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Friday, November 20th, 2009
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9:53 am - Well, at least it's not kidneys....
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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9:55 am - Good riddance...
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| Friday, November 6th, 2009
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9:30 am - Also, the latest SouthPark?
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8:28 am - Where'd you go?
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| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
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2:36 pm
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Dear Perforce,
Quit crashing the server when I'm working on a time critical project that involves doing lots of source control, k thnx.
Luv Brandon
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(comment on this)
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10:10 am - Home repairs.
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It's ridiculous how costs can snowball when you're trying to fix up a house a little bit before moving in. We had planned on X, and we're getting disturbing close to 2X as the price. None of the things that were done are BAD, per se, and none of them seemed outrageously expensive, but when you add them all together, it gets super pricey super quickly.
On the bright side, we're getting much closer to being done.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 16th, 2009
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9:53 am - You know...
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I really hope they send a bill to the 'balloon boy' parents for the 'rescue effort' of chasing a balloon halfway across Colorado when the kid was hiding in the garage attic.
I can't believe our tax money got wasted like that.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 9th, 2009
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8:54 am - What is that you saaaaaay?
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Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize? (Also, bonus points for anyone besides Alison who can guess where the subject quote came from.)
I'm not saying they were scraping the bottom of the barrel this year, but they must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel if Obama was the best they could come up with. Why did he win? Because he changed the tone of America's foreign doctrine I guess. Did he end any wars? Nope. Not even the occupational ones we were directly involved in. He hasn't, in fact, even made any real moves towards ending them. He hasn't done anything to prosecute the torture America engaged in. He hasn't closed Gitmo. He's spent most of the time spending our kids future earnings to try and fix our and our parent's financial mistakes.
Sure, he hasn't dropped a nuke on anybody, but even Bush managed that and HE didn't get an award.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
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11:47 pm - Calling all masons...
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I wanna build a playhouse for Katie. I also have a ton of random fist-sized to large cantaloupe-sized rocks laying around in my yard.
I figure, hey, why not kill two birds with one stone? Or rather, one amazingly large pile of stones.
So, I decided I should build Katie a castle. Of course, that involves lots and lots of mortar. I figure if I start soon, I might have it done before Katie's 4. (She's turning 1 right now.)
So, anybody on my friend's list ever done any masonry and have good tips? I already know the stone I have isn't the greatest as it doesn't come in nice, flatish pieces. I'm not against creating a substructure and facing it with stone and doing some work to make it stable. I figure a nice wall with crenelations and a drawbridge surrounding a wooden keep would be the way to go.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, September 21st, 2009
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12:49 pm - Dammit...
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Is it too much to ask that somebody make a nice fridge that doesn't waste space with stupid damn water dispensers and ice makers? I DON'T WANT A STUPID TINY FRAGILE WATER LINE ON MY FRIDGE! And I don't want to pay for the dumb features that use such a dumb idea, and I certainly don't want them taking up space in the freezer and fridge!
If I want ice, I will pull a cube out of a dang tray. And water comes out of the sink faucets very, very nicely.
So far the only ones I have found are bargin bin basement models without energy efficiency ratings and no noise dampening.
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(22 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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12:42 pm - Working on the house.
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I love doing house demo. Ripping out stuff is fun.
That being said, I dislike sucking up roof insulation from the 60's. That stuff is nasty, even with a breathing mask. Urgh.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, September 7th, 2009
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9:41 am - Nice.
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So Alison and I both love They Might Be Giants so we got their kid's CDs, Here Comes the ABCs and Here Comes the 123's.
First of all, they come as CDs with DVDs, which is awesome. Second of all, if you don't listen to the words, a lot of the songs sound like TMBG's regular songs, which makes them WAY LESS SUICIDE INDUCING unlike most kid's songs.
The coolest part is we put the 123's dvd in this morning for the first time. The very first song talks about zero and how it's not just the end of 10, but the abstract idea of being the point between positive and negative.
Alison and I were joking about how it's a little advanced for our 11 month old kid.
Then the second song came on and introduced set theory talking about how you can define 1 as one thing, or 1 group of things, or how everything can be 1.
