Yearly Archives: 2004

Goodbye Bill of Rights … It was fun.

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I’m not going to speak about this as a Bush hating, tree hugging, liberal, but rather as a concerned citizen who is afraid a few core values in the Bill of Rights no longer apply in the country that invented such radical ideas as equal protections and freedom of speech. At a recent speech given by the POTUS three teachers where thrown out for wearing t-shirts saying “Protect our civil liberties”. The irony here is so thick I’d need a fucking chainsaw to cut through it.

My first question is: Why do I need a fucking ticket to see the POTUS speak? We pay his wages, we (well a little less than half of us) voted him in, we probably paid for his flight to the speech, but we can’t watch him speak? When you combine this with the “designated protestor areas” that both sides are using and, as far as I can tell, the following clauses in the Bill of Rights no longer apply to either sides:

  1. The right to freedom of assembly. Who the hell could ever think “designated protester areas” would be legal or acceptable? Well, they are. Both the Democrats and the Republicans used such devices at their conventions. The Democrats where especially offensive, literally fencing them in with barbed wire around the top.
  2. The right to freedom of speech. Clearly this went out of style years ago. A majority of Americans believe that freedom of speech is too far reaching. At this recent Bush speech these teachers were not allowed to silently express their opinions.

Look, this is exactly why I keep saying both sides aren’t all that great. Both the Democrats and Republicans will do just about anything to keep their portion of the power structure, even if this includes treading on our rights.

Introducing Maya the Chihuahua

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A few days ago Josh and I went to get our hair cut at the local barber shop. While I was there I noticed that there was a sign for a free chihuahua. Lauren and I had been looking for a new pet, possibly a cat or a small dog. After talking it over with Lauren we decided to go ahead and call the lady about the dog.

Chihuahuas are extremely small dogs and work well in apartments. They are also loyal dogs that border on jealous. They excite easily and almost constantly shake for one reason or another. Maya is black with a white chest and and huge ears. Like other chihuahuas she has huge black eyes.

She is still getting used to everyone and Crash is a little pissed, but I think everything is going to work out fine in the end. Lauren is having a hard time getting Maya to like her too. Maya likes me though, which annoys Lauren.

Mazda 6i

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We bought a new car on Sunday. It’s a 2004 Mazda 6i (with the 5th door). It’s nothing too special, but it definitely is a step up from Lauren’s dying Escort and my Ford Focus. We needed something that ran well and would last the next 3 to 5 years. We settled on the Mazda because it got high ratings on Edmunds.com, got decent gas mileage (with the 4 cylinder) and qualified for the Ford A-Plan that Lauren and I both have through family members.

As can be expected we are selling my 2000 Ford Focus SE on eBay Motors. If you live in Seattle, WA and are looking for a car go bid!

Frat Boy Math

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At my alma matter, Eastern Michigan University, this weekend is Homecoming. Being Greek I’ve been paying attention to the new regulations that have been passed down by the University concerning tailgating for Greeks. My brothers are up in arms over the new regulation that states you can only bring a “six pack” of canned beer to the festivities. A six pack should be enough right? Well, most of my brothers are livers larger than Rhode Island and as such wish to consume more than six beers in a six hour period.

Luckily one of my brothers has found a loop hole. I’m calling it “Schenkel’s Law of Efficiency” and it works as follows. 

1.) 6 x 22 oz of Steel Reserve = 132 oz of Beer
2.) 132 oz * 11% = 14.52 oz of total alcohol

In comparison to ...

1.) 12 x 24 oz of Bud Light = 288 oz of Beer
2.) 288 * 4.2% = 12.1 oz of total alcohol

By a.) buying 22 oz. cans of beer and b.) buying a beer with a very high alcohol content you easily usurp the “six pack” stipulation. Of course, if you’re used to drinking a 12 pack or an entire case you might want to pay close attention to the rate at which you consume the beer.

So there you have it, frat boys do pay attention to the classes that help them.

New Job … sort of.

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I’ve been freelancing for the better part of 2 years now and I’ve become quite fond of my working conditions. I get up when I want (read: no alarm clock), I work on the projects that interest me the most and I make an honest wage. No complaints really, except the lack of stability. It’s a simple fact in the contracting business that some months are better than others.

