I got in the car last night to go home and the sun was shining brightly. I noticed my glasses were pretty dirty and reflecting all the goop on them so I took them off to clean them. Untucked the front of my t-shirt, started wiping the left lens, and promptly broke the frames in half.

Fucking typical.

I called Jenn at home, who pointed out that in the interim I could wear my prescription sunglasses for the trip home, and had her call around to the Binyon's and Lenscrafters franchises in the local mall and find out who would take our insurance and who would do an eye test on short notice (my prescription was old and my right eye needed some serious updating).

She called back and got me an appointment at the Binyon's - they said they'd take the insurance (Lenscrafters said they would bill me and I'd have to bill insurance; thanks, but what a pain) and they had a doctor on staff to do the eye test.

I raced home, picked up Jenn, and barely made it to the appointment.

The eye doctor experience was different than I remember it being a few years ago when I last did it. Then again, I went to a different doctor then, so maybe it's still the same there. Now they have this digital imaging technique where they take a digital picture of the inside of your eye rather than dilate your eyes and look in there that way. It's $20 extra, but I wanted to try it for novelty's sake, so I paid. Pretty cool. The only down side is the flash - it goes off, literally, right in front of your eye so you see spots for the next 15 minutes or so. They also had this machine that you look into and it auto-focuses on your eye and prints out a baseline prescription. Very cool, particularly from a techno-geek standpoint. I dug it, and had I been given the opportunity, I'd have played around with it for a while to see how it worked.

Anyway, I got my prescription, and it's slightly stronger than my old one but things are much clearer. I gave it to the salesperson/technician and picked out some new frames.

We started doing paperwork and it turned out they were having a buy one get one free sale on lenses, so I handed over my sunglasses to get updated lenses in those, too. The salesperson started running the numbers and all that, then said, "Okay, cool. We'll have these for you tomorrow."

Tomorrow?!?!

The guy on the phone said an hour. When we got to the store, he said an hour. All the way through the process, the phrase "one hour" was key. Tomorrow?

Apparently, because it was after 5:00p and the insurance company was closed or something, they couldn't verify coverage, so I was fucked.

Awesome.

So today I've got no glasses. I'm not totally blind or anything, but don't give me directions by street names because I can't read the signs. Thank goodness my job is sitting in front of a monitor; I'm near-sighted, so I've got no problems there. I do feel a little naked, though. Hopefully I'll hear from them today and pick up my new glasses tonight. (I do have a spare pair... but I packed them and I don't remember which box they're in. So I have to wait. Fucking typical.)

I do surveys and tests and crap online when I find them. I'm a sucker, I admit it.

I just took this "Super IQ Test" over at Tickle and got 147, which is pretty much in line with every other IQ test I've taken since grade school. Apparently, I'm also a "Visual Linguist." Here's the longer description:

The way you think about things makes you a Visual Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have many diverse talents. You have especially strong linguistic talents and are very good at interpreting visual information. You've got your feet on the ground, but your mind is capable of very complex, abstract thought. Compared to others, you are easily able to see situations from many different angles. You also understand how things work in a very practical way.

The real kicker came in an email later, though:

Visual Linguists know what they know and don't particularly enjoy having to explain why or how.

That's probably the most accurate statement any test ever has come up with. It's exactly how I function. I know what I know, just trust me and don't make me explain it to you. All it's doing is wasting your time and mine.

This weekend was pretty eventful. Besides spending the majority of Sunday packing, cleaning, and painting, Saturday afternoon was spent in a pyrotechnician training course put on by Western Display Fireworks. Jenn and I both went, and over the course of about five hours they went over all of the Oregon State Fire Marshal rules for fireworks.

The first part was a little dry because it was geared for people who transport fireworks (like, commercial drivers and such). I'm not a driver, so it wasn't too interesting. The second part was better, though, as they reviewed the rules and regulations for putting on fireworks displays and such.

After the class, Jenn and I both took the General Operator Certification test, so we can be licensed pyros. We'll have to shoot three shows in the next couple years if we want the actual certification, but we did one last year, so only two to go. Might be cool. (Interesting side note: the guy teaching the class, who is also the president of Western Display Fireworks, has pyro certification #1 in the state of Oregon. Kinda cool.)

After the test they had a product demonstration where they'd announce what kind of firework they were going to shoot and then fire one off to show you what different things do. During one of the demonstrations, a box of two-inch mortars either split or fell over or something and started shooting at us. Pandemonium ensued, but thankfully no one was hurt. One guy fell off his bench and hit his head, but he was fine. It was sort of funny to watch the instructor guy, though - he just sat there and took it all in. Didn't even flinch. I guess you get comfortable with some things after you're exposed to them for long enough.

Friday afternoon my home loan officially funded and recorded, which means the house is officially mine. Part of the offer agreement was to let the current owner live there rent-free until the fifth of April, though, so I don't have keys yet.

Turns out the current owner will be out on Saturday, April 3, so I'll get keys then. We don't have the utilities scheduled to be turned on until the fifth, though, so we can take a couple of loads of the fragile stuff over and that's about it. Maybe just run around in the empty house and enjoy the fact we're moving.

The packing process kicked up a load of dust this weekend so my allergies are going nuts. I think this is the worst part of the whole process - the packing and actual moving. Next time I'm going to try to budget to have our stuff packed and moved and everything. I'm taking the opportunity while packing to get rid of stuff I don't need anymore, but couldn't I do that while unpacking just as easily?

