Tomorrow Jenn and I will be going to check out three more houses and see if anything compares with "the one that got away." They all seem reasonably promising, I'll just have to remind myself not to go in with any preconceived notions.

In the meantime, my parents, who haven't actively been looking for anything in particular, seem to have found their ideal townhouse out of nowhere and my father is now trying to figure out how to get them into it as soon as possible. I'm happy for them, but I continue to be aghast at the idea of moving out of a disconnected house into a situation where you're going to have neighbors. Just this evening, Jenn and I were laughing in our room when the guy next door started pounding on the wall. Apparently we were being too loud or something (of course, his alarm will go off and wake us up on the weekend at 5:30a, so his opinion doesn't hold a lot of water with me). I think they've forgotten what that's like. Oh, well. I guess this is one of those situations where you let them make their own mistakes.

Either way, I'm happy for them, but at the same time, I'm pissed off that I've been totally searching for a while now and haven't had any luck, while they just stumble across their dream home. Where's my dream home?

I went to the dentist yesterday morning to have my teeth cleaned. Not the most exciting procedure in the world, but I gotta keep these pearly yellows clean.

So I got the cleaning done and made it all the way to the final exam where the dentist comes in and pokes around in your mouth for a couple of seconds when he declared that one of my fillings was "rough" on top and needed to be smoothed out (I hadn't noticed, but maybe that's just me) and another of my fillings was acting like a "wedge" and my tooth was cracking so the filling would have to be replaced.

Thus, I went in again this morning to have the royal treatment. I got the gas, I got the numbing gel, I got the shots, and I got a new filling. All the while I listened to a little Blue Man Group on the iPod.

What really killed me was the part when I left and found out how much I owed. I have a 10% responsibility on the bill; insurance covers 90%. I ended up paying $78. That means a filling costs $780. Isn't that pretty exorbitant? I was only there for a frickin' hour! Maybe I should be in the medical profession.

Thank goodness they take Visa.

My Viewing SharePoint Site Administrators web part/tutorial is MSD2D Tip Of The Week (at least, via the email newsletter they send out), but the email newsletter had my name and article title but the body to last week's tip. If you want to see it, check it out on the site. It walks through the creation of a web part that you can put on a SharePoint site (WSS or SPS) and see the list of administrators for that site (a handy thing if you have a lot of sites and people want to know who to contact for help).

I will be following this up with an additional tutorial at some point because there are some security foibles you have to work around in SharePoint that the web part doesn't address. For example, My Sites are each individual site collections, each with a different root-level administrator - by default, there are no common administrators on WSS sites you create under My Site, and the web part I wrote about uses the site administration group to get access to the list of users and determine Administrators for the site.

What I ended up having to do to get around it was create a "helper web service" that I could call from the part such that I could run the web service as the ASP.NET process user (thus having full access to all sites, including stuff under My Sites), which, in turn, uses the web services exposed by WSS to retrieve the data. It's the "long way around," but since you have to be an Administrator in order to get any user information, I don't see any other way to do it. You have to emulate an Administrator, and that's the only way to do it on a large scale, and for multiple servers/sites (which is what we have to do).

Saturday Jenn and I went out house hunting with the realtor again. This time, however, we met with success - we found a beautiful house that had everything we wanted. We walked through and loved everything about it. Very spacious, beautiful construction, excellent floor plan, lots of character. Perfect.

You know when people tell you that when you walk into a house you just sort of "know" whether that's the house for you? We knew. It was awesome.

We went through a couple more houses just to make sure, but we couldn't stop thinking about that one. We decided to make an offer.

The realtor went back to the office to draw up the paperwork and told us to go hang out at Starbucks or something for a half hour while things got prepared.

Twenty minutes or so later, I got a call from the realtor.

Someone made an offer the day before on our house and it was accepted. So, from the category "a day late and a dollar short," we were a day late.

sigh

I guess we're going to take a day and go through some more this weekend, but I don't think we have that many now that we want to see. I know much better what features I'm looking for in a house (at least, I know all the things about the house we lost that I would like to see in any future prospects) and none of the ones we have seen so far even come close.

So... the search continues. Much to my dismay.

In related news, our next door neighbors moved out of their apartment this weekend. It made me very jealous, though honestly I don't know if they're moving to a house or just another apartment. Either way, I couldn't help but feel like it should be me doing the moving out.

What is it about developers that requires them to practice poor hygiene? I went to a Microsoft developer event and the sour body odor stink was nigh unto overwhelming. Besides that, I think it's mandatory to have some sort of respiratory issue requiring you huff and puff like you're working out the largest crap of your life.

This isn't the first time I've noticed this phenomenon, and I think it's high time someone did something about it. Maybe that's why they hand out t-shirts - as a subtle hint to folks that they need to change clothes sometimes. If that's the case, I suggest the hint is too subtle. Perhaps it's time for "Microsoft soap-on-a-rope" or "Deodorant 2003."

(My suspicions were confirmed on this point when I more closely investigated the tag on the shirt I got from the event. See for yourself.)



Oh, and I don't claim to be a fashion guru, but I'm pretty sure the Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants, and Birkenstocks-with-no-socks combo does not fall under "haute couture." (There were two of those there.)