Petie, go buy these CDs RIGHT THE HELL NOW!
Derek, do the same and play for your rere students.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, September 4th, 2009
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10:02 am - Wire wire, dark and dire!
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Okay, so we didn't write a flipping huge check, but I did just authorize a flippin' huge wire transfer. With that, the loan should close on the 10th. I thought it would be less gut churning to get a wire transfer set up instead of physically writing a check for basically half of our savings, but I had to physically send them authorization which involved me writing down the amount, and my stomach did clench up a little doing it.
Ah well. We're in the home stretch.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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2:18 pm - My wife is a trooper.
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| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
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11:12 am - I miss this hat.
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So I moved somewhere where I never wear a hat, so my hat with ears hasn't been seen in over two years. Zoinks. I miss that hat. I also miss snow, and in a weird, strange way, shoveling snow.
However, Alison and I are about to become home-owners which means we're about to enter a world of chores, so if I ever miss shoveling snow, I can see about installing a proper sprinkler system, or regrading the front lawn, or building a fence around the retaining wall/etc.
We're doing a lot to make the house feel 'new' when we move in. Unfortunately, we're paying to have most of it done. Getting into the house quickly with a baby in tow and two full time jobs is just rough.
1) Fumigate house to destroy every termite that even thought about living there.
2) Fix foundation in corner of house and relevel house. We have extra exterior paint, so we should be okay.
3) Replace windows that will break doing this.
4) Have the wiring fixed, with no doubled up circuits.
5) Remove ugly wood paneling and window seat. (It's ready to fall off.) (I'm doing this)
6) Fix drywall cracks from releveling house, fix window seat area, sand and retexture walls.
7) Take out old water heater, put new one in garage instead of at EYE LEVEL IN KITCHEN CLOSET. (WTH?)
8) Rip out carpeting and finish the gorgeous oak hardwood floors in front rooms and bedrooms. (We will pull)
9) Use said carpeting to repair carpeting where window seat was.
10) Install fireblock/waterblock wall between garage and house. This will probably be a little of my work, and a lot of Mike(our GC)'s.
11) Retile entryway to something less ugly. (Possibly all me.) This can wait a little while, if need be.
12) POSSIBLE : remove old water heater closet and straighten stair into living room. I found boxes of old tiles, so we could do this without having to re-tile the floor. (I'd like to do this before the drywall guys do all the work retexturing since it would keep me from having to try and match the texture.)
Aaaaand... that's about it. The total should be around 25k, but we've budgeted for overruns if we need it.
Stuff we eventually want to do :
1) Redo patios. Remove trees right next to house, pull out concrete patios, make pavers based patio. (All me!)
2) Install fence around retaining wall to avoid falling babies. (Again all me!)
3) Properly redo the back yard sprinkler/drip irrigation system. (Me again!)
4) Plant some more trees : Lime and Lemon. (Hooray for me!)
5) Kitchen. It has cabinets from the 50s and counters from the 70s. It's in great shape, so it's not a rush, but yah, it's pretty dated.
6) Second story. When Katie and her stuffed animal collection get too large for her room, we want to add a second story with a proper master suite, two kids rooms, and a common/play area. The 3 bedrooms below can be turned into two larger bedrooms with big closets and a stairway to the second floor.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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9:44 am - Best random message from a coworker :
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I just had this exchange with one of the guys on my team :
S. T. says:
my package is working
Brandon Sonderegger says:
That is excellent news.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 31st, 2009
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12:03 pm - I have a headache.
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I have a headache today, complete with nausea. I think it's because of stress. I hate buying houses, and I hate organizing workers to fix the couple of problems. But soon the worst of it should be done. We sign papers on Wednesday and the house will close on the 10th.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, August 27th, 2009
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11:42 am - I hate buying houses.
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Alison and I are buying a house, as you may know. Our loan processor told us we were a lender's dream borrower. However, the hoops and documentation and shenanigans we have to go through to try and get this dumb thing done is ridiculous. I can't imagine how stressful and crazy it must be for anyone who is trying to get a loan that is even slighly iffy. Thank goodness we had 20% down, well under our approval price, and no debt hanging over us. (We only had one credit ding that was actually incorrect and fixed before loan approval.)