We also started painting this cobalt blue wall in our apartment back to white. We've got two coats of primer on there and we'll put a third on tonight before painting it back to the original white color. The primer's doing a great job of covering the color up; I'm not sure why people complain so much about colored walls.

I love that Microsoft has gone on a security kick and is starting to lock things down, but let me offer a thought: The reason most desktop users don't use Linux is because it's too fucking complex to configure. To that end, I just read an article about how to enable remote debugging once you've installed Windows XP SP2. What a pain in the ass. I can only imagine what other software hoops I'm going to have to jump through to get the simplest things to work. I should probably read up on that.

Just when I had gotten all of the Harry Potter Legos, they released the Prisoner of Azkaban series. And some of them are rehashes of sets they already put out, which is just annoying. Bitches!

I'm a stress case. I'm a high-strung, mildly neurotic, anal-retentive, passive-aggressive stress case.

The house buying thing is causing me stress. I've worked my ass off packing and arranging funds and getting things coordinated and there's still so much more to do. The time is going altogether too quickly.

Work is causing me stress. I'm working on one project, which is really three projects that people are kind of calling one project, all of which have their own timelines (unreasonable) and goals (conflicting). Requirements are poorly defined (if, in fact, they are defined); cross-project dependencies are entirely out of my control (and they're trying to jerk the carpet out from under me on one particular key dependency); and the whole thing is just moving way too fast for me to feel in control of my own destiny.

To that end, little things are bothering me now. I get the urge to tell everyone to just fuck off because I can only deal with one thing at a time anymore. I'm constantly riding that "last straw line" and it seems that folks can always just find that one last nerve to step on. I'm rational enough about the situation to realize that I'm not going to be able to address any of this rationally in a discussion, nor do I want to "talk it out" or debate about why things need to be the way they are. I don't care. I just want shit fixed, I want it to work, and I don't want it to require my personal time and attention.

I think I need a vacation.

I went at 11:00a to the title company and promised my mortal soul in exchange for...

Oh, wait a minute.

I mean, I went to the title company and signed all of my loan papers, handed over a ridiculously large check, and now my house is in escrow. As soon as the loan funds and records (which should be Friday), I'll be getting some keys to the place because, at that point, the house is mine.

Of course, the lady selling the house won't be out until April 3, which was part of the offer - allowing her to stay there rent-free for a few days while her new house closed and she moved out - so I won't be able to go in until then. I'll take a couple of loads of stuff over, maybe roll around on the carpet, nothing major... but on the fifth, I'm movin' in.

My realtor, Gregory, missed my paper signing, but I think it was just some sort of miscommunication or something. He said he didn't get the message on when the signing was, while my title officer (who is, coincidentally, also my aunt) says she left a message for him with the info. Gregory is understandably irritated because he thinks it reflects poorly on him, while my aunt is also understandably irritated because she thinks it reflects poorly on her. I don't think it reflects poorly on either of them; they both provided me with excellent service and will be getting future business and recommendations from me. These things just happen sometimes. I'm not sure what Gregory would have done there anyway, other than just showing support; it was basically just a bunch of new versions of loan documents I already signed.

All in all the signing took about 45 minutes and I signed probably - seriously - 100 different things (I have two loans - a primary/first mortgage, and a secondary/home equity line of credit - so there's double the usual paperwork), many of them duplicates of each other, but all reasonably straightforward. Now that it's said and done, I'm not sure what all of the hazardous warnings and bad signals were all about that I got from people I talked to; the signing isn't really a bad experience, and there's not a lot different there from when you buy a car or any other big-ticket item. There's just more to sign, which doesn't make it bad, just a pain in the wrist.

Only one more step remains in the entire process - the actual move. We've been packing nightly and getting things ready to go, but there's still so much more. I'm wiped out, man.

I'm sitting at the allergy clinic, waiting for my weekly shot, and they have the stupid country music station playing. Apparently this is Toby Keith singing a song called American Soldier. It occurs to me that this is probably one of the worst capitalist sell-outs I've witnessed (in a manner of speaking) in a long time. I mean, how cheap do you have to be to write a really bad tribute song to cash in on the emotions of military parents and sympathizers? Terrible.

I went to U-Haul this weekend to pick up some "mirror packs" - gigantic flat boxes you can pack things like framed art in - and ended up spending like $80 on boxes. I bought not only the mirror packs, but they also had these styrofoam corners you can strap onto to the picture to protect the frame, so I got those, too. But at $6.50 per box and $5 per set of corners... well, nobody ever said moving was cheap.

So there was some packing this weekend, but not the quantity you'd think. Instead, Jenn and I got into this sort of triage mode where rather than just dumping things into boxes, we're going through everything and separating it into piles. We've got an eBay pile (things we want to try to auction off); a garage sale/Goodwill pile (things we'll try to sell at my parents' upcoming garage sale and donate if it doesn't go); and a garbage pile (stuff to just pitch out).

As part of that triage, I decided to go through my magazine collection. I have this pack-rat style problem when it comes to magazines. I'll read them, then if I find an article I like or pictures I like, I'll keep the magazine. This reached a particular head during my Sarah Michelle Gellar phase a few years back and resulted in my having probably 250 magazines of various natures stashed in the closet. Time to weed out. To that end, I decided that my pack-rat nature would be satisfied if I somehow kept the article even if I didn't keep the whole magazine, so I set about scanning all of the articles that I was interested in keeping. I spent probably 16 hours on that this weekend, and a couple of hours last night, and I finally scanned all of the articles out of the magazines I'm throwing out. 588 pages worth of scans. I won't even get into the nightmare pile of magazines in the middle of the computer room floor. I have to clean that up tonight.