I went to Mr. Bill's Trivia again last night with Andrew and Susan and crew. Always a good time. Andrew laid off the beer a bit this time so he didn't go shouting the answers to the questions for the world to hear, but Susan spilled her drink in her lap after getting worked up about one of the questions so I almost had to cut her off.

It was confirmed once again last night that Jenn and I think pretty much the same thought process entirely. It began with a conversation Andrew and I had about reality TV:

Andrew: Do you watch reality TV?
Travis: Yeah, Survivor and sometimes American Idol. You?
A: Both of those. Oh, and Average Joe.
T: Is that the one where the guys wear the masks?
A: No, it's the one where the lady has to choose between a group of average guys and a group of models.
T: Who'd she choose last season?
A: The model.
T: Of course she did. Was there ever any doubt?

*** Time passes... conversations change, the trivia game continues, and somehow someone starts talking about reality TV again... ***

Jenn: So you like reality TV?
A: I watch a couple of shows. Average Joe...
J: Is that the one where the guys wear the masks?

I think you see where that's going.

I ended up eating way too much - a huge nacho, an order of cheese sticks, an order of potato skins, and three iced teas - and this morning I can still taste the potato skins. I really need to just cut back when I'm there.

Anyway, that was a good time. It's always fun to hang out with those guys. Plus, Andrew finally won something at the trivia game ($1 off his meal), so his bad luck streak is broken.

Super Diamond is coming Saturday, March 13, to the Crystal Ballroom and both Jenn and I are thinking this group needs to go experience the Surreal Neil. Andrew's firmly against it, which will make it all that much more fun. Doesn't look like we have a hockey game that night (is the season over already?) so it'd be cool.

In entirely other news, it turns out Hasbro is releasing (or re-releasing?) the "original trilogy" line of Star Wars action figures. I never got a Millennium Falcon and I've always wanted one. I don't know what I'd do with it, but I want it. Maybe I'll have to get one now.

I called my mortgage broker who said it was no issue to raise my budget for houses, so I'm doing just that. I found a good rule of thumb is for every $1000 extra you want to spend, it's an additional $6 monthly payment.

I told my realtor that and got back a listing of 81 possibilities. 81! Looks like opening up the budget has opened the door to more possibilities. And these are actually decent ones, too. It's almost like there are "tiers" in the housing market - sort of like tax brackets. Certain types of houses will be found at certain price levels. I think I've found the price level I was meant to be looking in to begin with. Lots more that look good to me here.

Jenn and I went over the list of 81 last night and whittled them down to 21 that we want to see more information on. Not sure how much further down we can cut the list, but that does mean a full day this weekend driving around looking at places. Maybe this weekend will be the one?

Okay, now this is just plain cool. And I don't even play guitar.

I've realized for quite some time that I just have too much stuff to remember so things end up falling through the cracks. The latest issue I've run into is the fact that so many things out there require so many different passwords that I can't keep them all straight. Either you end up using the same password for everything or you start forgetting what all the passwords are that you've registered places.

To that end, I started investigating different options. At first I liked the idea of this hardware keychain you can get from Mandylion Labs where you just cart the keychain around and look things up on it that way. There were only two problems: first, it only holds 20 passwords and I need it to hold more than that; second, it's like $65, and I don't feel like investing that much.

I decided the best way to go was a password management program, but then you run into the problem that you can't cart your computer all over the place, so you need the thing to be self-contained either on your handheld computer or on a USB keychain drive. Since the keychain drive is more portable (and I happen to have one), I went with that.

What I came up with was Password Manager XP from CP-Lab.com. You can install it on your local machine and then store the database on your USB keychain, or you can create a local copy of the program itself right on the keychain. In my case, I did both - that way, regardless of where I run it from (my computer or the keychain), it'll connect to the password database.

It also has features like the ability to right-click a password field on a web page and insert your password directly from the database (and then copy your username to the clipboard so you can paste that in, too).

And it only costs $20. Which is just about right for my pocketbook. Er, wallet. Whatever.

I'm digging it. Now I can actually change all of the passwords I have everywhere and not have to worry about forgetting - I'll just look them up.

I just finished calling a bunch of job candidates on the phone, doing phone screens to see who we should call back for an interview.

I hate talking on the phone.

It's sort of like a phobia. I don't have anything to say to people on the phone. I can't sit and think about what I'm going to say, or how I'm going to say it, so I end up hemming and hawing about things. If it's casual conversation, that's one thing, or if it's someone I know already, that's something... but cold calling people I don't know and trying to talk to them, even on a professional basis, that's hard for me.

Yeah, it's a wonder I ever got a date, right? Trust me, it took some balls on my part to call Jenn the first time. Even today, I still avoid calling her if I can, even at home, because I hate the stupid phone. I email her a lot.

So Greg (boss/friend) probably thinks it's a fucking riot that he's got me calling people, against every grain in my being, and filing it under the "other related tasks" clause in my job description. I know, I know, I gotta help out and all... but man, I'd so much rather program or draw or work with Microsoft Access or, like, clean the bathroom or something than call people.

Well, maybe not clean the bathroom. But you get the point.

