Gaming Problems

 A lot of developers are bitching that players won't "pay full price" anymore, and the answer is actually much simpler than the companies realize. It's because the developers are not actually adding much to the games anymore. At best we get engaging gameplay, sometimes you get a decent story, but almost everything is now just stitching random GPU features together.

The end result is a game that requires little art and is very inconsistent across different hardware specs. So now gamers are flocking to retro games and indie titles.

One game to look at was Ark Survival Evolved to see one of the last great games, we won't discuss why the game fell from grace in too much depth because it was developers being idiots which caused that. The original animal models were good, but not much detail.

The developers did a great job on the gameplay, though the story was lackluster. The game was fun an engaging from the start, the players loved it. Then they started adding details to the animal models and slowly the game started to look as good as it was fun.

They did simple but elegant layering for fur and feathers, which required some art and skill to accomplish but was not restricted to specific hardware and looked the same across different platforms. The result was encouraging to the players enjoying the same game they saw others playing on YouTube.

This drove engagement and people would pressure their friends to buy the game driving sales. The developers continued to add details to the graphics, while still keeping it from being hardware specific. Soon the worlds felt alive, almost real to the fans.

Everyone was happy.

Then greed and laziness hit and the developers made a sequel. But this time they used hardware specific "features" instead of good artists. The consistency collapsed, the latency jacked up, and the framerates tanked.

The game did not appear consistent across platforms, so what you saw on YouTube wasn't what you saw on your screen. This caused a lot of the fans of the original to stop playing.

Sometimes they update and the players jump on to see, hoping that the developers stopped the insanity. Every time the players became disappointed, there was nothing fixing the issues so the player base quickly fell again.

The YouTubers all stopped playing Ark altogether, live streamers who kept playing it lost viewers. The franchise is essentially dead with some necro posting and empty dreams. The moral here should be obvious, yet somehow I feel the modern developers will still miss it, so here is is said plainly:

Stop using stupid hardware "features" to fill in details and go back to making art.

Gamers don't want to pay for something we already paid for. We already paid for the hardware, we don't want to pay for it's features with every game we buy, so of course we're not going to pay full price for games now.

Make games with actual content and then we'll pay full price for them.

The Trick To Credit

 There is a system that banks have started using to determine if you are worth investing in. Yes, you are an investment to the bank, you are not a person in their eyes.

This is one of the many atrocious systems that develop in capitalism, and here's how to easily improve that score. Now this will only work if you can also avoid any criminal charges from here on out, a criminal charge that you cannot pay the fine on will reset all your work, which is why there are many crimes which they only enforce on the poor.

So the first step is to get a checking account, specifically a checking account with a debit card. Most banks are required to have a low income account, they often give them a name similar to "starter" account.

When you use this account, use the debit card more than checks, if you can just do the debit card. Use it like a credit card when possible as well, just be sure to never go over your balance.

This is the hardest part because we all need money sometimes and that temptation will be a struggle for most people. I know because I made the mistake a few times before I managed to finally resist that urge.

I was living in shelters at the time so it didn't impact me nearly as much. Now if you do live in a shelter you will need to get housing to accomplish this, so get on those lists and use the time while living in the shelter or on the street as practice.

After a few years the bank will start giving you offers for a deposit backed credit card. I didn't say this was a quick method, for us poor people there is no quick method.

Once you get these offers, not how much you need to deposit and try to save enough that you can afford that deposit. Don't worry about your needs being covered because you will be using the credit card for all of that.

Yeah, you have to go into debt for this to work and that may be scary, think of it this way: you're using the deposit and then loaning it back to the bank the next month. With this card you can't go over the deposit, and you will get that money back at the end, so you are not truly in debt now.

Your credit score will see a small increase from this, but nothing big until the next phase. Once that test period is up, as long as you kept paying it off every month, you get the deposit back

By now you'll be used to not over spending, and paying it off every month means you don't get hit with a ton of interest. Keep doing that, use the credit card for all your purchases during the month and pay it off with your paycheck every month, do not spend more than what's in your checking account.

If you feel comfortable, buy something large once in a while, worth no more than twice your paycheck. Then spend a bit less on regular things so you get that large purchase paid off in a couple months.

After no more than 5 years your score will be at least 700, after a decade you will have a score of 800. That last 50 is much more difficult, because the score itself is influenced most by how much credit the bank trusts you with.

So yes, every time they offer to increase your credit limit you say yes. But never ask the bank to increase your credit limit, doing that will decrease your credit score and you won't get an increase, wait for them to do it for you.

This happens for wealthy people automatically, because they get credit cards from their parents, jobs, or they deposit a large amount of money and the bank gives them one for that. But if we all get 800+ credit scores we ruin their system, we crash the credit score.

Suicidal Social Media

 Social media websites are "cracking down one ToS violations", well that's what they want advertisers to believe. The reality is that they're eliminating all the users advertisers want to target, because everyone breaks the ToS, even the advertisers.

Well, everyone except the bots, those very bots artificially inflate the number of users, making it appear the site is popular. Advertisers, being as clueless as they are, fall for this tactic and ultimately are scammed out of their money by a corporation that's more dirty than they are.

Reddit, Facebook, even LinkedIn are all following suite. Though Facebook and LinkedIn are trying to actually fix the issue, Reddit is not.

There are thousands of bots posting on Reddit every second, all run by moderators, most of the "moderators" of every subreddit are bots. They do not understand context, they do not understand human communication, they just post preprogrammed texts and react to regex scripts that have been in use since 1985.