Speaking of packing/moving, my parents have listed their house for sale. They've been toying with the idea of moving into a condo for a while now and it looks like they're actually committed now, which I think is a good thing. Not the condo part - I've tried to convince them out of that; I think it's been too long since they've lived in an apartment and understood that there's no such thing as a good attached neighbor - but the fact they've committed to the decision. It's been up in the air for over a year now, and it's time they shit or get off the pot.

In other news, Jenn and I watched an episode of The Sopranos season four via our On Demand cable a couple of weeks ago and it was intriguing. Enough, at least, so that we went this weekend and rented the first three episodes to the first season. We've seen the first two episodes and I'm liking it. I'm not as sucked in by it as some shows, but something about it compels me to watch. I'm sort of fascinated by the way it's like GoodFellas meets Analyze This.

Oh, and I've been sucked into that show Wonderfalls. I'm not even really sure why, but I think it's got something to do with the writing. The main character, Jaye, sounds like a live action Daria, and the sharpness of the whole thing reminds me of a song by Cake. I can't not watch it. Maybe I should figure out when its regular time slot is (we caught a couple of episodes in "special encore" showings). I asked my mom if she'd seen the show and she had but couldn't watch it. Apparently there was "too much going on." I think the generation gap is starting to widen.

I watched Matchstick Men this weekend. It said "comedy" on the side of the box, but I don't think I'd classify it as such.

Matchstick Men is the story of Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage), an obsessive-compulsive con artist. He's been conning people for years, has a bit of a shady past, and wants to get out of the business. He's done some big cons, he's done small cons... and now he's going to do one last big job and quit.

It occurs to me that being a con artist must be a lot like being a gambler. You do it often enough and you become greedy, and rather than knowing when to quit, you somehow feel the need to make one last big play before cashing in. At least, that's how it seems from the movies.

So Roy decides to do one last con. Unfortunately, he's run out of medication for his OCD so he needs some psychiatric help to get some more medication. He goes to see the psychiatrist and starts discovering things about himself. He feels sort of empty and needs to get in touch with what really matters in life.

Eventually he gets in contact with his teenage daughter (Alison Lohman), who he's never met. And, somehow, life seems that much better. The compulsive ticks slowly dissipate and you finally see a man complete and happy.

I thought this was a great movie. It legitimately made you care for the characters, which is not something you see a lot of lately, and it told an interesting story. I will tell you this - there was a colossal plot twist that I never saw coming. It just makes it all the better.

If you have the chance, give this a rent. It's well worth your time, as are most Ridley Scott films.

Cruising in to work this morning, I saw one of those WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) stickers on the bumper of a car and it got me thinking. Besides the fact that I hate bumper stickers (as long-time readers know), if you're asking me what Jesus would do in a situation, I'd like to pose to you the following:

As of now, if Jesus were alive, He'd be over 2000 years old. Chances are He'll have seen it all and done most of it. It's also pretty likely that He'd be fed up that people haven't figured things out by now and will probably have lost patience with stupidity, arrogance, and all the other traits you generally find in people right now. I mean, seriously, even Job would be like Sam Kinison by now.

So, having established a few facts and knowing what we know, let's run through a scenario. Jesus, sitting in His 1984 Honda Civic hatchback, driving down the highway doing 70mph. He's got places to go, people to see, He's probably late for work. Okay, now some guy gets on the freeway and merges right in front of Jesus going 40mph. Knowing that the freeway speed limit is 55mph and the rest of traffic is doing at least 65mph, What Would Jesus Do?

Option 1: Slow down and say a small prayer for the person who just merged in front of him. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, please bless the poor soul in front of Me, who feels cautious and careful while driving. Please bless him that he may gain confidence in himself and his driving abilities, that he might someday allow himself to take full advantage of the abilities bestowed upon him. Amen."

Option 2: Lay on the horn and yell - through the windshield, basically just to Himself - at the merging person while shaking and beating on the steering wheel. "What in the hell is wrong with this guy?!?! HEY, COCKLUNCH, FIGURE OUT HOW TO MERGE ALREADY! What is this, rocket science? People like you are the cause of road rage! A pox on both your houses! Sheeit!"

Yeah, that's what I thought. After 2000 years of ridiculous drivers - all the way from the people unable to steer their camels in the marketplace to now - you'd be pissed off, too.

Let's try on one more, just for fun.

Jesus, still driving His '84 Civic, in the middle of rush hour and almost home. He makes this same trip every day. He starts driving down a busy road where there's a peripheral street that merges into the main road. The peripheral street has a yield sign; there's no traffic control telling the main road to slow down, stop, or anything. It's up to the peripheral street to fit in where they can.

Instead of letting traffic flow the way it was designed, the people on the main road stop to let one, two, sometimes three cars in off that peripheral street at a time. This ends up backing the main road up something awful. After sitting on the main road and hardly getting anywhere for half an hour (while everyone on the peripheral street has it free-and-clear), He's almost past the peripheral street when the guy immediately in front of Him stops and lets one... two... three... FOUR cars through and seems to be letting more in. What Would Jesus Do?

