“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
― Gore Vidal

Check out the link below.  I know many people who complain about how long and frustrating it is to attempt a loan modification with their lending institution.  One friend told me it took three (3) years.  Others say they finally gave up  citing the same experience the article below speaks about.

http://realestate.msn.com/banking-bad-angry-mortgage-customers-act-sing-and-post-their-grievances

Health on Today (posted on msn.com 12.21.12

Kitchen calamity: Reports of shattering cookware on the rise

Courtesy the Parker family

The Parker family of Pontiac, Mich., is shown on Christmas Day 2010, minutes before the clear glass baking dish at the head of the table shattered into hundreds of shards, according to Debbie Parker. Parker, standing, said she found glass pieces three feet away under the Christmas tree.

By JoNel Aleccia, NBC News

Debbie Parker of Pontiac, Mich., says she still can't shake the memory of Christmas morning brunch two years ago when the festive egg casserole she baked in a glass Pyrex pan "exploded" without warning on her holiday table. 

“There was this loud crash. We looked to see the dish shattered with shards of glass all around,” recalled Parker, 70, who said she found pieces three feet away under the Christmas tree.

No one was hurt, but Parker said she shudders even now at the thought of her young grandchildren, then ages 1 and 5, who were seated at the table for the family's traditional meal.

“It was right at their eye level or face level,” she said. “We could have spent Christmas Day at the hospital.”

Other consumers say they have been hurt by suddenly shattering glass cookware, including James Sinton, 29, of Houston. Medical records show that he needed stitches in April 2011 to fix a gash on the inside of his right arm after he said a large Pyrex measuring cup broke when he poured boiling water in it to make tea.

“It exploded. There’s no other way to describe it. It instantly became shrapnel,” recalled Sinton, who said he slipped on the wet floor and landed on the glass pieces, cutting himself.

Such incidents are rare, but reports of glassware abruptly shattering have climbed sharply in recent years, NBC News has learned. And a controversy is heating up over whether the pans or the users are to blame.

Complaints about the problem to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission rose from just two in 1999 to 144 in 2011. That's a total of 576 during those 13 years, records show. This year, 93 incidents had been reported as of mid-November. 

Emergency room reports collected in a federal database show that some consumers claim to have suffered cuts to the face when glass pans broke as they opened hot ovens, or claim they’ve been injured by spattering pan juices or hot grease after dishes disintegrated.

At the advocacy agency ConsumerAffairs.com, which posts reviews about popular goods and services, the two top brands of glass cookware in the U.S. -- Pyrex and Anchor Hocking -- have drawn nearly 1,600 reports combined, mostly accounts of unexpected breakage, since the site began in 1998.

“This is without a doubt the highest number of complaints about a single type of cookware or kitchen accessory,” said Jim Hood, founder and editor of the site, which has been reporting on the problem since 2005.

Sheer volume might account for some of the complaints, considering that glass bakeware is found in at least 80 percent of U.S. homes. World Kitchen, the maker of U.S. Pyrex, produces more than 44 million dishes a year, company officials say. Anchor Hocking makes more than 30 million pieces a year.

The rise in reported incidents has raised new questions about the possible causes of unexpected breakage during cooking. A recent article by two scientists at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa suggests that today’s pans are more prone to sudden shattering than your grandmother’s hand-me-downs.

But World Kitchen officials have filed a trade disparagement lawsuit disputing that article and claiming that the researchers used faulty science to reach their conclusions. They say that any problems with shattering are rare, and that when they do occur, it may be because consumers don't follow the directions included with all cookware. 

Pyrex packaging

A pamphlet with instructions about proper use is included with every Pyrex product.

Many cooks are surprised to learn that companies, including World Kitchen and Anchor Hocking, have specific safety rules for using glass bakeware.

In instruction leaflets and even embossed on the glass pans themselves, the companies stress correct use.

In responses to complaints filed on the CPSC's SaferProducts.gov site, World Kitchen posts these instructions:

·  Always place hot glass bakeware on a dry, cloth potholder or towel. Never place hot glass bakeware on top of the stove, on a metal trivet, on a damp towel, directly on a counter or in a sink.

·  Never put glass bakeware directly on a burner or under a broiler.

·   Always allow the oven to fully preheat before placing the glass bakeware in the oven.

·  Always cover the bottom of the dish with liquid before cooking meat or vegetables.

People who pull their pans out of the oven and set them on a “wet or cool surface” such as a sink or a granite countertop -- found in more and more kitchens these days -- risk sudden temperature changes that could induce shattering, glassware companies say.

