Thanks, XKCD, for amusing me just enough to link to an oldie but goodie: Fields arranged by Purity
Oh, and this too.
Happy 2010. We're all doing very well. There was a pretty intense health scare for Michelle late last year, but it's all 100% clear. We are truly blessed.
Michelle is recovering quite nicely from her unexpectedly painful laproscopic oophorectomy. For most, I suspect 2009 will be considered a 'good' year. For us, God has blessed us very richly; there were thrills and chills. When I was laid off in February, things could have turned out very differently. Things have turned out better for us than we could have ever planned. Life is very good right now.
Thu Jan 7 07:37:35 PST 2010
This talks about how much better kids in Texas do than kids in California. One to two YEARS better, even though CA spends 12% more per kid and per capita income in CA is substantially higher.(0 comments to this post)
We have been sick as can be with a very nasty flu, starting on Saturday the 5th of December. Noah came down with it, then me, then Michelle. We were slowly getting better the last half of last week, but then got a bit worse yesterday. As of now, I feel a little better. Noah went to school one day last week, and he's going again today. Michelle is going to see a doc to make sure her lungs are ok.
To get this blog kicking again, I'll start posting links. Kind of boring, but it may do the trick.
Here is a link that talks about how to use Perl to make recursive regular expressions. Kind of a mind-blowing affair, really.
And here is the worst run big city in the US: our own, silly, beloved San Francisco. The classic liberal excesses at their most excessive. For shame.
Some good news here for a change.
Tue Dec 29 08:00:23 PST 2009
Wed Dec 30 07:50:44 PST 2009
Someone who is actually talking sense with respect to national security and terrorism.
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Has it really come to this?
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Taken from the script the movie Gettysburg. For some reason, this script came to me as I considered the possible end of the modern movement to reduce carbon emissions. Yeah, that thing.
You know what's happening here
in the morning?
Sir?
The whole damn rebel army
is gonna be here.
They'll move through this town,
occupy the hills on the other side.
When our people arrive, Lee'll have
high ground. There'll be the devil to pay.
The high ground!
Meade will come in slowly, cautiously,
new to command.
They'll be on his back from Washington.
Wires hot with messages. Attack! Attack!
So he will set up a ring around these hills.
And when Lee's army is nicely entrenched
behind fat rocks on the high ground...
Meade will finally attack,
if he can coordinate the army.
Straight up the hillside, out in the open...
in that gorgeous field of fire.
We will charge valiantly
and be butchered valiantly.
And afterward, men in tall hats and
gold watch fobs will thump their chest...
and say what a brave charge it was.
Devin, I've led a soldier's life...
and I've never seen anything
as brutally clear as this.
It's as if I can actually see the blue troops
in one long bloody moment...
going up the long slope to the stony top...
as if it were already done...
and already a memory.
An odd, set...
stony quality to it.
As if tomorrow has already happened
and there's nothing you can do about it.
The way you sometimes feel
before an ill-considered attack...
knowing it will fail...
but you cannot stop it.
You must even take part and help it fail.
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I bought a nice home in Bella Vista, Arkansas, shortly after I hired on to Wal-Mart permanently, in early 1998. I paid about $54k for this home. It was built in 1979, was a little bit over 1000 square feet, had a new roof and a new heat pump, and was in generally good condition. Though the entire house (I mean entire) was covered in ugly carpet. Including the bathrooms and kitchen. The house was on about 2.5 acres of land, much of it steeply sloped. It was about 14 miles from downtown Bentonville. Later on, I bought the 2.5 acre lot next to us and the 3 acre lot across the street for about $2k and $3k respectively.
I married my best friend in late 2000, and we had our son in 2002. During that time, we ended up getting some huge medical bills that my wonderful employer decided to not insure, and it pretty much wrecked our credit. In fact, the last of that was paid back only in 2007. But our credit was well and truly trashed, and we had a lot of nasty bills over our heads. I was --this-- close to declaring bankruptcy in 2003, but it didn't QUITE make sense.
We always had the idea of buying a nice plot of land somewhere along the Missouri Arkansas border and eventually building a nice house on it. But the possibility of any such spending was pretty much ruled out because of our financial state.
During 2004, God told us to move out in faith and just start looking for a home on some land in Missouri. It was crazy and irrational, and certainly impossible, but we started looking. Within a week, we located a 20 acre piece of property with a 1450 square foot house on it. It was only a few miles down the road. The seller was motivated. The price was $165k. And we were struggling to keep up with our current house payment, which was (wait for it) $345/month at the time. So we started thinking, and a plan came through. We discovered that the house and land we had bought for $54k plus a few thousand in cash was now worth over 100k. The housing bubble was entering the height of crazy. So we very completely redid the inside of our small home. It looked great; new wood-looking floors, new paint, new stove, new fixtures. We did a bang-up job. But it was still a pretty small house, and we had to find a buyer. Oh, and we had to get a loan for $165k.