Option 1: Pull out His PocketPC and write new scripture until the person in front of Him decided to resume travel. No time like the present to reflect on one's life, right?

Option 2: Get out of the car and part the main road like the Red Sea. Following the laws of God means following the law of the land, too. That'll teach those bastards. "Learn to drive, bitches!"

Again, a pretty cut-and-dried choice if you ask me.

I'm thinking the "What Would Jesus Do" people really haven't taken into account the true nature of the issue here. Jesus might have been the Son of God, but he was human, too. Maybe something to think about, eh? :)

(Yeah, I'm probably going to Hell for that one, I know.)

I got word yesterday that my home loan was officially approved. The paperwork is being wrapped up and sent to the title company for closing. One step closer!

In other news, the packing is going reasonably well. We've got a lot of the books and appliances and things we don't use daily boxed up, but there's still a long way to go. Tomorrow I'm going to have to get a couple of large boxes for framed artwork, so that'll mean a trip to U-Haul. Once we get the art off the wall in the living room, we'll set about repainting it (it's cobalt blue now; it needs to be white when we leave). To that end, we'll be picking up some primer tonight at the store.

Jenn thinks we're working way too far ahead of the packing game as it stands. I think, though, that it's more accurate to say we're right on schedule. What I'm trying to avoid is the stressful mad-dash-of-packing at the last minute. What I'd rather have is one or two boxes packed each night until all that's left that last weekend we're in the apartment is the stuff we use on an absolutely daily basis. Especially since we'll be busy most of next Saturday with a pyrotechnician training class.

Looks like Marty might be moving the server here pretty soon, so if you are for some reason unable to get to the site or whatever, that's probably why.

As requested in comments, here's the Official Housewarming Gift Guide. Buy me stuff! We will be having a party at some point once we're unpacked, and the price of admission is a gift.

(Okay, I'm joking about all that, but for the people who actually do want to know what we need, here's a list. I'll keep this constantly updated with new and changing things, so check back before you get anything. I'll also be updating the registries constantly.)

THE LIST

Gift Certificates

• Home Depot (I think I'm going to become fast friends with these folks)
• Sears (Not for the softer side, mind you)
• Michaels (I still have lots of stuff to frame correctly... get rid of some of these cheaper/ugly frames)
• Meier & Frank Home Store
• Linens N' Things
• Amazon (hey, they have a home department...)
• Best Buy
• Circuit City

Online Registries

• Home Depot
• Linens N' Things
• Trav's Amazon Wish List
• Jenn's Amazon Wish List

I got my copy of the CC&R document for the neighborhood I'll be moving into. I have mixed feelings on the whole thing. On the one hand, as a homeowner I'd like to be able to do whatever I want to my own house. On the other, there's no accounting for taste, so I'm glad there's at least some sort of checks and balances going on.

I wish there was an English version of the thing, though. It's all written in Legal, which is difficult to understand at best. I get the basic gist of it, but the particulars are a little more difficult. Do you have to ask before you plant stuff? It sure looks like it. I suppose it depends on whether it's in good taste or not. And who defines good taste? The "committee" (which is like something out of a James Bond movie... sort of ominous sounding... some nebulous entity that may or may not truly exist, and if it does exist, it may not be for the forces of good...).

I can live with it. I wasn't about to put up a pole barn in my front yard anyway.

I wrote yesterday about some eBay troubles I was having where an item I sent to someone in Australia got shipped to the wrong person.

I contacted the person who got the shirt and asked them what we could do to get the issue resolved and got back the following:

Yeah, i have the t-shirt that you tried to send to Michael. The mistake that
was made was that you didnt put the suburb on the packaging. This caused the
mix up and it has been sent to the wrong address...mine. The package had the
postcode on it. So i think i have determined the correct address. I wrote
"Vermont Sth" on the package and am going to re-deliver the package.

I wrote back to the guy and thanked him for doing that. I got:

No problem mate, next time make sure you have the correct mailing address
before sending stuff away. Poor Mickey almost paid US$12 + postage and
handling for no reason.

I figure it's beside the point that I used the address I was given by the customer. It's stuff like this that sort of restores my faith in humanity. Some people out there are good.

It's been a busy, busy, busy weekend. This morning I'm getting no reprieve, either.

Friday we had the house inspection, which, as posted in an earlier entry, turned out well.

I went home after that and got there about the same time Jenn got home from work. We unloaded some boxes that she had brought home and we sat down to watch TV. Interestingly enough, it turns out Comcast enabled On Demand programming for us (we have digital cable) so we were able to watch the movie Phone Booth (which, while not the most exceptional film ever, was still interesting due to the novelty of the On Demand broadcast. Like a digital video recorder full of free stuff. Very cool. We ended up watching an episode of The Sopranos, too.

Saturday we started packing. We got a lot of books and things packed up from the computer room, but if you look in there all you see is a stack of boxes and you can't tell anything was packed. I can see this is going to be a long process.

Saturday night we went to see Super Diamond which, as always, was totally fun. They changed up their playlist a bit so we heard a couple new ones (songs I didn't know) and some of the favorites. I think I liked their old playlist a little better, but change is good, too. (My feet are still aching from the three-hour standing session.)

Sunday we went shopping and picked up some more boxes (they were having a buy-two-get-one-free sale on smaller boxes, which we need loads of, so we broke down and bought some). Then we packed some more. After that, went to the last hockey game of the regular season, which we won. Finally, came back home, did a tiny bit more packing, and sat down in front of the tube.