Then when a user attempts to communicate with the moderator, they get suspended for "ban evasion" or some other ToS crime. Resulting in no one wanting to spend money on Reddit, and no one wanting to invest in Reddit.

This resulted in them attempting to latch onto that stupid NFT scam, the funny part of Steve Huffman trying that scam too late is not ironic at all. Steve is slow, very slow, like so far behind the times he thinks people will pay for avatars in this day and age.

Now they're back to begging advertisers to join Reddit, while banning the only people who can and will spend money on said advertisers, resulting in nothing but lame religious "ads" or other obvious scams. When an advertiser doesn't see a lot of fucking shit, like "fuck" and "shit" that's human, they automatically assume the content was generated by a bot, and rightfully so.

Because almost all of Reddit's content today is generated by bots. Welcome to the future, a broken system called capitalism finally dying.

Blogger Is Protecting Hate

 Blogger is protecting the hatemongers, the muslims, the christians, the judaic. the buddhists, the hinduists, all those who bring hate and violence to our world. Blogger is protecting the very Nazis who created the orange man by doing so.

Blogger is perpetuating violence against the irreligious, and hatred against minorities.

The Future Rat Problem in Everett

 In Seattle they "took care of" the stray cat problem, reducing the stray population to almost nothing compared to other areas. In downtown Seattle there are virtually no stray cats at all.

But there is something that took over, two pests that carry diseases that can infect and even kill humans. Rats and pigeons, so many of them.

The pigeons are easy to spot, there are thousands and their fecal matter contains enough worms to kill off pretty much any wildlife. Not that any other type of wildlife is even possible in downtown Seattle, but the pigeons won't stay there, they'll spread out and infect surrounding areas until they've decimated all wildlife in western Washington.

The rats in downtown Seattle own the streets, at night you'll see them rummaging around the alleys. With rats they don't all travel at once, if you see one there are at least a dozen in the nest.

Scouts go out to get food and bring it back to the nest, most communal animals behave this way. As a species we learned that we cannot maintain the rodent population, so we adopted a species that would be perfect for reducing the pests, we call them cats.

But because we didn't want to accept the fact we were destroying the environment we started blaming the cats and dogs for the vanishing wildlife. In reality it is our own presence that is devastating the other populations, and only a few species can live in the environment we've created for us.

Of those species, only cats and dogs do carry very few illnesses that can infect us, the others can wipe out our populations in a matter of a few years. The irony being that many of the animals we've pretty much destroyed would prey on cats and dogs, coyotes, eagles, falcons, wolves, bears, etc.

Where cats and dogs can thrive, no other life can thrive but us, meaning we're the ones who drove out or destroyed the wildlife. Our very presence is has shaped the environment, and given we need wildlife it is time we accept the fact that nature gave us life which can live with us and embrace them.

The cat and dog, nature's response to our devastation of the wildlife, and we're destroying them now. In Everett I am starting to see rats who do not fear humans, rummaging for food without fear at all.

If you see one, there are a dozen in a nearby nest, and for every one you don't see there are several in the shadows watching you. This is the future of Everett, another rat infested diseased city just like downtown Seattle.

The scam of neutering and spaying is going to cost us our world, as we vacate these environments we have ruined it would take hundreds of years for them to stabilize and be reclaimed by nature. Given the lack of larger animals, without cats and dogs becoming the new organisms in that environment, many cities would never recover wildlife.

In nature the only constant is change, we've caused a lot of change and it's time we allow the change to just happen instead of swinging to the extremes that created the problems already. We will be replaced by rats, then when they go extinct because we're no longer here there will just be plants, we've already started a great reset of of the planet.

The Veterinary Scams in Everett

 So I am being pressured into neutering Rhodey, even though after 8 years of life it has never been an issue. I decided to get it done rather than deal with the pressure anymore and discovered a serious scam that all vet clinics are running in Everett.

First the "pre-surgery" exam is a total rip off. They charge for a full blood work when all they are concerned with are two levels, two specific chemicals in the blood which the vet glossed over and this cost more than $300 USD.

Then the surgery, at the discount vet it will cost almost $400 USD because he wasn't able to be neutered sooner due to Compass Housing making him ill. Other vets were quoting nearly $1,000 USD.

I am paid only $900 USD per month for disability. The housing authorities keep saying they have to be neutered or spayed, ultimately making it nearly impossible for a disabled person to actually keep their companions unless they are of perfect health and adopted only from the shelters after they are of a certain age.

Basically, the state is telling us what specific therapy we must have for something that is clearly a very personal thing even when it causes no harm. You see, Rhodey never sprays and he is never out of the apartment unless he's in my control, he is literally the most perfect male cat possible because I actually know how to care for and manage a cat, that is why they are my preferred companions, otherwise I would have chosen a different companion.

I actually understand felines better than I understand the ape known as homo sapiens, or as the low brow like to call us: humans. Humans suck.

Gaming For Fools

 There is a very long running problem with video games of late, one which is utterly destroying the industry. It's sad because the fans know why, but seem unable to to simply stop buying the garbage that has been released lately.

First I must demand no more zombies!!!! Seriously, this wasn't even that great in the early games, why are there so many zombie based games being bought? Stop buying them, if the theme is "zombie" then just avoid it, pretend it doesn't exist.

Zombies were used as a single and rare encounter in older games, one encounter of many. Even games like Resident Evil didn't focus on the zombie, they were just the first thing you see before the really scary stuff started chasing you.

Now they are the staple, the primary encounter. Zombies are cheap, and any bugs or glitches can be ignored as "expected zombie behavior" which excuses the laziness we now see in developers. But it's up to us gamers to stop paying for this laziness, so stop buying games where zombies are the primary protagonist.