So, the plan. We would use the cash money we made from selling our Bella Vista home to pay off huge chunks of our debt. It turns out we could not turn this plan into a contract or anything that lenders would consider, so we had to simply get the loan without 'the plan'. Which is really crazy, given our financial state, but in those days, crazy loans were possible. Crazy being irresponsible. In the end, all we could qualify for was a suicidal adjustable rate interest only loan. And we took it, with the idea that we would then refinance a year later, which much improved credit.
So I'll skip some of the drama, which was extreme at times. We found a buyer for our home in Bella Vista, but she was barily qualified. So I took point on finding her a lender. Yeah, that's crazy too, but in the end, it worked and she qualified for a 30 year fixed loan for $112k. Except she had to some up with about 10k of downpayment. And she didn't have any money, and she didn't qualify for any secondary loans.
What to do. Even more insanity. I loaned her $5k and my seller loaned her $5k. Insane. Oh, and her funds had to be sourced, but not seasoned. So we had to give the cash to her aunt, who then gave it to her. I have no idea if that's legal or not. But we made it happen.
I was able to justify all of this by the simple fact that her monthly payment was actually going to go down slightly, compared to the stiff rent she was paying at the time. Plus she would be building equity. Great!
And so, the deal was done, and I helped our seller move his stuff to his new house, which was under construction a dozen or so miles away. And he helped me move our stuff. And our buyer had some of her family or someone help move her stuff.
Oh I forgot a piece of this. We decided to do the move well before all of the loans were approved. A good three weeks before. I just asked my wife why we did that and she said 'crazy faith'. So be it.
We made a good $50k in cash from the deal. Our seller made a lot more; I think he owed something like 30 or 40k on the house and land. He built the house himself, and the land was a lot cheaper when he bought it about six years earlier. We did use some of that money as a 10% down payment. We used the rest to pay off debts. Sealed the deal in April 2005, almost a month after we moved in.
So a year later, in mid 2006, after scrubbing our credit record for all I was worth, our credit score was substantially better. Still not great; on the edge of 'poor', but not quite 'poor'. We were able to refinance to a 30 year fixed rate of 6 percent. Turns out our monthly rate went down a little, because we were paying so many points on the first, toxic loan.
After I was laid off in February 2009, I immediately set out to refinance again, because of extremely low rates. And I did a streamline refinance with the same bank, and locked our 30 year rate in at 5%, which is pretty awesome. It had to be a 'streamline' refinance, because our property value had fallen tremendously. We were way underwater, and the streamline allowed a refinance based on the initial valuation. Basically, it allowed the bank to 'look the other way'.
At this point, we have paid off all but one of our old medical debts. We should be able to knock that one out next year or so. The only thing we owe on now is our land and house in Missouri. We own our cars and tractor outright. I haven't checked, but I'm sure our credit score has gotten much, much better. It probably hasn't been enough years for some of that ugly debt we paid off in 2005 to drop off, but it will over the next few years.
In the end, we leveraged the crazy housing bubble to our full advantage. We used the ability to get a really bad loan to get what I call 'funny money' from our property, which we used to get a very good, conservative loan.
Shortly after she bought our Bella Vista property, our single mom buyer was laid off from the real estate company she worked for. She had defaulted within a year. The bank she received her loan from, much of which turned into the 'funny money' that we used to dig ourselves out of debt, was closed by the government in 2008, one of the many bank failures that year. Too many bad loans that went bad. The bank that took over most of the holdings sold the property to some law firm, which put the house up for sale in mid 2008. It sold for $65k in late 2008.
Sometimes I think about where that $50k of funny money came from. Certainly not from our buyer. Not from her failed bank. Funny money indeed.
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Things are going well at home and at work. Noah is doing very well in school. Michelle is healthy, and getting more healthy every day. We adopted a very cute pair of cats last week. They're both about six months old, and almost completely black, both short hair. The little brother is very outgoing, friendly, and cute as can be. The little sister cat is extremely scared; she hides all the time. Michelle will have to work with her for a long time, but it'll be a work of love. She spent years working with the tortured and abused Sugarplum, who turned into a wonderful cat.
