Hunting The Muse

Form, Essence

A good way to sum up one of the subthreads of the previous post is that I was working so hard on avoiding "form without essence" that I was basically falling into an "essence without form" trap. The real goal should be to make form reflect essence always.

GTD (Getting Things Done)

So, for a while now I've felt frustrated about feeling overwhelmed with ideas. One thing about me and ideas - I have a lot of 'em. The writing I do on this weblog - mostly politics, lately - probably represents about a fourth of my psychic load, which is why I sometimes go a few days without writing. My other things are basically computer programming, music composing, and financial analysis. That's on top of all the personal maintenance stuff we all have.

The combinations get pretty heavy sometimes. I'm always coming up with ideas for political website tools. I've wanted to write some music for political ads that can be freely used. I just rarely have the time to follow up on my ideas. (Luckily, I haven't developed an interest in writing music that is algorithmically composed from the movements of the stock market.)

So, ideas. Over the past year in particular I've been judging against myself pretty heavily for what I've seen as, plain and simply, a lack of bandwidth. Some people just seem to get a lot more done in the same amount of time as I do.

I decided that I just needed to reject out-of-hand the possibility that some people are just naturally able to get more done, and that I'd be forever doomed to have a lot of ideas, with no chance of making serious progress on them.

So the objective became, how do I get more done in the same amount of time?

It brings up some painful thinking. For one thing, I hate discipline and I hate guilt. I've got my own values and ideals, and I'm going to stick by them. I do not want to assert myself under deadlines and schedules all the time, because I thought that if I missed the deadlines then I would just feel crappier and crappier about myself.

Of course, the way I then chose to respond to those values was to only have a very vague relationship to my goals. And that only led to the pressure building up in a different form - psychically; a general feeling of malaise, of life feeling stuck and life's pressures building up against me.

So that wasn't working. Now, discipline. What do I mean about hating discipline?

Well, long-time readers probably have a sense of the thread I'm describing here. I hate anything that involves replacing an emotion with a construct, and then doing away with the emotion.

A law that continues to exist even when the reason for that law no longer exists. A political policy that is in action only to "see it through" even when it serves no public good anymore. And, on a personal level, any ambition that we have when we've forgotten the reason for the ambition.

Basically, I want to avoid the practice of telling myself I want something, when I might underneath not want it anymore. So, I want to avoid an over-reliance of self-coaching, as I judge that it can too easily turn into a sort of consciousless, rote ambition. Better to always be in touch with what your true desires and needs are in the moment.

So you can see where I've been stuck. By not wanting to coach myself in a direction where I would get out of touch with my long-term goals, I ended up focusing too much on short-term "in the moment" types of goals.

And as happens way too often with all of us, I had come up with the answer to the wrong question. I had the right answer to, "How can I live so that I don't coach myself into a rote, consciousless ambition?". But I didn't have the right answer to, "How can I live so that I am continually moving towards my long-term goals while also staying in the moment enough that I can always know if my long-term goals are still right for me?"

Now, don't get me wrong. Feeling my way through by responding to short-term goals has actually worked pretty well for me. Particularly with my career. After I lost my last salaried job just before 9/11, I have basically been improvising since then, and it's turned into a (so far) successful freelance business that I've recently incorporated. I certainly didn't have a three-year goal to incorporate, and I frankly think that if I had had that goal, it wouldn't have worked out as well.

Um, I didn't just write that paragraph to knock it down. It's actually something that gives me pause.

The part I'm trying to reconcile with it, though, is that I don't see a long term horizon with this business. I mean, I'll keep at it, but I don't have a clear set of ambitions on how to grow it in the future. I don't exactly want to hire employees, and my time only scales so much. The only way I can truly scale it is with my hourly rate, but that can really only go so high without going through a complete overhaul.

And then there are just the general background stresses of aging, feeling more responsibility to your future, etc.

So, back to the objective. How do I get more done in the same amount of time, and how do I more efficiently work towards my long-term goals, and how do I stay checked into my internal sense of what it is I really care about and want to do, and how do I dual-use my actions so that they work towards my goals, but still are worthwhile if I decide against those goals later?

I think you start with the master goals. Keep them vague. Like, "Have a musical career." Always write a supporting document detailing exactly WHY you have that vague goal. Check in with that WHY document regularly to make sure your reasons are still valid. If you disagree with any of them, reassess that master goal.

Come up with actions or subprojects that help to enable that master goal. Make sure that you always have something scheduled for yourself that is in alignment with that master goal.

Practice time-blocking. We get overloaded with tasks. But always schedule yourself time for those master goals. I might schedule myself an hour a day for classical score study. Or it might be two hours to just sit down and play with your kids.

Or, you might need to just schedule yourself time for play. Important psychological trick - view this as NEGATIVE SPACE, so it doesn't become an obligation that you have scheduled for yourself. Instead it is just a "free" block of time that is unavailable to anything else.

You start with that. Remember the story of the rocks in the bottle. A professor brings in a bottle, puts a bunch of rocks in it, and asks the class, "Is the bottle full?" They answer, "Yes!" Then he puts a bunch of pebbles in, which skitter down between the gaps in the rocks. "Now is it full?" The class, catching on, "No!" He fills even more gaps with sand. And, still not full, because he's able to pour a large amount of water in it before it truly overflows.

You have to start with the rocks. Do your master goals first. This includes vacations and social plans! Schedule them in. Within reason, of course, you can't schedule yourself a ten-year vacation to Hawaii. Then fill in the rest. Appointments and tasks would be the pebbles and the sand.

So what's really left is the appointments and the tasks. That's a lot of stuff. I've felt overwhelmed by it. I've started reading "Getting Things Done by David Allen, and it's helping a lot.

I won't describe the process here as there are plenty of other sites that can describe it. But here's my general process so far. There are a lot of kinks, but I'm slowly working them out.

If I have a "nag" anywhere at any time, then if I have my cellphone, (a Treo 650 with mVoice installed), I press and hold the phone button, which gets through the keyguard and automatically records to my SD card. I record my reminder, press the phone button again to stop recording, and then my brain is nag-free again.

Every night I go through my reminders and process them. If it's a task, I add it to my iCal task list - either work, music, or personal. If it's multi-step I put it in my project list, which is a page in my VoodooPad wiki.

I review the wiki weekly - there's a page for each project. I determine action items, and add the ones I'm enabled to do to my iCal task list.

I sync my Treo to iCal, and they show up in Agendus Pro. I haven't worked out all my categories yet, but I schedule my tasks by day. If I don't get a task done in a day, I just bump it forward. I don't use priorities. I do enjoy the "Urgency/Importance" grid, and I use that... generally looking at "Importance" as being whether or not it is aligned with a long-term goal, and "Urgency" as whether I'm feeling time pressure from it.

Physically, I basically threw every damn thing in my office into an inbox. My inbox is basically a bunch of trays. I bought a new lateral filing cabinet. It has hanging folders, but I put manila folders into them. I bought a $30 label maker. My inbox is overwhelming right now, so I am adding an extra step, where I give it a once over and grab a chunk of my inbox and throw it into my tickler; my 43 folders. So I know I will look at and properly file the urgent stuff in the next few days.

Flaws?

Well, my task list is getting pretty large, and it is still easy to feel grumpy if I don't get my tasklist completed for the day. I would actually like to get away from scheduled tasks, I think, and only categorize them by project and category. I need to figure out better categories to do this well, though.

The other thing is that as I'm doing this, I am identifying more and more potential "Next Action Items". The list is getting pretty long. It is rather overwhelming to know that at any moment, there are thirty things I could do if I just sat down and took the fifteen minutes to do them. It is easy to feel paralysis from that. I haven't figured that one out yet.

Results?

Well, I do feel more organized so far. I look at my history over the past month, and I've completed an average of six or seven tasks a day - just completely random, ambiguous tasks that had no deadlines, but were taking up psychic space from me just knowing that I needed to get them done sometime soon. And, my brain generally feels emptier of obligations, because they are all externalized.

However, that emptiness hasn't yet transformed itself into more presence for my friends or for "living in the now". Instead it's been a bit of an unsettled feeling. I think I am just getting used to it. My brain still is in this mode I call "tracking mode", continually scanning around for what it is supposed to be obsessing about, just because it's so damn used to obsessing over the stuff that isn't there anymore. I'm hoping that will shift soon.

