

Good lord read the website disclaimer at the bottom!

The Residences: Oral representations cannot be relied upon as correctly stating the representations of the developer. For correct representations, reference should be made to the documents required for Section 718.503, Florida Statutes, to be furnished by developer to buyer or lessee. This of This is not an offer to sell, or solicitation of offers to buy the condominium units in states where such an offer cannot be legally made. Prices, features, and specifications are subject to change without notice. The photos herein are intended merely as illustrations of the activities and concepts at Marlin Bay Yacht Club. Plans and elevations are artist’s renderings and may contain options, which are not standard. The Yacht Club: the marina, the pool, clubhouse and dock master facilities, and any and all ancillary facilities, re-included in a separate club membership fee which is available on a separate disclosure. Ask your Sales Executive for details.