Not sure what else to talk about. Oh, I went to Startup School 2009. There were a lot of excellent speakers. I was very, very highly inspired and motivated, and came up with some good and interesting ideas, but I find it so hard to press forward with them. It's just so much work. :-)
I think this is pretty cool. I've spent more than my share of time working on flow diagrams; this web based tool makes it very easy to just type in your words and comments, then turn it into a diagram. This Perl module is a slick front-end to it too.
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This is an e-mail I received from an old high school friend of mine:
The caption is "Worth a Thousand Words... "
This is the response I sent to the entire distribution list:
I think facts are worth ten thousand words, rather than whatever is being spouted out of Fox news and right wing radio: Under the Carter administration, US National Debt as a percentage of per capita personal income fell from 56% to 53%. Under the combined Reagan/Bush Sr. administrations, that percentage doubled from 53% to 110%. Under the Clinton administration, US National Debt as a percentage of per capita income fell from 112% to 90%. And under GWB, who had a Republican controlled congress 6 out of 8 years, the percentage climbed from 91% to 131%. I have no doubt that the first year or two of Obama's administration will show a mounting debt. The same happened to Carter and Clinton as they struggled to bring financial order back to the table. Let's put to rest the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative. They make that claim, but the facts are quite different. They toot the horn of social responsibility and small government, but what they are really doing is feeding our money to the already wealthy. Cheers, -Dana Raw numbers: FORD 12/31/1976 2,997 57% CARTER 12/31/1977 3,264 56% CARTER 12/31/1978 3,546 55% CARTER 12/31/1979 3,755 52% CARTER 12/31/1980 4,094 53% REAGAN 12/31/1981 4,483 53% REAGAN 12/31/1982 5,167 58% REAGAN 12/31/1983 6,034 64% REAGAN 12/31/1984 7,052 68% REAGAN 12/31/1985 8,179 74% REAGAN 12/31/1986 9,223 79% REAGAN 12/31/1987 10,036 81% REAGAN 12/31/1988 10,979 84% BUSH 12/31/1989 11,964 85% BUSH 12/31/1990 13,488 94% BUSH 12/31/1991 15,077 103% BUSH 12/31/1992 16,379 110% CLINTON 12/31/1993 17,595 112% CLINTON 12/31/1994 18,439 111% CLINTON 12/31/1995 18,983 110% CLINTON 12/31/1996 20,070 111% CLINTON 12/31/1997 20,548 107% CLINTON 12/31/1998 20,774 103% CLINTON 12/31/1999 21,182 100% CLINTON 12/31/2000 20,065 90% BUSH 12/31/2001 20,847 91% BUSH 12/31/2002 22,247 98% BUSH 12/31/2003 24,077 103% BUSH 12/31/2004 25,868 108% BUSH 12/30/2005 27,565 110% BUSH 12/28/2006 28,848 112% BUSH 12/31/2007 30,599 117% BUSH 12/31/2008 35,123 131% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm
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Finally made a home page for my ancient mud. One person is helping me with it, and maybe some others will be soon. :-) Hope springs eternal.
Great day at work; Michelle is doing well, but Noah is not doing well in school. We're working with him pretty extensively. His teacher and staff at his school are just great.
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At least I am adding new bookmarks to Delicious. Facebook is killing this blog.
We feel like Michelle picked up H1N1 on Thursday; she was pretty violently ill, and it came on really fast. But we took care of it, and she's almost all better today. We even went to the Norcal Ren Faire on Saturday. It was just wonderful; we all had a great time.
Of course, I was rather ill feeling on Saturday, but I managed to recover today, so all is well.
As always, work is good but hectic. We're VERY short handed, but we're getting used to it, unfortunately. But there are some interesting things coming up!