I'm also finding that it is a bit easier to find things. I had no idea how much energy that was taking from me. If you need to find something, you have to spend five minutes to find it, and sometimes that five minutes is too much, so you put off finding it and doing the task that requires it. If it takes fifteen seconds, then you do the task, and much faster than you would have otherwise. I know it sounds simple, but those are the things we can also overlook.

I tend to either be in front of the computer, or out and about with my cellphone, so my "collection" approach is working well. If I'm going to carry something, then it's easier to carry my Treo than a Moleskine. Really all I want on the computer is a Quicksilver Plugin to append to a Voodoopad Page without having to open Voodoopad.

My main challenge now is to expand the GTD habits to the rest of my house. I just have clutter that don't have right places. I probably need to buy a couple of armoirs.

So, that's about the state of my "life organizing" habits. Feel free to weigh in how you do things, or if you have suggestions on how to enhance this approach.

Cursed, Werewolf, whatever

A random quote from a random review of the new Wes Craven flick:

This is not a process that works. You can't have somebody half finish a script, then start filming, then tell them you want something else and have them rewrite it, then when it's finished try to cut it into something else you thought of later. How many times can you make that mistake and not figure out what's what? I'm telling you guys, you just can't make a good movie the way you are trying to make movies. You can't even make a good sandwich that way. You'd end up with peanut butter and dijon mustard, with lightning bolt shaped bread that has jalapeno cheese sauce in the crust, and a little screen made out of white chocolate that you can use to look up football scores and download the new song by Ludacris. These people cannot be trusted to make decisions about art or entertainment. They should not be allowed out of their houses.

There's some pretty funny writing at that site.

Bad Fish

You want some nightmares? Go check out the pictures of the weird fish that the tsunami washed up. Creatures no one has seen before.

Update: D'oh! Urban legend. The fish exist, but it's not from the tsunami.

5000 Americans unaccounted for

5000 Americans unaccounted for:

Australian Press reporting that Powell concedes that the American death toll from the tsunami could be as high as 5,000. That's more Americans than died in the 9/11 attacks.

My Christmas Haul

Stuff I got for Christmas:

• A Conspiracy of Paper
  
• The Speed of Dark
  
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised : Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything
  
• The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring
  
• The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
  
• Onimusha 3
  
• Various gourmet-ish dry foodstuffs (if that's not an oxymoron)
  
• A poinsetta
  
• A fine china wasp killer
  
• Some chocolate
  
• A hot water self-heating electric teakettle
  
• Some cool candleholders that are also like puzzles
  
• A milk frother for the coffee machine that I don't have.
  
• A Starbucks gift card.
  

Looks like I'm on my own for buying The Return of the King!

Christmas Break

I'm taking a break for a few days. Spending time with family, taking pictures of nieces, eating amazing food. My family's tradition is oil fondue on Christmas Eve, and eggs benedict on Christmas Morning. There won't be as much time for the Internet, and that's probably a good thing. I might check in, but I might not be writing again regularly until just after Christmas.

And for our Jewish friends, we'd like to all wish them a happy... HHHaa.. CHHh... KHHaaaa...

(sorry, just a Daily Show reference there...)

Where Am I?

Boy, a couple of priorities change and everything gets all scrambled around. Where have I been lately?

Musically? I'm taking this course on film scoring, and our final project is to write around four minutes of full orchestral music for a student film. We're at a key phase in the project right now where we get our theme ideas approved - after that point we can start developing the material and syncing it with the film itself. This is all before we start actually orchestrating it. Needless to say, it's taking up a bit of time.

Business? As the year is wrapping up, I've been involved in all sorts of corporate planning. Since this is my first year of being incorporated, I don't really know what I'm doing in a few areas - specifically, taxes and retirement. It looks like I'm signing up for an "Individual 401k" plan, which is different than an IRA, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE, or the type of standard 401k that one's employer might give them. But as is always true with these sorts of things, there are right ways and wrong ways to go things, and you don't always know until after the fact what it was you actually should have done.

Politics? I'm still looking into graduate school, but I'm taking my time, because one of the things I know about myself is that I'm always coming up with project ideas, and that it's not usually worth immediately starting any of them, because many of my ideas don't age well. So it's usually wise for me to sit on my ideas for a while to see which ones stick around and which ones don't.

Socially? Hard to say. Dating's been a bit aggravating lately.

Weblog? Changes are afoot. ;-) Stay tuned.

Play It In Church

Best laugh of the day: The Penis Game

From The Comments...

My thread on Toby Keith has turned out to be quite popular. Here's a comment that I thought was pretty interesting. This high-schooler has got some guts.

Oh Dear. We're screwed. I have lost all faith in mankind. I know this is off topic, but I just have to get this off my chest. I'm going to tell you a tale of Hypocrisy and injustice.

My High School was letting people dress up in costumes on the 29th. I decided to go as Jesus (Is that wrong?) For an Hour and a half, students and administrators stared and laughed at my costume. Once I reached my PE class, some stupid Right Wing Evangelists come up to me and bawl me out. One even came up face to face with me. He said. "You're Not Jesus! You can't do that!"

I said "Uhh...I'm pretty sure God has a sense of humor too."

"Well stop this s**t right now. You can't do the things our lord did!" He retorted.

I fought back. "Well, didn't Jesus say that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could accomplish the things he did?"

And here was his very Christian Response. "NO HE DIDN'T. WHY THE F**K ARE YOU DOING THIS! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THIS!" (Very Christian)

I said. "Let he who has no sin cast the first stone."

He said "Shut up, you're not Jesus. You can't say that!"

I said "So, just because I'm neither Jesus nor a Christian I can't follow Jesus's philosophies?"

His intellectual response was "Shut Up."

This is where a pending republican kid got in. "How can you hate George Bush, who is a devout Christian, and portray Jesus?"

I said "What about gang members who wear rosaries while they do drive by shootings?"

He said "Well those are gangs."

I said "Oh, so let me get this straight. Wearing Rosaries and doing a drive by shooting is self contradictory. But a hardcore Jesus Following Christian ordering an attack on civilian targets is the lords work?"

This is where the evangelist guy stepped in again and commanded, not asked, commanded me to take my costume off or else.

I said "No. Just because you're an evangelist doesn't mean you hold any supremecy over me or anyone else. In gods eyes, We are all worth the same. You are equivalent to the athiests."

He said "Take it off B***h!"

I said. "Oh yeah, I'm really sure Jesus wants you to beat someone up. Yeah, the real christian thing to do is to threaten the life of anyone who dresses up like him."

Well, he went to the administrators and said that my costume was offensive. Yeah he, as an evangelist, is willing to let the school participate in a satanic holiday and let people dress up like satan or other demonic entities. And I dress up like Jesus, the universal symbol for peace and love, and I am offensive. Makes perfect sense. Well, the administrators came with a police officer and I was taken to the office. They informed me that my costume was offensive. Once I decided to attack their policy they snapped before I uttered my sentence and said "We are not here to debate the issue, the fact is you are offensive!" For you see, previously this year, I wore an "I Hate New York" T-shirt and they apprehended me. I told them my rights and I whooped their asses in a debate on their policies. So now they know if they let me speak, that it would make their policies look hypocritical. So, they didn't allow me to plead my case. They called my mom so she could give a change of clothes. I had to give my mom my costume so I could wear it for the rest of my time at school. I didn't draw to far into conclusion until the very end of the day, when this one girl in my class came up to me. When I was being taken away, I waved hi to her and she smiled and shook her head. Now in our sixth period, she came up to me and said.

"Can I use that?"

I said "What."

"I'm going to be a director when I grow up. I just thought it was a cool Image, Jesus being taken away by police officers. I want to use that in one of my movies."

I told her okay. Then she told me.

"You know, you are a lot more like Jesus now than you were when you had your costume on. I mean, When Jesus came to earth to rid the land of sin. He was persecuted and unjustly accused of being a blasphemer and a heretic by the people he was trying to enlighten. Here you are held on the same accounts of blasphemy by the people who claim to be a follower of Jesus. In Jesus's time, his accusers would rather let a murderer go free than Jesus. In our time, these right-wing idiots decided that it was alright to dress up like satan and vampires. And they subject you to punishment because you dressed up like Jesus. If anything, these people made you more like Jesus than you did yourself."

Of course, I was well aware of this. But hearing that from another persons mind was all the satisfaction I could ask for.

Well, that is the end of my story. I hope I didn't dehumanize evangelists or republicans. I am well aware that some republicans are cool, and some evangelists actually follow the teachings of christ. I just found this little situation Ironic.

