Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Bam - homeowner!

Hey, I'm a home owner now. Weird, huh?

I can't move in until December 2, because the old owners are leasing the house back from me for today and tomorrow. This weekend I'll hopefully start painting and moving some stuff.

I hope to be moved in sooner rather than later, for obvious reasons. It's my first house, after all. It should come as no surprise that the first purchase I made for the house was a TV for the living room. That might be more exciting than the house itself. Nah, just kidding.

Here are some projects that I need to take on (not necessarily anytime soon):
-Repaint a couple rooms (asap)
-Run ethernet cables through walls
-Eventually remove wood paneling (we are going to paint it preliminarily)
-Restain deck
-New fancy kitchen faucet?

Still trying to figure out how we're going to furnish the living room, but Ikea has a cool modular entertainment center.

I'll take pics of the empty house once I can.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

goodbye old friend

A sad thing happened last night... I went to take out the trash and I realized my motorcycle was no longer where it used to be. Gasp.

It's sad to think that someone, somewhere, is taking her apart and selling her piece by piece. How cruel. How unjust.

You were fun while I had you. We had many good memories and I spent hours maintaining you. I only wish that we could have spent more time together. Goodbye old friend.



Monday, November 14, 2011

15 days

15 days until the closing date of our house. Our appraisal came back today and everything is good on that front, so I think that means we're essentially set. That was the last variable as far as I know that would have hindered a smooth close. Now the credit union just needs to put everything together and do what they need to do. Given that, I've officially given my 60 days notice to Justin.

I'll want to move in as soon as possible, since you know, it'll be my brand new house. On the other hand, we really should paint and stuff. How do I balance?! That reminds me, I need to call the utility companies.

In other news, Taylor showed me this cool shirt and I bought it:
http://www.threadless.com/product/3333/Live_Music_Capital/tab,guys/style,shirt

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

countdown to close - 20 days

20 days until my scheduled closing date. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited so this is really drawing out my days. You know how your day feels longer when you are anxiously awaiting something that night? That's how the last week felt, and the next three will probably feel.

The last variable left is the appraisal which should be in at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. Assuming everything is good there, I'll be set to go.

What will we need to do when we get the keys? Nothing needs to be done, but we want to repaint any necessary rooms. We're not totally keen on a couple of the room colors, so we'll probably do that first. Also one room as wood paneling which I'd like to remove, but other people have told me they'd just leave it. Maybe that'd be easier?

I'd also like to run Ethernet drops to the rooms. Why? Because I'm a nerd, mostly. But more seriously, I'm sure most of you can attest to the numerous problems you run into when dealing with wireless internet. Random cutouts, having to power cycle the router, random speed drops, etc. I want to run ethernet drops to each room so you can just plug in your PC and go. No need for random wireless problems. Wireless is good for laptops, phones, tablets. Running desktops off of wireless is just asking for problems. Who's with me?!

Speaking of problems, the "Great Desk Soak of 2011" ended without much issue. Like I said before, I noticed some speaker problems and it still seems a bit messed up. It turns on and off, but the volume knob doesn't work most of the time. It stays at one volume regardless of what the knob is set at. Maybe I can take it apart and try to fix that. Otherwise I'll just learn to deal for now.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

whoopsies

I drink a lot of water. Yesterday, this bit me in the ass. I had a full, 32 oz cup of water sitting on my desk. One careless movement and BAM —now there is water all over everything. My desk was soaked in water, which got over my speakers, my wireless USB adapter, and even my computer. I turned off my computer as fast as I could, and then started toweling off all that water.

I'm going to go home tonight and run a hair dryer over everything to dry up and remaining water, but I think I already had my first casualty this morning. My speakers have a separate unit to control volume, treble, bass, and power. It didn't really get that wet, but it did splashed some. I dried it off with a towel but apparently not good enough. I powered it off last night with the power button, and when I woke up this morning it was on again. Uh oh. I tried to power it off and the button is unresponsive. The volume knob works, but it also seems to flicker around and do some weird stuff. Since my computer was off, I couldn't actually test to see if it worked. I'm assuming there is some permanent damage, but maybe it's still usable.

Hopefully I get luckier with my computer.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

times are a changin'

It's been almost a month since I've updated — sorry about that! I went ahead and updated my blog template because I was getting tired of the old look. Also, most of all that side matter wasn't important and no one cared about. I "cleaned" it up. I couldn't decide on the background photo, so this will have to do for now. Maybe I'll find a better one to replace it in the future. It's just some stock photograph that Blogger will let you use.

Actually, it turns out that Google has made some changes to some of its services, too. It updated the look of Google Reader and Gmail. Gmail I don't care much about, but the changes to Google Reader impacts how I shared my links on the right. I can't do it anymore! So unfortunately, for now, those links on the right will be stagnant until I can figure out how to do it the new way. Why kid myself, they were already pretty stagnant to begin with.

Last week, I flew to Georgia to do some training with our customer. Without going into any detail, I'll just say it went really well and we received a lot of praise from them and our management as well. Sweet.

Oh, and I guess I have some big news. Taylor and I are in the process of buying a house. The offer was accepted last weekend, and we're in the contract and mortgage approval process right now. I'll post up some pictures once everything is a done deal, but until then I'm still waiting for something to blow up in my face. Always better to be mentally prepared for disaster and stress, right?