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Recently, I have been greatly moved by a particular song in Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown album. I have only known my wife for 10 years, 3 months, 8 days, 3 hours and 11 minutes. But in that time, I have learned about everything about her, including and especially her terrible, wonderful past. As I have been listening to this song, I have been asking her about it, and she says that it speaks to and about her. She, along with many others, was the girl in this song. So, here are the lyrics, as well as the song itself at the bottom. Screw the RIAA. :)
She puts her makeup on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland She's got her little book of conspiracies right in her hand She is paranoid like endangered species headed into extinction She is one of a kind, well, she's the last of the American girls She wears her overcoat for the coming of the nuclear winter She is riding her bike like a fugitive of critical mass She's on a hunger strike for the ones who won't make it for dinner She makes enough to survive for a holiday of the working class She's a runaway of the establishment incorporated She won't cooperate, well, she's the last of the American girls She plays her vinyl records singing songs on the eve of destruction She's a sucker for all the criminals breaking the laws She will come in first for the end of Western civilization She's an endless war, she's a hero for the lost cause Like a hurricane in the heart of the devastation She's a natural disaster, she's the last of the American girls She puts her makeup on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland She's got her little book of conspiracies right in her hand She will come in first for the end of Western civilization She's a natural disaster, she's the last of the American girls Aw yeah, all right, aw yeahLast Of The American Girls
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Curse facebook for forcing me to not post here. :(
We went to Monterey California on Saturday. We checked out the Thomas Kinkade Nagional Archive, walked the world famous Cannery Row of John Steinbeck note. We also hit a couple of beaches. Alas, they were very "keply". And "kelpy" on the beach means that were tons and tons of rotting vegitation and jillions of flies. That stuff needs to stay out to sea. :(
And just for the foo of it, here's my last bunch of Facebook posts:
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Michelle wnated to 'drive somewhere' yesterday, so I found that the nearest coastal redwoods are at the Navarro River Redwoods State Park. (Located here.) Google said this was a four hour drive, so we got started. Unfortunately, the traffic on the freeways was relatively slow. So I bailed off of the freeways and went over to the Pacific Coast Highway. This was great, except it's way more twisty than I thought. I, of course, should ahve known better. It's on the damn Pacific Coast; of course it's twisty. So it was taking us forever to make any progress. So we turned around and stopped at Goat Rock State Beach. We climbed some rocks, Michelle skinned her shin, and we had a great time.
On the way back, we ate at a great over-the-water restaurant called Lucas Wharf Restaurant and Bar, located in Bodega Bay, California.
I wanted to mention that Michelle's lung problem has been getting better and better. I think the move to California has been very good for her lungs. It took a while, but slowly, ever so slowly, her condition has been getting better and better. So that's all kinds of awesome. We're very grateful.
My work has been going fairly well; I'm getting pretty over-loaded with stuff to do, which is the idea. :-)
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Facebook is eating my personal 'update' time. So let me just take a little time to put a few things on the record here. I'm not sure any of this is written down anywhere, so here goes.
In general, I am pro-life, mostly in the Catholic sense. The Republican party has hijacked the pro-life movement in the last decade or so to mean something more narrow than it should. I'm pro-life, through and through. I don't believe in the death penalty. I'm generally anti-war. I believe that a theoretically viable fetus has basic human rights, including the right to live. I do not believe that sperm and egg cells represent independent life; in that way I diverge from most Catholics. My opposition to abortion is a sliding scale; I'm mildly uncomfortable with it immediately after conception. I fully stand against it at the point of theoretical viability. I oppose abortion for unwanted pregnancies. I believe the Christian church should practice what it preaches and create a formal, efficient and comprehensive system that FULLY supports the mothers of unwanted pregnancies. I am personally torn about how to handle pregnancies that are dangerous to the mother. The mother, seeking the Creator's will, should decide how best to proceed.
In the same way, I'm an Environmentalist. To me, working to keep the earth from killing tens of millions, or more, is the most pro-life path anyone can walk.
I tend to vote for the Democratic Party. This is difficult for me, since the party is pro-choice, which I believe is anti-life. The bigger issue is environmentalism. The Democratic Party screws environmental policies up less than the Republican Party, and so I must vote for Democrats. As a plus, modern Democrats tend to be anti-death penalty and anti-war.
I could write extensively about each one of these views; maybe later. :)
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Hell yeah!. (Sorry mom...)
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In my inbox from Tiger Direct: Deal Alert: Seagate 1.5tb Hard Drive $119. According to this, the library of congress has about 100 terabytes of data. So with this new Seagate drive, you could store the entire library on 67 of them, at a cost of about $8000. That's just amazing.
What's even more sobering is that the rate of storage increase is expected to increase even further.
I predict that, within my lifetime, unless 'the whole thing' goes belly-up, pretty much the whole world will be continuously digitized and stored forever. The future Google street view will be high resolution, current, and have full history and time scale. One way to find out exactly where you are would be to take a picture and submit it to a search engine. It will compare what's in your picture with its archive of all things video and tell you where you are to within inches.
We are rapidly getting very comfortable with an abject lack of privacy. Most of us carry cell phones around. Any of those people can be located, most of the time, by the cell carrier. Our ancesters would have been utterly horrified by that.
Most of us will, in not too many years, be happily living completely transparent lives. The implications of that future are unclear at best.
