A Home Next to a Jiffy Lube is Just as Prestigious as Ocean Front. Thank You BP.

I've taken on quite a few projects around here lately. Today I am hanging a new office door to match the one I put up for the bathroom last week. While I'm doing that the television is on in the other room, tuned in to one of the cable news networks. All afternoon I've been hearing about how British Petroleum has destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, and why hasn't the President fixed it. I'm trying to take care of my little corner of the world, and all the while, world wide, corporate giants are working on destroying it. The facts are quite simple, ecologists have been warning about the dangers of drilling off shore for forty years. Now the worst has happened. Everyone is bitching that the president isn't doing enough. What would they have him do, swim down one mile below the ocean, and put his finger in the hole? We can scream all we want about stopping the oil gusher in the gulf, but unfortunately the only people who have any expertise in these things are the oil companies themselves. Oh, and one more thing, anybody who has ever uttered the words "Drill, baby, drill" needs to shut the hell up.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on that subject. What I really wanted to write about is Home Depot, and  corporate incompetence. After spending thousands of dollars at the Depot over the years, I have noticed a couple of things. If you have a project, it is a guarantee that Home Depot will not have all the parts and tools you need to finish it. Half of the unfinished projects around here are because of that, and once I stop working on a project it's very hard to get me motivated again. The second thing I noticed is that when you return a product to Home Depot, for any reason, like it's broken, or parts are missing, the folks working at Home Depot simply tape the package back together, and return the damn thing to the shelf. Which is why last week I purchased a door knob set that had no screws, and yesterday I purchased an electric planer, that when I opened it up to install the blades, I found saw dust. The damn thing had been used. Apparently some people are confused, and can't tell the difference between the tool rental desk and the sales shelves. Honestly, if I were going to buy a tool just to return it when I was done, I would buy top of the line, not the cheapest one, like I did.