“Citing an “overwhelming consensus in our country” against same-sex marriage, President Bush on Tuesday called for a constitutional amendment banning gay wedlock.”Here’s my take on this.. “Citing an “overwhelming amount of bad press and sliding approval ratings lately”, the president attempted to get the focus off his poor performance and questions of honesty, and onto an issue the entire right-wing supports him on: keeping those gays as second class citizens where they belong..”

I mean come on! With all the crap our country has to deal with right now, we’re going to modify the constitution so we can keep a certain ‘class’ of American citizens at the bottom of the legal food chain?

The one thing that gets me about the right-wing, and this is a great example, is when things aren’t going their way, they try to change the rules. “What, judges are actually interpreting the law to say you can’t discriminate against people based on sexual orientation?! Then let’s change the law so it’s legal to discriminate!”“What do you mean the new popular right-wing poster boy can’t run for president just because the constitution says so?! Let’s change the law!“The common trend here is that when things don’t jive with the way the right-wing government thinks they should, it’s time to change the law. If Bush had won the popular vote in 2000, but lost the election, I guarantee we’d have a law that outlawed or changed the way the electoral college works so the real winner comes out ahead. That’s just one of many examples things would be different were the tables turned.Discrimination is what this whole gay marriage ban comes down to, and there’s no way to get around that. Expect the lawsuits to start flying(even more than they are now) if this ever get’s close to passing. Just like African-Americans had to use litigation for their fight against discrimination in the 50′s and 60′s, expect homosexuals to do the same in the 00′s.

Even though we’ve been living in our new house for just over two months, the headaches with our old property management company Siegel-Gallagher continue, much to the stress of Jenny and I.

Siegel-Gallagher runs the Gallun Tannery lofts where we used to live, quite happily untill last summer, when they started treating their tenants more like serfs. In fact, the original weblog post I made about moving there is the #1 result in most the major search engines for Gallun Tannery, and because we used to like living there so much, the positive things I had to say about it led a lot of people searching for information about the Lofts to actually rent there. As you can see though, I was forced to stop recommending our lofts to people who came across that page because I didn’t want them to have to go through the same frustrations that we did. About 85-100 people a month looking for more information about Gallun Tannery Lofts read our experiences with Siegel-Gallagher, and if they’re smart, look somewhere else.

So, after nearly two months, I’m forced to complain yet again about our former management company.

We got a notice in the mail that we still owe a considerable amount of money to the Utility servcies company Siegel-Gallagher used to bill us. See, when we moved out, the expenses for our final month of Utilities was supposed to be taken out of our security deposit refund according to the manager we signed out with. Sure enough, in mid-January we got our security deposit back less the amount of the Utility Bill. All squared away, right?

Wrong. It turns out although Siegel-Gallagher took the money for the bill, they never actually paid it! COOL! So we get a collection notice that we haven’t paid our bill, all because Siegel-Gallagher either forgot to apply the money they took from us to the bill, or they just didn’t do it.

Either way, more reasons to stay away from not only the Lofts, but all Siegel-Gallagher properties in general.

Update: Well it turns out that the payment was just never applied to our balance. It took a letter from a collection agency to us, and us getting on Siegel-Gallagher to get this resolved. There’s a good chance that if we didn’t get on them about it, or didn’t know about the problem ourselves, the payment still wouldn’t be applied.

All is well now, but man, this just reinforces all the bad things I’ve ever said about them…

Hi Grant,

Sorry to send this to you directly, but we couldn’t find any other method of feedback on the nhl.com website. If you could, please pass this on to the appropriate parties..

My wife and I were looking to get highlights of the Wings vs. Av’s from Feb 5, 2004. Naturally, we hit the nhl.com website. We then chose the ‘Highlights’ link, and then the appropriate game, and that’s when our frustration, and the basis of our correspondence with you, began.

Upon choosing the link, we were prompted to ‘Sign Up’ for the Windows Media Player service, as that is the only video format NHL.com offers. Although we were at the nhl.com website to view highlights, and not fill out forms, we did so with the hope that we’d soon be watching our favorite team’s highlights. However, after completing the form, our windows computer locked up on us and we had to reboot. After the reboot, we again tried to view the highlight, but again, we were not successful because the Windows Media Player locked up on us again.

Obviously, not the result we were hoping for.

Still in search of the highlights, we used our secondary computer, a Macintosh running OS X to view the highlights, but since NHL.com only supports Windows Media Player, that didn’t work either.

It’s too bad the 10% of people who choose to use Mac’s and happen to be hockey fans are restricted from keeping up with their teams, or any hockey for that matter, on the Web.

When we tried to send our grievances via the NHL.com website, again, we were met with disappointment and failure to complete our ‘goal’. Although there is a ‘Feedback’ link on the bottom of most NHL.com webpages, all the information is about marketing, rules, and pretty much anything except giving ‘Feedback’ about the NHL.com website itself.

Obviously, this has left us a bit frustrated. So, here we are pulling an email address off the WHOIS record for the NHL.com domain name in hopes that we could get ahold of someone in the NHL organization to let them know the problems not only we, but more than likely thousands of other hockey fans from around the world are facing. Many of these people like ourselves are simply looking for content about their favorite game and/or favorite NHL teams.

We aren’t looking for forms to fill out, websites to navigate, or errors to decipher. We just want to enjoy some hockey. :)

So, here we are, emailing you, maybe a guy who doesn’t even have anything to do with the site. Hopefully you can pass this onto someone who may help remedy the situation, because what should be a great resource for hockey fans is only frustrating some of them while locking others out all-together from the content of the NHL.com site.

Thanks for your time, and if you’d like to respond to us, please use the email we sent from, or the address below!

Sincerely,

Daniel & Jennifer Cody

Avid Red Wings Fans

With seconds left in regulation, Colorado Avalanche goon Adam Foote (and I can say he’s a goon from personal experience) used his stick to whack Detroit Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman across the face after a faceoff causing Yzerman to lose a tooth and need stitches in his mouth.

The Colorado fans then proceed to throw beer bottles and trash onto the ice in protest.(?)

I tell ya, nothing but class all around from Colorado’s NHL team and it’s fans.Wings end up winning 3-2 in overtime. The rematch of the NHL’s most heated rivalry is coming up in March in Detroit, and as usual, I’ll be attending. I guarantee no matter what the outcome of the game though, the real hockey fans in Detroit would never act as classless as their Colorado counterparts. GO WINGS!

The ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon Mich. across Lake Michigan that will start this summer announced it’s estimated prices yesterday at a groundbreaking ceremony in Bay View.. around $50 for each car and $40 to $45 for each adult passenger, with children riding for half price.

Although I’m not totally thrilled about the price, it could be a lot worse… They’re supposed to have a website set up for the service in the next few weeks, and will start taking reservations shortly after that.