We're getting along pretty well, though we're still 'up to here' in boxes. I have assembled our bed, as well as Noah's bed. Our video and sound system is basically setup, though not well. My wife's computer desk is setup, and her computer and my computer are functional. We have a fair percentage of our kitchen stuff unpacked and in working order. Mobility is still strictly limited because of boxes everywhere, but that's diminishing.
I'm pretty far behind at work, but working hard to catch up. We're in full Scrum mode at work now. It's interesting; we kind of used this system at my last job in my team, and I liked it. We'll see how it can apply to operations here.
Back on the home front. We initially had one car port and one garage slot to park in. Of course, we only had Michelle's Saturn and my motor cycle to park. For convenience, she parked in the car port and I parked in the garage. We decided we didn't like the garage; it's hot, and you have to drive 'all the way in' so that the door can close. Plus, now I have my Saturn here, and I need a place to park my motor cycle along with two cars, using only two parking places. My initial thought was to park in front of one of the cars, but the bike is a lot wider than I thought, so that didn't work out too well. So we requested a pair of car port spots adjacent to one another. This has worked nicely; I can park my bike between the cars, pulled far forward, mostly in front of the front doors of the cars. Oh, and then we found out that we pay $15/month less for not using a garage. Awesome!
I had reported earlier that our apartment complex was getting empty. Some units are now filling back up. I guess there is a certain cycle to this. Plus, we're getting more and more friendly with the landlords, so we hear about the ebb and flow more directly than most everyone else.
And here is a short story about what it was like to program the Apollo days. Apollo 11 landed 40 years ago yesterday, which is awesome and depressing in different quantities. Awesome that it happened, depressing that we as a nation have lost so much capability and ability since.
PS: For no good reason, and because I'm kind of manic this morning, I want to show you our old and new parking places. This is where I used to park my motor cycle. My wife's saturn was right across the street. This is where we park now. So there. I don't care if you don't care. :-)
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Ok, just to let everyone know, we have all arrived in Sunnyvale. Utterly exhausted, but fine. I faced 12000 unread e-mail messages at work today. That'll be fine.
Unfortunately, we brought the heat with us. It was in the high 80s today, though the humidity is FAR lower. It's still quite hot.
The drive across country was difficult. I got a very late start Saturday, because the 'little bit of remaining packing' took six hours. So I got started after 4pm lima, and got into my hotel in Groom, TX after 2am. The next evening I stayed in Seligman, Arizona. This is right next to the town that was used as the model for the Pixar movie, Cars. The scenery looked just like the movie, and the town itself looked a lot like the town in the movie. It was pretty cool!
Our townhouse complex is getting more and more empty. We have no neighbors on either side of us, two deep even. Pretty scary, overall.
I think I'm posting here less frequently because I'm posting more to facebook. People actually read that. :-) I do plan on continuing blogging here. My intent is to, eventually, post more in-depth topics.
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Back to link aggregator service. This is an incredibly cool feature of rsync.net.
This morning, I'm going to Lowes to get a bit more lumber. Then I'm going to pickup a grill from a friend of ours who's giving a bunch of stuff away. Then I'm going to return the grill we bought at Wal-Mart, and finally close our Arvest checking account.
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We've been SLAM busy. Burning Man is coming up in three days; we're leaving the next morning. Packing is continuing apace.
My rough sketches of The Man indicated about the required height of 35 feet. Now that I have him mostly built, he tops out at 42 feet. This is an insanely large structure. I'm getting better at making these things; it uses less lumber and it's far more sturdy than previous efforts. Tomorrow the head goes on, along with the braces and the cardboard, and it's a done deal.
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Cats are so awesome.
Michelle is steadily better, and we're steadily getting ready to move.
EDIT: This is creepy. But really cool!
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It's been a week since my last update. Michelle had her surgery, and it went very well. She stayed in the hospital two nights. She's now home and recovering.
Driving up our rough-as-hell driveway was very painful for her, but she'll be staying up here until she gets a lot better, so that'll be fine.
We found a couple who is willing to rent our place for 18 months; that's good news! Most importantly, they're willing to lease 'as is', which is even better news. We'll buy all of the new flooring and they'll put it in.
The weather has been DREADFULLY hot here. It's been very hard to work outside in this heat, so I've been mostly working inside. I haven't been working for my company; I'm going to start that this weekend.
By the way, Randall Munroe is the man.
Things are now going badly in Iran. Blessings and safety to all sides in that conflict.
A shout out to my ancient friend Roger Dingledine, the prime architect of the Tor web anonymizer. We met online back in the very early 90s when he was in high school and I was in college. We learned a lot from each other, but he has gone much further than I have.
