jthis professional home inspection team: When opportunity knocks do you answer? - 01/12/13 07:08 AM
When opportunity knocks do you answer? I hear people complaining about how bad things are. How few opportunities there are to make more money, to get a better job, to advance in their careers. It's not fair! The times are against them!

When I hear this sort of talk I often ask:  When opportunity knocks do you answer? Sometimes a little thing turns into a bigger thing. It's called opportunity and we need to know how to recognize it. A local Realtor requested a well water test. I didn't really want to go out on a rainy Saturday afternoon to … (32 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Sir you are a blooming idiot, please just stop talking to me. - 01/10/13 02:02 AM
Sir you are a blooming idiot, please just stop talking to me. One way to get people to read your post is to use a catchy title. Since you're reading this I can only assume that it worked. 3 months ago I performed an inspection for a young man that made me fell very uncomfortable. I couldn't put my finger on why he made me feel that way, he just did.

At the end of my inspection I did what I usually do. I went over everything with him and asked if he had any questions. His only question was … (77 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Absentee homeowners are easy prey! - 06/04/12 04:00 AM
Absentee homeowners are easy prey for unscrupulous individuals posing as handymen. In the Commonwealth of Pa. Home Improvement Contractors are required by the Office of the Attorney General to register and show proof of insurance. This includes handymen performing home improvements and making over $5000.00 a year.
I stated that absentee homeowners are easy prey for unscrupulous individuals posing as handymen and here’s the proof. As you can see in these two pictures, these repairs are far from professional work. Yet this absentee homeowner paid for these repairs.  



Before you hire someone to perform repairs on your … (7 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: What lies beneath? - 07/31/11 01:20 PM
What lies beneath? No I’m not referring to the movie were Harrison Ford plays the adulterous, murderous husband. I’m referring to the crawlspace your house is sitting on. Most people have no idea what’s going on in their crawlspace. They’ve never been down there and have no intentions of going down there.
Now stop and think about this. The crawlspace is the area between the ground and the first floor of your house. The air quality in your crawlspace affects the air quality in your house. The very supports that your house is built upon are in your crawlspace. Now take … (9 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: What a drag. Active Rain’s not responding again. - 07/31/11 02:09 AM
What a drag. Active Rain’s not responding again. It was about 4:20 this morning when I posted my 10th comment for the day that it happened, Active Rain stopped responding. It was terrible; I was having so much fun. I had just commented on Susan Neal’s post: Speechless Sunday: Nighttime visitor in Fair Oaks CA 
So what are you left to do at 4:30 in the morning when AR gives up on you? Well, you throw together a quick post worth 225 points, and then you turn off your laptop and go to sleep. On Active Rain even a disappointment can be … (18 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Be careful or the bears may get you! - 07/28/11 03:46 AM
Be careful or the bears may get you! My daughter in law has been warning son and their kids to be careful when approaching the woods because of the rising bear population. I’ve been telling my children to be very careful when walking down the road as we live in a wooded area and we have a large bear population.
Well, my daughter-in-law, her husband and the kids were picking berries in the back yard when she heard a too familiar sound. She told my son and instructed the children to walk, not run slowly back into the house. My son … (28 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Do you feel like you’re going over the edge? - 07/21/11 05:39 AM
Do you feel like you’re going over the edge? I hear that there are no jobs out there. Real Estate isn’t selling. Builders aren’t building and those who did are sitting on their homes. Contractors are working for less than before or not at all. Home inspectors have given up and left the field. So, do you feel like you’re going over the edge?

Despite all the bad news in the media these days I firmly believe that the sky is not falling. I’ve found that persistence does pan out in the long run. Look for a special niche in … (18 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: My Home Office Takes On The Paper-less Challenge - 02/24/11 10:55 AM
My home office takes on the paper-less challenge
My home office was once a prime candidate for the paper-less challenge. Over the course of the last two years we have gradually converted all our files to digital media. Originally this was a major under taking. We had to scan hundreds of documents into the system, and then perform backups to insure the safety of these files for years to come. This was phase one
Phase two was converting all our paperwork to computer format. While not difficult to achieve it was tedious and time consuming. We used Microsoft Word to create … (5 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: So What’s Happening In Your Neighborhood? - 02/21/11 05:58 AM
So what’s happening in your neighborhood?
Here are a few pictures I snapped this morning in my neighborhood. Actually these are all on my property, but that’s part of my neighborhood. I’m going to attempt to wonder around a little later and snap some others, but the walking is a little tough. There’s a lot of ice under all that snow. 
I took these with my Canon PowerShor SX10. 

 


 
… (10 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Question Of The Day: Can you tell me, what you did all day? - 02/08/11 06:19 PM
Question of the day: Can you tell me, what you did all day?
Kidding Me? Well lets see, I made breakfast, threw a load of wash in the machine. Went next door to work on that paint job. You know ... the one our son jump out a window about.
 
I came home and made lunch. Emptied the washer into the dryer and put another load into the washer.
I did the breakfast and the lunch dishes. Added wood into the wood stoves and then went back to the paint job.
 