Now the rot that this has created, while the developers have been awarded for their laziness they made it a feature of all games now. Even Minecraft is becoming one massive mess of bugs, glitches, and poorly implemented additions.

All the newest content for most of the major games are a mess, sloppy and hastily thrown together to try to remain relevant while the fans jump on the "next big thing" which ends up being a huge flop anyway. To the developers I say: 

Stop worrying about the fad hoppers, they'll always come back, take your time and get back to what you love doing. The profits will always be there.

To the fans, stop jumping on fads just because the developers of said fad paid a streamer or youtuber to play their game. Preordering, getting early access, it's just a bad idea.

Games like Valheim and Last Oasis turned into huge flops, but because everyone was rushing to those the Ark developers panicked and released two buggy messes full of redundant grindfest content known as Genesis and Genesis 2.

Minecraft developers got so lazy they decided to merge into the Xbox ecosystem. This merging added so many bugs and problems that this move will actually kill off the Java version.

Conan Exiles was the first to fall prey to this problem with the release of Isle of Siptah, breaking many of the core mechanics in the game and ruining the graphics system in a sorry attempt to beat the rush to newer games. The only games that seem to maintain composure during this mess are Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14.

I don't like FF14 anymore, but it's not because they rushed the production, it's because one of the stories they released broke the lore too much for me to appreciate. GW2 is going strong though, looking forward to the End of Dragons expansion, even pre-ordered it because I trust they'll release it when it's finished and not a day sooner.

So what made the successful ones so great before they broke? Newness, that's it, they each offered something completely new to the genres they focused on.

But all of the newer games are not doing that, Last Oasis tried but it was too little of a thing to build an entire game from. Valheim was just a low end version of Conan Exiles, so I have no idea why anyone even thought that was worth the purchase.

But in spite of the mistakes made by the developers, the primary fault lies in the fans. Everyone flocking to something that's "the best new thing" and then never returning to the games that still hold up in spite of their flaws hurts the developers, they think they lost everyone to a fad so they start moving to projects that are just more short term fads.

This makes game development a fool's game.

The State Of Seattle

 So evictions in the USA are one of those really messy things which most tenants do not even know a fraction of the laws involved. Landlords have taken advantage of this fact to wrongfully evict tenants, often without even having to go to court because the tenant can't afford legal counsel.

Seattle finally joined the growing number of cities who offered a "public defender" of sorts for tenants facing eviction. This is likely because of our growing homeless problem, which is likely a result of the fact that landlords are finding ways around the eviction moratorium.

But what do home owners say? They're complaining, of course.

We have had this serious problem in the USA where the people who have money are convinced that everyone who doesn't have money are somehow out to get them. Which has resulted in creating a huge divide between those who have, and those who struggle just to get what we need.

The end result is what we see in renting, where somehow people have this idea that every eviction is justified. The pathetic irony being that most evictions are without good reason, and often those who should be evicted never are.

A primary reason why those who should be evicted manage to avoid it is that the landlords just listen to neighbor complaints, and the Karen types are generally the loudest. The ones most likely to be wrongfully evicted are the quiet types who typically stay to themselves and don't scream about every little thing.

Then that one thing causes the quiet person to complain just once about someone, and suddenly the Karen types will start an onslaught of complaints as well as generating rumors to ruin the quiet person's reputation with the landlord. Resulting in the one who did nothing wrong being evicted while the Karen type remains secure in their residence.

This is, of course, only one example of how the disparity shows up, there are many others. Well, with the court appointed lawyer the quiet person suddenly has the strength of the law behind them, as well as all the information normally only afforded to the landlord on how to fight any wrongful eviction in court.

Now the biggest complaint I've seen is about the cost. But let's put this into perspective.

A homeless person will cost about $35,000+ a year, that's taxes it comes from. My apartment generally costs about $5,000 per year in tax dollars, I still pay almost half of the total costs and the rest is subsidized.

Though the average is about $12,000 per year for housing and that include "supportive" housing. So it's in your best interest to house people, not kick them out onto the streets.

Source: https://endhomelessness.org/resource/ending-chronic-homelessness-saves-taxpayers-money-2/ 

The Problem With Office Staff

 My whole situation can be summed up as "office staff are lazy". On the bright side, it wasn't Compass Housing Alliance that messed up this time, instead it was a building with multiple managers who all took the same days off and didn't want to check their emails.

Of course that's only part of the story, but it's the backbone of the problem. The severe resistance to use modern technology is hurting people in so many ways, and yet there are still many people who refuse to modernize because they're comfortable with being troglodytes.

With our modern technology we also have better ways to manage our money, it uses the credit card system. So basically the story goes like this:

First they keep insisting payments are made using money order or cashier's check, both of which are typically used by criminal organizations attempting to commit tax fraud. So I was kind of pushing that back in my mind because they said a credit card system was available for rent payments, and I shouldn't have to deal with the parts which criminals prefer.

Then the stupid bullshit holiday known as Thanksgiving happened. I expected them to take a four day weekend because of it, which was bad enough given the vast majority of the world still functions and the whole process would be delayed because of precious time lost due to this.

But then they all took Monday off as well, because they're privileged office staff who are so over paid for sitting on their asses all day while others toil for entire days and earn less than a quarter what they do. So I am frantic about not knowing what's going on, what needs to be done, and all of that with only a few days remaining to make the transition to a new residence.

I get up on Tuesday, check my email, and no response was made. I don't check my voicemail because it's 2020, not 1980.