Here's a question, though - can you legally disqualify a job applicant based on their inability to speak in a comprehensible fashion? Like, if they have such a thick accent or just don't have the grammar to communicate verbally with you so you understand? That's not even just ESL people I'm talking about, either, but, say, people who are so into Ebonics or whatever that you just can't understand a single word they say. Isn't that a communications problem? Wouldn't that impact team performance and results? How do you know someone understands the project requirements if you can't hold a conversation with them?

My weekend, albeit three days long, was like something out of a certain Judith Viorst book. Where do I even start?

Saturday morning Jenn and I woke up at around 5:30a. Not of our own volition, mind you, but because the neighbor's alarm clock is pressed up against our common wall and went off at 5:30a. It turns out the neighbor didn't want to get up at 5:30a, either, so he hit the snooze button. Again. And again. The alarm went off every nine minutes for two and a half hours.

We took the day to drive around to the nine or so different properties that our realtor had sent us so we could weed out the ones we just weren't interested in. You know, to save time on Sunday actually walking through these things. We whittled them down to two houses, one of which we loved in the pictures.

Saw a sign on our travels at a jewelry/pawn shop that said: "Stay out of the doghouse wit bling." Is that even English? What is the world coming to?

Sunday we went out with the realtor, who is not our usual realtor, but his partner, and she had come up with another house for us to visit, which was good because one of the two houses we liked had an offer on it so we couldn't go in.

We went to the other house we had looked at on Saturday and, while we liked it on the outside, the inside would need some serious work to bring it up to our standards. No, thanks. Not for that price, anyway. Plus, the floor plan just wasn't what we were hoping for. Usable space wasn't so prominent... lots of "walkways" and things.

We started off toward the house that the realtor had found, but not only was it pretty far out from where we wanted to be, but it was right by train tracks, which is not something I need to be a part of. So the search continues.

Looking at the real estate listings, it seems that I'm going to have to raise my spending limit for houses. The stuff we've been looking at doesn't fill our requirements, but the stuff that fills our requirements is just slightly outside our price range. So ramen noodles may become a staple at our house, but it will be our house, so I guess that's the price you pay.

We figured we should enjoy eating out while we could still afford it, so we went to the mall and ate in the food court. Yeah, it's not high class, but it's reasonable. Plus, I love the Cajun Grill. (I also picked up a couple of cheap PS2 games - Space Channel 5 Special Edition and Beyond Good and Evil. Both are pretty cool, but I have to admit I'm entranced by Beyond Good and Evil. I can't not play.)

When we got home from house hunting there was a message on the phone. It was for Jenn, from the bus driver who would be the only witness to the front-ender Jenn got into (thus, would be the person who could vindicate Jenn and bring out the truth that it wasn't her fault): He doesn't remember anything.

That's not going to be so helpful, methinks.

Monday we figured we'd paid our dues, so we decided to return a couple of movies we had rented, drop some stuff off at our storage unit, and then come home and relax.

We went into the kitchen to get some breakfast and were greeted with a huge puddle of yellowish liquid in the middle of our stove range. The vent over the stove somehow gets water in it when it rains and it runs down the pipe, collecting grease, and deposits itself on the range. We filed a maintenance ticket for that, but apparently that never got fixed. Mental note: go to the office.

We sat down to eat breakfast in the living room and discovered that our friend the woodpecker is back enjoying himself with our chimney, happily pecking out his machine-gun rhythm for all to hear. Mental note: while at the office complaining about the stove pipe, complain about the woodpecker.

Finishing breakfast, we left to go down to the storage unit and drop off some stuff. We got there to discover that someone broke into it and thrashed everything. Stuff that was nicely stacked was out of order; things that were in boxes weren't anymore... it was insanity. No actual sign of break-in, so they must have jimmied the lock or something. And what did they take? One (1) glass top to a hurricane lamp (not the bottom, mind you, just the top); two (2) Santa Claus candle holders Jenn got from her parents at Christmas (I wasn't too fond of these, so I don't miss them, but the principle of the thing still holds). That's it. They might have gotten some McDonald's Happy Meal toys I had stashed in a box, but I'm thinking I moved that stuff to a box in our apartment, so maybe not. Even if they did, the total they took was less than $200 worth of stuff. Oh, they did manage to break one of our Rubbermaid storage boxes, so we had to replace that. More of an inconvenience than anything, but give me a break already.

Got home from the storage unit (and grocery shopping, and replacing the Rubbermaid storage container) to find the cat had knocked all of the clean clothes out of the basket on top of the washer and into her water bowl. More clothes to re-wash.

Went down to the office and found out they looked at the leaking stove vent and there's "nothing they can do about it" - that's just the way the vent works. Million-dollar idea: Come up with a stove vent cap that's wind/water-proof but not airtight. You'd think they'd have thought of that by now, but apparently not.

Got home again and realized I forgot to mention the woodpecker.

Now it's this morning and I went to cut up one of the apples that I bought at the store - I found some awesome, huge Fuji apples that I liked the look of - and it turns out they're too big for my apple cutter so I have to cut them up with a plastic butter knife.

Oh, and my back hurts really bad because of the lifting and moving of huge boxes of books yesterday in the storage closet, so I think I'm going to have to load up on the Advil.

Things just keep getting better.