Euthenasia

I probably would have won the costume contest too. Damn.

Great Movie Reviews In History

This has got to be one of the funniest sentences I've read in a long time. From Capone's review of Polar Express on aintitcool.com:

But the spectacle that Zemeckis and his animators create around the arrival of Santa Claus is one that Leni Riefenstahl herself would have been proud of.

Seriously. If you can't make a clear delineation between Santa and Hitler, you might just have had a traumatic childhood. :-)

Lost: White Rabbit

Argh!!! I don't know what the hell is wrong with ABC! My Tivo started recording at the exact right time, and recorded for a full hour, but I missed the last few seconds! Anyone know what happened the last minute or so?

The last thing I saw was Doctor dude mentioning his dad in Sydney to Kate. Camera was on her.

Lost Episode 3

Does anyone know what happened at the very end of Lost tonight? The music was playing, Iraqi guy tossed an apple to the jerk, and it was just about to focus on the back of Locke, that creepy whistle-maker with a secret. I'm sure there was going to be some sort of reveal there. What happened from that point on?

BOOM!!!

SAY IT LOUDER, SISTER!!!!!

Yeeeeeeeeehaw!!!!

Update: All right, all right... it's really more of a "Sssssssss....."

Back To The Grind

Well, the move into the new house is mostly completed - I'm mostly on to unpacking, arranging bookshelves, and ordering furniture. The whole goal for the house involved getting something that had room for a piano, so the piano project will be starting shortly. With all that is the need to start working again - it appears a new project with a new client will be launching tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to that.

This all happened during a ton of political activity. The Republican convention, batty Zell Miller, a slightly rejiggered Kerry campaign, Clinton in the hospital, a couple of crazy comments on some other weblog entries, messed up national polls, 1000 KIA, Cheney claiming that a Kerry vote puts the US in danger, and the usual GWB incompetence. How will I ever catch up?

House Final

Well, I own the house. Phew! All over! And I finished moving all my possessions to the house tonight, too. I didn't have time to clean it properly before I moved in so that will be a bit complicated to manage, but overall I'm quite happy.

The rest of this entry will be an in-detail description of exactly what I went through with the mortgage process. It'll be boring, but for people who don't know what to expect with mortgages, maybe it'll give some idea of what sort of things can happen. I know I would have liked to have read an in-detail description of a mortgage process before I started.

I looked for a house for a long time. I used a buyer's agent so I could get into houses with lockboxes. All the buyer's agents around here ask you first if you've been preapproved. It's a seller's market right now so you pretty much have to be preapproved to have a chance of landing your house.

I got preapproved through a mortgage broker that a friend recommended. After several offers that were rejected, I made an offer on this house that was accepted. The offer added 2k onto the asking price, and asked the seller to pay up to 6k of closing costs. Normally, the buyer pays closing costs. In this market, closing costs for this price range is 6k-7k. So this meant that while I would normally have to come up with 6k when it was time to sign for the house, here I'd only have to come up with money if the closing costs were greater than 6k. If the closing costs were less, it would benefit the seller. For example, if closing costs were only 5k, the seller would pay 5k and that would be it - they wouldn't cut me a check for the extra grand.

I put $2500 down for "earnest money". This is to show that you are serious. And if the buyer welches on the deal for a stupid reason, the buyer can lose that money. If the deal goes through, the earnest money is contributed towards closing. In my case, since seller paid closing, I'd actually get most or all of the $2500 back.

I decided to try and fully finance the loan for more cash flow flexibility. After briefly considering a 30-year fixed loan (which is generally advisable since rates are so low), I realized there was next to no chance I would be in this house for an extremely long time, so we went for lower interest rates and a 5/1 ARM. This means that the interest rate is fixed for five years, and adjusts after that. We did that for 80% of my loan. The other 20% was to be a HELOC. It basically acts like a credit card that starts out maxed out - you pay it off, and then when you want, you can get money from it again (up to maxing it out).

Originally, both loans were described to me as having interest only options. Meaning, for added flexibility, you can pay just the interest payments without the principal. The 80% loan (the "first") was quoted at 4.875%, and the 20% loan (the "second") was quoted at 6%. Over the phone, they gave me an indication of what my monthly payments would be at that rate. I specifically asked for PITI numbers, both loans added together. This means that I was asking for the monthly payment with principal, interest, taxes, and insurance all added together. I wanted this so I could compare the numbers to other brokers I was considering. My original broker had switched careers and was unavailable at the last minute (after the offer had been accepted), so I was in a bit of a mess trying to get another preapproval together and finding a new lender.

That afternoon, I was told by two separate brokers, the rates went up. I tried calling my favorite broker right back to tell them that I wanted to "lock" the rates, which is good for thirty days. The next morning, before they got my message, I was told by the broker I was going with that the rates went up again. Huh.

That was okay, they said, they could get me into this other program. (I would find out much later that the program that was first quoted to me was from FNBA - First National Bank of Arizona - but I haven't checked up on that.) We locked in the other loan at 5.125 for the first and 6.3 for the second. The broker promised to set a "rate watch" for the other program, and if the rate came down again, we could slide right into it. The reason given was that the other program didn't move with interest rate like standard loan programs did; didn't mirror the daily bank rate movements. Instead, it was set every few days at the discretion of the people behind that program, by watching trends and making judgments. I would check with my brokers every few days, but this other program never came back into the picture.

The FNBA loan wouldn't have needed any tax or bank account documentation, because it was a very credit-driven program, and when they ran my credit they saw I had excellent scores. Upon locking the new numbers, though, my loan officers asked for my financial docs - they said they could get those rates without the docs, but this was in hopes of knocking down the rate another eighth.

During this time the home inspection happened - we found a problem and negotiated it to be fixed. Sellers asked for closing to be moved up to the 17th, and we agreed, conditional on the mortgage brokers being able to bring it home that fast. The brokers said it would be possible, but tight.

During this time, I received my Good Faith Estimate from my brokers in the mail. The numbers were significantly higher. This was the first big disagreement. Despite me asking them specifically for PITI numbers over the phone, they had given me interest only numbers, while telling me they were PITI numbers. I felt misled by this and was annoyed by it and had a talk with the mortgage brokers about it and told them to be more clear with me. They said they'd give me a $150 credit on closing costs. After that I let it go, because honestly, I could have plugged it into an Excel spreadsheet (I had just figured out the PMT and IPMT functions) and checked the numbers myself and found out that they were telling me interest only numbers.

After the home inspection, we were waiting for the appraisal. During the brouhaha about the payment numbers, I took a night to think about whether I wanted to continue with them, so the appraisal wasn't ordered until the next day. Even with that, though, I wasn't sure that the appraisal was ordered as soon as it could have been. I was nervous about the appraisal because this house is a nicer house than other houses on the block and valued higher because of it - I was worried the asking price was too high.

The appraisal came back fine and I thought that was the end of it, but then I heard that my broker had mentioned to my agent that they were mildly worried about the possibility of the underwriters objecting to the value of the house.

Then on the next working day, I found out that that had gone through also. The final step was for them to run my credit a second time to make sure nothing had changed.

This is where the real problems started. My first credit check three weeks earlier had been great - three very high scores. There was also a fourth entry on there, but it was for a very bad misspelling of my name and I had never opened an account under that name, so I ignored it.

All of a sudden on my second credit check, I had two zeroes and only one high score. My broker called me and said that it had happened, and it had immediately triggered an "Exceptions process", where the loan had to be packaged up and sent directly to the underwriters for the company so they could consider an exception. (Before this point, they had been trying to underwrite it in-house, after which they would sell it to the lender.)

This took a week. The sellers moved out of the house, their fast closing date not even close to a reality.

The explanation given for the zeroes is that I had had no credit card activity over the previous six months, which is true. I've been debt free for a while and living off my debit cards - I thought that meant I was being good with my money. But it's bad. Warnings had showed up on my first credit report but I hadn't paid any attention because my scores were so high, and my brokers didn't draw those warnings to my attention. But, it was still suspicious that the scores would change so drastically so fast.

On the day the scores got declined, I called a bank where I had opened a corporate account, and asked if that may have affected it. They said no, but if it was a zero, it might just be because the credit reporting service was down, and the system would just need to be reset. I called my broker and told them this, but they said that that wasn't the problem.