And a little side rant : If you don't have 20% down, you have no business buying a house. Low/no down payment programs drive UP the prices of houses and make them less affordable. 20% is already dangerously low for a down payment. Freddie, Fannie, FHA, and HUD only serve to make it harder for the working poor to buy a house by forcing them into larger amounts of debt in order to get a house.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 24th, 2009
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2:57 pm - If you own an iphone...
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You should buy Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor and get ready to waste a lot of time.
Google for lots of glowing reviews, but really this is all you need to know.
You play a spider. You make webs with your butt. You eat bugs. And you TACKLE WASPS RIGHT OUT OF THE AIR! BAM!
It's a great game obviously designed for the touch screen. It doesn't feel like a game that's been compromised to work on iPhone.
Anyway, nifty!
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, August 20th, 2009
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10:46 am - Housing Update, or how to blow money on a house you just bought.
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So we're moving closer to buying the house.
We've gotten the foundation guys in to look at it, and the estimate for everything is about $4100, which reinforces the corner with some HUGE new footings (1 foot thick and 1.5 feet square) under the existing foundation at the corner and the two places where the foundation cracked. Then the house will be jacked back up into true with the rest of the house and rebolted to the foundation.
This will necessitate some not covered costs. Likely the windows will break. We wanted to replace them with vinyl dual panes anyway, so that's not a huge concern. Our GC said 1k per window is a good rough budget. It'll also require fixing cracks in the drywall. There was already a few cracks in that room, so that's not a huge added expense. I've over-budgeted 1k for the repair. The walls in a lot of the house have a sharp, pokey texture on them, so to reduce abrasion of kids falling against them, we're sanding down and retexturing everything to a much smoother finish. I don't have the quote on that yet, but if it's hugely high, I'll sand the walls myself and we can have a less pretty smooth finish.
Since we'll have them doing that, pulling down the wood paneling and having them finish the wall will be very little extra expense. There will be a little bit for rewalling where the window seat is (and won't be going forward), and a grand should be way overbudgeting for that part.
The electrician will likely be one of the more costly things. We've been told 2k to redo the circuit box so we've separated the kitchen and living room circuits. There's some other minor things (like exposed junction boxes) that I can take care of or should be cheap to have the electrician take care of. The electrical service is something I DEFINITELY want done and checked. I have no problem swapping fixtures/switches/etc, but making sure the basic circuitry is done correctly and safely from a fire-hazard perspective is important.
Since we're fixing up those things, the inspector will want a firebreak installed between the garage and the house. And honestly, how can you argue? They weren't required in the code when the addition was done, and the garage is open to the attic space, so a car fire would turn into a house fire in short order. That's probably another 2k. I'm hoping to cut down on that by doing some of the work myself. Tragically, I have a job and can't just mess around working on the house all the time.
Foundation : 4k
Electrician : 2k + 1k
Firewall : 2k
Wall repair : 1k
Living room paneling : 1k
Retexturing : 1k
Windows : 3k
So, I'm hoping everything can be done for about 15k. Note, none of this HAS to be done to move in, but this is all stuff that ought to be done, and right before moving in is the only time you can bang it all out without worrying about moving furniture/etc.
The things we don't have quotes on is the floor refinishing. The house has some older white carpeting over the original oak hardwood floors, and it seems like a shame not to have them refinished. Alison LOVES hardwood floors, so I lose the argument on keeping any carpeting. And really, it's hard to argue against existing hardwood floors.
After that, we need to paint. We have existing house paint, so we can touch up the siding around the foundation and windows ourselves. The inside will have to be painted as well after the sanding, fixing/etc. So I'm not sure if we can get it done in a weekend ourselves with the beeb, so we might have to bite the bullet and spring for professional painting. I'd rather do it ourselves.
So our 'up in the air' expenses that we're definitely doing is the floor refinish and possibly painting.
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(15 comments | comment on this)
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