More importantly, his creation is doing some real good during this Iran crisis. That pleases me greatly.
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Back in Missouri. The driveway is pretty wrecked up, but not as bad as it could be. I'll be fixing it up shortly. It is barily passable.
What's cool, of course, is the green on green on green that is this area in the summer. It's really beautiful. Here are some pictures:
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Oh wait, that's some kind of jungle! No, it's our backyard. I already took the tractor and cut the front yard. (Yes, that is a cat sitting on our hot tub cover. Sort of.)
So the great endeavour begins this week.
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In Michigan, they're converting their paved roads back to gravel to save money.
If it wasn't so tragic, it would be amusing. Here in California, the state is doing the same thing, but the slow way. Just don't maintain roads long enough and you'll get gravel again. Kind of.
Haven't blogged in a long time! Not sure why. Lots going on.
We had a great and wonderful time in the eastern sierras last weekend. We stayed up there three nights and three days; Devils Postpile did not open before we left, unfortunately. We drove up and visited the ancient bristlecone pines again. The views and the drives were wonderful. It's great to be able to take weekend trips to the mountains! More importantly, celebrated my beautiful wife's 41st birthday. Happy birthday, hunny bunny!
So, next week, we are flying back to Missouri, and staying there more than three weeks. On July 10th, we'll be holding our last Burning Man celebration. And then we'll move all of our stuff to California for good.
I'm getting crazy busy at work. I have moved from being really over-whelmed and not knowing how to contribute to being really over-whelmed and contributing in a rather inefficient way. There's still a lot to learn, but I'm finally learning a lot.
I've been feeling rather poorly since last night, so I'm going to close a bit short today. There's lots more to cover, but I need to lie down.
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We went to a Mega Church last Sunday. It's called the Jubilee Christian Center. It's been there since 1980. They've had a web site a long, long time.
The music was great. The praise and worship was outstanding. Unfortunately, the preaching mostly about Dick Bernal and all of the cool, interesting and rich people he hangs out with. Oh, of course, the preacher was Dick Bernal. Bummer.
I told Michelle that God would lead us to a church that had excellent music as well as healthy, wholesome preaching. Those two things are NOT mutually exclusive.
We left disappointed and a little sad.
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We spent a lot of time worrying about how much more it was going to cost to live in Silicon Valley compared to NorthWest Arkansas. This post is completely non-scientific. It's simply my impressions of the different areas of cost differential between these two regions. And I'll mention traffic too.
The purchase price of real estate in the bay area is FAR HIGHER than in NWA. This single element is what pushes the cost of living delta so much higher. If memory serves, when we were looking to move out here last year, the overall delta was 2.4. That is, to keep the same standard of living in the bay area as you had in NWA, you had to spend 2.4 times more.
However, rental prices aren't a great deal higher here, from a certain perspective. Comparing rental prices of 'normal' areas in the bay area to 'downtown' areas in NWA, I have found them to be about the same. However, in NWA, prices VERY quickly go down as you leave 'downtown'. Around here, it's not that simple, but overall, you have to be a LONG ways out to get much cheaper prices.
I'm not sure about the utilities. We're only paying electricity and internet for the place we're renting; everything else is included. Internet is more expensive than I thought it was going to be; we're paying 45 bucks for 6 megs down. We haven't gotten an electric bill yet, but it should be pretty low since we're only running the air from time to time. It's rarely really warm here.
Consumables is a tricky comparison. In NWA, you go to your closest Wal-Mart and get just about anything you need. And get a hair cut. And see a doctor. And do banking. And get a burger. And you were pretty sure to get the best prices for anything you bought. Here in the bay area, things are more complex. There are a few Wal-Marts, but the only supercenter is out in Gilroy, which is a good 45 minute drive from the main part of town. So we've learned to shop around. The results are mixed. Many things are cheaper here, like fruits and vegetables and meat. Many things are about the same, and some things are quite a bit more expensive. If you play the game and join the clubs at the local markets, the prices aren't too bad. As long as you shop around.
It is costly to eat out here. Low end fast food is probably 10 percent more expensive here, but as soon as you get beyond that, it's expensive. A fair sit down meal is going to start at 15 bucks. Low-end Chinese take out starts at 10 to 12.
Of course conveyances are about the same price, and gas is 25-35 cents higher. But excellent public transportation and VERY well integrated bike lanes offset that.
How about sales taxes? I was quite surprised. Sales taxes run from 8 to 9 percent. In NWA, they run from 9 to 10 percent. People I have spoken to who have lived here a long time were stunned to hear how high the taxes were in the midwest. At least my little experience with the area.
