Archive for April, 2005

Contestant number 2

4/1/2005

The first place I was going to look at in Mystic Connecticut is not going to happen, the cost is too high. I found out that loans for smaller amounts have much higher interest rates and it’s more than I can handle.

For example, a $150,000.00 loan with 30-year fixed rate you can get for about 5.75 to 6%. To the best of my knowledge this is as good as you can get.

However..

Anything under the 100k mark (or thereabouts) and you’ll get socked with a high interest rate of 7 to 8 percent or higher(!) Hence, I wasn’t able to afford the Mystic place.

I am now looking towards Norwich CT. Prices are much lower, so that will accommodate for the higher interest rate, plus I’ll be able to pay off the loan a lot faster. Norwich may not be my first choice for where I want to live, but who knows, maybe I’ll like it. We’ll see what happens after I check the place out.

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Contestant number 2 part deux (and troi?)

4/1/2005

Okay, a few things have happened.

The first place in Norwich I will not be able to look at. Reason: The old tenant positively refuses to move out. Bummer. It’s some crotchety hag who is being a pain in the ass even though she full well knows the place is up for sale.

But anyhoo.. As an alternative, the guy I’m doing business with concerning this home buying says he has two other places, so, that’s where I’ll be going tomorrow.

Oh, nice part about both places: They’re less than 10 miles from where I werk, how cool is that. Let’s hope the stars line up and I can grab a new spot to call home.

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Got ditched, no new home :-(

4/2/2005

(see edit below!)

I went up to look at the two places in Norwich today. I couldn’t find either of them. I called the agent’s cell phone. It was out of service (not a good sign). Then I called the realtor’s office and asked for directions. They were inaccurate. I called back, spoke with someone else, she put me on hold. I hung up, then called back 10 minutes later, and told them in my usual blunt way that I wasted 20 bucks in fuel trying to find these places and that I didn’t appreciate the unprofessionalism of the idiot who has a cell phone that doesn’t work. I told them to get me a new agent and to call me back - I will go see these places next week.. IF I still feel like conducting business with these idiots.

I am not a happy man.

– edit –

The idiot finally called me back. His stupid phone was “not in service” because evidently the area the place is in has no service for his phone. Yeah. Right. Well anyway - he gave me better directions.

So I went.

I saw the two places. The first one was okay and do-able. The second.. uh.. no.

Tomorrow I will take a walking tour of the place that I want and go from there.

My spirits are somewhat better now. (grin)

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Open mouth, insert foot, echo internationally

4/3/2005

The title is an old old tagline from the good ol’ days of FidoNET posts, but anyway..

I requested to be removed from a message board today. That I’ve never done before. Usually I stick it out or just let the account expire. Not this time. I absolutely do not want to be associated with that “community” any longer.

It’s unfortunate because the place was actually quite cool.. oh well.

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Pass Go and collect $200

4/3/2005

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but, while I was online doing the credit card maintenance thing I noticed a “Request Rebate Check” option. “I wonder what that is” I said to myself. It turns out I signed up for (although I don’t remember signing up for) a cash rebate program back in 2002, a long long time ago. The “balance” said I can get a rebate check of $284 bucks. So I called my credit card company to see if this was for real or not. It is, and they’re sending a check for $284. In’t that nice? (grin) I never thought that “cash back” thing was for real, but I guess it is.. and I didn’t see any obvious conditions for cashing it, nor am I signing up for anything by cashing it either, so.. I think it’s the real deal.

I also went to go look at the home today and got to walk the inside and check it out. It’s clean, which is good. Everything works, mostly. The only things I could find immediately wrong is that the water pressure was a bit low and a few other odds and ends. From what I could tell, there was nothing too major that isn’t fixable.

So anyway, I made an offer. The guy has 48 hours to respond. The offer I made is about 1/3rd the asking price, however, I personally feel that’s how much it’s worth. Will he go for it? I don’t know. I am reasonably sure the answer will be no, but I had to try. The answer will come tomorrow most likely. Either he’ll laugh in my face and say “No way, pal” or make a counter-offer.

We’ll see.

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Maybe it’s the stress?