I'm having all sorts of eBay troubles.

Got in to work this morning and found an email in my inbox from a guy I sold a t-shirt to on eBay. He lives in Australia and apparently hasn't gotten his shirt yet (I sent it like a month ago and it should have been there in four to seven business days). He did get a strange email from someone asking if he was missing a t-shirt, though, so I'm thinking the post office delivered it to the wrong address. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? I don't think you can get delivery confirmation overseas, and shipping UPS would have cost - seriously - $75. And that's the cheap service. What do I do if this guy doesn't get his shirt? Do I eat the $24 (cost plus shipping) and give him a refund? Or do I chalk it up to the stupid post office and say, "Sorry, buddy, not my fault?" Just what I didn't want to have to deal with.

Not to mention I sold another shirt to a guy in the UK who pretty much dropped off the face of the planet for over a week and just now reappeared to say, "Oh, sorry, I was out." (Basically.)

Screw this worldwide shipping thing, man. It's too much pain in my ass. If I just ship to US addresses, I can print postage and get delivery confirmation right from my computer. If I ship overseas, I end up having to stand in line for an hour so I can pay for service that apparently doesn't actually get my package delivered to the right place.

My house inspection was successful except for some pretty minor cosmetics:

• There's a cracked tile in the kitchen countertop
• The grout around the kitchen sink needs to be touched up
• The trim around the front door needs to be repainted
• There's a spackled area above the front door that needs some touch-up paint
• There's a dime-sized area on the ceiling above the storage closet under the stairs that has lost its texture
• There's some ceiling patching in the kitchen that needs to be painted up (it looks like they've had some settling cracks that they had repaired; I'm waiting to hear back on a confirmation that that's all it was)
• There are some loose electrical wires (presumedly not hot wires) in the crawl space that need to be bundled up and properly terminated

Since that all went according to plan and I was able to go back there and spend some time taking pictures, as promised, I posted some pictures in my photo gallery for those curious to see what the house looks like.

I also promised some specs/stats, so here you go:

• 2315 square feet (1151 upstairs, 1164 downstairs)
• Vinyl siding
• Composite roofing
• 4 bedrooms and a bonus room (master bedroom, two regular bedrooms, bonus room, and an office... but I think they count the office as a bedroom)
• 2.5 baths
• Built-in microwave, range, oven
• Gas fireplace (with blower)
• Walk-in closet and bath off master
• Gas heat
• Air conditioning
• Maple cabinets and tile counters in kitchen
• Oak hardwood floors (not Pergo!) in the entryway and kitchen
• Two-car garage with automatic opener

I hope that's enough for those of you craving more info. Again, I highly encourage you to check out the pictures and see what you think!

My house inspection is at 1:00p today, so I'll be leaving pretty soon to go do that. I guess it'll take about three hours, though I'm not sure what I'm going to do during that time. The inspector's going to run around and do his whole "inspection thing..." I'm assuming I don't need to do anything unless there's a problem.

Either way, I'll try to get some photos while I'm there so I can post 'em for you guys.

Jenn and I are preparing for the move. With the movers scheduled, we've got to get the boxes and start packing. Jenn picked some up this morning so I can tell you how the weekend's going to go.

Not only that, but I'm not going to have to disassemble and reassemble the home theater system, the arrangement of which is a tricky and ever-changing process. To that end, I've created a Visio diagram of my home theater system complete with all of the connectors and wires that I'll have to have.

Right now, my speaker wires are all over the place, running along the walls and ceiling because I don't have the ability to actually wire them into the walls. I'll be doing the wiring the right way in the new place, so I've gotta plan for that. I ordered some connectors and adapters from Bose today to accommodate the Acoustimass 6 system I'm running (they have oddly shaped RCA connectors) and those should be coming in a couple of weeks.

I also want to get rid of these generally crappy cables I have and get some high-end cables that are better quality and more easily managed. I don't think that'll happen right off, but it'll be something to shoot for.

This article on Life After The Video Game Crash has to be the funniest thing I've seen all day. Maybe even all week. I'm damn close to tears laughing in my cube.

It's a beautiful morning out there, so I snapped a shot of the sunrise as I see it on my way to work (I head west in the morning).



So, um, this is going to be sort of a mishmash of thoughts, potentially stream of consciousness level stuff. You've been warned.

Coming home last night, I drove past this guy panhandling at the end of an off-ramp.



I hate that shit. You know, I do feel bad for people who can't make ends meet and all that, but come on now - leave me alone. I'm not going to give you any beer money, man. Particularly not in the middle of rush hour traffic. I donate to the local soup kitchen; my tax dollars go to facilities to help people like you... use the proper channels. Harrassing me on my way home is not the way to go.

Oh, and when the brand new Suburban picked up another guy off the corner and dropped you off, like you're all rotating panhandling positions? Yeah, I saw that, friend. Kind of sours my attitude.

Went to Mervyn's a couple of weeks back and saw these little handbags that looked like bustiers. There was a black velvet one that I thought would go good with some decor we have in the dining room, but I figured there were three of them on the rack so I'd go home and think about it.

Came back two days later and they were all gone.

I've been trying to find that one ever since. Unfortunately, Mervyn's is one of those stores that doesn't know when the next shipment is coming in or what it's going to contain, so I have to keep calling back every few days, which I'm quickly tiring of.