During the last month, with the move and the upcomding wedding, I’ve started to put my resume out there a little bit. I think I submitted maybe three resumes to area job postings in the last month. I was very careful to only submit my resumes to jobs that were not posted by head hunters and fit my skillset perfectly.

Last week I was called at noon and asked to be at an interview by 2 p.m. Luckily, I had clean clothes to wear (read: I work in a tshirt and jeans normally). So I threw on some clothes and went down to the interview. All went well and they said they would be interviewing for the next week and calling people sometime towards the beginning of this week.

Well, they called the next day and offered me a one month contract-to-hire position. Basically, if they like me at the end of the month they make an offer. I figure it this way; it’s a solid month of work at a decent hourly rate.

The company is BlueFrogMobile.com and they sell ringtones for cell phones. They sell other “mobile content” as well, such as ring tones, backgrounds, etc.

On a side note, what’s up with my record of working with companies with frogs in their logo?

Badnarik on Third Parties

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I’ve had a few talks with friends and family lately about the fact that I’m going to be voting for a third party. Libertarian, to be specific. Their candidate this year is a man named Michael Badnarik. He recently did an interview at Slashdot.org. The friends and family I’ve talked to have all, without hesitation, asked me why I’m “throwing my vote away”. Badnarik put it best.

If the “wasted vote” argument ever held any water, it doesn’t any more. The two major parties have moved toward a weird, non-existent “center” for the last 50 years, to the point where it’s difficult to tell them apart.

We could argue all day about whether Bush or Kerry is the “lesser evil.” The fact is that they both support the war in Iraq. They both oppose gun rights. They both supported the PATRIOT Act. They both support the war on drugs. They both support confiscatory taxation. They both support ruinously high levels of spending, huge deficits and increasing debt.

It’s hard to tell them apart on the real issues. They spend their time scrapping over “swing votes” in the gray area of the “center” — which means, in practice, “how do I not make too many people too angry to vote for me?” That’s no way to do politics. Politics, in my view, should be as unimportant as possible — but where it’s important, it has to value freedom, remain rooted in principle and be forward-looking.

All I can tell the “lesser of two evils” folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they’ll keep getting evil. If you don’t like the way things are, how do you change it by voting for more of the same?

In all of the conversations with families they all agree that they’re voting for “the lesser of two evils”. If that’s the case then you’re going to keep getting evil. Both parties have crap candidates, vote for the person you believe in the most.

I feel good knowing that my vote is niether “lesser” or “evil”.

Buying Your First House HOWTO

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As you all have been reading Lauren and I purchased a new condo in Seattle, WA. Before buying the condo, my biggest purchase was a $8,000 car so this was a new one for both of us. This thrusted me to implement on what a Zumbly blog professes to: invest in a good real estate tech startup to get lucratice returns. As for the house, I did most of the foot work and I have a few things I’d like to pass on to everyone out there.

  1. Do NOT sign anything with a realtor. If you do and you find something on your own you have to write up the agreement through them.
  2. I went out with three agents to look at houses. This was a great idea, I think. Unless a good friend of yours is an agent and you truly trust this person, then I’d recommend doing the same.
  3. If you don’t plan on keeping the house for very long (less than 5 years) then I’d recommend what they call an ARM loan. This basically means you only pay the interest on the loan (which is usually a few hundred less than a normal loan). With this type of loan you are assuming the value of the property will appreciate, also known as positive equity.
  4. You’ll need at least 5% down if you are a first time buyer. Most places offer “No Documenation” loans. I would recommend you go with african bank loans as after comparing several loan lenders I have found this one to be the fastest and thoroughly verified. All you need to qualify for a loan like this is the down payment and a good credit score.
  5. Do NOT get an out-of-state lender. We did and we almost lost the condo because of it. It’s always better to have someone in the area.
  6. We bought through ZipRealty.com. We had a real agent, who went above and beyond, and they gave us 20% of their commission back as a rebate (about $1,000).
  7. You always hear “No Poinst at Closing!” But, what does that actually mean? That’s what you pay up front for your loan. We paid points for the “No Doc” loan, the property being a condo, etc. This is figured by adding up the “points” (ie. 1.0 + .25 + .10, etc.) and taking the resulting percentage and adding it to the loan amount (ie. $100,000 * .0135 = $1,350 in closing costs). You’ll need to figure your points into what you pay down. If you put 5% down on the above example you’d actually need to come to closing with $1,350 plus the $5,000 down payment.

