Do Houses Talk?

Do houses talk? I don’t know because I don’t speak their language. However, if anyone does, I would think it might be that small group of men and women that have dedicated their lives to the study of houses. Can a house remember when the room received the first born baby girl? Can it tell you about the Christmas tree that looked better than all the others? Does it remember when all the relatives came for Thanksgiving and the sewer backed up? Like the stories of an old man or woman, does an old house have a treasure chest of tales just waiting to be told? I think so. It must be, because a house is more than a structure, it is part of our lives. Imagine going to Grandma’s without thinking of her house. I would love to hear the stories but I can’t. I will just have to ask a home inspector, if they would tell me what they heard.

InspectionWise is an agile tool for Home Inspectors. They can inspect the home on their handheld and generate a report on site if they want. You can find it at http://www.InspectionWise.com.

Real Estate Inspectors: Freedom Displayed

This Fourth of July many of us will proudly display our flags. This is a wonderful tradition but we often forget about what the flag really represents. To me, the flag represents the freedom we have in America. However, I believe that the Real Estate Inspector represent a pillar of freedom in America. They remind us that a small business where one can be both chief and Indian, big or small, or whatever else our hard word and imagination can create is still possible in America today. Hats off to the Real Estate Inspector this Independence Day, just like the flag, they remind us that we are still free.

InspectionWise is an agile tool for Home Inspectors. They can inspect the home on their handheld and generate a report on site if they want. You can find it at http://www.InspectionWise.com.

Oops I Missed that One

Last week I had the rare enjoyment of being able to watch game 2 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Halfway through the third period, Detroit iced the game (sorry about that), with a shot from just inside the left point on a rolling puck. This was a shot that the Pittsburgh goalie was capable of stopping, but he just missed it. We all miss something from time to time, yes even home inspectors. I sure am glad that when we do, a red light doesn’t come on and 20,000 people go nuts. Let’s strive together to not miss em.
InspectionWise is an agile tool for Home Inspectors. They can inspect the home on their handheld and generate a report on site if they want. You can find it at http://www.InspectionWise.com.

Whose report will you believe?

According to a story in the May 28th Wall Street Journal, existing-home sales in April rose 2.9% compared to the previous month of March. While this was still 3.5% below the sales in April of last year, I think, this is a good report. In a poor economy the temptation is always to be influenced by the bad reports and to start expecting bad things to happen. At some point this may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our industry is seeing some improvement, no doubt. The question is, are we, as individuals in the Home Inspection Industry, also improving or are we still singing the blues. Let’s strive together to shake the blues.

InspectionWise is an agile tool for Home Inspectors. They can inspect the home on their handheld and generate a report on site if they want. You can find it at http://www.InspectionWise.com.

Quality Counts for Home Inspectors

The big news yesterday was that General Motors is now in chapter 11 bankruptcy courts. My impression, true or not, has been that the US car makers have not been providing the same quality of product as the foreign car manufactures. I have felt this way for more than two decades now. There is a good lesson to learn from this. A perception of inferior quality may not take you under overnight; however, if that perception remains long enough, one cannot survive in the competitive world we live in. I guess we should all ask if there is anything we could do to improve our quality.

This may be a great time to look at the way we do things, the way we service our customers, the tools we use, and our attitudes to make sure they will survive the quality control inspections our customers make every day. Let’s strive together to make our companies examples of the highest quality found.

InspectionWise is an agile tool for Home Inspectors. They can inspect the home on their handheld and generate a report on site if they want. You can find it at http://www.InspectionWise.com.

Communicating with Windows Mobile Devices

There's not a good way to transfer files and communicate with smart devices via .Net, but our team needs to be able to do that all day, every day. The problem is that the API to get to the devices is unmanaged code (not written in C# or VB.NET) so you have to do the includes at a lower, less abstracted level.

Fortunately, the good folks at Red Gate have created a wiki for low-level access and they've deigned to include rapi.dll (Remote Acess API for communicating between the PC and the handheld) and coredll.dll (for the guts of working within the device itself).

Here's the link: http://www.pinvoke.net/

Look at the lists of dlls on the left and go to the bottom for smart devices.

Very nice examples, how-tos and tips and tricks. It's a wiki ... add to it!