After four days of not calling, I called again yesterday and they described a couple of the styles they had in. Nothing I'd seen before, so I went with Jenn and checked them out. Jenn ended up getting a little pink one with roses on it (to carry around):



And I got a gold Asian silk one with frog closures on the front that will go well with some stuff in the living room (I don't have a picture of that). I'm still looking for the black one, but not as avidly. I checked eBay and they have several interesting styles, but not the one I saw before. Bah. I should know better; if I see something I like, I have to buy it on the spot or I miss my opportunity. Always happens.

It's been a little while (hey, I've been busy!) so I figured I'd start this fine day out with a Traffic Asshole.

Today's is less a "Traffic Asshole" than a "Parking Asshole." This right here is why I hate people who own large trucks:



Here are a couple of pointers for those of you who somehow feel the need to buy gigantic trucks even though you don't go off road and you don't haul anything:

Don't park in compact spaces. See the label on the space that says "COMPACT?" Your truck doesn't qualify. Don't try it, it's not going to fit. Even if you squint, it's not coming close. Go park in the larger spots. It will probably be less convenient, but that's the price you pay for wasting our natural resources.

Parking on the line doesn't mean you're in the spot. If your tire's riding the line, especially if it's all the way on the line, you're not in the spot. You need to be between the lines. Pretend those lines are walls. You can't park in the wall, can you? Of course not. Don't park in the line, either.

It's okay to try again. If you get out of your behemoth and you see you're not quite in the space, nobody cares if you get back in and correct yourself. In fact, I'd wager people would openly encourage you to resolve the situation. Back 'er up and try again. There's no shame in it.

If you follow these handy parking tips, I think the world in general would be a better place. Wars would cease and famine would end. I bet they'd find a cure for the common cold and cancer. All you have to do is try. For all our sakes, please try.

My original plan was to rent a U-Haul truck, move the small stuff myself, then hire some guys to come and load/unload the heavy stuff.

After calculating it out, it would only cost a couple hundred more bucks to get a full-service outfit to do the whole thing (minus packing).

So I called up and canceled my truck rental reservation and now the moving company will show up at 9:00a, truck and all, ready to go. I just need to be supervisory/moral support and the work will all be done for me. That's exactly how I like it. Hopefully this will take the sucky lameness out of moving so I can focus on the positive portion of things. Plus, these guys are hooking me up with some boxes, so I can start the packing process right away. I like that.

I've contacted my apartment complex to get the paint color I need to repaint my walls to (we have a cobalt blue wall in the living room that Jenn and I painted up) and it turns out they're just going to leave us some paint to use, so we just have to go get some primer and a couple of rollers. Good deal.

Finally, the escrow company mailed me a receipt for my earnest money check, so I know that's all going according to plan.

October 2004 can not come quickly enough.

I've scheduled the home inspection for this coming Friday, March 12th. It'll end up costing me $270 for that (I have a coupon for $35 off), but it's money well spent. Greg says he's seen great looking deals go south because of the results of an inspection, but you know, that's why you get the inspection in the first place - to ensure there's nothing wrong.

It's a pretty new house (2001) so I don't anticipate anything going wrong, but you never know.

Apparently these things take like three hours. Looks like I'll be taking a half-day on Friday.

On another note, several folks have been asking for pictures of the new place and maybe some specs. What I'll do is take some pictures during the inspection (hey, what else am I gonna do for three hours?) and then post them up here with some specs. I'd point you all to the RMLS listing for the house, but it's been taken down.

It's turning out that, while searching for the house was the most grueling part of the process, the coordination of all of the post-offer efforts is like a novelty plate-spinning act. This weekend I scheduled a U-Haul truck for the move. Thus far today, I have:

• Locked down an interest rate on my 80% conventional loan
• Called the insurance company to get my homeowner's policy started (I now have a questionnaire to fill out)
• Turned in my earnest money check ($5000... that's a large check)
• Contacted my mortgage broker and received a new Good Faith Estimate based on the tax and homeowner's insurance numbers I know
• Scheduled time off for the Monday and Tuesday we're moving
• Called the house inspector and left a message to schedule the inspection
• Got recommendations on a moving company so I can schedule that

That's all just one day. There's a lot more to go, too - this is just the beginning. Jenn asked me if I thought the time would go by quickly or slowly and I'm saying quickly; there's not enough time to schedule and coordinate everything.

You know how they have wedding planners that take care of orchestrating weddings? They need to have home-buying planners that take care of all the steps involved with buying a home. From picking the mortgage broker and the realtor to getting the U-Haul together and the house inspection done. There's your million-dollar business idea for the day.

Here's my day, play by play.

9:38a - Ann (mortgage broker) called. I gave her the details on the house I made an offer on so that she can issue the loan approval letter to Gregory (my realtor). She didn't have Gregory's contact info so I gave her that, too.

10:17a - Gregory called. He was pretty upset and said Ann wasn't cooperating with him and wouldn't give him a letter of approval for my loan. Having just talked to Ann, I double-checked this with him and told him she didn't have his phone number so wasn't able to get in touch with him. He said he'd call her to close the loop.

10:38a - Gregory called. He talked to Ann and now realizes he's worked on a deal with her before a year or so ago and she's a great broker. It was all just a miscommunication (or lack of communication, more accurately) and everything's cool. She said she'd get him the letter of approval in about 15 minutes.