The traffic around here is interesting. The side-streets get heavy, but they don't get utterly clogged the way they do in NWA. I think this is because of superior planning, more streets and many more lanes. A 'normal' street will be five lanes, and a large one will be between 7 and 8 lanes. I don't think there are ANY roads in NWA that have more than 5 lanes. Also note that virtually all of the roads here also have well marked and well defended bike lanes on both sides, making them look even larger. There are very clear times when traffic gets heavier than others. But most of the time, outside of rush hours, it's quite easy to get around, quickly.
These are my very personal and un-scientific perceptions, which means they are going to be mostly wrong. I gladly encourage my NWA readers (I know who you are!) to correct and expand on these perceptions.
The net result for us? We're not spending nearly as much money here as we thought we were going to. And that's some great and surprising news.
We will be watching Green Day perform 21st Century Breakdown in San Jose in August. (Yes, I like to use Wikipedia. :-) We were blown away by this new album. Virtually every single track is huge. So all three of us are going to this concert on August 18th. We are very, very excited.
I will be working tomorrow, Memorial day, so I can take 5-June off. We're going to take that as a three day weekend to celebrate Michelle's birthday. We will drive to the Eastern Sierras around 3pm on the 4th, and stay three nights in the Edelweiss Lodge in Mammoth Lakes. This is the place we have traditionally stayed on our every other or third year vacation to the mountains. And on her birthday, we're going to hike in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. This is a beautiful and sacred experience for us.
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I sent out invitations to Burning Man III. This has become an excellent yearly celebration that we've come to anticipate very greatly. In 2007, we built a 25 foot 'man'. Last year, he was 30 feet. This year, 35. The plan was to grow five feet per year as long as possible. We'll make 35, and that height will stay for a good long time. This will be our swan song for the midwest. It'll be a sad time.
Regarding Burning Man. This is, of course, a reference to the now (in?)famous Burning Man celebration in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Michelle and I would love to go, and I expect we will many years from now. But our Burning Man is a bit different, and more low key. Only our friends and associates are invited. We basically grill, shoot fireworks and have a good time. We write the things we want to be rid of in our lives or in our environments on the man. We erect the structure, douse it with fuel, and burn it down.
I just read on the Wikipedia entry I referenced that the man itself has remained close to 40 feet tall since 1989. Only the base has been getting taller and taller. That means our little party in McDonald County, Missouri, is only going to be a few feet shorter. Woot!
In any event, this is going to be an emotional time for us. We will be saying our final good-byes to many of our friends. We will simply not be returning for a long, long time. Somebody else will be living in our old home. Our new home is in the bay area, and so it will remain.
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We went to 'hole in the wall' beach today for a few hours. This beach is about 15 minutes north of Santa Cruz. It wasn't very crowded, even though the temp hit 91 in Sunnyvale today. I think it wasn't crowded because most everyone went to the 'easy' beaches near downtown Santa Cruz. This beach has a very challenging, steep hike for access. Very steep and rough, with probably a 150 vertical climb across perhaps 500 feet. Michelle had a very hard time, but she did very well. Noah had a hard time too. But the beach was worth it. Here are some pictures.
The drive wasn't too bad; it probably took us less than 90 minutes to get there, and 70 minutes to get back. There were some moderate traffic jams in both directions. Nothing to get in a twist about. There's some amazingly cool stuff close to where we live now. We're quite pleased.
This hot weather is suppoes to pass after today. I picked up a used bike from the Salvation Army yesterday for 50 bucks. It's in good shape. Tomorrow morning, I'm going try my hand at riding it to work. I think it's going to be quite challenging, but I'm up for it. It's only 4 miles, but there are two factors that stand against me. First, the bike is a mountain bike, which kind of slows things down. Second, I'm in terrible physical condition. Bummer. I'll report the success or failure of this venture next time.
And finally, I found this. Got it in one, Mr. Garabaldi.
EDIT: This is too amazing not to post. My immediate family and I consider ourselves people of faith. We have attended various kinds of Christian churches over the years. However, tying elements of our faith to the second Iraq War turns my stomach.
I consider myself to be a Libertarian of some stripe or another. Given that, here's a couple of articles that I found amusing. They serve to help balance out the less government perspective.
As always, The Onion amuses and instructs at the same time.
And here we poke some gentle fun at some folks who have recently been protesting taxes.
On another note for my chess playing readers, here is a very cool chess playing simulation.