So, a week later, after the exceptions process had exhausted itself, I was informed that the loan had been declined. This was a complete surprise to me and I was feeling sorry for myself. They offered me a different loan package that was 5.5% for the first and 8% for the second, a significant difference in monthly payment. While asking me this, they said that the first could be interest only for 5.75% or principal-required for 5.5% - I said I preferred the lower interest rate. While explaining it to me, they said that the 5.5% loan led to an increased monthly payment, while the 5.75% loan would have exactly the same monthly payment as my old loan. This annoyed me and I said, "You mean that this newer loan with an interest only payment is exactly the same as the old loan's principal plus interest payment?" They said, "Yes, that's right." That made me annoyed at them again because it was exactly what I told them not to do before - representing it as PITI when it was ITI. But I didn't say anything that time. This loan package was with First Franklin and had significant prepay penalties, which I didn't like.

I said I would think about it but they said they would need to know within an hour, so they could tell the underwriters at the office to start on it that night (a Thursday night) with the hopes of approving it the next day. I called them back at 4:00 and told them to go ahead and start the process. In parallel I spoke to another mortgage broker who wanted my business. He was worried I was being scammed although didn't have concrete reason to believe it yet. By this point I had asked my brokers point blank who my loans were with and they told me it was with Countrywide. After talking with this broker, I called Countrywide directly. I spoke to someone there who said it sounded like something was messed up with my credit scores, and told me the same thing that my bank had said a week beforehand; that it was probably because of a systems glitch.

I called my broker back at 6pm and he answered - I repeated the thing about the systems glitch to him, and he said that he had just heard something similar from a colleague, and that perhaps we had just discovered the same thing. That night I wrote him an upset note saying that I had warned them about that very thing a week beforehand.

The next day he wrote me back and said that they really had checked into that thing beforehand, but it wasn't as simple as a systems glitch; that I really did have a lack of credit card activity and that it was a problem. However, through talking with Countrywide, they found out part of the problem was that one of Countrywide's three scores was that awful misspelling of my name that had a zero. They were able to go into the system and require it to pull the valid one instead. So then I had two good scores and one bad score. It appeared the other one was possibly something similar, since they had credit records for multiple versions of my name. I eventually got through to them and had them correct the name errors, but I don't know what affect that has had on my credit score. Now, other brokers have told me that a good broker should have caught that from the outset. I don't know if that is reasonable. I do think they should have pushed harder to resolve the zeroes from the outset, though. At any rate, at 5pm that night, my broker called me back and said that after a lot of arm twisting and phone calls, he was able to get Countrywide to make the exception and approve the loan. Despite my feeling that that effort could have been taken earlier, I was quite complimentary to my broker in reaction.

So, we were finally back at the first loan rates. I relaxed for the weekend. I was told we would probably sign on Monday.

The sellers had agreed to let me move in early, and I will owe them a few days of rent for it. I got the keys over the weekend and set up all my services and utilities.

On Monday, I was packing boxes all day when my broker called me. He said that it was only the first loan that had been approved, but the second loan was 1.125% higher. The second was originally 6.3%, so I said, "So it's like 7.5%?" And he said "Yes, that's exactly what it is." I wasn't happy about this. The deal was that since my first loan with Countrywide had been declined, it triggered Wells Fargo to decline the second loan. Even though Countrywide reconsidered, Wells Fargo evidently would have taken 7-10 days to reconsider, and it wasn't guaranteed since I had that problem with my lack of credit card activity. He said I should go ahead and take the second loan with the higher rate (which was also through Countrywide), and then in a couple of months when my credit score was fine, I could just go ahead and switch over to Wells Fargo, and they would probably let me do it at no cost to me. So, grumble grumble, but okay.

An hour later I am asked to sign the next day. The next day was really crazy for me - movers showing up at 9 AM and my parents due in from Colorado immediately afterwards. I asked if I could do Wednesday, but they said it couldn't wait that long, and could I do it that afternoon. At 4:15 I'm asked if I can make it to the title company in time for the title company lady to leave at 5pm. I didn't like that because it's my first house and I was expecting my buyer's agent or my brokers to be there for questions or something ceremonial, or something like that. The title lady called me back and said we could meet halfway at 5:30, at a Starbucks. Whatever.

So I'm at the Starbucks and we're signing the papers for the first loan, the 5.125%. I don't see any mention of there being an interest only option. I call my broker and he answers, and said that he didn't set it up that way. I asked why not, and he said he probably screwed it up. That when we were talking about the First Franklin loan, I said I wanted the 5.5% without the interest only instead of the 5.75% with the interest only, and so he applied that thinking to the Countrywide loan. I hung up to call my agent, who wasn't available since it was after 6. I called him back and said I didn't understand why he would assume I didn't want the interest-only flexibility if it was at the same rate. He said it was different rates, and that he checked his notes and was sure he explained to me that to do the first loan at interest-only, it would have been 5.375%. I don't remember him ever repeating that figure to me and I think i would have remembered. But it's possible. He said that we could stop signing and take another few days to try and push it through as interest-only, but that he couldn't do it quickly because he already spent so much time calling in favors on the other loan. I hung up annoyed and continued signing.

In signing for the second loan, I see that it says 7.625% . He had said 7.5% over the phone. It's just an eighth, but at this point I'm so ticked off at all the circumstances that I'm getting pretty steamy. I call him back and he doesn't answer. I leave a nasty message saying that I know it's just an eighth, but there are all these little mistakes and none of them are in my favor. I tell him I'm considering having him redraw up all the closing papers and send them on to the title company the next day, with him eating every available margin. I then tell the title company lady that we'll finish signing the next day. In the meantime, I go ahead and accept the broker's gift - a basket full of food. On the way home I try calling again and get through to the broker. We end up yelling at each other for a while. He tells me that it was a slam dunk deal that just went sideways, that he's put himself through more stress than he's ever been through on a mortgage, that he's not making any money, and hell, he sure sounds like he feels like crap. I decide, fuck it. I let it go. I did not ever apologize for being nasty nor do I feel like I deserve to, but I explained to him that he needed to see it from my perspective - this was a lousy deal, a lousy experience, and I had three bad surprises on the day of signing, two of them while I was signing the papers. But inside I'm thinking, really, what the hell am I going to do about it? Threaten to not buy the house I've already moved into? Plus, I felt a bit indebted to the sellers, who had been so nice and understanding and flexible. My broker mentioned something about helping me with a free refi in six months - free for me if he could make the margins work out in a way to pay his costs. I'm not sure I will even take him up on it, because after pressing I found out that he's really only eating margins on the second loan, not the first loan, so I think he was exaggerating when he said he wasn't making any money.

I finished signing yesterday - there were no more surprises. I was told today at 3:15 that the deal "recorded", which means I officially own the house. In an example of extraordinarily fitting symbology, at the exact instant they left the message saying the mortgage process was finally completed, I was taking a dump.

After all that, I still haven't completely worked my way through how the closing deal was drawn up. There's something about how the closing costs of the second loan were transferred into the financing of the first loan... but the figures that were made most apparent to me were that closing costs were $5800 and that I'd get $2700 back - all my earnest money and then some, I think. I am not sure how much of the closing costs the sellers paid, it might be the $5800, or that might be an accounting thing and they might have paid the full $6000. I'm waiting for the check to be mailed to me in the next couple of days. I also owe a couple hundred dollars directly to the sellers for the few days of rent I've already been here.

So, in hindsight? It is hard to say what the verdict is. I think my brokers are not the best at dealing with problems. I can, however, see that brokers are used to dealing with large sums of money and are really not concerned about the impact of fractions of a percentage point on a monthly payment. Once you're into real estate, the name of the game is more how effectively you are leveraging someone else's money (the bank's), not the fractions of an interest rate. Someone like me who follows detail pretty closely is focusing on a different set of things than they would probably prefer. So I can imagine that me being upset about figures being misrepresented a bit here and there can very well just be an example of a first time home buyer freaking out over little things because he doesn't have perspective.

But all that said, it's my right. Their frigging job is to look at things from the first time home buyer's perspective, and provide a solid service, and either keep these details straight, or effectively manage my expectations. I know full well that most other buyers aren't going to follow or understand the details that I've been following, but it's not a flaw of mine that I follow this stuff - there are plenty of home buyers that don't even know they are on adjustable rate mortgages and they are going to be pissed when they find it out. Me being a little bit anal about my money is not going to be painted as an inconvenience to the people that I am paying.

There are things I don't know. I don't know how much money a mortgage broker actually makes by adding on percentage points to the rate a lender quotes them. I know it's always a split - partly an origination fee, partly a margin/spread they get from the bank.

