Category: Complaining

I don’t know if I would call myself a planner. Definitely a dreamer, but less confidence on the planner. Sometimes a brain gremlin will escape and I’ll end up with half finished bookshelves in my garage or a computer simulation of a human powered flying machine. I’ve been thinking about trying this planning thing out. All of my friends live in town. I work in town these days too. My commute is 40 minutes on a good day and over an hour on bad days. Each way. I love my house but it is far and I would like for it to be near. So, what if I decided to start saving to buy a house in town? I could figure out how much I needed and put that away over a few years and then move right?

If it were simple it wouldn’t be me; it wouldn’t have that intrinsic me-ness. Here are the problems.

• My house is paid off. Not having a house payment is super awesome and it will be sad to have one again.
• I like the fact that my house is “new”. Plumbing and electric have improved since the the 70’s and anyone who says different is trying to sell you something (a 40 y/o house probably).
• Stuff in town is expensive. Selling my house wouldn’t buy me an unimproved lot in most of the neighborhoods I like.
• I like pretty things. I would like a house that is interesting but still functional.
• I want a garage AND a workshop. This thing where I have to move cars to tinker with stuff is bullshit. My unicorn must also have wings.
• I also want a house that is efficient in terms of electricity, water and gas use.

A person who is a planner would figure out the cost of building a reasonably sized house with the necessary features in an acceptable part of “in town”, decide how much house payment was tolerable and from that how much money needed to be saved. Then such a person would determine how much money could be saved balancing quality of life from available dollars and quality of life from spending two whole weeks per year driving to and from work (1.5 hrs * 5 days * 48(ish) weeks = 360hrs = 2.14 weeks).

I’ve been telling my friends I’m on the five-year plan, but clearly that’s crap because there is no plan. I have, however, obtained the Employee Direct Deposit Enrollment Form to change the amount that goes to savings. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to save one way or the other but I’ve been thinking it would be good to make an actual plan and commit to it. Shows responsibility, maturity, that sort of thing. Alternatively I could put a zip line between the office and home.

This will at least be an opportunity for me to collect pretty house pictures.

Today, one month and one day after getting my new car it was involved in its first altercation. I decided to drive down to Houndstooth for delicious coffee and while I was sitting in the left turn lane on Airport waiting to turn onto 45th the guy behind me (who had successfully stopped) smacked the back of my car. Apparently his dog was misbehaving and he took his foot off the brake while dealing with that. It was a red Volvo S40 (hi Zach).

The only damage I can see is two bites in the bumper from where his license plate screws hit but some of the plastic in the little groove back there is actually broken so they’ll probably want to replace the whole thing. I didn’t even see it coming. I was just watching the light and the on-coming traffic.

I was fantastically lucky in that the picture I took of the launch was the final one my camera could hold. I meant to clean the card off last night but it slipped my mind.

We are sitting in the most amazing traffic ever right now. It’s been 2.25 hours since we started driving (after sitting on the bus for an hour on the causeway) and we have travelled 16 miles according to the phone GPS. The much vaunted Titusville police traffic plan appears to have completely shit the bed. I think we’ve gone a quarter mile in the last ten minutes. A guy walking with his backpack passed us and is now ought if sight down the road.

My kingdom for a horse. Seriously.

Addendum: it’s 4:00 and we still have 25 miles to go. Plus it’s raining and Friday rush hour now too. Fuck yeah!

I am having a hard time on the ol’ bicycle. Saturday Zach and I rode 360 and about all I can say for that is that I ended up back where I started. There was a completely awful head wind all the way back home (15-25mph with gusts to 35. woo.) but I couldn’t make it up the hill to 2244 on the way out even with the tailwind. On top of that, though I didn’t know it at the time, the velcro strap from my under-seat bag was busy chewing through my nice cycling shorts from the company. A fact I didn’t notice until I was getting ready to leave for an after work ride with Kate today and she pointed it out. The ride was nice but on the way home we had just crossed a little neighborhood street in Clarksville and my left calf decided that was enough and stopped working. Just cramped right up into an awful little ball of hate. Also, Kate dropped her bike chain-ring first onto her leg helping me with mine after I had to pull over.

I’m just going to camp out here at work and wait for some stuff to go quiet for the evening so I can fix something. Then it’s back home for dinner and sleeps. Life goes on. So that’s enough bitching for now. The 360 ride is really pretty. Once you get past 2244 there’s a beautiful view of central Austin off to the East. It’s also nice and straight with only a couple of dangerous bits so I will probably try to do it again soon. I need to build endurance for the ride to work in May so being able to do that thing would be a good step. Bill and I went and rode on Sunday morning and that was fun. There were a lot of people out and it was chilly but not very windy and we came down Far West which was new for me. Then, this afternoon Kate and I rode from work up to the Shoal Creek loop and rode a few laps with some people from her club. I hadn’t ridden with a group before and it feels insane because everyone is so close together. We rode back through the neighborhoods West of Lamar and there are some beautiful houses back in there. Of course, the internet tells me that one of them is worth 8.9 million dollars so I don’t need to worry about living there but it doesn’t hurt to ride by.

So, bicycling hard, etc. but for as much as it makes me feel like I can’t do anything right it’s still fun. I guess I’ll keep it up. Also, I’m going to take some scissors and a lighter to the end of the velcro straps. They’re too long and I will not have them eat the other pair of shorts I just got today in the mail.

Discovery’s Launch No Earlier Than Dec. 17
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:07:40 PM CST

NASA managers have targeted space shuttle Discovery’s launch for no earlier than Dec. 17. Shuttle managers determined more tests and analysis are needed before proceeding with the STS-133 mission. The launch status meeting planned for Monday, Nov. 29, has been postponed and will be rescheduled.

