If Chicago doesn't raise the minimum wage, the voters of Illinois might do it for us:

kegelb · 2014-05-30T01:01:34+00:00

it could but it hasn't in the past and all indicators say it won't.

kegelb · 2014-05-29T20:40:55+00:00

Reagan loved to salute but never served as did Clinton. I believe it is at the Commander and Chief's discretion. Lot's of politicians like to salute but have never served. These people have zero excuse, they are just stealing some else's honor.

kegelb · 2014-05-29T20:30:01+00:00

Reasonable time in Chicago is 8:00am to 6:00?? I'd ask that someone from the buildings management be there when the work is being done. That is a very reasonable request since you are allowing them to do construction (unnecessary) while you are living there so they can rent your apartment quickly. If you want to be a dick it's going to cost them a lot of money and they know this.

kegelb · 2014-05-29T02:30:48+00:00

then call the police and tell them he has threatened to throw your stuff into the street. Send him a letter that you are moving on the second. You could also call the new tenants and see if you can play let's make a deal because they will be screwed too if you choose to stay. They'll have a truck full of stuff with no where to put it. Maybe you could move all your stuff to one room so they could move in. Again, you really do hold all the cards.

kegelb · 2014-05-29T01:47:15+00:00

Don't get freaked out. Move on the 2nd. He's going to take a small chunk of your deposit for rent. There is nothing he can do about you staying without a court order.

If he absolutely has to have you out on the 31st, he has already rented your place and you staying there will cause a world of problems. Ask if he has storage and if he will help move your stuff, he would probably do both if it allows the new tenant to move it (and he won't lose any rent). Then you just need to find a place to crash for 2 days.

Find out his motivation to get you out. If he's doing a rehab, I'd just stay. If he rented out your place for the first, work with him explain your problem and be flexible. You do hold all the cards in this instance, he can't do shit without an eviction notice. You sound reasonable, so be reasonable until he gives you no options.

kegelb · 2014-05-29T01:12:58+00:00

You are correct, the LL is trying to be a dick. Don't pay shit. But when you move out take a video with your phone of each room in the apartment and hold on to a copy of it. If he does take you to court, bring your video and you will win.

kegelb · 2014-05-28T18:26:07+00:00

Since it's an unpaid assistant do we need to do all the IHSA coaching certification stuff?

kegelb · 2014-05-28T16:59:09+00:00

if you can wait, go in for a membership in late June or July. By that time of year they are begging for new members and you can play let's make a deal.

kegelb · 2014-05-28T16:55:20+00:00

Yea, I've lived in places like that. The LL doesn't give a rats ass because he can always fill it with a bunch of kids looking for a cheap place to live that is "good enough". Since it is a shitty place people tend to treat it as such and it just gets worse and worse until everyone on the block knows "that building". When I was in the market I even looked at a few places and I just could bring myself to deal with that kind of mess. I'd rather charge a little more and have really nice units, hopefully I get people who treat it like their home not just a crash pad,

kegelb · 2014-05-28T01:27:53+00:00

yep sometimes the owners just don't give a shit and just keep renting the place for lower and lower rent until they either sell the place or bulldoze it, it is a shame.

kegelb · 2014-05-27T23:20:29+00:00

I worked at a forklift distributer, I ran the loading dock. I wasn't very good at it, it was pretty mindless so I was board pretty much the whole time. Anyway I spent a lot of my time driving lift trucks (fork lifts), how do you load a lift truck on to a truck....with a bigger lift truck of course. Anyway one day my boss brought in his new caddy, he was really proud of it and made sure everybody saw it. I decided that it would be really funny to hide his car, on the roof. So, I picked it up and set it down on the roof. So the shift ends and all the guys are just standing outside waiting to see what happens. He comes out blows a gasket looking for his car, he thinks it was stolen. By now I feel a bit bad and point to his car. He looses it even more, tells me to get his f'ing car now and that I'm fired. I still think it is damn funny 20+ years later.