And I don't know if it's cynicism or a gut feeling, but part of me believes these brokers weren't making all the margin cuts they could have, and quite possibly added some back in to justify their added stress. But it's also possible that they just worked their little hearts out to get me the best deal possible, and that like he said, it was just a slam-dunk deal that went sideways, and that they've never even seen problems like these happen before, and that they ate a lot of costs to bring it home. I could call FBNA to see if those loan rates ever existed at that time range, and First Franklin to see if the prepayment penalties were as high as they claimed, and Countrywide to find out the rates on their HELOCs, etc, etc, etc... or I could just work on decorating my house and give them the benefit of the (many) doubts and let it go.

House

I can't believe I'm buying my house at a freaking Starbucks.

House

Well, after much pain and gnashing of teeth, I was able to overturn the decision to decline my mortgage loan. Hooray!

Long long ago, someone made a credit entry for a Kurt Sissert - not even close to my name. But it was enough for one of the credit companies to return two scores for one SSN - a good score (for my real name), and a zero for good old Kurt Sissert. It turns out that the underwriter pulled the wrong number. Really, they're supposed to take a closer look, but they didn't.

The other one still fell afoul of the "low credit activity" thing, because I've only been using debit cards for the last six months. But, after me coming down on my broker and a lot of phone calls, we were able to pull it through.

I sign on Monday, I think, but we went ahead and made a rental agreement, so I spent my first day in the house today. Hooray! Possessions get moved over in a couple of days. Turns out I might be a homeowner by my birthday (Friday) after all!

Geek details: I decided to use Comcast for cable internet, with an Airport for wireless, and Vonage for my phone service. I got that all working today.

House News

Those of you following along know that I am buying a house. We've just been in dotting i's and crossing t's mode lately. Pre-approved, done with home inspection, done with appraisal, underwriting agreed that the house was worth the loan - we were just getting ready to sign the papers.

Today, my loan got declined.

Three years ago I had a fair amount of debt. I came out of college in '95 with student loans, several thousand in credit card debt, and a car loan. I had a job in California and had moved out of state to telecommute in an effort to have lower living expenses and get ahead with my money. After a few years, I was finally getting over the hump. I remember when I finally paid off the last of my debt, and then I was surprised at how relatively easy everything felt afterward, due to interest working for you instead of against you.

I basically let my credit cards rot because I was so sick of the games they play - charging you finance if you're late by a couple of days, charging you finance even if you pay your credit card in full, because of the interest that builds up while your check is in transit. My cards were paid off, my loans were paid off, and I owned my truck. I liked it that way.

For the last two years I have lived off of my debit card, with the exception of when I bought my laptop - I paid that off the next month.

My credit ratings have consistently been above 800, which is close to maximum. But on the final spot-check for the loan, they ran my credit again, and two of the reports came back blank. They were blank because I hadn't had much recent credit activity. So, my loan got declined.

In other words, this bank is not allowing me to buy a house, because I am too good with my money.

They're setting me up with another loan with higher interest rates that I can't refinance for three years. That's an extra $120/month. I guess I am high-risk because I pay off my debts. What a fucking stupid system.

Coors Loves The Rockies

So I'm reading this vacation magazine about New Zealand. It's talking about the South Island, which has this stunning mountain range - the Misty Mountains or something. Evidently it's really popular for film shoots. The guide in the article mentioned that Coors was down there shooting a commercial. The commercial? "Nothing Tastes Like The Rockies".

A Career Is Launched

Funniest line I've read about Paul Hamm:

The kid will be a guest on Leno or vault over some dead body on "Law & Order" this fall.

Carly And Bob

I don't know who put in the greater effort: Carly Patterson in winning gold, or Bob Costas in trying to interview her afterward.

Oh well. I guess she went to the Olympics to win, not to make his job easy...

Olympic Gymnastics

I watched the team finals of women's gymnastics tonight. The announcers are bugging me - they talked a lot about the mistakes that the U.S. made as if it was the only explanation for the U.S. not winning, and that basically overshadowed what was a dominating performance by the Romanians. They won by seven tenths of a point, which seemed to be a pretty large margin. If Patterson hadn't have messed up on the uneven bars, and Kupets hadn't missed that combination on the floors, they still would have been behind, and those were the two big mistakes of the night.

Online Dating Article

I've had this weblog entry that has yielded a lot of discussion. For a while this entry was the number one google match for "eharmony sucks", although it's fallen a bit. Anyway, someone has since written an article about eharmony and I got quoted. That's always amusing. :) It's a well-written article by Joel Keller, go check it out.

AVP! AVP! AVP!

Alien Versus Predator is out!

Okay, I'm probably not going to see it.

But, check out its rating:

'Alien vs. Predator' is rated PG-13 for Violence, Language, Horror Images, Slime and Gore.

Oh, they fell afoul of the dreaded SLIME provision! If not for that, they might have had the ultimate prize, PG!

Tigger Acquitted

Tigger Is Not A Pervert.

Phew!

I Rented Hellboy

Hellboy was better than I thought it would be, but I had to return it really fast due to the by-noon return deadline. Then I read a review and found out there was a tiny bit of extra footage after the credits, that I didn't see. If you know what it is, could you leave a comment describing it?

Switching Banks

I'm thinking of switching banks from Wells Fargo to Washington Mutual. WF's fees are just insane, especially for corporate accounts, one of which I'm about to start. If anyone has anything good to say about other banks, let me know. I'm looking for low fees and good features - bill pay and quicken integration most importantly.

House Status

So, since the offer got accepted, I got worried that the living room wouldn't hold the grand piano I want to buy. So I went by with a tape measure to do some measurements and had my fears allayed. We came up to the house at the tail end of an open house, which was weird. But it turned out it was just because the open house had been scheduled before they accepted the offer. And they're probably trying to keep interest drummed up in case I, as a first-time buyer, gets cold feet and backs out (I won't), or if the home inspection craps out (hope not).

Then, the next day my mortgage broker called me up and said that he's transitioned to real estate sales and wasn't up on the products as much as he used to be, and didn't feel like he could offer me the service I deserved. This is the guy with whom I had my preapproval. So I had to do another round of mortgage broker hunting, which I wrapped up after two days. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going with now. Now I have to decide when to lock in my rates. I might just do it tomorrow. The loan sounds great, with a rate better than I thought and a payment lower than I planned for.

Even though I was preapproved, I have been looking long enough that my previous credit scores expired, which means they have to run my credit again. I didn't realize that either - and, since I'm self-employed, they want to look at my bank statements again, which I didn't realize. I don't like that because I've actually been holding some checks, which makes my income appear lower than it actually is, because I'm waiting to set up a new bank account somewhere else. So, that kind of sucks - it could mean the difference of a quarter or half point in interest.

Next up is the home inspection, on Monday. I've got all this anxious energy now - I just want to move!!

And I want my piano! I've been away from Chopin and Ravel and Prokofiev for far too long!

House

Made an offer on a house, for the sixth time. And I guess sixth time is a charm, because this time the offer got accepted. There's still the home inspection, but I think I have my house.

Blog Shrinkage

Forgive me for the blog shrinkage. I got socked with a slammer of a cold and I've been out of commission all week. More coming soon...

Pop Quiz!

Winonah Ryder or Boy George?

Real Estate Hunting

"Oh, you're here! CHRISSY! WILL YOU GO GET THE STINK OUT OF THE BATHROOM?!"

Heard from a homeowner yesterday as I showed up to see her house that was for sale.

Busy Week

I'm reviewing my stats, and I believe I have just had one of my most busy weeks ever. This week I:

• House Hunted
• Made an offer on a house (didn't get it)
• Drove to Seattle and back for a three hour class one day - a ten hour chunk of time
• Billed fifty-nine hours of other work.

Honestly, I'm usually not all that busy from week to week - that's by far my record for hours worked in one week since I started consulting. Programming is odd because the time you bill is pretty much always time when you are thinking very hard - you don't bill for work/social things like a lawyer would. And, I'm not one of those supergeekfreaks that can live on jolt cola, pizza, a textbook, and the amber lighting of a flickering monitor screen. So that's a red-letter week for me. Just goes to show what kind of motivation you can find when a client you care about is in dire need.

It would have been cooler had the house offer gone through, but oh well. And I wasn't able to do my homework for the class... so it's not all peaches and roses. But pretty cool overall.

House

Made an offer on a house today. Eek!