Discovered they tried to call me in an email they finally responded too, so my response was simple: I pointed out all the problems they created and said goodbye. Rent is due in two days here, and staying past the first of the month is not only rude, it's also against the lease, when planning to move out because then they have to go an entire month without rent.

So I opted to not screw over the organization that finally started doing something right, and stop the farcical procedure that Colwell Building managers were putting me through. The kicker here is that there are more managers for the Colwell Building than for the Karlstrom. Yet they still manage to have an entire week in which no manager is available to complete a time sensitive procedure in which the people involved need to know vital information to make plans around periods of being ill, medical care, and basic life needs.

At least with the Karlstrom, there was an excuse, the lack of stable staff in necessary positions. Colwell Building is supposedly a business, and they get tax credits for keeping some units for low income, yet they don't seem to be capable of doing this well.

From an assistant who doesn't know the process, to a head manager that is never there. The policies that resemble a criminal organization are just the cherry on the top here, so I will reiterate those really quick:

1. Only drug dealers or beggars take cash now, because it's easy to steal, and untraceable.

2. Only criminal organizations take money order or cashier's checks because they are easily hidden from tax records.

3. Regular checks are viable alternatives to debit and credit, but there is a reason to avoid those.

Of all the payment methods, debit and credit are the only ones friendly to the environment, completely secure, and easily managed. This is why so many new payment systems connected to the credit card system have become so popular, this is the future, time to start acting like it.

A Tale As Old As Time, At Least For Me

So on r/AskReddit someone asked what the most fucked up thing to happen to you was. I decided I'll paste a copy here for posterity because this one day really does sum up my entire life:

The Power of Millennials

 So I have watched a lot of millennial prank videos, stumbled on a lot of feel good ones. Originally I had expected a bunch of those really messed up pranks that my generation was and is quite popular for, and was so pleased to see none of that.

What I did discover was a few wealthy millennials with a lot of money and time, bored because they're rich, pranking people and giving them a lot of money and stuff in the end just to thank them for being a good sport. These videos show much more than that, and that in itself was really uplifting.

Big Daws TV is one of the groups doing these pranks, and they do some old fashioned pranks as well. So of course I saw those as well, and what stood out for me was that they were completely harmless.

Then I noticed a disturbing trend, something that shocked me to the core: of all their marks the millennials had the best reactions. Not best as in "most shocking of all time", but best as in laid back, so laid back.

Of course they get a bit shocked and surprised, but they don't swing, scream, or start attacking the pranksters. So these millennials that everyone else calls "entitled" or "weak" are really giving and laid back.

So if "entitled" means "giving money to people who need it when you have more than you need", then I hope they continue to be entitled. If being "weak" means "not attacking someone because they catch you off guard" then I hope they continue to be weak.

What we're seeing is our species finally becoming more humane, and these are a generation inheriting a pretty fucked up world. From allowing climate change to get out of hand to allowing our law enforcement to become tyrannical, and these youth are doing what they can to help fix the problems we started.

I'm embarrassed to be middle aged, not because I'm "old" but because others in my generation are insulting and attacking people who are doing the right thing.

Compass Housing: Archaic Trogolodytes

 So we finally get a forward thinking manager for The Karlstrom. One would think that was awesome news, however for us who live here it's like nothing changed.

The reason is that Compass Housing Authority won't even listen to the people they hire, instead they choose to do the same bullshit. So here is a list of things they do wrong, and all of them could be so easily corrected if they'd just embrace new technologies.

1. No Communication

If you send anyone an email, and you are lucky enough to get a response, it's no less than 7 days before you get said response. It's as if none of them check their messaging systems but for the two hours they spend in the office.

There are several possibilities as to why, from really inexperienced tech department to plain old laziness. There is no department email address system either, it's all to individuals using predetermined email addresses which the staff have zero control over.

This is straight out of the handbook of "how to handle this new thing called the internet" from the 1980s. Given today's environment, checking email should be an hourly thing and the staff should have a mobile app available to check it on the go as well.

2. Bad Web Design

Their website is generic, bland, and something that could easily be thrown together from a Wix template in about five minutes. Ironic given that they claim to have an IT department.

So it makes you wonder if they are even receiving emails. A short time ago it was discovered that their email system was filtering out most of the emails that were being sent to them.

3. No Modern Payment Methods

This one makes them seem suspicious as well as inept, given that the most secure and accessible payment methods are with credit card systems. These are inexpensive and easy systems to setup, and yet they are insisting on using the archaic, insecure, and often very slow methods of payment for rent while pretty much every other organization which manages low income housing offers a credit card payment system.

The new manager has been trying to convince them to implement such a system, which can be setup overnight by any competent technology or financial professional. Yet nearly eight months later no such system has been employed.

4. No Accountability

Often companies they employ for any task are unheard of, almost not internet presence and sometimes their office location on Google points to a residential house. Then when the residents file a complaint about the services, CHA tells us to complain to that company, then that company tells us to either complain to CHA or fuck off.

We have a laundry facility that can't even wash sheets well, and then whenever new residents move in with bed bugs we end up with a massive infestation. These are new problems, relatively, that started when they sold off the expensive laundry machines that were installed in the building when it first opened.

The machines we had were not prefect, mind you, but they were functional and didn't require cash to operate. The company they replaced it with not only remains elusive and avoids all contact with residents, their machines are from the late 1980s and are designed for low and infrequent use.

When attempting to discuss this issue with them, the best we can hope for is occasional access to their better facilities used for cleaning the laundry from the shelters. If the company they contracted cannot provide machines which could work for shelters, what makes them think it would work for an apartment building?