The glassware makers also urge consumers to be careful with their pans; impact accounts for far more breakage than heat changes -- and it also can weaken the products, raising the chance of shattering, they say.

World Kitchen officials said in a letter to James Sinton that an examination of his broken measuring cup showed it may have been bruised by “banging” or “dropping.” Sinton, however, said he’d just bought the glassware weeks earlier and didn’t misuse it. World Kitchen didn’t analyze samples of Debbie Parker’s broken dish, and they say they can’t be sure it even was Pyrex, according to press reports after the incident.

Courtesy Laura Lowe

Laura Lowe, 47, of Evans, Ga., said her chicken dinner was ruined last December when the glass baking pan she was using shattered suddenly inside her oven.

 

At least one cook whose glass pan shattered suddenly last year said she had no idea there were rules about use, especially for such a well-known brand.

“I didn’t follow their directions, but it was Pyrex,” said Laura Lowe, a 47-year-old piano teacher from Evans, Ga.

She said it never would have occurred to her to add liquid to chicken in a baking dish. She assumed that the new glass pans she used were the same material as the pans passed down from her mother and grandmother under a brand once advertised as “icebox-to-oven” bakeware.

Not your grandmother’s Pyrex
There’s no question that the glass pans made in the U.S. today are not your grandmother’s Pyrex.

The original Corning Inc. pans, invented in 1915, were made from a particularly strong material, borosilicate glass. Virtually all glass bakeware sold in the U.S. since the 1980s is now made of a different material, soda lime silicate glass, said Daniel Collins, a Corning spokesman.

Company officials say that soda lime silicate glass is better able to withstand impact if banged or dropped and that it is better for the environment. Ceramics experts also note that it’s cheaper than borosilicate glass.

Recently, Richard Bradt and Richard Martens, the Alabama scientists, set out to explain the increase in reports of shattering. They said they calculated the breaking range for the glass used to make dishes in the U.S. today -- and compared it with that for old-style glass used in original Pyrex.

Then Bradt, a materials engineer, and Martens, an atomic probe microscopist, bought six new glass pans in local stores -- three Pyrex, three Anchor Hocking -- and tested them in Martens’ photoelasticity lab for signs of heat tempering, which boosts the strength of glass.

Their article, published this fall in the American Ceramic Society Bulletin, concluded that the newer glass is far less able to withstand rapid swings in temperature than the older material now used mostly in pans sold in Europe.

“The margin of safety … is borderline,” the scientists wrote.

That conclusion, however, is hotly contested by the glassware makers.

“Anchor’s tempered soda-lime glass bakeware has been in the marketplace for close to 30 years with an excellent safety and consumer satisfaction record,” spokeswoman Barbara Wolf said in a statement.

World Kitchen officials maintain there were errors in the researchers’ work, namely, that they didn’t fully account for the company’s heat-strengthening process.

“The Bulletin feature story contains serious flaws, inaccuracies and highly misleading assertions and assumptions,” said Ed Flowers, the firm’s senior vice president, in a statement to NBC News.

World Kitchen, which acquired U.S. rights to the Pyrex trademark from Corning in 1998, is now suing the American Ceramic Society, the two researchers and a publicist over the trade journal article. The company has demanded a retraction, claiming that the scientists have launched a deliberate “campaign of disparagement” against U.S.-made glass cookware, including Pyrex, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

“Defendants have purposely but needlessly frightened consumers into the false belief that Pyrex glass cookware is unsafe for normal kitchen use and could pose an unreasonable risk of serious injury to those who use it,” the complaint states.

Bradt and Martens are standing by their conclusions. So is the American Ceramic Society, which has refused to retract the paper.

Independent ceramics experts who reviewed Bradt and Martens' paper for NBC News found it to be fundamentally sound, though they said more testing was needed to affirm the conclusions.

Glass bakeware under fire
This is hardly the first time that glass bakeware has come under fire. In 2010, Consumer Reports magazine investigated complaints of shattering cookware by conducting its own tests on borosilicate and soda lime silicate pans. In a dramatic video demonstration, the magazine concluded that the newer pans, including those made by World Kitchen and Anchor Hocking, were more likely to shatter under extreme conditions than the original Pyrex.

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Federal safety officials who've looked into the problem say that while there have been injuries, no deaths have been attributed to the unexpected breakage. There are not enough cases to estimate how many people might be hurt in the U.S. each year, said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the CPSC. Wolfson wouldn’t speculate about what’s behind the growing numbers. He said the agency analyzed the issue in 2008, but found no cause to recall the glassware.