Harris and Klebold - 4/20

The Depressive and the Psychopath - At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. By Dave Cullen

Columbine affected me personally more than 9/11 did. Columbine was a perversion in a way that 9/11 wasn't, because it was all American kids. Something got corrupted that isn't supposed to get corrupted, unlike massive foreign policies.

The only thing that comforts me about this article is the knowledge that maybe one of the two kids wasn't as completely far gone as the other. But the bit about the psychopath doesn't help me at all. Why do psychopaths happen? In the suburbs?

I know there's the pat answers from the more automatic and snarky among us, ("dude, it's the suburbs! isn't it obvious?") but sometimes things demand deeper delving and greater effort to consider. If we accept the thing about the psychopath, it means a psychopath can emerge spontaneously anywhere, even in a kid in the suburbs. I don't find that comforting at all.

Update: There's supposed to be another great article about the Columbine survivors in the April issue of GQ. (Viggo Mortenson is on the cover.)

Other Bloggers' Desks

For some reason I feel better about my home.

Weblog Planning

One of the things I'm thinking of doing is splitting my weblog, but I thought I'd let myself be affected by my readers! So if you have input on the following, let me know.

I've been writing about politics more and more. I realize that might not be so interesting to my friends. And most of my technological interests are having to do with groups, consensus, decision-making, and... politics. So I'm thinking of making a weblog specifically for technology and politics (and honestly, I've already registered the domain name for this hypothetical site, but that's a secret).

Then I'd have a personal weblog elsewhere for miscellaneous and personal stuff, for those that like to keep up with all things Curt.

So that's the idea. What do you think? Why do you read this site?

A Break

Well, I am taking a nice break the next few days. Off to Fort Myers for a long weekend to see grandmothers, nieces, and everyone in between. I might be blogging a bit, but I doubt it. Too bad, since traffic is just starting to take off. Oh well, I'll pick up the threads of momentum soon enough...

Jesus, Etc.

"Jesus died for our sins."

"So it was preordained?"

"Yes, God sent Him to die for our sins."

"So... that thing about the Jews killing Jesus didn't happen?"

"No, the Jews killed Jesus."

"I thought God killed Jesus."

"No, God sent Him to die for our sins. But the Jews killed him."

"Oh, so they were acting in service of God."

"No! It was wrong for the Jews to kill Jesus!"

"Oh. So God didn't want Jesus to die?"

"Jesus was sent to die for our sins."

"So, God sent Jesus to die for our sins, but by making it bad for the Jews to kill Him? How Machiavellian of Him."

"Why can't you understand this! Jesus died for our sins! But the Jews killed him!"

"I thought God sent Him to die for our sins."

"He did!"

"So God framed the Jews?"

For the record, I think there's something a bit off about the whole thing regarding Jesus being sent to die for our sins.

I think the understandings of God and Jesus are so messed up that most of the literal conclusions to be drawn from the Bible are really only assured of being pretty far from the truth. It's a great source of metaphorical wisdom and inspiration, though. I own both a normal Bible and a Vulgate. I still have back-burner plans to write a choral cycle off of the "love" chapter in I Corinthians. But it's more beauty than literal truth.

My personal beliefs about God and Jesus are unsupported (as far as I know) from anything literal in the Bible. But as far as I know that doesn't make them any less likely of being the truth. I believe Jesus existed, was more than just a "great man", was a part of God, and I believe that God was heartbroken by the crucifixion of His son, and I believe the crucifixion wasn't what God desired for Him at all.

I think guilt, sacrifice, and sin are horrible concepts designed to undermine free will, love, and desire.

And it pisses me off to no end to know that these beliefs mean that huge portions (half??) of the nation would therefore see me as a sacrilegious heathen.

I don't know if I'm going to see the Passion. Right now the thought of it just makes me angry.

Pop Vs Soda

This is just delightful. I love it. I have no idea what to say about it other than that.

Cool Maps

Home Page - The National Atlas of the United States of America

I found the coolest mapmaking site - tons of free information that you can use to make your own maps online, and tons of gorgeous free preprinted maps that you can download. Probably the coolest find since I found the PDF of the world map of political boundaries (countries) that you can zoom to any level.

Palindrome Poem

I finally found that awesome poem I read a long time ago and have mentioned to my friends. It's a Palindrome Poem, called "Doppelganger", written by James A. Lindon. You can start either with the first line and read forward, or the last line and read in reverse, and it's the same poem... but that structure has a cool dramatic effect, too.

Doppelganger

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush --
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever --
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.

I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.

I puzzled over it, hiding alone --
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.

A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.

Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife.

Prancing Horse

MSNBC - Cubans sailing vintage car caught off Florida

We played a card game where guys ask girls "guy questions" and vice versa. We asked a friend "What car has a prancing horse as its icon?" She answered "Buick?"

Well, a Buick isn't really a Ferrari, but, as the article shows, you can evidently do some things with it that you wouldn't with a Ferrari...

match.com and eharmony.com

I recently deactivated my match.com profile due to extreme boredom, but I'm also a sucker for personality tests, and I had it recommended to me that eharmony.com has a really exhaustive one. I took it and it gave me some pretty detailed responses... some of which I disagreed with, but oh well. Then of course you have a free profile and have to pay $50 to gain access to contact people, which is not really a good deal for guys given the low response rate. No , thank you. Although, I suppose that if someone were really smart they could read my description, do some googling on certain key words, and stumble across me here.

Living Dangerously

Sometimes I pull into the garage, press the remote to close the garage from inside my truck so the door starts closing, and THEN turn off the engine.

Top Blog Books

BlogStreet : Popular Books I find this fascinating. These are the top twenty books as counted by a blog utility. It just illustrates how the people that are blogging are a very different group of people than society in general. We're just slanted. But, this is a crazy cool top twenty list. I'd love to have all these books. Anyone want to buy me one? Well, I already have The Tipping Point and some of those blogging how-to books I might not want... and I've read parts of Stupid White Men... but the rest... sure!

Phone Call #483958

Ring...

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Stayvin!"

(beat.) "Hello?"

"Stayvin!"

"Hello?"

"Stayvin!"

(beat.) "What are you SAYING?"

"Stayvin!"

"'Stayvin'? What is that?"

"Is this Stayvin Babcock?"

"You have the wrong number."

"Oh, Ahhm sorry!"

click.

It wasn't until then I realized it was a southern accent. Gawd. Yay me. So have you belittled a southerner today?

Harry Potter Spoilers

HPANA - The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator is something I've been subscribed to for a while, and I'm unsubscribing today because they are infuriatingly irresponsible about spoilers. Today in my feed there was a headline that said, (censored) Hints at (censored)'s Death. It's common knowledge there is a death in book 5, but this was just stupid, stupid, stupid. Even if it was a red herring, I don't like that either.

Update: - I had a pleasant conversation with Jeff, the editor of HPANA, and he explained that it is an automated service that doesn't have control over what spoilers are posted. That was unfortunately not obvious when I subscribed, and since most other services like this have editorial control, I wasn't really expecting it until after I was spoiled. It appears that he is developing a "No-Spoilers" mode - more details in the comment he leaves.

Yay Romance

It sucks sometimes.

Poor Kids

Children With Tourette's Syndrome See Harry Potter - Okay, I saw this headline and I snickered. Well, I squelched a snicker. But still. I'm so bad. But I also have a big heart. The blurb said that a doctor arranged the viewing. Poor kids, can't normally go see it because of the disturbances, you know. What a nice doctor. And the mental images have mostly subsided by this time, as well as the desire to hear an mp3 of the audience. And the wondering of if someone with Tourette's sitting in an audience with 199 other kids with Tourette's is really having a good time. I'm mostly over that by this time, too. So I decide to click on the link to read the full article. And I see the picture at the top, and that's really all she wrote, it was hopeless. I'm still laughing. Like Nelson from The Simpsons. I'm so, so bad.

Life Maintenance Space

See, I've got too much crap in my office right now. I want to clean it up. I use my office to work on projects and clients, and also to do research.

But it's too full because I've been so busy, and because I'm not organized enough to have a perfect place for everything. Things are starting to pile up like health insurance claim forms (somewhat work-related since I write them off), and brokerage statements (which host my work-related retirement accounts), etc. I haven't scaled well.

So I start thinking in terms of themes. And really, I feel like I've got my Life Maintenance too mixed in with my Work Stuff. I've got course catalogs mixed in with client notes. So I'd like to separate it. I thought about having a separate life maintenance space, where I'd hook up my laptop to be able to pay bills, do Quicken, keep track of home organization stuff, and free up my office for just work stuff.