5. Retaliatory Practices

A few of their staff will watch the social media of the residents, thankfully they don't know how to do this well because they do response to any criticism with anger. Given they are also constantly looking for things to hang over the heads of the residents as threats for eviction, this is really bad practice and looks suspiciously like they are attempting to silence any criticism.

Several residents have mentioned as much, many too paranoid to even complain to the authorities which are supposed to hold CHA accountable for their actions. When a resident mentions anything to them, CHA will hold onto that and blow it out of proportion, even making up complaints from "some neighbors" even when no neighbor has made any official complaint.

Now it is possible the neighbors are just too afraid to talk to each other, but this would be in response to the fact that CHA has created such an environment by ignoring legitimate complaints, delaying repairs, and blaming some residents for the damage caused by other residents who have routinely flooded the building. When pressed on any issue, the staff complain about their insurance rates increasing while defending the very people who caused it and moving more such people into the building.

As I write this, the residents in the apartments above mine are smoking marijuana, which they have done almost daily since the COVID lockdown. These are the residents responsible for so much damage to the building, and the property of those of us who have caused no damage to the building.

Instead of even considering compensating us who have lost property, then making things right by fixing out broken services, they defend and protect the ones who actually caused the damage. To make matters worse, they blame those of us who have been harmed by these incidents for the results of the damage.

My newest neighbor has brought with him bed bugs, which would not have been a problem if we had functioning laundry facilities which were easily accessed. As it is, there is no way to launder the linen so I have to spray poisons almost every day to keep up with the invasion.

There is also a resident selling drugs out of their apartment here, and though I don't know who it is nor how valid that accusation is, it would not be surprising if that was true.

Compass Housing Alliance is one of the most dysfunctional and archaic organizations in the system, a far cry from the original Compass Center that maintained the building to high standards, kept very strong relations with the residents, and took responsibility for their role when things did go south.

You can't complain about insurance rates increasing when you remove amenities that helped maintain the building and protect those who are flooding units regularly.

Fuck Washington, Especially Seattle

So my problems when I was young, growing up in western Washington (mostly Covington), I had no support from anyone. My mother was psychologically abusing me, even the teachers knew something was wrong but back then no one thought psychological abuse was a thing.

So instead of getting me the help I needed, they would just punish me for my odd behavior. I had no one to turn to, being trans and atheist for as long as I could remember.

In school I avoided the popular kids, even though they often wanted me to hang out with them. Most of the time I was far more happy with cats, dogs, pretty much any other species by my own.

After turning 18 I was lost, no aim, no goals, because I didn't even know who or what I was. All I could do was strive to survive, and that I did well.

I picked up a set of skills, which would better serve some super secret agent in a fictional movie than any real human. After having helped many people and a lot of cats, I was diagnosed with disability and locked into a system that does what it can to keep you there, no matter who is in charge.

The only thing I could look forward to was that one day I could get some surgery and feel happy about my body. Then a medical doctor who was a bastard in Virginia Mason decided to lie and remove my hopes of getting that surgery by having me declared suicidal just because I disagreed with him on something unrelated.

So now I had only one thing to live for, a single cat who I would raise from a kitten and have for their entire life. A cat who I could say "I remember when he/she was so tiny."

That cat was going to be Rhodey, a wonderful black cat with a shady past who got really lucky. Healthy and happy, friendly to everyone, and I was forgetting all my problems focusing on taking care of him and his sister.

I looked so forward to the next twenty years, I probably won't live much longer after that because of a few health related problems and the mistake of smoking tobacco. But at least when I died I would be happy to have had this one thing.

Then, only a year after I had brought him home, our home was flooded and Compass Housing Alliance did not follow through with the repairs, forcing us to live with mold, no kitchen, and exposed insulation. Rhodey lost two pounds in about six months, scared I took him to the vet.

Everything seemed okay, and the vet assumed it was his teeth. I took that diagnosis because it was something I could directly help with.

Brushing his teeth regularly, I hoped he would regain the lost weight and start growing again. But he didn't, though he didn't seem to lose anymore weight.

A few years later, last year in fact, I took him to renew his vaccines and have him checked on. I was correct, he had not gained weight, so they did a full blood work on him.

It was expensive, but I was desperate now, I was worried, tense, scared. A few days later I got the email back, everything looked perfect, as in perfectly healthy, as in what I was doing was great for him, except ...

That except was kidney disease, when I read it I felt numb, fear, rage, hatred, washing over me, all at once. It was obvious who was responsible for it, a disease caused by environmental toxins, a thing which he was only exposed to during the time of the flooding.

Seattle had taken the last two things I loved from me. This vampiric city that masquerades as "environmentally friendly" and a place for equality.

Seattle, the city where everyone will tell you they care about you, as long as you don't rock the boat. Seattle and Compass Housing Authority, the people that claims to be animal friendly while complaining about the extra strong urine small caused by a cat who suffers because they poisoned him.

The last good employee for Seattle Housing Authority, the one who demanded that Compass Housing Alliance actually finish the repairs for the flooding that was caused by a drunk who passed out, retired the same day he did that wonderful thing. The last person who cared about the poor, the needy, the ones truly in danger, retired with one last loving act, though too late, I will always remember that he was the last good person in the Seattle government, perhaps in all of western Washington, perhaps in the entire country of the USA.

Rhodey, My Baby Boy

Three years ago I brought home this tiny ball of fluff. At six weeks old, he was covered in ringworm and looking for a loving home.

Typically I only adopt adult felines, ones which don't have any annoying phases of development that I have to deal with. But Pepper would not accept an adult so my options were limited.