I think I'm going to move to Australia.

Jenn and I drove around yesterday and weeded out the neighborhoods and houses that we didn't like, and today we went out with our realtor's partner, Terri, to look at the remaining properties on our "list." (Gregory, the realtor, is on vacation in Mexico. I'd like to be on vacation, too.)

As it turns out, we had like nine different places on the list to look at, but yesterday we weeded them down to four, and today we found out that two of them are pending sale, so that left two. Which was okay, since we found one house that we were really excited about from looking at the pictures and that one was still available.

We went in that one and I was, to say the least, underwhelmed. I'm not sure if I had built up my expectations too much or if it really just wasn't the house for us, but we were really disappointed once we got inside.

We didn't even look in the second house - turns out it's right next to some train tracks, and I'm so not into dealing with that.

Which means the search continues. I've heard that it takes a while, but, man, that one house really had me hoping we could cut this short.

In the meantime, I've noticed that limiting my budget (and, thus, my monthly payments) as much as I have has also limited the number of properties that I've seen that fit my space requirements. While I at first thought 1500 square feet would be enough, I find that those are barely larger than our current apartment of 1100 square feet, and with the layouts they have, they generally feel smaller. My new goal is closer to the 2000 square foot range, which means I've gotta up my spending limit. It may be harder in the first couple of years we're there, but we'll manage somehow. If it's somewhere we can live for several years, I think it'll be worth it.

I just finished my taxes a few minutes ago. Now, I realize that financial analysts or whatever say that it's better to owe at the end of the year because you can make use of the money and earn interest on it yourself rather than letting it sit with the government like a free loan and let them earn interest on it.

My view, though, is that I like getting what appears to be "free money" in the mail at the end of the year. The interest I would have earned on the money never seems to be more than a couple of bucks anyway.

So, like I said, I just finished my taxes, and while I only owe the state like $30 and the feds like $70, I never anticipated the county tax being quite so high.

See, I live in Multnomah County, and last year they had a special vote to put in a "temporary tax" or some shit because the state squandered a bunch of money on stuff it didn't need to do so they punished the schools and public works departments by stealing money from those. You know, make it hurt the taxpayers so there's a perceived value in adding more new taxes to support the programs that are actually useful, right? Anyway, they put this new tax to the vote and the voters, stupid as all hell, voted it in. And it wasn't just a tax starting when the vote hit, it was retroactive for the whole year.

Okay, so this tax passes and we have the option of having money taken from our paychecks for the remaining three months of the year to cover the Multnomah County tax, and then we pay at the end of the year for the remaining nine months' worth of tax that wasn't stolen from our paychecks.

I paid $137 via paycheck deduction for the last three months. I didn't think I'd get hit too hard at the end of the year.

I did my taxes and, even after the $137, I still owe Multnomah County $461.

I mean, why don't they just send someone to my house to jam a hot poker up my ass while they're at it? I didn't vote for additional tax - I don't have kids, and, frankly, most of the money's going to the school system that I don't use or generally agree with. But still, I get raped by the county to fix their screwup. (Here's a big shout-out to those voters who voted in the tax. Thanks, guys! I fucking appreciate it!)

After all was said and done, my effective tax rate was like 20%. That means between the state, feds, and county, I'm getting like 20% of my gross pay stolen to support lawmakers' pork barrel projects.

Thank God Jenn and I are moving out of Multnomah-fucking-County. I like the place, but shit, I just can't afford to live here anymore. I'll still owe 'em for a partial year's residency, but maybe I can still get out without having to donate blood plasma.

Microsoft finally released some free SharePoint Portal Server 2001 (web storage) document library migration tools that copy all the data into SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SQL) document libraries.

This is some seriously good news, considering that the alternative, AvePoint's DocAve Migrator 2.0, is licensed per object migrated.

I'm not sure if it's a sign of my age or distinct lack of energy, but Jenn's friends at work invited us out to go clubbing tonight and I was all for it until I heard they wanted to meet up at 11:00p. Dude, I'm ready for bed at 11:00p. I'm all about meeting up at 8 and going from there.

My eBay auctioning has been reasonably successful. I'm finding that generally I need to list things for two weeks, but after that they're sold. The default listing of a single week doesn't seem to work. It's like people specifically wait for me to pay the extra $0.35 to relist the item before deciding to bid on it. At least the stuff's selling.

I've got a lot of stuff to do at work, but I'm really just not interested in any of it, so I'm finishing up little nickel-and-dime things that fall through the cracks. The three-day weekend is coming up and I'm not only anxious to get to that, but also kind of excited to go house shopping. One in particular has caught my eye.

In other news, I've converted Jenn over to be a Homestar Runner fan. She used to just not understand the whole Strong Bad thing, but I bought the CD and she's hooked. Now she goes and regularly checks for Strong Bad emails just like the rest of the intelligent universe. Her favorite character is The Cheat. I think she may need a Cheat shirt.

I went to the quarterly all-hands meeting just now and learned exactly one thing:

I really need to make an eye doctor appointment and get a new glasses prescription. And maybe find out if I'm a candidate for laser vision correction.

