Look at this. Who the hell are those people, and who are the fools subsidizing them? Michael in particular is looking real bad these days, but Brit isn’t looking to normal either. I wonder - if you asked them if they thought it was all worth it, would they say yes?

The mortgage company has gotten back in touch and upped my limit to $175k from the initial $150k. Now to find a house. When I get back to work on Tuesday I’m going to contact a couple of the local realtors and see who can come up with something for me. I’ll post links to the houses I have been looking at as I find them.

One thing I have concluded is that I need to get frugal. No more $8 lunches, no more ‘I feel like filet mignon and shrimps tonight,’ no more ‘I must have that $50 videogame now,’ no more ‘New videocard for the gaming rig, yee ha!’ every 6 months. I’ve been very spoiled the past couple of years. While I knew this would come it is still bumming me out. Even today I had to restrain myself from bidding on a game on ebay.

Poor me, crying about no new toys, he he. Oh well. I’ll whimper intermittently about this over the next few months I’m sure.

I’ve started the home buying process. I went to the bankers yesterday and got pre-approved for at least $150k. I was a little surprised by this. I had some financial troubles just after college and I thought that those would still be haunting me, but the bank ran my credit rating and she told me I had the second highest rating of anyone she had run in the past 10-15 years. It was an 813 in case anyone is keeping score.

Next step is the bank sends me an official pre-approval letter, at which point I can begin talking to the realtors. I’ve already started looking for houses. If you’re interested you can use realtor.com and input maine as the state, Brunswick as the town. There are several houses for under $150k, including one that is only a 10 minute walk from my office and another that is a 240 year old house on 3 acres of land. I plan on looking at both of them as soon as my pre-approval comes through.

I’ve also scoped out a few in Harpswell and Topsham. There’s a nice oceanview cottage in Harpswell that looks promising that I plan on looking at as well.

More to come as the process continues. I might actually be in a new house by this fall though if all plays out well.

Check out Perdido Street Station. I’ve been reading mediocre heroic fiction for about the last year and a half, intersperesed with batches of superb manga. I had lost sight of how engrossing a truly excellent novel can be. The story follows the adventures of a cast of characters in a sort of steam punk alterna-history london with some aspects of tolkien-inspired fantasy mixed in. Yes, it is that bizarre Two thumbs up from me though, by all means check it out if you’re looking for something interesting to read.

Buried deep in a mefi thread was a post about The ‘74 cockroach attack. It sounded too interesting to pass up, so I didn’t. Worth a look for a short laugh. In brief: jackass army researchers inadvertantly unleash a horde of hard to kill giant cockroaches on a small town. Residents get pissed, the army denies, citizens ultimately prevail.

I love life’s little ironies. The PC gaming market is in its slow period this time of year. I’ve been playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights, and I am anticipating Battlefield 1942 (the demo is awesome), but not much else has come along now in about 3 months. So I started picking up Playstation 2 games to feed my jones. They’re in a great spot now; similar to when I got my original playstation, the system has been out long enough that games have started dropping into the $20 range. I picked up….
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I was mulling over theGoogle Answers service and thinking of other models along the same line and came up with an idea. In case you’re not familiar with it, you can use Google Answers to find answers to questions. Any questions. Want to know what Babe Ruth batted in his rookie year, and you can’t find the answer? You can ask Google Answers, offer a sum of money for the answer, and if one of Google’s experts knows the answer or how to find it and thinks your fee is sufficient, they will find the answer, tell you, then take your money. It’s brilliant. It remains to be seen whether it is sustainable or not, but in theory it’s an excellent concept. We’ll call it….
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A few months ago my brother and I had an argument about satelite radio services. He thought they were a great idea, I thought they were doomed to failure. While both of them have been struggling, the jury is still out on their longterm prospects. One of my central points in the debate with my brother was that there was no way I would pay $10 or so a month for access to satellite radio when I get what I need for free already. Among his counterarguments was the quality (which isn’t there - they’re streaming 96kbs MP3 files. By way of comparison, I won’t play anything below 192kbs on my stereo) and breadth of programming. Which is actually true. But still, I was adamant - I wouldn’t pay and I seriously doubted that enough people would pay to make satellite radio commercially succesful.

I still think that. But the irony lies here - today, I sent $10 via paypal to Radio Paradise. Why? Because they kick ass. They’re tremendously better than anything I can get off of broadcast radio. They’re exposing me to new artists that I like, something that I’ve been trying to do myself, largely unsuccesfully, by hunting through usenet for recommendations. Yet the quality is not that good, it’s prone to interruptions, and most importantly, I paid for it. And I’ll likely continue to pay them periodically if they continue to deliver.

So I’m guilty of intellectual dishonesty I guess, or at least of inconsistency. But do give Radio Paradise a try. Check out their website too, it’s got a great ‘community ranking’ feature similar to ones like Game Rankings that I’ve linked to in the past.

I went down to Andrew’s house this past weekend to deliver his Robotron machine, which had been living in my basement the last couple of years. Andrew managed to bribe Paul into driving the machine down to Andrew’s new place in MA. I came along for the ride. As a bonus Andrew and Patty cooked us up a feast and we got to check out their new house. Instead of reading about it you can checkout the pictures:

here

Planet of the Apes, the recent remake. Ugh. I’m used to Tim Burton movies having incomprehensible plots, but usually you can count on them at least being visually interesting. Not so here. An abomination of a script, unexceptional special effects, a killer ‘what the fuck were they smoking when they thought that up?’ ending, a long running length, and performances from uneven to awful all conspire to make this move a piece of crap. The makeup work for some of the apes is the only redeeming quality this movie has. Stay away, star far, far away. That’s my 2 cents.

I would definitely look like this:

From the nifty barcode generator

The Washington Post just completed an excellent 5 part series on the fall of Enron. It’s literally been years since I found myself turning to a newspaper for news. This piece has reminded me why newspapers actually have value in the modern information flow - the in depth investigative piece. Well worth a read if you’re curious how and why the current business scandels are taking place.

I spent the weekend plus a few days down on Long Island. Two of the days I went to the ocean and boogie boarded and body surfed. It was awesome. I put together a:

photo album

Check it out if you’re interested. Note that I’m still using Image Rodeo for the galleries. I love the software but not the templates to the pages look like…well….ass. But the photos are cool

The family has conspired to make a little photo album for Jesse’s amusement. Feel free to scope it out if you like here:

Dad’s album

Though it’s mainly for family and no one else is likely to appreciate its goofy sense of humor