Pepper was still unsure of me, and I needed to bring her out of her shell so I took a chance. Bringing this little adorable boy home did just what we needed, and Pepper is now a very loving and trusting cat because of it.

But one year after I brought him home our apartment was flooded, and Compass Housing Authority did nothing to complete the repairs for a very long time. During this time Rhodey lost two pounds, but was otherwise looking quite healthy.

The vet said it might just be the stress, which kept me at ease and I just tried really hard to find a treat he would love enough to eat all up. But a year passed and no change, so we went in for a checkup last month and they decided to do an in depth check.

Everything came back as "normal", except one thing, his kidneys were not functioning correctly. The vet found he was suffering chronic kidney disease.

Usually caused by exposure toxins, it reduces their life expectancy significantly. Toxins like mold and mildew caused by massive flooding of an apartment which we were forced to live in during his development.

I have been fighting my own brain to accept this, the tiny runt I had come to love so much, the runt I had hoped to get at least twenty years with, I will have no more than five or six years in total. Thanks to the vile monsters who run Compass Housing Alliance, the monsters who dragged the name Compass through the toxic mud.

Since I got the news I struggle every day to do anything, I struggle to keep a smile on my face, I struggle to get out of bed at all. I struggle to live. I will never forgive Compass Housing Alliance for this, may they all suffer long and painful deaths on the streets, forgotten and alone.

Fuck Musicians

I will never spend money on musicians again, ever. The reason for this is copyright trolls who act on behalf of these musicians, who only encourage the trolls.

This problem is destroying YouTube, and YouTube can't do anything about it. The only people who could do something about it are the musicians, yet as I stated before, they encourage the trolls.

To make it worse, things like parodies and using snippets in a vlog or some other video is free advertising, and yet rather than be grateful for this free advertising they attack people who do that for them. Since I lost monetization anyway, every video they claim I remove, no exceptions.

I will not give free advertising to a musician who employs these trolls, nor will I buy any more of their music. I have even gone a step further and started selling the CDs of the music from these musicians for a much higher profit than they got when I initially bought them because they are all collector items.

My favorite musicians are the ones who do not employ these trolls, the rest of you can just fuck right off.

Why Agencies Are Bad For Non-Profit Organizations

A non-profit's income should be very near zero, of course this is after administrative costs. For housing this is a very challenging point to get, maintenance alone can bring an apartment complex into the red and devastating failures caused by lacking maintenance can drop that even more, not to mention actual damages done by the residents.

There are many issues residents will face that will cause damage to units, often without intent from the resident but by the very nature of the medical problem. Let's take the example of surgery, a very common occurrence for vulnerable members of society.

The wounds caused by surgery will take time healing, during this time blood will be likely to come from the wound. This blood will get onto lots of surfaces, which inevitably cause stains which cannot be cleaned up.

Often surgeries will add even more challenges, and more sources of refuse which will inevitably cause damage. Now a good organization will have a manager on site for the majority of the week, and said manager would know what was going on at all times even when not on site.

All residents would know who said manager is as well as have multiple ways in which to contact this manager. Transparency would be nearly complete, communication lines would never be blocked or severed without notice, and whenever an issue arose it would be well documented and taken care of without anyone getting put out or harmed.

A management agency is a for profit business, they want their employees to move their company into the green as much as possible, and there is no obligation for them to take a profit loss even if they are hired by a non-profit organization. So they make promises to reduce costs, and you hire them for that.

Well now the costs include their administration, the business owners, share holders, CEO, etc. As well as their employees, all of them.

So how do they "cut costs"? They reduce the number of hours the manager is on site, and it's reduced to an insane amount.

Given a typical business, you will want a management staff or team on duty for at least 2 more hours per day than the business is in operation. An apartment is, essentially, a business that is open for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

That's 168 hours per week, which is the same as saying 168 hours work that needs to be done. Apartments are a laid back business, often the manager is only necessary for about half that amount of actual work, however to accomplish that they must be on call and ready to show up at the property every hour of every day.

Agencies do not accommodate that cheaply, for the typical landlord they can increase rent a bit to help pay for better services and most renters are more than happy to accommodate that increase. But for public housing, non-profit, such a method is not viable nor supported by the state.

So the management agency will reduce the number of hours a manager is on site to level which forces these managers to accomplish at least 80 hours work in about 2 hours. This saves the agency plenty of money, they are in the green because of the contract, but the organization which has hired them is suddenly dealing with major damage caused by neglect, tenants being unable to contact a manager when necessary, and a manager who often sells off the organization's property to cut even more corners.

The agency will stay in the green, earning a profit as that is what they are suppose to be doing, while the non-profit organization is in the red so much that they face having to declare bankruptcy. Regular maintenance is so vital to an apartment building, even if something as simple as pipe inspections are neglected can result in massive flooding damage which cascades into neighboring units all the way to the ground floor.

A simple pipe leak, which would be detected and repaired with simple inspections, can explode into millions of USD in expensive repairs. Without a reliable manager on site capable of ensuring such inspections occur unhindered, the massive damage becomes inevitable.

Ultimately not only are the residents made to suffer what is essentially a slum, the organization begins to collapse under all that debt, and the end result is more people back on the streets with nowhere to live. This is what we are seeing happen in real time at Compass Housing Alliance, and the management agency is pushing the blame onto the residents to add insult to injury.

Seattle Housing Authority is unwilling to step in to correct this, the city turns a blind eye to this volatile situation, and Compass is trying to pretend they still have everything under control when they clearly do not. If we want to fix homelessness, this is one of those practices that needs to end as it does not help anyone involved.

