“All I said was, ‘this pizza pocket is good enough for Allah!’.”

“There! You see?! He said it again. Blasphemer!”

Now bury a whole sit of wrenches standing straight up in a row, out in the middle of a random field and call it “art”.

You’re absolutely right. You, the client, don’t get to see what goes on the backend so it’s often impossible to know up front who is going to represent your interests and who is going to be more interested in padding their own commission. Zillow reviews are basically useless because all it means is that the reviewer liked their realtor. That’s great and all but “likeability” and quality of work are not the same thing.

There was a lot of media speculation that the recent court case and settlement with the National Association of Realtors would bring commissions down and make terms more favorable, especially for sellers.

I don’t believe that has happened at all. In fact, it’s just helped make an industry known for its opaqueness and underhanded tactics even more opaque and underhanded. As usual, it’s the client who gets the shaft.

If you want to find a good realtor, or avoid a bad one, there are a few things you can do.

• Beware of realtors that aggressively push you toward certain vendors (banks, title companies, etc). If you’re looking at your third house and they’re now asking you for the fifth time if you’ve applied for a mortgage at a specific bank, that’s a red flag. Kickbacks are illegal in both banking and real estate. But some people like to treat those pesky laws like suggestions.

• Beware of dual agency in general, but especially Realtors that are very persistent about it. With dual agency, the same realtor represents the buyer and the seller. It’s not a guarantee that your realtor is going to do something unethical, but let’s be real. Collecting commission from both sides in a real estate transaction is a very clear conflict of interest. But it’s a conflict of interest that is considered acceptable as long as The buyer and seller both approve. You do not have to approve. But you may have to find another realtor depending on who your initial realtor was representing first.

• If a realtor has been in the business for a long time AND is willing to show you rentals, that’s actually a positive sign. Rentals pay shit. Around here if you get $300 - $400, that’s a good rental commission. As the agent you get to keep maybe half of that. Depends on what the split is with your broker. Agents who sell more can negotiate a better commission split. So the rental commission is dog shit and on top of that, landlords and property Management companies are notorious for trying to either weasel out paying the commission or they will drag their feet on it as long as possible.

As the agent, you could easily spend many many hours showing rentals and lose money doing it because rentals are not profitable for agents. Agents that are relatively new to the business will do rentals just to help build up their client portfolio. But if you get an agent who’s been in the business for a while, doesn’t try to pawn you off on another agent, and will take the time to actually show you rentals, they’re not doing it strictly for the money even if they do hope that you’ll remember them if If you ever need to buy a house.

• Call a few local title companies and see if you can get them to tell you what they think of the realtor that you’re considering working with. Title agents spend all day working with real estate agents and they’re the ones who know which agents are on their game and which ones are a shitshow. If you can get them to divulge anything, you may learn something valuable.

A good realtor is worth every penny you pay them and in addition buying or selling your home will:

• Listen to and help you manage your expectations.
• Make sure you get a knowledgeable and thorough home inspector.
• Keep you from getting the shit sued out of you for one of numerous mistakes.
• Make sure you fully understand the giant pile of paperwork you’ll be signing.
• Have O&E insurance so if they fuck up the paperwork, it’s on them and not you.
• Go to bat for you if you’re being discrimated against in any way by banks, buyers, sellers or landlords (all of which are rampant).

The problem is that a lot of realtors are good at “shaking hands and taking names” and terrible at everything else or they’re just plain unethical. Unfortunately, that’s the vast majority of realtors in my experience.

Source: wife is a realtor who tells me all kinds of “you’ll never believe the shit [other realtor] tried to pull today” stories.

USS Enterprise NCC-1701D

Code name: “The Love Shack”

Presbyterians don’t have canonized saints but if they did, Fred Rogers would be the first on the list.

“Oh, you’re gonna cut ME off you little shit!? We’ll see about that.”

My wife: “What are we doing this weekend?”

Me: “The same thing we do every weekend. Try and take over the world.”

Both of us laughing

Me: “No, seriously, I’ve got a bunch of yard work to do.”

Nah man. Jesus is cool. It’s the people selling knockoffs that you gotta watch out for.

No need to blow through stop lights when you can just blow them up.

Least reliable and highest maintenance costs of any light artillery.

“The Lord of the Rings: Shockwave”

“The Lord of the Rings: Mushroom Cloud”

“The Lord of the Rings: Nuclear Winter”

That works when you have access to a SQL database instead of a bunch of massive CSV files.

And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

Capability is a double edged sword. Any tool that is capable of doing something is going to be used by someone to do that thing, regardless of whether it should be. Excel gets abused and used for things that it shouldn’t be frequently in corporate environments because of its capabilities. I can understand being frustrated by that.

I use Excel for reporting and analytics because it makes manipulating and visualizing data very easy. Especially if you know what you’re doing. No need to write a UI or worry about portability between workstations, etc. At the end of the day it’s a tool. A very capable one. Like any tool, it’s not the right one for every job.

Lol. Don’t bother asking Chat GPT for help. You will get so many completely wrong answers. At least the answers will be formatted nicely. Complete bullshit. But easily readable bullshit.

You’re entitled to your opinion but I would say Excel is one of the best, if not THE best spreadsheet application ever produced. It’s one thing that Microsoft actually got mostly right and one of the only reasons I still pay for an Office 365 subscription.

If you’re just creating simple spreadsheets, there’s plenty of other options out there.

But, if you’re a power user doing a lot of complex data analytics, Excel is still the king.

My main gripe is that I still have to use VBA for a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Yuck.

I forgot about that part! Saddam had the whole thing taped and distributed copies all over Iraq. We take the ease of media distribution today for granted. Much harder to do in 1979. That was truly some next level bragging. “I’m in charge now. Go fuck yourself.”

I remember reading about Saddam’s takeover of the Ba’ath party. That story was a wild ride.

TLDR: Saddam calls an emergency party conference and has the former president’s secretary stand up and read a “confession”, claiming to be part of a Syrian-backed plot to overthrow the Iraqi government along with a list of names of his “co-conspirators.”

As the name of each "co-conspirator’ is read, guards come in and take them from the room one at a time. 68 people were removed, charged with treason, and convicted. Saddam has 22 of them sentenced to death, gives the others weapons, and orders them to kill the first group.

Voila! Saddam is now dictator for life.

If you can stand the fuss, buy corded tools and skip the brand loyalty that comes with batteries.

Just want to second this. A good quality corded tool can last you a decade or two, even with moderate use. You’ll probably be replacing your cordless tool batteries within 5 years.

The only cordless tools I have are a drill, lawn mower, and chainsaw. That’s only because I use them often enough to justify it.

False. I am definitely an introvert but if I’m going to pay for it, I’m going to get what I asked for.