There are around seven or eight new properties that Jenn and I will be checking out on Sunday. Gregory, my realtor, sent over a few, and I searched around and found a couple, too. There's one in particular that I'm really liking the look of, and it doesn't hurt that it's all of two or three blocks down from some good friends of ours. If it's as cool as it looks like from the pictures, that'll be the one. I know that one of the houses we're going to look at is a nice size for the price, and I'm big on size (heh) but the kitchen looked REALLY small from the pics, which could be a problem... then again, it may have an offer on it, too. I guess I'll worry about that Sunday.

Of course, Gregory's going to Mexico for a week so I'll be dealing with his partner, Terri, on Sunday. Which really doesn't bother me so much, but it's just one more thing to stress about.

The thing is, I'm starting to stress over things surrounding this whole house-purchase thing, and it's generally things that are out of my control. I find it helps to call people and ask questions about the process and what I need to do at certain steps therein since familiarity with how things work and knowing what my part is in all of it is comforting. Sort of "imposing structure on chaos," if you will.

There's other stuff, too. For example, my parents are adamant that they see any house I want to make an offer on before the offer goes out. But they can't make it to this side of town during the daylight on weekdays, so that would mean I'm waiting weeks - weeks where other people are potentially making offers on my house - just to make a first offer. I'm thinking maybe they can just see it after I get things moving, since the timing on things is just not going to work.

And we've got a bunch of stuff in storage, some large items of which (a mattress/box spring set, a display case) are going to be listed for sale in the want ads. That's Jenn's one job here - figure out, by tomorrow (she's had a week now) how to list things in the ads. Like, what sort of requirements there are - description length, pictures (if online or whatever)... but she's made no progress on it and just complains that there are no display cases out there like the one we're selling so she doesn't know how to price it. She's a smart girl and I love her, but sometimes I would love to just be able to trust her to use the intelligence I know she has (she passed the national pharmacy tech certification test, after all) and solve the problem without my intervention and without procrastination. If I was able to do everything by myself, I wouldn't have asked for help, would I? (Note that I very rarely ask for assistance on stuff from much anyone - I'm very much of the philosophy "God helps those who help themselves." Plus, if we've gotta list these things for more than a week, we need to know how to do it yesterday.)

It occurred to me about 4:45 this morning that I didn't know how I was going to go about converting my renter's insurance policy over to homeowner's. So I got up to pee and got back in bed and laid there thinking about that... and the fact that I'm not sure what Ann's (my mortgage broker) part in making an offer is... or how I'll be going about doing that... or even whether Ann's received my loan paperwork in the mail that I sent her earlier this week...

I got up about 5:30a after laying there stewing on that stuff, took my shower, and went to work early.

Since then, I've called State Farm and talked to a nice lady named Jessica who explained how to go about getting the homeowner's policy, so I'm feeling a little better about that. I'll need to provide my information to Ann so she can file that away, uh, wherever those things get filed.

I still need to call Ann to find out what I need to do if I need to make an offer on something. I'd like to think the realtor and the mortgage broker get together behind the scenes to deal with the details, but somehow I'm scared to let that stuff out of my control. And when do I lock my loan rate? Before or after I make an offer? Does it matter? Argh, this will be the death of me.

I took slightly less than a minute per question on my latest Microsoft certification test, MS 070-290: Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment, and I think I missed all of three questions total. A passing score was 700, I got 760, and from the way the results graph looks, it seems that 800 was the best possible score. Out of 45 questions, that's not too bad.

Only one more test and I'll have the Microsoft Certified Database Administrator certification (to add to my Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer in .NET certification). Meaningless paper? Possibly. Worth something in the job market? Most definitely.

I usually think code humor is pretty lame, but I was dying with this one. (Which may not be funny to those who didn't read the Nine Reasons Not To Use Serialization [in .NET] article and realize why it's a load of crap. Or to those who just don't care.)

I found that Pelican makes an A/V selector/switcher that works on component video and is reasonably affordable. I have an HD cable box, PS2, and DVD player, all three of which do component video, but my TV only has two component video inputs. This might be something to look into. Similar products seem to go for more... maybe a bargain?

This is the first follow-up to a Traffic Asshole Of The Week that I've posted, which, I think, makes this a fairly momentous occasion. Like we need a moment of silence because someone out there was stupid enough to make it to TAotW twice.

So, those sort of following this thing realize that Jenn got front-ended at a stop light last week. After being given some faulty insurance information, it turns out that the lady at fault was driving on a suspended license. And why, you might ask, did she have her license suspended?

For driving without insurance, of course.

Needless to say, this is not terribly surprising to me, but it is a highly annoying thing nonetheless. My insurance rates are sky high and I only have one accident - a rear-ender going about 10 mph - on my record. Why? Because jackoffs like this feel the need to back up for no apparent reason in rush hour traffic and not carry insurance.

Jenn has followed up with the police and got the insurance information they have on file for the lady, which is also incorrect. We've gotten no call back from the lady, either, so it seems Jenn's going to be paying the $200 deductible and filing the uninsured motorist claim.

The real kicker - as if you hadn't already read it - is that this bitch had the outright balls to file an at-fault claim against Jenn. The sheer audacity of it all makes me want to take up arms and hunt her down.