But here's where real life sucks in a way that databases don't. I can't multi-categorize. See, some of my life maintenance stuff is clearly work stuff. Like, where do I keep my business checkbook? I first thought that would go into my office. But then, what about my business receipts? This is where it gets tricky. Does all business financial stuff go into my new Life Maintenance space? Or is my Life Maintenance space more for purely personal matters? Grr. I don't know how secretaries do it. I hate these kinds of choices.

I guess I just need to pick one. I'll say all financial stuff, even business financial stuff, would go to my Life Maintenance place.

But then. What about invoices? Etc. You can see my problem. See, I'm not messy because I'm a messy person. I'm messy only because my organizational standards are so impossible in the real world that I just spread everything out into a spectrum to approximate what I need. It's actually extraordinarily organized, and it's not my fault that the real world can't handle it.

World's Most Depressing Ad

God, I so want to be that guy.

Link Whore

Hey, any of you regular readers also have blogs? I want a bit more traffic. Link to me. :)

Music In My Head

Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra: Misterioso from the album "The Music of Joseph Schwantner" by Joseph Schwantner

That's what I'm listening to right now. And it's really, really, really cool. :-)

Deadlines

Monday: Curt demonstrates software revisions to Client A, promises it be done by a week from Thursday.

Tuesday: Curt's server (with customers) crashes due to a webhost-provider error. Tuesday is shot.

Wednesday: Client B comes up with several extremely hot deadlines for the following Wednesday. Curt works on webhost server. Wednesday is shot.

Thursday: Curt's server is mostly up, Curt goes in all day to Client B, then takes a break Thursday night due to stress from previous two nights (working straight for two days). Thursday is shot.

Friday: Another full day at Client B, important social engagement Friday night. Workload for Client B grows, Curt pushes back. Friday is shot.

Project due Wednesday, project due Thursday, struggling to not cancel social engagements. I'll make them, but man. Justification for higher short-notice rates?

Soooo Tired...

I really think there might be something to that 90-minute sleep theory. The theory goes that are best waking up at 90-minute intervals. If you wake up after six hours sleep or 7.5 hours sleep, you'll have a more alert day than if you wake up at 7 hours or 8 hours.

I've been testing that out the last week or so - if I was short on time I'd set my alarm for six hours sleep and I'd do okay. Today though, I woke up badly about 6.5-7 hours after going to sleep and I am having the damndest time concentrating on anything. I'm at a client's office today and am totally dragging.

Of course it doesn't help that we have superlite 40's big band singing on the background. Like "I've Got You Under My Skin" but with nooo energy. zzzzz...

Reading My Blog

Just earlier tonight I was glum about the huge throngs of people who are not actively reading my blog, and then someone I know messaged me (unprompted) and said they read my blog regularly and really like how I think. Thanks!

Of course, I think the secret of getting more people to read my blog is to DO more stuff rather than THINK more stuff... still thinking about this DO thing. I'm also Doing Thinking though, so at least I'm even there.

Studying Money

Well, it looks like I am in an investment club now! I'm really excited about this. I talked to Peter about this idea about a year ago, and then independent of this, his buddy Ted got into the idea, so it ended up hitting critical mass and now it looks like it is rolling. Seven of us met the other night, and there are at least two other definites. I think we're aiming on 10-12 people, and then we have to incorporate and make bylaws, and then we'll have monthly meetings to talk about stocks and companies and research, where we will then pony up money and invest into what we collectively decide. Hopefully we'll all end up learning a lot and actually end up making some money!

Leaping and Looking

I've convinced myself that all of a sudden I might be developing a problem with doing things impulsively. Deciding to do things without thinking them through. That's a very bizarre problem for me to have, of course, but in the last few days I've done a bunch of things that after doing them I've second-guessed whether I really wanted to. It isn't that I've ever thought that I really DIDN'T - I haven't regretted - but, I've found myself wistfully wishing that I had decided more emphatically to do what I did before I did it. I'm most worried that it will grow into something I really will regret. Not sure exactly how to get a hold on myself without totally paralyzing myself...

Bloggone

Yeah, I fell off the world again for blogging. I flew to Colorado for a reunion of my old a cappella singing group, and since then have been swamped with new projects and completing old ones. Soon I'll be porting my old blog and then we'll be moving again.

Tamara Is Behind Me

I am showing this blog software to Tamara.

My First Post

Hello, this is my first blog post. I can write and write and write here, and make it be a big teaser, but if it's a really long post, I can also continue it by stopping here (at which point an automatic link will show up...) And I can then continue it here! Very cool. Now I just need to update the graphics.

Plantraco Desktop Rover

Plantraco Desktop Rover tracked micro vehicle explorer More hilarious toys!

Scared Straight

A Giant Lava Lamp See, you don't need to get high.

cuboro - I want

cuboro - oh, I want this. What fun.

Eczema on Alias

Alias had an advertisement for a drug.

So, that eczema-medication's most common side effect is "a feeling of warm foreboding". That is hilariously creepy. And that they meant that as REASSURANCE!

Scorpio Woman

"I'm a Scorpio woman. All I respond to is sex and candy." - Anonymous, after I tried to bribe her.

Footsieball

Salon.com News | Football: America's favorite homoerotic sport - "Hey. If there's a gay player on my team, and he scores a touchdown? I'm gonna go up to him and give him a hug and smack his ass just like any other player, because dammit, HE SCORED A TOUCHDOWN!" - Well, no one said that, but it's a quote I'd LIKE to hear someone say.

Big Geekerie

I've been a complete geek in these last few blog entries. I'll be back to normal soon, I promise. Just powering through my todo list.

Barber's Adagio

The original string quartet version of Barber's Adagio For Strings is so much better than the supersized string chorale version. Kronos Quartet has a recording of it.

KILLER DONKEYS!

So. Erm, evidently, every year, more people are killed by donkeys than by airplane crashes.

No, don't ask me for my source. But gosh.

Kelso's Journal

Kelso's Journal - You know, all this blog stuff I'm doing, and I never hear about LiveJournal. Seems like the two crowds just don't mix. I go to a random LJ today and run into this. Oof. Poor gal. :(

Doesn't that make it fall OUT?

So, I had a dream I went to a hair salon yesterday and they tried to push me on a plutonium hair growth lotion.

I dreamed about this chick

megnut.com - a weblog by meg hourihan One of the highlights of Christmas vacation was playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my brother's PlayStation. I didn't think I liked video games, especially the horribly violent kinds like GTA. But it was so fun! It was like being a character in The Godfather or some Guy Ritchie movie. I was stealing motorcycles and punching cops and doing all sorts of other nefarious things I would never ever do in real life.

Little Things Overwhelm, film at 11.

Today was just an exhausting day. I really do feel like I was doing productive things all day today, I just can't remember what many of them were. I think I am about ready to mail off my accounting information to my accountant so I can pay my last estimated tax bill by January 15th. I finished testing some midi hardware I have that is keeping me from being gloriously musical, and will mail it off soon. I networked quite a bit and got some stressful situations off of me, including a contract that someone thought I accepted that I didn't. I bought a plane ticket for my singing group reunion in January. I installed the new versions of iCal and iSync. I found the mp3s for my star wars radio drama to replace the audio cassettes that I quite unfortunately ruined with, uhm, an electric drill. And now I'm tired!!

See Dick Bike

Study links biking, male infertility - Maybe I should thank the criminal who stole my mountain bike.

On the other hand, yet another example of how statistics might not tell the whole story. Maybe the explanation is that already-infertile men are more likely to want to start mountain biking. You know, they have nothing better to do.

Ellen Feiss Interview

Ellen Feiss gives an interview that is surprisingly entertaining.

Hooray Tommy!

Wow, Tommy! You're turning into a regular comment hound. Ya might just be my number one fan, as far as rabid comment hound fanboys go. Happy Thanksgiving!

Return From Florida

Welp, back from Florida. I suppose it wasn't quite as recharging as last year, although I didn't exactly have as much to recharge from, so overall that's a good thing. In general I think I actually had a better time with my parents this year - we had a good time on the final full day, went to a nature preserve and took a lot of pictures of animals with my digital camera, and talked a lot of photography. My dad worked at Kodak for many many years and I had forgotten we had such a fun subject to talk about. He was really impressed with my camera (canon s200 powershot elph).

