(no subject)

[vicarz]

Does it seem painfully obvious that I'm always doing something or tired? I used to write a lot at/from work but my job is simply too demanding - or I'm more conscientious of how much downtime I cash in on.

Gym, I go to it. My workouts are more geared towards the girlfriend's classes and schedule - she does classes, in 800 different places, and enjoys variety. I do what spreadsheet tell me do /tarzanvoice.
This is how fat I am http://vicar.livejournal.com/photo/album/5733/
Most of my washboard pics were taken after I was sick - I never ran around looking chiseled. I was impressed at how awful I could look in these, and how a couple vertebrae make me go from troll with moobs to meh.

Tomorrow I try to duplicate my 435, or was it 445, DL.

I visited the house with Kobi, and was surprised to find teeny tiny things done. A toilet is in the powder room, the sinks were installed. Stain and sealer is in the living room so it looks like the work trickles on. I'm still trying to set a meeting though, as the dates not met isn't forgotten over a couple tiny things and lacking an explanation of what went wrong. Granted, some of my anger is based on getting abused by corrupt DC employees, but it does all go back to him not meeting timelines by...a year.

On the other hand, he has also done a lot for free.

I'm exhausted...

Life is good but busy - just vacationed with Veronica over her birthday, then made social time with friends. Now my wild fantasies are about catching up on sleep.

Edit - I'm still stunned by the number of typos I leave in my posts. Did I used to read them more? Is my brain degrading over time? Was I always this sloppy?

Comments

Tight, thick, solid brah.

[(Anonymous)]

Totally supple leopard.

Unrelated, I'll leave this here for Reasons.

http://build-muscle-101.com/natural-remedies-for-gynecomastia/

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

Now that we're legally emancipated from our builder...

It could be argued your builder has done a rather more significant amount of work for free than calculated. We started making regular reminders to our builder a few weeks before his estimated completion date that:
a) it didn't appear as if he would be finished
b) not completing it when promised was going to force us to incur costs that had not been planned on
c) it needed to be known with some degree of certainty when the job would be completed so C could schedule her move in and close down her rental agreement.

This accomplished very little in the context of getting the job completed on time, but when the final settlement came due it became obvious (because he said as much) that the builder was operating under the misconception (as had I, until corrected) that because the contract did not specify liquidated damages he was not liable and so was under no pressure nor obligation to do anything other than what was most convenient for him.

C patiently and thoroughly and patiently explained that, no, in fact "actual damages" was a real thing, no, one does not have to codify actual damages in order to claim them, no, we're not obligated to just pay you whatever you feel is just and yes, that is indeed how many thousands of dollars we're holding back from the final payment even though that does not cover all damages.

I think my favorite line of the evening was C's response to him of, "hey, don't come complain to me because you wrote a bad contract."

We did have a lot of stratergerizing ahead of time about what would be said, what wouldn't, and how much we'd claw back, the goal being striking a balance between my wanting to salt the ground that his company was built on and C's pragmatic desire to cover some of her losses while avoiding actually being dragged into court. We were assisted greatly by forcing most of our interaction with him to be via email (or following up just about every verbal with a written summarization) and were able to put a justifiable number onto everything.

tl;dr - at the end of the day the only incentive you have to offer the contractor is unpaid money. If it's a significant amount you can possibly try working out a new schedule of payments with adjusted milestones but start calculating your actual damages now, put calendar dates on where completion dates were discussed. You might also check any information DC makes available for making formal complaints about contractors and official sanctions that may be imposed if eg. they abandon a job.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Thanks - very helpful comment and perspective. I'm sort of a softie, and in compensating for my softieness I sometimes overcompensate and give myself a bee in my bonnet when the gentler approach might actually be better.

Yes! your abc is what I've been nudging, but not putting in writing. But the list of free is incomplete...when I raised the issue that he had charged me extra for the treated brick wall when he should have saved on framing - he responded to note he never charged from ANY of the framing throughout the house, which on inspecting the contract was completely true. Oops and yay. Similar notes were made about the exposed brick wall in the living room and a few other things (escaping me at the moment).

The email follow-up I'm doing.

I hadn't thought of paying less and am not sure how I feel about doing that without being clear up front, but what you say makes sense and just like I'm handicapped regarding dragging him to court - his 120 day contract would be hard to defend and pay to litigate for him as well.

I've noted I'm losing $1200 monthly, but need to check if I did that to him in writing. My opportunity cost of paying to live in VA and not having the basement rental seems fairly clear, and that's easily $3000 monthly and highly likely more.

Unpaid money is substantial, $50-80k on a $250-300k total.

My current goal is mixed...My original and current goal is to put set financial penalties...INCENTIVES...of cuts from his bill if deadlines are not met. Curiously if I commit those to writing now, it precludes applying them away from the final payment as such an arrangement appears to modify the contract then - unstated in that case is now hard to argue as implied.

One positive note - he definitely has not abandoned the job. Even if he did, it's looking at least "ok."

One thing that makes me sad is I wanted to do this again, with this contractor if able. I still do if I can control the timeframes or have a set financial defense if this were to recur, but that does not seem reasonable.

Read every word. Thanks - good info.

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

One annoying distinction we discovered about Virginia is that all courts are equivalent jurisdiction, or something like that - whatever the proper terminology is to describe a situation where there is no lower limit to what court a party can bring a civil suit in. A big concern for us was that if he wanted to pursue recovery he was free to start his case all the way in big-boy circuit court, and the cost of entry for the plaintiff is pretty much the same. Further annoying from the perspective of the potential defendant is that there was nothing we could find indicating there was a mechanism to petition for the case to be remanded to a lower, less-expensive-to-defend-in court.

So we were all 3D chess tactics discussing an opponent who turned out to be playing "go fish". YMMV.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Indeedy - my guy is pretty rustic, but that doesn't mean one of his drinking buddies isn't a lawyer. I mean me too, but I have never filed nor do I know a thing about court-court. Thanks again - you gave me something I didn't know about but do know enough about to look up.

I'm also 98% more likely to try and push for a fair settlement, but to do that I need to know what I'm dealing with as you guys did.

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

Everyone has a big belly when they stand in that position!

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I often have bad posture. Sadly the gym has also made me see I need to fix my posture as it's related to general muscle imbalances.