Apparently there are also other claims against this lady - tickets and whatnot that she's evading - and there's some sort of a warrant out for her... but (and this is something I don't get) the police, for some reason, can't just go to her house and arrest her. Like, every time they show up, she's not there, and that's stopping them. Shit, I may just go rob a bank, and when the cops show up to arrest me, I just won't answer the door. That seems to be a viable thing now.

If it was up to me, the fucking SWAT team would be at this lady's house. They'd swing in through the windows on ropes and break down the doors with battering rams. You know what? They wouldn't even have to arrest her. I'd accept the property damage on her part as due pennance for the whole ordeal. Maybe they could shoot her in the meaty part of her leg or something. That'd be fine, too.

What a load of ridiculous crap. Somehow I'd like to envision a world where people take *gasp* responsibility for their actions, but I believe my Utopian dreams are just not meant to be. I've been told I hold too high of expectations for people and I should lower them lest I be constantly disappointed. This right here is proof positive that's the case.

I participate in my company's employee stock purchase plan. You contribute to the plan a small amount every paycheck and at the end of a quarter or whatever that amount of money goes to purchasing a block of company shares at a discount rate. It's a pretty good way to go.

The problem is that the shares automatically get dumped into an ETrade account (actually, an "OptionsLink" account - sort of like an ETrade account, owned by ETrade, but more geared toward stock options and things). Now, I'm not a big stock trader. I'm not comfortable with moving electronic sums of money around willy-nilly, particularly since I have so little money to actually move. To that end, I have an account at a stock broker that I'm comfortable with, where the service is a little more personal and the experience is generally friendlier.

Every time I get stocks through the purchase plan, I send a fax over to ETrade to have them transferred to my other account. In the past this has only taken three or four business days.

This time, I asked for the stock to be transferred over, and two business days later, the stock no longer showed up in my ETrade account. I went to the web site for my other broker and... it wasn't there, either.

I waited a couple more business days and checked again. Still no stock anywhere.

It's been eight business days, maybe more, since I asked for the transfer. My stock's not been received by my other brokerage, and it's not on ETrade's site. I'm starting to get concerned.

I called ETrade and after navigating an impossible phone tree and sitting on hold for an interminable amount of time, it turns out that ETrade's process is a bit more involved and lengthy than I'd like, and God forbid they tell me about it. What they end up doing is transferring the stock out of OptionsLink and into a straight ETrade brokerage account (an account that I don't even look at, let alone use). That takes several business days. Then they initiate the transfer from the brokerage account at ETrade to the one at my regular broker. That, too, takes several business days.

We've gotten as far as getting the stock into the ETrade brokerage account and my other broker has been contacted to expect to receive the shares in my account there. I should have something in the next - according to the telephone help lady - five to seven business days. Which would bring this process to about 15 business days, or three Earth weeks just to get some stinking stock transferred. Why so difficult? Setting up a wire transfer between bank accounts takes no time flat compared to that. What's the problem here? And how come I have to fax my request over to someone there and I can't just electronically initiate the transfer through the web site?

They should make two web interfaces for electronic stock trading. One for the novice user (me) and one for the advanced user (day traders). I want to buy, sell, and transfer to another account. That's it! I don't need all these fancy real-time analysis madubers and high-tech tracking whatsits. Big fonts, big buttons, simple interface. Maybe I'm stock-retarded. Or maybe I just want a simple experience, the same way the users of the applications I write expect.

I think I found exactly what I've been looking for in a car stereo: iPod integration!

Jenn and I spent five or six hours driving around to between 10 and 12 different houses on Saturday with our realtor and the best we got was a house that we wouldn't have minded living in, but nothing that called to us.

We found one listing that we totally fell in love with, but when we got to the address it turned out someone had listed the wrong picture with the address. We were beyond disappointed, because that was the house. That really sucked. I mean, it was located right by the local landfill and I was still sold. Our realtor is going to contact the person who listed the article and see where that house actually is.

I had hoped this wouldn't be a three-month process the way several people had told me it would be, but I guess that's just how it is.

I did get the paperwork from my mortgage broker in the mail on Saturday, though, and now that it's all signed and off to her, we can be a little more serious about having money and getting this house thing done. Not that I wasn't serious before, mind you, but now I've actually signed stuff. That makes it all official-like.

I threw together a quick tip that I posted to MSD2D about how to integrate user presence information into web parts. I saw a couple of the stock Microsoft parts doing this and thought it would be good to use for some of our web parts since we also take advantage of the Live Communications Server internally. One good application of this: I wrote a web part that displays a list of the current WSS site administrators (so users know who to contact to get more than just reader permissions) and threw their presence info in there so if someone wanted to request permissions or ask a question, it was right there for them.

I'm thinking I should put together a series of articles talking about how to build that "list site admins" web part. It's actually not as easy as you might think, since you have to run the part as an administrator rather than as the currently logged in user, and then it gets trickier still if you try to use the same web part on a WSS site that resides underneath a SharePoint Portal Server "My Site" (because of the way administrators are set up there).

I've finally received a new batch of 34 properties to look at from my realtor. Based on location and features, I've narrowed it down to 8, and that includes the two that Jenn and I already agreed we wanted to see. We may narrow it down further; I've let a couple slide through that are slightly farther south than what we want, but they're in brand new neighborhoods, so we'll see. I know I may be opening myself up for something bad neighborhood-wise, which is not going to fly.