The Long Tale of Corruption

How has Compass Housing Alliance changed for the worse? A question that is not asked often enough, it seems.

As Compass Center they were the pinnacle of social services, one of the best that all others could look up to, where those in need found someone who actually cared. This resulted in them getting the bulk of donations from local businesses, enough to fund reconstruction of their offices and a new apartment building fully furnished and ready for occupancy.

But now they struggle, trying to make ends meet and getting no donations to replace the amenities they sell off to pay for office parties and new chapels. That statement should make their mistakes very clear, but the repercussions are long standing and cut much deeper than you'd expect.

Local businesses were already reluctant to assist most social services due to the corruption and the fact that almost everyone they supposedly helped was still unable to meet even basic sanitary standards. But Compass Center residents were clean and presentable to a point that we always blended in with the other customers.

So when the earthquake hit in 2002, the organization had to get money for extensive reconstruction. To get the support of local businesses they offered to turn half of the building into apartments which would be run less like a shelter for the more stable clients using their services.

The result was the Karlstrom, which had all amenities and personal living spaces and very few restrictions on the residents. We were treated like people, and it was managed by a no nonsense manager who took regular maintenance so seriously that she would schedule maintenance inspections monthly to come in and ensure everything was working.

It was great, a wonderful apartment and the residents left good impressions on those who had donated to this project. Seattle had known of no low income apartment building with a better track record for keeping pretty much everyone happy and cooperative.

The Karlstrom was supposed to be a flagship building, a new standard to which all others could be compared to so that when the bulk of staff left Compass Center for retirement, schooling, or new careers those who took over would have the standard already set. Sadly their dream of helping people was destroyed by those hired to take their place.

For the first few years it was just a small amount of chaos as we awaited a new manager to be assigned, so we could get everything back on track. What we got was the beginning of a nightmare, Peter Madril was first appointed, and with him came several new residents which we can only surmise he hand picked from his other program.

Fine, we got some new neighbors, but these were not the same class of neighbor the rest of us had become accustomed to. One on my floor was abusive toward several residents to the point that we had to file complaints of assault on him, he died a few weeks ago and is not missed, but that's a story for later.

Then they sold off the laundry facilities that one of the businesses had donated specifically to this building. Suddenly they were struggling for money to the point of having to cut corners everywhere, including essential maintenance in the building, delaying repairs caused by flooding for years at a time, and having almost no staff present at any given time.

There were no emergency staff to contact, no organization, nothing left but an apartment building lacking basic essential amenities and maintenance which the organization was slowly taking over by storing their old files and supplies in the rooms now vacant after removing the amenities. Carpets with mold growing under them, walls with mold growing in the insulation, and toilets breaking from wear and tear because they have not been replaced in over a decade.

Now to add insult to injury, they remodeled the chapel in the building and hired some new preacher in place of taking care of the people who relied on their organization. Makes you wonder why a religious chapel would take priority over people here.

Our fire alert system has not been updated in over a decade either, wall heaters have not been cleaned or maintained in about that same time, and sinks are routinely clogging at the base of the building. To get any response from them requires many attempts to contact the staff, and most times we don't even know who to contact.

Then the belligerent neighbor dies, which was a huge drama as he was in the hallway attacking another neighbor while suffering what appeared to be a stroke. Others say it was more than a stroke, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt.

He had a cat living with him, a female the same age as my Rhodey. Now Rhodey is slightly underweight at 7.4 lbs because he has a kidney disease, he should be around 9 lbs if he was healthy.

Six days after he died, during which time two of the neighbors were trying to contact the staff over and over again to get the cat from the apartment, they finally got her to safety and she weighed five lbs. Now when I contacted the only person I can get hold of, Kelli Hurley denied that all this happened, all of it except the death that is.

Then she added that someone else had died and made a snarky remark about me not caring. Here's the thing, I don't care, they're already dead and living people take priority over dead people every time.

Using dead people as an excuse to ignore living people is a huge problem and one that many rumored to have started the whole mess. Remember Peter Mardil, they had informed us that it was the death of someone in one of the other buildings he managed that caused him to simply lose his interest in doing his job.

Assuming what they told of us Peter, which I doubted until tonight, it appears there is a big problem with them wanting people to die in their care so they can use these deaths politically. The problem is that this kind of tactic actually works.

People will donate a lot of money to help the organization deal with the dead person but no one cares at all for the living people who the organization now wants to die. If you see the problem then please do me a favor and contact Compass Housing Authority on every website you can to let them know how fucked up this is, or contact Seattle Housing Authority and let them know you don't approve.

https://www.compasshousingalliance.org/

https://www.seattlehousing.org/

Twitter the Hate Site

Twitter is a service many people have come to rely on to communicate with their friends, make new friends and participate in discourse in the safety that the internet has to offer. As of late, Twitter has decided to remove two of those aspects.

Technically they do have the right to censor how their service is used, but this is not what they are actually doing. Instead when a generic threat or general insult is meade they ignore it, however if you direct it at a specific person they lock you out of the discussion completely. Is this simply a move to protect themselves, or are they attempting to become the world's first platform for hatemongering?

I believe someone in the company thinks it's to protect themselves, but the reality is that this creates actual bigotry and hatred. A generalized insult is bigotry, it's hatred for a group of people rather than just ire at a specific person.

Ultimately this move will backfire on them if they continue to follow the course they have chosen. When in a discussion, people will call each other names, that's how humans have always and will always behave when they are faced with opposition to which they can only respond in short comments rather than a formal debate.

If Twitter actually thinks formal debates can even happen on their platform, they are as deluded as the religious people who talk to themselves. The bigger problem is that they are discouraging interraction with other people, which is what social media is.

