Real Estate Gag

What is an appraiser?

An appraiser is one who compiles and analyzes voluminous data of problematical accuracy from sources of dubious veracity and derives therefrom a numerical quantification of unquestionable necessity, analogous to a nebulous and euphemistic concept representational of value commensurate with ambient configurations of the open market and promulgates thereby a precise written declamation which delineates his observation, deliberations and conclusions all done while he feigns absolute ignorance of the avaricious machinations of Buyers, Sellers, Brokers and Lenders, compensated only by that penurious stipend known as the professional fee.

Top 10 Reason to Become An Appraiser

10. Dazzle your friends with your knowledge of external obsolescence.
9. The wonderful world of rats, bats, and spiders.
8. Be a part of the profession blamed for the collapse of the savings and loan industry.
7. See places in people’s houses that usually require a search warrant to access (even if they're Outer Banks rentals).
6. Arouse the suspicion of an entire neighborhood when inspecting comparable sales.
5. Chance to really irritate annoying real estate salespeople.
4. Walk around holding a clipboard just like “Skip” down at the Jiffy Lube.
3. Spend hours writing volumes of supporting documentation to justify the market value of a property you already decided on when you pulled into the driveway.
2. See that some people really do hang those black velveteen pictures of Elvis on their living room walls and who forks out for business satellite internet.
1. Be one of a handful of people who know that USPAP is not a medical term.

Weekend Away

We’re spending a weekend in London to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. The plan is to have dinner, go to the theatre and spend the night in London while the in-laws look after Arthur. We haven’t really booked anything yet, but are planning to either watch Wicked or Les Miserables. Trying to find a good deal on tickets is rather hard though, and I really don’t have much time to look around.

Should be a smooth journey as I’m only taking hand luggage. The airlines have been getting silly with baggage recently. Apparently you get charges extra to take sports equipment like skis on board now. The one thing I’m really waiting for it to be able to get Internet on planes. With satellite internet services being so ubiquitous around the world it’s quite surprising they haven’t cracked that one yet. The question is, how much would they charge for the privilege?

Some IT advice

I came across a post on InfoWorld entitled 7 things IT should be doing which talks about a number of problems organisations face today and gives some advice as to how companies should be dealing with them. Here are the main points:

1. Follow your users: Find out what your users really do in their day job. Share their pain and let them help you tailor what you're offering them.


2. Embrace Web 2.0: Your users have high standards as to what applications are supposed to do nowadays. Letting them down will alienate them.


3. Tame the data monster: Bad data means that people can't do their job effectively. Make data cleansing one of your top priorities.


4. Flirt with disaster: Disaster planning is only the first step of making sure you can cope with foreseeable problems. Make sure they're tested and up to date.


5. Capture old knowledge: Use toolkits like ITIL to capture and store old knowledge. ITIL Mangement will be a key differentiator for you in the future.


6. Plug data leaks: If you don't have a data security policy and don't police it, your data could end up in the wrong hands. Make sure you know what needs to be protected and what doesn't.


7. Follow the money: Senior management in the IT department need to have more than a basic grasp of the business drivers of the company. This will help the whole department function effectively.

There's some great stuff in there, ranging from technical issues to business issues, read the complete article here

Downloading your WordPress themes

It looks like WordPress has decided to revamp their theme directory and turn it into a fully fledged source repository. This is a step in the right direction and a possible route to order in the previous anarchy that represented the theme market prior to this move.

So, where does this leave WordPress. Well, for a start they are now in a position to guarantee quality in the themes they represent. In the past themes were riddled with bugs, unimplemented features, encrypted sections and sponsored links, all of which reduced the confidence of people trying to use them. All these reflected badly on the underlying product and now WordPress has a way to control all this. Another change we are bound to see is the ability for WordPress to automatically notify a user when a new version of a theme is available, in the same way it currently does this with plugins.

With a change like this, there are bound to be people who are unhappy with the decision. A number of people run directories of templates, these are bound to fade away now that there's a quality offering and WordPress can direct people in that direction. Theme designers who earn a fee for maliciously hiding sponsored links in themes will also suffer. I still think there's a market for premium themes that have a cost attached to them, if they offer additional functionality and support that the free theme directory doesn't offer, but that would be an honest transaction rather than persuading users they have a "free theme" that has dangerous bits attached to it.

The other interesting fact is that WordPress is not only pushing to increase the quality of their product, but also tying it it's other assets (like Gravatar) and encouraging people to use them. It's advice that any IT Service organisation should take on board and use their position to maximise their utility and return. That's what strategic planning is all about.

Should be interesting, check out the theme directory

Welcome All

Hi everyone,

I'm setting up this blog for the express reason of playing on Blogger. I have a number of other blogs, mostly based on WordPress, but thought that I can't really compare against Blogger if I've never used it. So here I am.

If you want to read more of my stuff, pop by Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot, there's tons to read there.

Enjoy