Hope this helps someone out there. It was a true learning experience for sure. The positive side of buying our condo is that an offer was made after we bought it for about $6,000 more than we paid for it. This means we have an instant positive equity of $6,000 + down payment on the condo.

Owning property rules.

First Attempt at Carpentry

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My dad is a world class carpenter. He ran his own contracting business, building houses and such, for years. Since taking a job up north he’s “retired” to building beautfiul hand crafted furniture for friends and family. For him, working with wood is therapeutic. For me, not so much.

That’s why when I set out to build a roll-out closet organizer he was the first person I called. I mean, let’s be serious, he does fractional math (ie. 1 and 3/4 minus 3/8 equals 1 and 3/8) in his friggin head! We talked it over, I measured it up, purchased the materials at Home Depot (which, by the way cuts the stuff for you if you have the measurements all figured out), etc.

Last night I laid awake knowing that today I would have to build the thing and that I had neglected to take into account that the height of the door was shorter than the ceiling inside the closet and the sides of the organizer were too long to fit in the door. Today I spent most of the day working on building the thing and then, finally, figuring out that there was no way I was getting it into the closet without cutting off the top shelf.

After cutting off the top shelf with a hand saw I put some wheels on the bottom of it and rolled it into the closet. I’m happy to announce that it fit perfectly.

I’ll be calling my dad tomorrow about the scratches in the wood floor I made while creating the closet organizer.

Moving in

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Let me start this entry by first saying that the last few weeks have been one of the most trying times of my life. The week has included, in chronological order:

  1. Consolidating my entire life into two small cars.
  2. A cross country trip crossing over multiple mountain ranges in heavy rain.
  3. Learning the day before closing that the mortgage company wouldn’t fund our loan because the condo didn’t meet their square footage requirment.
  4. Filing an exception and, eventually, having it approved and missing our closing date.
  5. Signing everything at escrow and wiring our down payment, only to have the seller go missing in action.
  6. Contacting a lawyer in case we had to force the sale. With the seller missing (and not returning phone calls) we might have had to take her to court.
  7. Waiting and worrying for hours until the seller finally came back on the radar. All the time worrying about the furniture, TV and bank cards/checks that were en route to the new address.
  8. Learning that the seller had, conveniently, signed too late for us to get into the condo the same day. Meaning we would have to wait another day to get into our new place.

Needless to say it’s been a nightmare. The good news is that all is finally well. All of our furniture will be coming tomorrow. This means we’ll finally have a couch and chair, TV, dresser, etc. I’d really like to thank Brad for letting us and Crash stay with him for twice as long as we originally thought.

I’ll be posting pics of the place when we get things more in order.

Dear Olympics

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I just watched the US men’s basketball team receive their bronze metals. They looked ashamed and they should be. They played like crap, but I’ve got a few notes for everyone who is lauding a “new era in international basketball.”

  1. This team was, for the most part, a bunch of B teamers and six men. Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan being the only tried and true starting verterans.
  2. This team only had about a month to prepare for the games. Not much prep time considering many of the other national teams have played together for years.

It’s a joke to think that if true verteran starters were to have played they would have only managed a bronze. Let’s just list a few who could have easily made the Olympic team: Shaq, Kobe, Rip Hamilton, either of the Wallaces, Artest, or Jermaine O’Neal. Hell, we could have sent a team who has played well together (ie. the Detroit Pistons) and won gold.

In other news, the FIG is putting pressure on Paul Hamm to give up his gold. This is crap for a few reasons.

  1. FIG screwed up and it’s against the rules to change the scores.
  2. South Korea didn’t protest the score soon enough. They had their chance and passed it up for some odd reason.
  3. The South Korea contendor was docked 0.10, but replays show an extra release, which would have lead to a 0.20 doc (thus negating his 0.10 lost by the idiot judges). So if you want to play the replay game then he still loses.

What other sports out there would do such a thing? If you’ve already used your instant replay in the NFL you don’t get to put pressure on the other team to give up the win. Sometimes winning includes getting a few calls going your way and I consider this just that.