If you live in Florida, don't use Drain Doctors.

I used them a couple months ago for a backed up main, after having a good experience with them getting my water heater replaced. Unfortunately, they didn't do nearly as good with my clog.

I called at 3am in the morning, while pulling an all-nighter. The dispatcher asked me if it could wait until 8am, if he got someone out first thing. Reluctantly I agreed. But instead of getting someone out first thing in the morning, I got a phone call from the plumber asking if he could come out a couple hours later -- he had a job from the previous day to finish. I told him my problem, that I'd been waiting all night, that I needed to go to bed soon, and that it wasn't okay to delay. He did anyway.

When he finally came out, he cleared the line, but did not snake out my kitchen sink as I asked because "he was afraid my pipes would break" since they're quite old now. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I was prepared to replace them if so. But I was too tired to argue the point.

Today Dawn needed a plumber for her new renter. I recommended Drain Doctors, still thinking of my good experience with the water heater and because they have cameras on their snakes (not sure the exact term for this), which lets them see the quality of your pipes, breaks, etc. But like me, she had a bad experience. They charged her more than the going rate, more than Roto-Rooter has charged me. And they refused to give her a six month guarantee on the work.

Because of this, I determined to write a letter to their corporate office and give them a chance to respond. However, to my surprise, their website has NO general contact information. No address. No phone number for corporate offices. --Just a web form and dispatch number. I could research the address of their office well enough, but that's really the last straw. Instead, I'm writing this blog entry and advising anyone who asks not to use them.

Between Drain Doctors, Roto-Rooter, and a small local company, Roto-Rooter has been the best I've used so far. If I ever find someone better, I'll update the blog post.

*** Sorry Dawn! ***

This is a mini-update I suppose. --Not really a long blog entry, but too much for a twitter.

I've been tired and sluggish all day. And I would have been more productive if I'd sat around and done nothing all day.

The day wasn't without big events though. I purchased the materials for my fence today with Dawn. I'm guessing there will be another few hundred to put in the gates, but I spent about $5000 to completely fence the back yard.

By this time next week, or sooner hopefully, I'll have a finished fence.

It's a ton of money that I really didn't want to spend. But I can now more or less quit worry about my neighbor now, and more importantly, can really start to enjoy the backyard. And to have something off my mind that has been weighing down on me since I first about the house five years ago, is quite nice.

As for yesterday, we had tons of fun kayaking. It wasn't as hot as our previous trip and there are plenty of good pictures. We can across an alligator that I named "Fear of God." Usually I err on the side of "too close" when I'm taking pictures of gators. Not this guy. I was hugging the bank of on the other side of the river and holding my breath the whole time. Dawn guesses that he was easily 12 foot. And he may well have been more. He was definitely bigger than our kayaks.

The pictures don't really do him justice, except if you zoom into his jawline -- which is huge and fat for lack of a better description. Usually gators are what I would describe as "lean and mean," even when they're big. This guy looked like he just sat around on the shore and ate whole trees.

Speaking of pictures, I'll post a few once I'm done going through them. Eventually, I'm going to have to resurrect my personal Flickr gallery or start using a wider Blogger template for the pictures though. They don't look very good "all smooshed up."

Well, Mom and Tom are on their way to PA for a mini vacation. Mom is showing Tom where she grew up. Hard to believe that we really have never been there as adults. (Not that I fully qualify as an adult most days of the week.)

I'm out of my zone today and celebrated by picking up Soul Calibur 4.

Here's a mini-review of my two latest video games. Haze really does kind of suck. I didn't want to say it. And I it's not just because I keep getting eating alive in multi-player games. I think it finally hit me when I got to the big "plot twist" in the story line. All I could say was, "Seriously?" Banal doesn't really cover it.

And then of course multiplayer is kind of bland, etc., etc. I went online to see what other people were saying and all of the reviews -- all of the reviews -- were terrible. No more impulse video game shopping for me! Check the reviews first!

In a similar vein I took a chance with Soul Calibur. Like Haze, everyone expected this to be a great game. Unlike Haze, it seems to be live up to the expectation so far. There are no "combo moves" in the game; I'm still getting a little used to that. And the manual is like a myster novel with no climax or resolution. But it's fun so far. I'll try multiplayer once I finally get a handle on how the moves actually work together.

Got assigned a change for work at 5pm this Friday afternoon. I don't know what bugs me more: the fact that so many things get scheduled at the very last minute, or that I really am just an SA now. If I ever had to switch jobs I don't know how I would explain the transition from what I did before this job to what I'm doing now. "Well, I was an effective leader in charge of budgets, a data center that I built, a national network of doctors' offices that I built, and had my own team of technicians. Then I moved up to applying service patches on Windows servers and dealing with filespace issues..."

Last but not least, I'm taking the plunge with my fence finally. Not having a fence in the back yard has bugged me the entire time I've owned my house. And the situation got worse when my neightbor put up a fence that was well over my property line. (I didn't realize how much until recently.) Long story short: he took it down, I'm putting something up, and it's going to cost a fortune to do the entire thing.

I'll feel very, very good having it finally done though.