World Kitchen officials described the Consumer Reports piece as “seriously flawed.” As for the ceramics journal report, they say that Bradt had a conflict of interest because he has served as a paid witness in lawsuits against makers of glass cookware.

Bradt acknowledged that he has been hired as an expert witness on behalf of clients who brought lawsuits against U.S. glassware makers about the products in recent years. He would not name any companies involved in those lawsuits, citing confidentiality requirements. The cases were settled out of court, he said.

World Kitchen also emphasized that each report to the CPSC is merely a consumer complaint and has not been investigated or confirmed by the agency.

George Quinn, a retired senior ceramic engineer with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, reviewed the ACS paper for Bradt before it was published. Quinn was among several peers in the ceramics field who reviewed the authors' drafts.

“My own professional opinion is that the thermal strengthening may not be adequate for temperatures in the home kitchen,” he said.

He said he handles glass dishes in his own kitchen “with extreme caution.”

“I’ll set it down on a cloth or on a wooden block,” Quinn said. “I will put a towel over the Pyrex as I am handling it, so if it should break, I will be protected.”

Courtesy the Parker family

Debbie Parker preserved the shattered dish of egg casserole that she said 'exploded' on her holiday table in 2010.

Debbie Parker said she still uses the old Pyrex pans she got decades ago, but won't buy new products.

Parker says she is certain she followed all the rules for proper baking during her holiday brunch. After the new pan broke, she wrote detailed records about the timing, temperature and treatment of her glass Christmas pan.

Still, she says, it shattered. When she complained to World Kitchen about her broken Christmas casserole and the danger it posed to her family, she says the company offered to send a new pan.

“They wanted to replace it. I just laughed,” she said, referring to World Kitchen. “I wouldn’t have another ‘new’ piece of Pyrex in my home.”

 

“I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to sooth me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: “Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failure of the wing.” The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time’s mystery and a man’s love of life.”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.”
― Gore Vidal

Trojan Horse strategy doesn't just work in war – it fights cancer, too

Some extremely good news for mice will hopefully become a transformative new technique for curing humans of prostate cancer. British researchers have developed a therapy that hides a cancer-killing virus inside the immune system, which then "sneaks" it into tumors. One doctor said the chief challenge with successfully deploying cancer-fighting viruses is penetrating the cancer cells' line of defense, a problem this strategy solves — which is why it's nicknamed a Trojan Horse therapy. In this study, all of the mice with cancer were clear of the disease and alive at the study's end, and now researchers are hoping it will have similar success with humans. [Source]

Click to see more on msnNOW.com, 12.23.2012 What’s Trending Now

Renters: Don't forget to ask these questions

Maybe that apartment has the dishwasher you wanted, but do you get cell-phone reception?

By Leah at MSN Real Estate Aug 28, 2012 2:50PM

 

There is no shortage of rental advice, from how to find your first apartment to how to screen your landlord. But there are a lot of things you may not discover about your new digs until after you move in. And while you can't find out everything, Ilyce Glink at CBS MoneyWatch came up with a list of 10 questions renters often forget to ask.

 One of the most essential questions on her list is, "Does my cell phone get reception?" It's frustrating enough to work in an office building without cell-phone reception or to spend time at a restaurant or business that deliberately blocks cell signals, but you certainly want to be able to make phone calls from your home.

Glink points out that because vacancies are down, some renters may think they should take what they can get, but you shouldn't settle for an apartment that won't meet your needs.

 Here are a few of her other important questions.

 How is the water pressure? No one wants deal with a shower that barely drizzles. Turn on the water, and ask a current tenant how long the water takes to get hot in the mornings, when lots of the building's occupants may be trying to get ready at once.

Are there windows, where are they, and do they open? You want to know whether you're going to get any natural light, whether your view consists of a trash can in the alley and whether you'll be able to open the windows for fresh air.

• Who handles package deliveries? If you don't have a doorman in your building, what happens if you're at work when the fresh-baked cookies from your grandma in Minnesota arrive via UPS or FedEx?
• What's the deal with the heat? If you're apartment hunting in the spring, you're probably not thinking about the chill of winter. But it's important to know whether your heat is controlled individually, if it's efficient and how much it generally costs during the winter months.

Keep in mind that your priorities for a home are personal, so think about what your needs and daily routines are, and make sure you find a place that suits you.

As Lee Lin, a co-founder of no-fee apartment listings website RentHop.com, puts it:

 "Everyone has a different set of priorities and preferences. Some people are willing to pay an extra $200 for a terrace … Know what you want and make sure you're not overpaying for features."

