Mac Users Rejoice: Sacramento MLS Entered the 20th Century This Week

Friday was the wrong day for techno glitches. First, ZIPforms would not recognize data fields on the signature lines. This means all those home buyers scrambling for the home buyer tax credit had to manually insert the date on their contracts. I thought I'd receive more offers on my listings than I received from buyers hoping to get into contract by April 30th. I managed to put another Sacramento short sale into contract yesterday but an offer on an Elk Grove short sale isn't likely to pan out.

Second, MetroList, which is our Sacramento MLS, quietly announced it finally could be accessed by a Firefox browser. This means Mac users aren't locked out of MLS anymore, treated like second-class citizens, and I don't have to use my stinkin' PC laptop. I tried it in Safari, and while most of the functions work in Safari, I could not email listings. Fortunately, the system seems to work well in Firefox. Just not Safari. I say that the Sacramento MLS entered the 20th Century because it should have been available to Mac users in the 20th Century, not the 21st. And it's still not cross platform because it doesn't work on a common Mac browser such as Safari.

You'd think that a system in which real estate agents rely on for their livelihood would be more advanced. Polished. Sophisticated. Web 3.0. I mean, I'm happy that I'm not hauling around telephone book-sized listing books like the old days, but I expect more from MetroList. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by technology?

Thank goodness my BlackBerry always works. When I receive phone calls, I often step away from my computer and go outside to talk. Not because I need the reception but because I don't want any distractions. Like emails dinging on my desktop. And because our Sacramento weather is so gorgeous. Well, it did briefly hail in Land Park on Thursday. I shot that photo above of our back-yard Jacuzzi deck. The hail was almost pea-sized.

While wandered in the yard yakking with an agent about homes in Land Park, and a new million-plus listing hitting inboxes on Saturday, my next-door neighbor motioned for me to talk with him when I was finished. He had dug out an old stump from a privet tree we had SMUD remove a few years ago. You know, SMUD will remove trees for free if they interfere with overhead wires. The stump was too heavy for him to haul to the curb. I quickly brought up my address book on my BlackBerry, scrolled to my husband's new cellphone number and was about to press the call button when it dawned on me how silly that was.

It was silly because he was in the house, about 100-feet away. I could just walk in the house and ask him to come out into the yard to look at the tree stump. It was also silly because his cellphone number was not programmed to a hot key. Why am I able to call my voice mail, my mortgage broker and my transaction coordinator through voice recognition or from a one-button key depress but not my husband? I guess I'll have to fix that.

Photo: Hail in Land Park, by Elizabeth Weintraub