4/3/2005

Since last night I have felt terrible. I’m not exactly sick, but I feel extremely fatigued. Yesterday morning was extremely stressful and that may have something to do with it. My back has been feeling sore and I have a little bit of nausea.

During the course of the day I have started to feel better. My back is not even a tenth as sore as it was this morning, and the nausea has subsided a bit.. not fully, but a bit.

This is weird for me because it is extremely rare that I get fatigued in any fashion due to stress. I’m simply not convinced it was the stress. Maybe it was something I ate. Maybe something else. I have no idea. All I do know is that my body and general mindset are returning to normal which is a good tihng.

Oh, small note: Those who visit this site regularly will notice the right sidebar is gone. It was slowing down the site (I had some PHP crap in there) so I removed it.

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No soup for you!

4/4/2005

I just got word back for the offer I made on the house. The answer was “It was not acceptable.” Guess that means “no”. (grin)

Ah well. Win some, lose some. At least I can say I tried, which is more than I can say for most people. I’ve also learned a things about financing, mortgages and so on, such as…

The bank will screw you nine ways to Sunday, all the time, every time. It is almost too easy to get sucked into a loan that leaves you owing money forever (or seems like that). It’s better to just buy things outright, including homes.

Credit cards companies are better than banks. Sound like a crazy statement? Not really. If I want a $10,000 personal loan from my credit card company at 1.99% APR for the first year and 9% after that, all I have to do is make one phone call and a check is in the mail. Done deal. Were I to do the exact same thing with a bank (and I’ve tried), the first response is “12%, nothing less”. Now while it’s true the credit card company is a bank, they seem to be a lot more accommodating than your local branch. Why I don’t know because I have a working history with both for about the same amount of time.

Live and learn, I guess. Fortunately I “learned” without taking a bath with my finances.

Being that I’m not going to buy a home anytime soon (evidently), I believe I will treat myself to a new Swatch .Beat watch. Considering the huge amount of cash I was just going to spend on a house which isn’t going to happen now.. why not? It’s either going to be the .Beat watch or some other useless thing. I’m feeling blue about not being able to buy a new house, so a little shopping therapy is definitely in order. Toys are good for the soul.

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Online addictions

4/5/2005

I’ve been hearing a few people around the office talking about this game called EverQuest and that it’s severely addictive. I said to myself “Okay.. how bad can it be?”, so I did a search and found this. Yeeee-ikes. I am so happy I never played that darn game.

Even though I wasn’t anywhere near the obsessive nature of the guy who killed himself because of EQ, I was similarly involved with the game Counter-Strike - a game I quit cold turkey. Put it this way, it cost me 80 bucks a month at one point. I had my own game server, team web site and put massive hours (on a daily basis) into the game. I did that for several months. Then one day I just woke up and said “This is fucking retarded” and stopped cold. The server was dropped, web site shut down, and I haven’t looked back since.

The sad thing is that I’ve known other people who pay their hard earned dollars to subscribe to games like EQ and others. I personally believe that pay-to-play is dumb. Actually, it’s beyond dumb. Anyone who would get into a contractural agreement and pay money just to play a game is beyond me. I admit, I did pay-to-play twice (just twice) with Yahoo! Games, but that was it. After that it just seemed ridiculous.. which it is.

There is always something negatively addicting when it comes to the ‘net. When I first got online, the big danger was chat addiction. After that it was instant-message addiction, then the online personals addiction thing, then the online games came into play and that became the dangerous addiction - which still reigns to preset. Who knows what the next dangerous addiction will be.

Whatever it is - I’m 99% sure I won’t be part of it, unless I start it. (grin)

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Who said Times New Roman was a bad font, anyway?

4/5/2005

I wrote this whole thing about removing font stylings from this site but decided to put them back anyway… ;-)

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IRC is still cool

4/6/2005

Last night I headed over to a DALnet server and joined the #computers channel just to kill some time. Believe it or not I actually enjoyed it - and it is RARE that I ever enjoy IRC chatting.. mostly because most rooms are filled with pre-teens that are all “1337″. For a change, the whole discussion was on old-school computers, particularly the Amiga 1200. Gotta admit, it was fun chatting. There were no “l337″ people and no kids. It was all full-on 100% computer geek night there. Very cool in my book. Who knows, I might go back again.

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