 If you're renting, you need to treat every apartment showing as a property inspection. Don't be afraid to poke around and make sure the place will be comfortable – and safe.

Renters' inspection checklist
Happy hunting.

 – Leah L. Culler is a freelance journalist and longtime renter. She believes that keeping up with the rental market means you have to keep on moving: She has lived in 10 rentals in six years.  She hopes to someday own her own home – and stay there awhile.

 Comments:

          First thing to do before interviewing the Property Manager, find out who owns it, are they behind in property taxes and or payments, all can be found out for free at the county offices. Check with the local Police to see how many calls they have made to that address and  for what, was it a Meth House.  Make a walk thru before signing any papers, if you don't get that "warm fuzzy feeling" get out of there

 

          I ask first if pets are allowed.  If they are not, that landlord won't hear from me again.  My pet is part of the family.  If pets are first allowed, then banned, the landlord better grandfather that rule or be ready to be sued.  My pet is as much a part of my family as peoples' kids are a part of their family.  I will not tolerate a landlord who tries to force me to rehome my pet or suddenly have to move because I won't, AND be forced to find a person to move into my apartment after suddenly changing the rules when first allowing pets.  My pet is trained in advanced obedience, and I show her in obedience trials very successfully. She is housetrained better than most peoples' kids, and she behaves better than most peoples' kids, as well, so my pet's conduct would not be a problem. Additionally, I am one of the few in our apartment community who actually picks up after my pet, using a bag to pull up the solid stool from within the bag.  Most others are too lazy to go through that trouble.  More than once, I have stepped in other peoples' dogs solid waste because they didn't pick up after their dog. It is pet owners like this that tighten pet rules in apartment complexes. Those of us who are responsible pet owners are held to the lowest common denominator of the worst of pet owners, right down to people who don't bother to housetrain their puppies, so most apartment complexes won't let you keep a dog less than six months old in a unit.  Having to get a "late puppy" or young adult dog for obedience training means that I have to work around other peoples' poor or absent socialization of a young dog.  This lack of socialization means the dog is likely to be shy, and is MORE likely to be a fear biter.

          There is some good advice here and I will add a few more bits. Some things the managers can't tell you due to federal or local laws.   If possible I would be there in the morning and/or afternoon when the school bus comes or goes. This will give you an indication of how many children live there and what their ages are. Also how they behave when getting off the bus. Drive through during the middle of the day. If the parking lot is full of cars it’s a good sign that many of the tenants don't work.  Also come around at night and see if there is adequate parking available. The landscaping is always nice near the rental office and model apartments. Look around the development away from these areas for trash and debris. Check the areas near the dumpsters, these can really be nasty.  

          Right now, landlords won't let you out of a lease unless you are military.  If you've lost your job, tough. You are stuck in your lease, no way to get out unless your landlord allows you to find someone to move into your apartment when you move out.  Otherwise, if you have to move out before your lease is up, you better find some way to seemingly have dropped off the ends of the earth because the landlord will find you and make you pay months of back rent, and if that landlord has filled the vacancy of your apartment, collect that rent as well, though I think that in some areas, that is of questionable legality.  Landlords from hell don't care what the law says. They can usually strong-arm themselves out of any legal entanglement. Most of us are not that powerful or intimidating

Don't be shown one apartment and leave a deposit then come back a week later and finish the paperwork to find out they want to put you in another. They did that to me and my children and 3 days later the upstairs neighbor came home and we found out she had 2 ADHD kids and one’s autistic. When they showed us the apartment they were out of town. We've had stomping over our heads for 4 months now and fits with stomping. It rattles the fixtures, china, doors on the hinges. But we're out of here. They won't enforce the same lease I had to sign on her or apparently they choose the "option" not too. Therefore they've neglected to provide me and the children the peaceful, quite tranquil setting they implied they had in the lease. 4 months of being woken up at 4am,5am,530,555 plus my own kids sit in the closet to do their homework or go in and lay down a pallet to nap on when they don't feel well because it’s the only place the retard doesn't stomp on top of. We're outta here and I'm seriously considering suing the crap out of the apartment owners due to the negligence of taking care of the woman upstairs while she breaks the rules of the same lease.

  

Ask if they are contracted with certain companies for your electricity and cable. I moved into my apartment complex and they were contracted with a certain electric company and I didn’t realize that until I was calling around to get cheaper rates. They later on signed a contract with a certain cable company and we were told that we either signed on by a certain date or we would no longer have cable services. I will definitely ask these questions when I moved.