We'll look at those online tonight and then tomorrow when we see the realtor we'll tell him which ones we're interested in. I don't want to spend all damn day driving around willy-nilly - I'm very much a get-in-get-out sort of person.

I'll have to remember to measure the TV so we can see where it might go in some of these places.

On my way to work today, I was passed by a FedEx truck that was moving like something on the Autobahn. The guy was weaving in and out of rush hour traffic like an expert race car driver and passed by like the rest of traffic was standing still.

I was utterly impressed. It makes me want to ship something FedEx. For what it's worth, the guy was driving an Overnight Delivery truck. I kind of wonder if he personally drove the packages across the country for their next day deliveries. At a speed like that, I could believe it.

(All you people wondering how Santa can deliver billions of presents in one night - he gets that FedEx guy to drive.)

I've got a very slight cold and went to bed last night after a healthy dose of DayQuil (we didn't have any NyQuil). I slept better last night than I've slept in, like, a month. Love it.

Of course, I'm dead tired this morning.

I went and traded in my previously viewed copy of Bad Boys II at the Hollywood Video store I bought it at a couple of days ago because DVD X Rescue couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'm running a test on the new copy I got now - it's already gotten farther than the last copy.

Can anyone tell me why ginger ale is always so expensive at the store? Every other 2-liter product on the market can be on sale for $1, but the ginger ale is always like $2.50. Why is that? Is the demand so high that it never needs to go on sale? Bah.

Just went to Progressive to pay my six-month bill and found that my insurance was $300 lower for this six month period than it was for the previous period. Woohoo!

I went a couple of days ago to the video store and bought a couple of previously viewed DVDs. I got them home and saw that a couple of them had some scuff and scratch marks on them.

The thing is, while they have a year long warranty, I may not get to watch every single minute of all of the special features and everything right away. How do I tell how readable the disc is without having to watch every second of the movie? And then, what happens if later down the line, the discs become too scratched to read anymore? Am I out of luck?

Not so - I picked up a copy of DVD X Rescue by 321 Studios. They license technology from Arrowkey (or look awfully similar to the Arrowkey software package CD/DVD Diagnostic). DVD X Rescue has the ability not only to analyze a messed up disc and retrieve data, but also to analyze messed up video DVDs and retrieve data from them.

Got a bad DVD that your player doesn't like? Pull the movie off and burn it to a new disc so you can watch it again.

The reason I got it, though, is it has a "readability test" such that you can put discs in and see whether you're going to get errors when you try to play them. No longer do you have to watch 20 hours of extra features to see if it skips - run it through this media tester and away you go.

We have an extra special Traffic Asshole this week. Even more special because it wasn't even me involved. (Which means you'll have to forgive details, since I'm sort of filling in the blanks. Also, this is by no means any legal account of what happened, it's just what I heard, so if you're with the insurance company, this ain't for you.)

Jenn was on her way home yesterday from work and was going to stop at the store to return some bottles. Six blocks from the store, she's stopped at a light. Behind her, a bus. About a half car length in front of her, a lady in a Buick.

Sitting at a light. Getting ready to go.

Out of nowhere, the Buick lady throws it into reverse and steps on the gas. Jenn, stunned, starts honking madly.

Still honking, Jenn gets... uh... front-ended(?). The lady gets out of the car and asks probably the two stupidest questions I've ever heard a human ask. Again, I wasn't there, and Jenn answered probably a little more diplomatically than I would, but let's re-enact the conversation, substituting me in for Jenn.

Stupid Lady: I didn't see you! Where were you?
Me: Behind you, you fucking tard! Where else would I be if you were backing up and hit me? In front of you?
Stupid Lady: How come you didn't honk?
Me: How come you were fucking backing up? We're on a major road in rush hour, here! Where the hell did you think you were going? And why didn't I honk? Are you deaf? My arm's still sticking through the window of my car with the horn on full right now. Maybe I should get the cops to come check this out, not only for my insurance, but so they can shoot you.

The killer thing is, it hasn't ended here. Jenn got the lady's name, license plate number, and insurance info and came home. Jenn called the lady's insurance company, and there's no policy for the lady. Jenn got bogus insurance information! What is the world coming to? My insurance is sky high and she's driving around handing out bad info?

Bah.

Let's go to tape:

Here's a bit of a side view. You can see the worst of it - the license plate and frame are now embedded in the bumper and there's quite a gouge out of the bumper just to the side of the plate.



Here's a better look at that gouge.



And a top view of the plate so you can see how messed up it is. Jenn hasn't even had her first oil change in that car - the plate used to be brand new.



Jenn has since left a message with the lady (we actually did get her real phone number) and is asking for revised insurance info. Otherwise, Jenn's going to have to file an uninsured motorist claim... and that's no good at all.

Ann, my mortgage broker, just called and I've not only had my home loan approved (well, pre-approved; I don't have the money, I just know it's there if I need it) but I've got excellent credit to boot. She's sending all of that info to me in the mail, and she's told me that she put a smiley face next to my credit rating to indicate how awesome it is.