In retrospect, this 'blog' is turning into a one person news aggregator. I'm posting links instead of making new content. That usually means I'm tired. :(
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So the bad news is that some crazy crap happened at work, and we were unable to see the movie. But the good news is that I read the IMDB reviews and spoilers, and decided I'd let Noah see the movie, so I bought three tickets online and we all went to see it after work. I had to censor two parts, but overall it was a huge blast. We had a great time! And it's a wonderful, fabulous reboot to the whole Trek universe.
One way or another, I'm very glad to have the weekend. I'm exhausted in many ways, and I'm looking forward to talking with my mom tonight. Right about now actually!
EDIT: This is pretty cool.
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This bug was floating around at work. We were highly amused. We also use bugtrack for bugs and change management too.
So tomorrow, all of our work place is going together to see the new Star Trek movie. There's a very nice AMC theater a couple of blocks away.
Honestly, my new job is more than a little overwhelming. I don't learn nearly as quickly as I used to. I hope I can first catch up, and then keep up, and then maybe do some good! It's an amazingly dynamic environment. In general, I'm utterly exhausted, my nights filled with anxious dreams. I'm really looking forward to getting used to this new situation.
Well anyway, this is kind of funny.
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Busy week. We are now moved into our home for at least the next year, hopefully longer. To say it's been difficult would be a big understatement. But here we are, and 'here' is a good place.
I came up with a fair definition of a 'very good' monitor today. If things displayed on the monitor lead you to believe that they are physically on the monitor, you have a nice monitor. Specifically, there was some app I was playing with today, displayed on the huge Mac LCD they gave me at work. On that app was a little indented widget, but at first glance, I thought it was a drop of water on my monitor. I tried to wipe it off. That's a good monitor!
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So we went to Muir Beach today, which is west of Sausalito, which is past the Golden Gate Bridge. From the front of our hotel in San Jose, it was almost exactly 80 miles to the beach. The drive was nice, but quite foggy, which is of course quite common in this area. The last time Noah has ever been to a beach was when he was 10 months old, in a stroller. The beach was a nasty affair in Southern California. In fact, the water was closed because of some kind of contamination. So, this was really his first beach. Obviously, he loved it. We all had a great time, and it's a nice reminder how close so many cool things are now.
On a more mundane, unhappy note, we just bought Michelle and Noah's airline tickets back to NW Arkansas, for the second half of our move, and the two set us back about 700 bucks. I guess that's a sign of the times.
Who says Google is ahead of the curve? Some of us have been doing this for a long time. :-)
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After a full week in our 400 ft^2 room, we decided to move decisively and we looked at a whole raft of places. We selected an older, two floor, 1100 ft^2 townhouse in a quiet neighborhood in Sunnyvale. Included is Dish network, water, sewage and trash. We just have to pay for Internet and electricity. The rent is $1600, which includes two dedicated parking places. And it's about five miles from my work. All in all, he's a hell of a deal. The deposit is rather steep, but the allow pets, so once Michelle starts getting better, we'll get a cat or two.
There's a problem with moving into this place on Wednesday: all of our furnature is in Missouri. So we spent some outRAGEOUS money to rent a very minimal set of furnature for less than two months. That'll be delivered on Wednesday.
As an aside, we've never bought a matress in our whole lives. So we decided to buy a nice, sleep number matress. We were rather blown away by the price, but we were able to get a showroom bed at a very steep discount. It's the most comfortable bed I've ever laid on, and my wife agreed, so we'll be getting that Monday.
It looks like I'm going to be doing some Ruby programming, and one of the big complaints with Ruby is performance. This, I believe, might finally silence that critique forever.
Work is quite stimulating, and challenging. It'll be quite a job!
Today, I was in a 'jumpstart' meeting nearly all day. I was certainly not looking forward to being in a meeting all day, but this was very, very valuable. I learned a great deal about all of the different parts of the company, including marketing, sales, engineering, everthing. Very cool stuff.
Yesterday, I took my motorcycle in to get a blinker light ordered, and then I was unable to start it. I had the guy look at it, and he noticed a very ominous rattle coming from the head. Plus, there's oil leaking there too. So there's some big problems with my bike, and I left it there. I called Michelle and took some vague directions from the biker mechanic about how to get to where I was.
Three terrifying hours and many, many cell phone calls later, we were finally together. Michelle was in some ferocious traffic, and in some bad areas too. She was scared, but she was a trooper and she rescued me. :-)
So in the mean time, we have only one conveyance. Normally, my wife would get pretty stir crazy, but with this crazy flu going around, she's content to stay in our room.
The task is very large, and there are now and will continue to be unexpected problems. But we'll be able to get through them. We're going to try to find a church this weekend too, which will be good.
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