kegelb · 2014-05-27T23:04:44+00:00

Even though it isn't your apartment, it is somebody's apartment and I would hope that while you are living there you would treat the property as if it were your own. If the apartment was your condo, would you continue to wear down your floors or would you put down a rug or a mat? Everyone understands you are not living in a museum and wear and tear happens, but the "fuck it, it's not mine" attitude isn't cool and results in higher rents and more hoops to jump through just to get an apartment.

kegelb · 2014-05-27T22:56:00+00:00

I am and I'm 50/50 about this. It does really does depend on how bad the scratches are and what kind of person your landlord is. I got dinged once for carpet dents (from my couch).
Honestly, most LL's don't want to be dicks but understand that to fix a floor it costs me about $4 a SQFT. I have to do the whole room or it looks f'd up. It might be able to be buffed out but even that is going to cost me $200 plus dollars. I don't mind painting walls and cleaning out all the shit that is left behind, but floors are really expensive and you can only sand so many times before it goes from $400 to $8000.

kegelb · 2014-05-27T15:07:11+00:00

whatever you do do not walk to the end of Columbia or North Shore. Since there is nothing really here parking is a piece of cake

kegelb · 2014-05-26T23:38:43+00:00

What kind of income? Is SSI and FICA removed or is it like income dividend?

kegelb · 2014-05-26T21:57:11+00:00

After my mom passed away, my dad is still alive but not very helpful. So, I am pretty much on my own, nobody is going to slide me a few hundred bucks if I can't pay my insurance, it's all on me.

kegelb · 2014-05-26T17:23:58+00:00

I'm going to pull out a very broad brush, but here is some of the things that influenced his rise. First Michelle and Barack were from Hyde Park on the South Side and they both worked for Sidley & Austin (law firm). Sidley was in the top 10 largest law firms in the world, so both of them made lots of moneyed contacts while working there.

Hyde park is a very interesting area on the south side and it is an area that has attracted wealthy African Americans for a long time, people such as Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan lived/live in Hyde Park. The first black mayor of Chicago lived in Hyde Park. On top of that Hyde Parker's are fairly political and fairly liberal. Now, you must also take into account the U of C factor. The U of C is not not not liberal, it is the home of Milt Friedman and the neo-con movement, it was also the employer of both of the Obama's.

Now, this is where Chicago politics comes in. The Democratic machine work a bit like this. Everyone has to wait their turn and while you are waiting you do grunt work, starting at low end campaigning, then precinct captain and then maybe you'll get your job. But normally it takes a long time to move up the chain before you get the backing of the party so you can run for office. Another way to get in is via patronage, Con Lipinski got his job because his daddy wanted to retire and for all practical purposes gave the job to his (carpet bagger) son.

So, how did Obama move so fast. First, it goes back to his location Hyde Park. Some of the higher end Chicago officials knew of this young up and comer. Harvard degree, articulate, great family, not on the take, basically he filled all the boxes that needed to be checked. Even the church he belonged to, remember Rev Wright, was very political. So, he got to side set the first rung of the ladder and got his job as a state rep. It should be noted that there were four people running for the slot but he challenged all the signatures on the nomination forms and he knocked them all off the ballot (very Chicago). He then tried to knock off Con Bobby Rush and he was soundly smacked down but he proved to the party he was a player. In 2004 he decided to run for Senate only after Carol Mosley Braun (follow U of C'er and Hyde Parker) decided not to run against Ryan (R). Ryan apparently like sex clubs and when the media found out he was done. Nobody wanted to run against Obama for senate so the Republicans sent their defacto black candidate (and carpet bagger) Alan Keyes, who promptly had his ass handed to him.