Looks like it's time to focus on finding that house. We've got a couple of walkthroughs on Saturday scheduled, and hopefully by then we'll have something new to look at, too.

I checked my email this morning to find that MortgageDesignGroup.com had finally sent me the estimates they promised me, last night around 5:15p. So, only about a day-and-a-half late.

Somehow, when someone's dealing with my money, I'm huge on punctuality. Don't tell me one thing and then do something else. That may seem petty in a case like this, but I feel like sometimes these little things are indicators of something larger.

After I looked over their estimates (closing costs were way higher than everyone else, so you're definitely paying for their service), I called Ann over at NW Mortgage Group to tell her she's the one. She was pretty excited, and I'm glad because I feel like that's enthusiasm she shares with me in the whole process. Plus, she's always easy to get ahold of and is very punctual about things. Maybe if I had gone through this process before I would consider doing something based solely on the money, but the first time I run through it I definitely want the service and I think that's what Ann's providing.

I gave her all of my vital stats and she's running my credit and coming up with a new, more accurate estimate to walk me through. She's also sending me a packet of stuff to look over which basically signifies the beginning of the paper trail that will end in my home loan.

One interesting thing she pointed out, which I think is a smart deal and I'm not sure if all new homebuyers do this: When someone asks you for a loan pre-approval letter, many times that letter shows the total amount the buyer is approved for. If you're the buyer, that's tipping your hand to the seller, who is trying to get the price to go up. What I'll end up doing is calling Ann to get a letter tailored to my offer, so the approval will only show the amount of money I'm willing to pay for the house. Sounds good to me.

I was looking forward to seeing something from MortgageDesignGroup today as I was promised on Friday, but it's 5:00p, end of the business day, and I haven't gotten anything.

On the other hand, I got a call from Ann this morning and she was exceptionally up front with me on some things that I hadn't heard from anyone else.

The question was how flexible she could be on some of the closing costs and broker fees. She said that, frankly, she could make them all go entirely away. With that, though, is a sort of caveat. She likened it to a car dealership: You might get the dealer to give you a lower price and cut his overhead more than he'd like, but that rebate you might have qualified for... you suddenly don't qualify for anymore. Basically, you might not pay the fees and closing costs up front, but you may end up paying it anyway in the loan's percentage rate.

It sounds kind of crappy, but I won't lie to you - I'd rather someone be honest with me than try to sell me into something of a lower value. I appreciated her honesty on that one.

And with that, I think I've picked my broker. Sure, I'll wait to see if MDG sends me anything, but I have a very, very strong feeling I'll be calling Ann back to ask what next steps will be. Jenn pointed out that, of all of the brokers I've talked to, the only one that doesn't stress me out when I talk about her is Ann. I think that says something right there.

In other news, I've scheduled with the realtor to do a couple of walkthroughs this coming Saturday - houses he recommended that Jenn and I drove past this weekend. In the meantime, he'll continue looking for stuff in our desired area and maybe we'll have more to see when we meet up with him this weekend.

This week I'm bringing you an extra-special Traffic Asshole.

I went to visit one of my potential mortgage brokers on Friday afternoon and, seeing as how it was 2:00p, figured I'd head home and work from there. You know - beat the traffic, so to speak.

Imagine my surprise to get into this:



What the hell is going on here?

I continued into this quagmire, merging with some other traffic, equally backed up:



And when I finally got to the head of this thing, what was it? A wreck? A death?

No, something much more insidious still:



A metered on-ramp.

What a load of shit, man. Whoever figured out this metered on-ramp thing should be fucking shot. What else could cause such traffic devastation in the afternoon?

I sure as hell won't miss that once I've moved closer to work.

Jenn and I didn't do a whole lot this weekend, but we did go to a Superbowl party at a friend's place.

Interesting way I met these friends, actually: I was in a geology class at PSU and was talking to a classmate, telling her that I was going to get a job at Lattice Semiconductor. She said her husband happened to work there (small world, right)? So I ended up going to school with her and working with her husband.

Anyway, they're cool people and always have a great Superbowl party (lots of people and food) but I haven't gone in the past couple of years, so it was good to go this year. Not only did I catch up with them (and see their kids finally) but I also got to see a lot of friends I used to work with who I have lost touch with. It was really great to see all of them, and hopefully I won't be so long in seeing them again.

Jenn and I drove past the three house candidates on Saturday afternoon that the realtor sent over and further reduced the competition there down to two potentials. Those are the two we want to see inside so we can better gauge whether or not they're any good. The outsides (and neighborhoods) on the two are good, though. So I guess we'll see.

I find that the descriptions in listings are slightly misleading in some cases. For example, the house we ruled out was supposed to be on a cul-de-sac. Last I checked, that implied a street that has sort of a round end to it. My parents live on a cul-de-sac and it's decent. What we found when we got there was the house situated at the squared-off end of a one-lane road. Yes, that means no room to turn around, no curbside parking for visitors, and a very cramped feel. Thank you, no. As nice as it might be inside, that's not something I think I could put up with for years to come.

I'm kind of excited, in a sick sort of way, to see what MortgageDesignGroup.com can come back with estimate-wise. The more I think about the features and services they offer, the more I like them.