Soon they will be left with nothing but hatemongering and news feeds, and when that happens everyone else will find a new platform. The only reason people used social media was to find some interraction, someone to challenge their ideas or verious personal aspects.

This latest trend to suspend accounts which engage in social discourse will remove that completely, making Twitter die out like all the other social media who remove the social aspect of their service. Google is coming in strong in this regard, rather than suspend people for engaging with others, they tell those who don't like what they read to just not read it.

Sooner or later a group like Anonymous will declare Twitter a hate site and remove them from the internet completely. As is the reason such groups exist, this is what the support team at Twitter can expect if they leave the racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. and remove those who insult specific people they are actually talking to.

Recently I got suspended for calling someone a nut, that was all I called them because they were just trolling, and that got my account removed from the discourse completely. I didn't say "all this type of person is a nut", I called that one person a nut.

This is the environment that Social Justice Warriors are creating, a society in which it's better to hate a group of people for something than to insult a single person for their own behavior. They do it by calling it bullying, but bullying is (by definition) a situation in which the person cannot remove themselves from.

Online you have many options to remove yourself from the situation, which is why it is perfect for even the most heated discussions. I have been bullied in the past, this is something I am all too familiar with, and right now Twitter support are being the bullies.

Thanks for reading, please add your opinions on the matter for discussion.

McBride Construction and Illegal Immigrants

The troubles with McBride Construction began with the hiring of a crew of illegal immigrants, which barely spoke English and caused damage to personal property due to gross negligence. Hiring illegals isn't something I truly care about, so long as they are able to communicate with their customers and do the job properly.

However that was merely the beginning of the problems with McBride, betraying a problem with Seattle in general. The biggest problem is their lack of communication and an inability to stick to a schedule.

I was informed that my apartment would be ready on a specific date, that day is today and McBride is nowhere to be found to verify this. Aside from the fact that their hired help have been nothing but destructive, the people in higher positions there are now nowhere to be found.

Seeing as how they refuse to comment, it is safe to say that they are simply being irresponsible. Likely off on a golf trip or some other self indulgence while they should be at work earning their huge salaries.

During their mini-vacations people remain homeless, without access to basic necessities, and without any word as to when they can return to their lives. This is what corporate America is, and to deny that my experience is the standard is to deny the nose on one's face.

When I discover what precisely is going on, I will release a video explaining it in more detail. Whether the video is a reveal of great work done by McBride or an example of their incompetence, time will tell.

The Real Problem With Housing

So I live in subsidized housing, I have been in this one apartment for over a decade now. I pay my rent on time every month, I never complain about anything, and I maintained the apartment in perfect working order.

If this was a regular apartment building I would have had no problem getting the repairs done when a neighbor above me flooded the apartments below him. But this is not a regular building, it's subsidized by Seattle Housing Authority.

So how does that change things? It changes a lot of things. For one, housing authorities actually reward building owners of subsidized housing for cutting corners and ignoring resident complaints.

This resulted in the whirlwind of events that have happened recently. First they delayed repairs for 5 months, leaving me with no kitchen and no closet during that time. This means microwave food only, except for the few times I could afford to eat at a restaurant. Around here the restaurants are expensive.

Then when they finally get the repair crew in here, they actually hire some contractor who is unlisted. Their electrician's license is registered at an apartment over in eastern Seattle, http://www.towncontractors.com/shanco-restoration-services-electricians-seattle-wa and no contact information is offered.

So the one hanging the drywall was screwing things in and suddenly the main circuit breaker was tripped. I investigated and said that something shorted out the wiring, and reset the breaker to see because it also effected the lights. Then he went right back to work.

No hesitation, no calling for an electrician, he just went back to work and shorted it out again. This time it damaged my computer and he laughed about that. They rarely spoke English during this whole process, and were obviously joking around about it all.

Ultimately I finally got it through their thick skulls to call the electrician. The next week the electrician showed up and we discovered that the only way it could have been tripped was if the drywall hanger was messing with some wires that were exposed because they powered the oven's vent.

So he was either a complete moron and unqualified or did it on purpose. Neither bodes well for them, or the city in general. For the last 6 months I have been very tolerant of the situation, but now with the housing authority threatening to cut their funding I'm very angry.

Rhodey (my youngest cat) now suffers PTSD because of the cleanup, those high powered fans running and strange people coming into the apartment have scared him almost to death. Every time someone knocks or even walks too close our front door he freaks out, scared.

My health is declining in general, and I find my violent tendencies to be resurfacing. Luckily I am only violent toward humans.

Microsoft donates large amounts of money to Compass, your tax dollars also fund both Compass and SHA, yet they are both taking that money and doing nothing with it. This is the way of things in Seattle, ironically all the drug addicts get a bunch of free resources and housing.

Which leads me to why it's completely backwards here. The drug addicts cannot be arrested by the cops unless they harm people, they can sit on the sidewalks here and do their drugs while harassing people for money.

Compass gives these addicts free laundry and showers, while the working poor, disabled, and elderly are given the finger instead. Every organization in this city endorses and even encourages this kind of behavior.

So what do we do about it? Nothing. Those of us stuck in this situation can do literally nothing, but you can. You can stop electing morons like Trump into office, you can help out your friends, and you can make sure your friends have what they need.

If you can't trust someone, then don't give them your money, don't give them anything. Most of the money you give to strangers is wasted, the way Compass Housing Alliance is wasting everyone's money, the way Seattle Housing Authority is wasting everyone's money, these are not exceptions to the rule.