Wait, why are you asking … (6 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Enough is Enough; I'm out of here! - 02/08/11 02:18 PM
Enough is Enough; I'm out of here!
My son tried to warn me, but his warnings all fell on deaf ears.
The stress of the job was just too much for him.
6 weeks of doing the same thing day in and day out was more than he could handle.
He tried to warn me, he told me he couldn't take it any more.
He said he was going to break, to throw himself out the window if he had to. It was too much, he broke.
 
          His last words were:
Enough is Enough; … (13 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Pay It Forward: Cup Of Joe For A Joe - 02/06/11 12:57 PM
Pay It Forward: Cup Of Joe For A Joe
I discovered this organization via Facebook. The Green Bean Coffee company has a special program which allows us to buy coffee for our service men and women. All you have to do is go to their website http://www.greenbeanscoffee.com and buy as many cups as you want at $2.00 per cup.  
Today I joined the millions of ordinary people like you and me and sent a Cup of Joe to a Joe. I also turned a couple of my friends onto this great organization. 

… (8 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Another Wonderful Day In The Pocono's - 02/06/11 12:18 PM
It's just another wonderful day in the Pocono's! Even though it's been a wonderful day I can't say I've been having much fun!
First of all there is way too much ice and snow to be able to get around and take any cool nature shots and there are so many beautiful pictures to take right now. They're just calling to me, but I can't get to them. It's driving my crazy!
I'm having trouble getting my pictures inserted where I want them in my posts. I've gotten help from a few Active Rain members. Charles Buell even called me … (7 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: It’s All Slip, Sliding Away! - 02/06/11 08:15 AM
It’s all slip, sliding away! After a constant barrage of ice-cold weather, snow and ice, the weather here in the Pocono’s has decided to give us a much-needed break. Yesterday was warm enough for the snow to turn to rain and rain it did. Today the temperature is again relatively mild in comparison and of course everything is melting.
When your house is at the end of a long lane that drops in elevation towards your house and driveway the melting leads to only one thing. Yeah, you got it! A long sheet of ice, which is making everyone and … (4 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Down Payment Assistance Programs | Are They Really a Good Idea? - 02/05/11 09:00 AM
Down Payment Assistance Programs | Are they really a good idea? I was reading a very interesting post today written by Marisa Hunter titled: Down Payment Assistance Programs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Now I didn’t really know that these programs were available before I read her post. I found the information was very well presented and easy to understand.
Then I started thinking about it from a different point of view. While such programs do afford the lucky ones that manage to qualify for them and have both the patience and the trained agent to help them through … (12 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Sometimes The Littlest Things Can Make Someone Happy - 01/23/11 03:19 PM
Sometimes the littlest things can make someone happy. Take for example the other day. I had a paint order to fill at the local Lowe’s Home Improvement Center. As it turned out the base that was needed to mix my paint was not available in a 5-gallon bucket.
This was the case for 3 of the colors I needed. The gentleman mixing my paint said he could do it in 1-gallon cans and charge it at the 5-gallon price. This was fine for me but a lot of extra work for him. I needed a total of 25-gallons of custom paint … (4 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Gerbil-Minded Fool - 01/23/11 01:38 PM
Sitting here in the warmth and comfort of my home with my two dogs laying by the foot of the couch I am reminded that there are all kinds of people in this world. My thermometer is currently reading –3, yet hear a dog howling outside somewhere. What kind of gerbil-minded fool would leave their dog outside at 9 PM in this weather? 
… (3 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Pay It Forward – Helping A Friend Of A Friend - 01/16/11 12:45 PM
Most people who know me know I repair computers, configure networks and design an occasional website. So it’s not uncommon for me to get a referral from time to time. This one was pretty simple, her operating system corrupted. It was pretty obvious that she wasn’t living large and I found out she was attending collage while holding down two jobs. So I reinstalled her operating system, drivers, software and data in exchange for a quiet pleasant afternoon, coffee and a turkey sandwich. Except for a few dollars worth of gas it didn’t cost me any out of pocket money and … (6 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: A Little Morning Inspiration From Roy Kelley - 01/15/11 03:11 AM
This morning I logged into the Rain as I try to every morning. I saw a post by Roy Kelley titled: Are you ready?. What I like most about his post was the beautiful array of colors in the photographs, so I left a comment. Roy in turn visited my blog to find that I haven’t posted a single thing since early December 2010 and spoke right up. He told me to get my daily posts up for 2011. Even if it was just going out into my neighborhood and taking a few pictures I could post for localism.
Now, while … (11 comments)

jthis professional home inspection team: Poor Little Waddles | He Should Have Flown South - 12/06/09 06:03 AM
Yesterday we had our first snowfall for the year and poor little Waddles was totally taken by surprise. He really should have flown south for the winter. Now he's stuck out there in the snow. When I took this picture at around 1:30 yesterday afternoon you can clearly see about 3 inches of snow already accumulated on the ground. The moment he saw me on the porch he came running, I suppose he must have thought I had food for him.

We have made a warm spot for him under the porch where he can at least get out of … (15 comments)