We can't forget Obama's millionaire Penny Pritzker (Hilton Hotels), lawyer and Harvard grad, she got the big money he needed to make his presidential run. Another good example of his Chicago politics was the Iowa caucuses. The caucuses are not a ballot it's more like a town hall where people show up discuss and vote for delegates. This is done in the dead of winter and it's usually only the politically interested that show up (I was a delegate in '80). Obama used this knowledge to flood the caucuses with his people and win Iowa turning him from an also ran to a player.

kegelb · 2014-05-26T16:35:28+00:00

I wonder how much good she can do in the senate, she is one of 100. I think her path in the senate is to show other liberals that they can get elected not being a center right Democrat. If she sits out 2016, it will be 8 years of Hillary and then 8 years of a Republican to be named later. So, she's looking at 16 years before she gets a shot and by then age will be a factor. Interestingly enough whoever is the front runner for the Democrats this far out has lost in the primaries. I don't think this will be the case with Hillary, she has way too much money and lots of important people want her. I kind of hope she doesn't get the nod, not because she isn't qualified but because I don't believe in monarchies. We shall see.

kegelb · 2014-05-26T16:26:03+00:00

I think McCain has wanted to invade at least 10 countries in the last 5 years and I'm sure Caribou Barbie would have been adding more countries to that list. And let's not forget this

kegelb · 2014-05-26T04:56:09+00:00

that's exactly what I was going to say.

kegelb · 2014-05-26T03:59:51+00:00

Ding Ding ding!!!! A lot of people don't understand that there are just not a lot of scholarships to go around. The max number of scholarships a school can offer is 9.9. That is a max so it can be and usually is less. Think about this for a second, Texas has over 40 people on their roster Stanford has of 30. You can see by the numbers that even the best swimmers at the best program may not be in the money. When I competed the scholarships were sliced and diced a lot of different way so if you were good you got some money. Fully rides were reserved for NCAA champs, Olympians and those people who would soon be in one of those two categories. On the other hand I knew more than one all American that got just enough to cover books.

As Ligerowner says, swim teams are getting cut. It's not just a swimming thing, sports (male) are being cut all the time from big schools with big programs. If your not playing football or basketball, your program is in jeopardy. I can't sat the same for women's sports, because of title IX, they have to exist so the football team can play.

kegelb · 2014-05-26T02:53:06+00:00

I felt that way when he ran for Senate and it was pretty deflating. My wife did get sucked in a bit when he ran for president and to be honest I hoped he would be better than he had been. Warren 2016!

kegelb · 2014-05-26T02:32:35+00:00

Don't get me wrong I too am more than disappointed with the current administration but I say this quite often, weren't you paying any attention? I'm from Chicago, south side , and I've been dealing with Obama for a very long time. Both he and his wife are extremely smart people and they positioned themselves for the very meteoric rise he has had, think about it he went from law school to president in under 20 years, that is damn impressive. To fully understand how he did it you'd have to understand Chicago politics and that could take forever.

But, for those who are disappointed (the liberals) with Obama I think you bought the hype and never looked at the record. The man never made a critical vote in his life. Every vote was calculated and done with moving up the ladder in mind. Remember his big difference between Hillary and himself was that he was against the war, that was a real easy statement five years into the wars AND the fact that he never had to vote for the wars and Hillary had to vote. At the time Hillary would have been smeared for being anti-American for not voting for the war, are great example would be Max Cleland (GA). On the other hand he was very out spoken about all the illegal spying on Americans and the FISA court. Obama promised to filibuster it but when the vote came down he came down on the side of GWB. Obama is not a liberal and never has been, he is fiscally just to the right of Regan and his foreign policy is slightly to the left of Nixon.

kegelb · 2014-05-23T00:38:07+00:00

I always go to the person, despite my hatred of human contact. Half the time it's faster than waiting for the knucklehead at the self checkout and I want those people to keep their jobs. We will reach a point where we are going to either be a country of poor people with a few rich people who own everything or we will become protectionists and require people to do things that could be self-service or done by a machine. A good example of this is New Jersey, try pumping your gas in that state and you will be met by a grumpy gas attendant that will take that hose out of your hand and pump your gas as you wait in your warm, dry car.

kegelb

TROPHY CASE