10:50a - Gregory called. He talked to the listing realtor and the two offers are neck and neck, like, within a couple hundred dollars of each other. One key difference that Gregory thinks may make the difference is that our offer allows the seller to stay in the house a week after closing free of rent (though she has responsibility for utilities and taxes) so she can get herself moved out; the other offer doesn't have that. I told Gregory to let them know that we could stand to let them keep the refrigerator if that would be a deal breaker (my offer asked for the fridge). He said we might want to bump up the price by $1000 or so but I didn't do it. I already bumped up my offer price a little over list; much more and I'd be outside my budget again.

11:41a - Ann called. The listing agent called her to confirm my vital stats. She told him (without being specific, because she can't reveal specifics) that I had good credit and a steady job, both big plusses. She also confirmed to the listing agent that the money to close is sitting in the bank (which is true). All good impressions.

12:20p - I'm anxious. They met at noon and it's 20 after... what's the hold-up?

1:15p - I'm having difficulty concentrating. I still haven't heard anything. Jenn sent me an email expressing the same frustration.

2:00p - WE'RE IN!!! I've gotta go to Gregory's office at 3:30p to sign papers. I'll need to have a check to Gregory on Monday with my earnest money. Finally, an end to the search. Now to arrange the house inspector, call the moving company, talk to the insurance agent...

I went last night to see a house that looked reasonable from the pictures and had decent stats on paper. Jenn called me on my way there and said she got out of work early so she'd be able to make it, too, which is not something I expected.

We (Jenn, myself, and the realtor) all got to the house at the same time, about 5:30p.

Magnificence.

For the price, you can't beat it. Great neighborhood, beautiful yard (not too big, not too small, well cared for), central heat/air conditioning, four bedrooms and a bonus room, 2340 square feet... just awesome. And seeing as how it was only on the market for a day, we figured it was a pretty safe bet no one had beaten us to it.

We went back to the realtor's office and called the seller's realtor. Found out an offer had been placed on the house at 4:00p that day (so we only missed it by a couple of hours) but the seller's realtor hadn't looked at that offer yet and would consider our offer simultaneously with the offer that had just come in.

We crafted up an offer, tried to make it look appealing (not so appealing that I'm wasting money or anything, but enough that it will hopefully look better than the first offer), and now...

... we wait.

We put an expiration time on the offer of 3:00p today. That gives them three hours to debate amongst themselves on the offer but not leave us hanging. So I should know something by this afternoon.

I woke up this morning at 4:30a and couldn't go back to sleep. I'm too anxious. I'm hoping I can retain a reasonable amount of concentration today.

I spent at least half a day trying to get ViewCVS set up on a Windows 2003 server running CVSNT so I could browse my code repositories. What a pain! When browsing folders in my repositories, I kept seeing errors like "There are X files, but none match the current selection criteria."

I searched all over and saw that other people had similar problems, but the most anyone would ever say was "it's either an RCS problem or a permissions issue." Uh huh.

So I contacted our CVS guy (one of our CVS guys) to see how they had set it up in the product department. The guy I talked to didn't set it up, but he pointed me to this ViewCVS Setup on Windows with CVSNT 2.0.x and IIS or Apache program.

Oh. Hell. Yes.

It even gets enscript and CVSGraph installed correctly. So painless, so easy. Just like it should be. Anyone using CVSNT who wants to put up ViewCVS should check this out.

I generally try to stay away from political topics but I'm getting hammered by this one from all sides so I gotta vent.

The whole gay marriage thing. Sigh. What do you say, right?

I could go into a rant longer than I care to dedicate time to and discuss my feelings on how I support people and any alternative lifestyle they can come up with as long as I'm free to do my own thing. I could further go into the fact that everyone should be treated equal regardless of race, color, creed, or sexual orientation, but then, I don't see a Straight Pride parade running down Broadway every year, and somehow I don't think the Million Man March would have gone over so well if it was oriented toward caucasian interests. Do I think minorities push their interests and get away with it far more than they should? Sure. Am I against their rights to do that? No, as long as I get that same right.

So here I sit, in the middle of Portland, OR, where a county-level decision was made to start granting same-sex marriage licenses. People lined up around the block on the first day and now they're renting out auditoriums to perform mass amounts of ceremonies.

I don't understand a lot about this whole thing.

I don't understand why a decision even needs to be made on this at a governmental level. If I want to go marry my cat, I should be able to. Okay, maybe we don't go that far, but you see the point. It's my business who I want to marry, and the separation of church and state should dictate that I can do that without legal interference. Sure, there are a couple exceptions to the rule - I mean, we need laws to stop things like inbreeding and genetic issues from cropping up - but by and large, that should be wide open.

I don't understand why some people feel that gay marriage will destroy the meaning of marriage or remove any sanctity from that institution. Can someone tell me a definition of marriage that doesn't involve two people who love each other forming a union? Isn't that what these people are trying to do? Isn't that the purpose of marriage?

I don't understand why the county made the decision to go about this without consulting the public. If you're going to change county ordinance or create new rules, we have this system in the US called "democracy." That means to change the rules you have to do what we call "voting." None of that seemed to happen, but here we are.

I don't understand why it's such a huge issue right now. It wasn't until really recently I even heard all the hoopla about this whole thing. Why's it such a gigantic case? I mean, it's a presidential campaign point. Gimme a break, people. It's not like it's assisted suicide or anything. Heh.

I just... don't... get it.

So, anyway, to all the gay people who wanna get married, you go for it. Good luck. It's a free country.