I spent a lot of time with Mir also - my sister's family was there for the first three days and Mir is the wonderniece. I took an absolute ton of pictures and little movies. She's 3 1/2 and hilarious.

At night I sat around with my iBook and did whatever I could without internet access, which it turned out was quite a lot. I obviously did a whole lot of iPhoto categorizations. But I also played with iTunes a lot, too. I got some new cds and for the first time I have more than 5 GB of music in iTunes, with a 5GB iPod. So I was over. So, while before I had iTunes just syncing everything, I figured out a really cool system to have only the best subset of music in my iPod.

Basically what happens is that when I have new music that hasn't been rated or heard yet, it goes to my iPod. The iPod keeps track of play count. Once it has been played a couple of times, then it goes back OFF my iPod, into a "rate me!" playlist in iTunes, since that's the only place I can rate music. Finally, any music that has been rated three stars or above is stored back on my iPod. So, if I listen to new music that I really like, of course I will want to rate it highly so it will show back up on my iPod.

So basically what that means is that I have a lot of music that is not on my iPod now - one-star, two-star, and music that I have listened to multiple times but haven't rated yet. By the end of this, all my music should be rated. I accomplished it by making a few smart playlists, telling the iPod to only update those playlists, and also taking advantage of the whole checkbox feature in case I had a highly-rated song that I didn't need on the iPod (like the star wars radio drama, for instance - it's great, it takes a lot of space, I already heard it).

The other thing I did was go through a bunch of Project Builder tutorials. I'm learning Cocoa programming. I'm doing it in an unconventional way - I'm learning it using Java first, since that is what I know, and then trying to learn some Objective C on the side since that's more mature for Cocoa. It's weird though, because I'll really be learning Obj-C from scratch - most tutorials assume you have proficiency of C/C++ and I'm only moderately familiar with them. So what I really need is an Obj-C book that either teaches it from scratch, or (better yet) teaches it to people that already know Java.

Right now I'm waiting for Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my iBook so I can take it into the shop - it's got at least a bad battery, but might also have a bad power management system. Booo!

Off To Florida

Off to Florida for a few days. Not sure if I'll be able to blog from there!

Packing took forever!

Symptoms And Healing

Just because there's an absence of symptoms doesn't mean that there has necessarily been healing. That was something Tamara said today that I like.

BuffyAngelPotter

I watched the most recent Angel episode. Visually and plot-wise, it was one of the best ever. Dialogue and script-wise, it was one of the worst. Like, Cordelia and Connor had sex. That's a big moment. But it was prefaced earlier in the episode with Connor saying something complimentary and also about how he was confused. Cordelia said thanks and said, "It's because you're eighteen. When you turn 21, a world of possibilities opens up." It was totally clumsy. It was to emphasize that they're really not all that far apart, when otherwise we'd be thinking, uh, this kid was born last season, and when he came back from hell all grown up, wasn't he fourteen? And I know that Cordy's 21, but isn't she played by a 30-year-old? I mean, come on.

Buffy has been great lately, with a new script writer, Drew something. Goddard, maybe. He has a knack for big moments and melodrama. Although sometimes, it's a bit heavy on the melodrama. I'd say he's at about 85% on the "earning your excesses" scale.

I saw Harry Potter II tonight. Man, is that ever Chinese food. In short, Kenneth Branagh was really funny in the first half. Lucius Malfoy was cool. Dobby was just as confusing as he is in the book. The rest of them were pretty boring. Although Ginny Weasley, man, she is going to be one gorgeous woman, and she seems to have a lot of presence as an actress as well. Really looking forward to seeing more of her in future movies. And as for the big twist that I won't spoil, I couldn't help but feel that if the movie had been shot so that that other perspective had been followed throughout, it would have been a hell of a lot less boring of a movie. Show don't tell, people!!!

Cleanup

I'm in a big cleanup phase again, this time to prepare for a trip I'm taking to Florida. I did this a year ago and it was a good recharge. This time there's the added advantage that I get to see my sister, brother-in-law, and niece. I think the quarters might be sort of cramped, but it shouldn't be too bad.

The cleanup is aggravating. In Peanuts, Pig-Pen has a strip where he's scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing in the bathroom, and still has his dust could, then says aloud, "I think I may have passed the point of no return." That's how I feel about my stacks of papers right now. There are just too many papers that don't have categories. What do I do, give them their very own folder in my file cabinet? No, I leave them out on the desk, with the sixty-five other similarly unique documents. In a pile.

I clearly don't know how to file. I like hierarchies, especially multi-parent hierarchies. You can't do that in a file cabinet. Well, maybe you can, but I sure don't know how.

I've also spent time cleaning up my computer. I finally ported Quicken, although I'm now waiting for my new pin numbers (still can't use the damn thing). I'm going to make an appointment with an accountant, and I'm also going to transfer all of my bank accounts and investment accounts to one place (maybe Fidelity) as soon as I start my new company name. That'll be nice and clean.

I'm also gearing up for a set of new personal technical goals - my first priority seems to be my new interest in voting technologies (made blindingly obvious in previous blog entries). One site to set up votes for various polls, and perhaps another site to mimc a direct representation setup with a mock Senate. I'm corresponding with a couple of people regarding these subjects right now.

My second priority is StorySprawl, again. I want to get that moved over to save myself $25/month.

And third priority is to start learning some actual desktop programming. I've done a lot with server-side programming, but now I kind of feel like I want to learn Cocoa (OSX programming). I'll start with Java, but will move on to ActionScript and Objective-C soon enough.

That's enough technically though - keenworks should help me get some new freelance contracts, which helps with money, which aligns with my other goals. The house and the piano, namely. I'm getting into music again - I actually had a song idea the other night and wrote half a song. I will be trying to finish it soon.

That's all, that's that. Off to bed, snooze.

Under Construction

It looks like my new professional website and domain name is in the process of being developed. Yay me! Can't wait to unveil it.

Soundtrack Finished

Hooray! We finished Tamara's soundtrack today. 27 minutes of peaceful music that she was desperately trying to make NOT sound like Muzak. I think she succeeded easily on that count, by the way. We had it synced up to the video, we recorded it digitally, exported it to stereo, burned it to cd, and she's mailing the cd with instructions on how to sync it to the master video on Monday. We also loaded it into iMovie and made a 50-meg movie file to play with - I also made an mp3 of the soundtrack and loaded it into my iPod. Now she's all in love with the software and happy about her system and I can't wait to buy some of the same equipment and do some of it myself. She also says she is jazzed about the idea of writing some soundtrack music to StorySprawl. I'm excited about that because I also recently had a good idea about how to expand the StorySprawl project. What fun!

Food That Lasts Forever

Check out the TVP I just got in the mail!

Stews and pot pies, here I come!

Woo-hoo!

Harmony's Monkey

Oh, I love my friend Harmony. I wrote her an email yesterday:

oh harmony harmony harmony. I want to be happier. I was thinking yesterday about how I was grumpy about love, tired about money, discouraged about beliefs, and I couldn't think of what else there was besides those three. what else is there? poof, please be happy, maybe if my friends were happier I'd be happier. I need more happy.

all right... guess I should go to sleep. maybe you will draw me a picture of a monkey? that might make me happier. draw me a monkey, harmony. I need a monkey picture.

So she just drew me this:

Awww! I feel much happier now. :-)

Her Music Factory

The Tamster just burned a cd for the first time from her new digital music setup. G4, Logic Audio Gold, Roland JV 1010, Emagic 2|6, all on OS 9 (but burned on OS X). She's a bit too frustrated with the learning curve right now to fully appreciate it all, but I think it's a big milestone. It'll be way easy from now on.

Misc Life Stuff, Drained

Sitting with music. The Tamster is feeling overwhelmed by deadline, same as I was a week ago. I'm not fully recovered, but I want to help. Partly because I am trying to learn from what she's doing (scoring music to video). Partly because I feel partially responsible for how difficult her project ended up being. She's almost done. I'm pretty tired.

Clients are tough in freelancing. One of them is itchy about our recently-ended projects. The other one is putting me on hold. I've got a full day tomorrow. I've got a full week. Not fully confident in how reliable I'll be able to be this week because I'm tired.

Voting sucks. I had a bit of a surge but I'm depressed about the results. I get entranced sometimes about the thoughts of convincing large numbers of people to follow my points of view, but then I get discouraged and the idea has no appeal anymore.

Love, money, and beliefs. Sometimes I forget what else there is. I'm pretty drained by all three right now.