The Program Requirements Control Board reviewed on Wednesday repairs and engineering evaluations associated with cracks on two 21-foot-long, U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the shuttle’s external tank. Managers decided the analysis and tests required to launch Discovery safely are not complete. The work will continue through next week.

The next status review by the PRCB will be Thursday, Dec. 2. If managers clear Discovery for launch on Dec. 17, the preferred time is about 8:51 p.m. EST.

Oh come on. February? Remember February? The month with a good window and we can do all the stuff we want to do and it doesn’t interfere with anyone and is the best damned choice? How about that? No. Ok. Thanks.

At least they pushed it back from Dec. 3rd.

It has been raining here in the Magic Kingdom for the last hour and a half. We rode Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain in the rain thus becoming, somehow, even more wet. Now we are sitting under a covered sidewalk by a gift store drying out a bit and seeing if the sky will relent.

Update: got a poncho and soldiered bravely on. Stopped in to see the Haunted Mansion and accidentally crammed three adults into a two person car. That would have been tolerable had the ride not broken down half way through. After five minutes or so we were released from the “Doom Carriage” and walked out along the ride path. It was actually pretty cool. Not exactly Behind The Scenes but still interesting to see the ghosts and other effects in full lighting.

Laying in bed thinking about work stuff. I have all of these seemingly great ideas for awesome things but all that will come of them is another night with not enough sleep. I ought to at least draw up some of the interface layout and interaction elements but tomorrow it will all look insurmountable and fantastical. I did at least manage to work through a structural issue with what I was doing today. That won’t go away or look stupid in the morning. I guess I’ll fire up the image editor and flail about uselessly until I’m tired enough to fall asleep.

And now it’s 1:20. Awesome. Tomorrow is going to be totally sweet.

Today was our 52nd 100+°F day this summer and apparently also the straw the broke the camel’s back. When I got home today my A/C was not on and the house was at 89°F. No amount of fiddling with the thermostat or the breakers has produced an improvement in the situation. I submitted a help ticket with Fox Service and called Strand Bros. and I suppose we’ll see who gets back to me first. If you ask me, six years isn’t very long for a system like that to go before failing but since it seems to me like it could just be a relay or something so I suppose I should withhold judgment. It is very hot though and I’m feeling cranky so I think I’m going to indulge myself and call it a piece of shit.
It’s not like it’s the most efficient thing in the world and if it were to be irrevocably dead it wouldn’t be so bad to get it replaced with something that didn’t use so much electricity. It’s probably not though. I think it might be dinner time. Dinner time somewhere with working A/C. Which would be just about when someone from a repair company would call me and say, “I can be there in five minutes, are you home?” I best be quick about it and then.

I’ve finished painting the living room. No pictures today since it’s still kind of a mess but the back wall is all brown now. I still think the brown is a little too red but it mostly looks off when it’s night and the kitchen light is on so maybe it’s just that there’s a little more red in the fluorescent output that’s messing with me. It looks ok. I’ve been thinking about some curtains for the living room windows too. A big, flat TV will have problems with glare coming off the windows that it is facing and curtains would help tie the colors together. I saw some nice ones at Crate and Barrel and at Z Gallerie.

Z Gallerie also had some pillows with nice fabric but they’re square and I think I’d prefer some of the cylindrical pillows. I think they’re called bolster pillows but you get the idea. I think I’m going to have a look at Etsy and see if anyone in town makes pillows and would do a commissioned lot.

This week I also got my annual nastygram from the home owners association. As per the unpublished quota bylaw, some insignificant horticultural transgression of mine triggered the release of the hounds and a three page letter informing me that I had weeds growing in my driveway expansion grooves and that if I was insufficiently speedy in remedying the condition or if that or another issue like it appears again in six months I’ll get fined $75 and be further threatened. I love my house but being beholden to this idiotic cadre of petty tyrants is galling. It makes writing the dues check in December a bitter pill to swallow knowing that the only real benefit I get from my $330 is my annual correspondence and the sight of the human whales beached in the outdoor public urinal pool down the street. My friends have offered several suggestions for how best to strike back at my suburban oppressors but instead I pulled weeds and mowed like a good little sheep. :|

Finally, I went shopping yesterday. I don’t really care for the proliferation of exaggerated embroidery and paint on Men’s shirts these days. Some of my friends can pull that look off but I think I just look silly in it. Too bad for me. I also wandered into the home store at Macy’s thinking they might have some pillows and they had a few but nothing like what I wanted. I did see a nice bed set that was on sale. It came with curtains and decorative pillows and all kinds of other good stuff. I’d need to break down and get the bedroom furniture and a new mattress though and I’m not sure where that’s going to fit into the finances with the chairs and the TV. I probably ought to buy the bed instead of the TV since I spend 6-8 hours a day on the bed and don’t watch much TV anymore but that would be the smart thing to do and since when have I ever done that?

The old blog-o-thinger has been down for a week while I unhaX0red it. The picture gallery is still not functional (curse you stupid gallery software) but the wordpress is all updated now so I figured it would be ok to put it all back online. Not too much to say other than that. The garden has been suffering in the post-hail, apocalyptic heat weather. One of the hills of acorn squashes is dead. The infected edamame are giving up, the corn isn’t growing. A pretty discouraging year all around but there is a silver lining. Lunch today was pasta and yellow squash with the marinara being made with tomato and basil from the garden and the one yellow squash coming from there as well. It was pretty good too.

Anyway, I’ll get the gallery fixed but the upkeep concerns me. I don’t really need administration as a hobby. I have enough hobbies already.