That said, try to spread yourselves out while doing it. Just like I don't want my city to be labeled the "Catholic capitol of the US" or the "Caucasian capitol of the US," I don't want to be labeled the "Gay Marriage capitol of the US." The "Rose City" was quite enough for me, thanks.

I have no choice but to use E*Trade in my online stock dealings. My employer goes through them for stock option grants and the employee stock purchase plan. I, though, have an account with another, more friendly brokerage, where I keep my primary account.

Every time I get stock stuck in my OptionsLink (a subsidiary or something of E*Trade) account, I have it transferred to my preferred brokerage.

Normally that goes smoothly, but this time they're taking their own time, and it's gotten out of hand. Thus, I present an open letter to E*Trade, in response to their customer service representative asking for five business days to respond to my transfer status inquiry:
Dear E*Trade:

As you requested up to five (5) business days to respond to me, and today is the sixth business day, I am writing you back to follow up.

If you have not yet heard back from your transfers department, please pass this along to help put it into perspective from a customer's point of view:

I currently HATE E*TRADE. I hate you guys. I hate everything about you. If I could get away from using you at all, I would, and the only reason I HAVE to use you is because my company has some sort of deal with you and OptionsLink and I can't change that.

Why, you might ask, am I so irritated? I could list any number of reasons, but they all come down to customer service.

The E*Trade web site, from the beginning, is geared more towards the user who actively participates in online trading, who sort of knows something about stock trading already. (This may not be the case, but that is my perception based on the options available and navigational structure.) I am not a heavy trader. I have stock in my company, but I require an entry level sort of service or guidance.

I was able to muddle through and find the transfer request information, but you only seem to be able to transfer INTO E*Trade, not OUT. To transfer OUT, I have to fax you - FAX! - a letter, then wait an arbitrary number of business days for my stock to transfer - get this - from OptionsLink to an E*Trade brokerage account, THEN from that account to my preferred brokerage. At no point in the process am I alerted to the state of my transfer; I am kept in limbo and have to keep checking back and hoping the transfer has completed.

I came to discover this transfer process because I was told that a transfer takes UP TO 5 business days. At the 10 business day level I became concerned. I was told that "things were behind, but everything should be done in 5 more business days." I waited that length of time, and it's still not done. I contacted you via your web site. I did get a timely response from you (which I appreciate) that told me to wait up to ANOTHER 5 BUSINESS DAYS. I have now waited A MONTH for a simple transfer to happen, with no status update during that time other than "WAIT."

I am very frustrated with this whole situation. Obviously I am not in a financial position occupationally, so I hesitate to say that a transfer is a "simple process," but considering that this must be a common thing that occurs daily, I also hesitate to say I have some exceptional circumstances which would require so much additional time.

Please let me know what the status of my transfer is and when EXACTLY I can look forward to seeing it completed. This is beyond nuts.

Thanks,
-T

I'm not much for kids, regardless of whose they are, and this weekend found me at Jenn's niece's sixth birthday party, so there really wasn't a huge smile on my face.

It took place at Jenn's grandma's house in the trailer park out in Canby. Actually it wasn't at her house, but at the community center at the "hub" of the bustling retirement community.

The first stop was actually at the house to visit Jenn's grandma's new dog. Jenn's cousin and wife moved to Hawaii and were unable to take the dog with them so they left it with Grandma. It's a silly pug dog named Anchor (Jenn's cousin and wife are both in the Navy).



I don't really like dogs, but this dog was cool. Absolutely out of control. No way could I have let it into my house, but it was fun to play with while we were there.

After that we headed across the street to the community center where the festivities were beginning. The festivities consisted of Jenn's sister cooking take-and-bake pizzas and me sitting and waiting for something to happen. Kids (and their parents) slowly drifted in, Jenn's relatives started showing up (Jenn's dad had to show me the cop car - er, Ford Crown Victoria - that he bought... yet again confirming that I hate American cars) and the party was underway.

Once some pizza had been pushed in our faces, gift-opening time rolled around. Seeing as how this was a six-year-old's birthday, the more kids that showed up, the rowdier the guest of honor became until eventually she was actually climbing on the table with the presents. Her mom told her to get down, at which point, just before opening gifts, a small tantrum was thrown.



Gifts were opened, yada yada yada (yes, you can yada-away the details of a six-year-old's birthday), and then it was game time. Rather than pin the tail on the donkey, they had two games. The first, for the boys, was "Pin The Tail On Spirit The Horse," you know, from that movie. The second game was something like "Pin The Horn On The Pussy Pink Unicorn" for the girls. I'm not sure about you, but even for a girl's game, it was pretty gay.



And thus went the party. Nothing really happened of import. I think Jenn's uncle's face says it best:



And that, as they say, was that.

The evening really improved as I went to a hockey game and watched our asses get beat six to one. Does it get any better than that? I didn't think so.

Anyway, all that, combined with the failure house hunting and my altogether too stressed out situation at work had my weekend all screwed up. Hopefully yours was better than mine.

Jenn and I went to three different houses this past weekend to see if there was anything worth buying.

There wasn't.

The first house was far too small with poor use of space. Good condition, nice neighborhood, but that's about the limit. The second and third houses were beautiful but were backed right up against a major road. Standing outside, I could barely hear what Jenn was saying standing five feet away. Crazy.

Thus, as usual, the search continues. I've been at this for a month now and, aside from the one that got away, I've got nothing. A little disheartening, but even more generally annoying. I'm in for the long haul.