The Earth vibrates all the time, even without earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate tectonics. Geologist now think this is caused by deep sea waves hitting the bottom of the ocean.
Archive for February, 2007
Earth’s Seismic Hum
Saturday, February 17th, 2007Preliminary Market Analysis
Saturday, February 17th, 2007The early analysis shows the Parket st house is far overpriced, even for houses in that area. The Adirondack st house is priced “top end of the market”. I guess that means almost overpriced. We’ll probably place a bid on one Monday. Tomorrow we’ll go over the whole analysis. In a few years, I will be on the other side of this analysis. My questions concern this process and the one in a few years. What can I do to reasonably increase the price next time it sells? Is it sq ft, amenities, bathroom, appliances, etc. that seems to have the most weight?
Last? Day of House Hunting
Friday, February 16th, 2007I think today might be the last day of house hunting. We went to two of the houses on the last link; 1 and 4. The house on Holyoak was nice, much more modern than its 1977 construction date. It’s currently rented and I think we woke on of the guys up. The yard was a little small, back facing garage.
The house on Adirondack was very interesting. The picture looks like a long square brick from the picture. And it is, but the inside is very nice. Wood floors, Garrett pointed out they are not laminate. They have texture. 3 bedrooms on one end. Large closests in two bedrooms, one with a private bath. Bathtubs in both bathrooms, but on is a little narrow and both are kind of small. The kitchen is interesting. A corner sink faces with window facing the very large backyard. The dining room shares a fireplace with the living room. You can open it from both sides. The living room is a litte dark, work paneling and no overhead lighting. But it goes with the fireplace. After the dining room is the wash room with a door to the garage. The garage has two good size closests. A 73 gal water heater. The kitchen needs some updates to the counters and oven. The stovetop is mounted in the counter. This house shares some things with the 6018 Gainsborough address. Identical tile, stovetop built into the counter, and lower counters. The backyard is very cool. The current owners have two boxers, very nice dogs. One has a blue and a black eye. The yard is huge. The plot is 90 x 120. Perhaps, the largest we went to. And the house is only 1427 sql ft. A prebuilt steel storage building is already there. Several trees in the back and 3 large stumps indicate these are the second set. The house is from 1964 like the Gainsborough address. It appears that the owners did a lot of updating themselves; paint, texturing, floors, tile. There are little things not done or small imperfections, but a very good job overall. The house is certainly updated in appearance. This house has been on the market 15 days, which is about the time I called Garrett.
I asked Garrett, the Realtor, to prepare a market analysis of this address and the Parker st. It feels like one of these addresses, but both are very excellent choices. Which one is the better deal and which do I want? I’ll make a dicision in the next few days.
After going through this process I noticed many similarities in these properties that I favored the most. Some of them in direct contradiction to what I thought I wanted. People live there now, even though 80-90% of the homes we went through were vacant. They are far cheaper than the $150k upper range I allocated. They are on the lowest end of the size, at ~1430 sq ft. One has an average size older lot and the other has a slightly larger than average lot size. Both had aquariums, wood floors, updated wall paints, views of the backyard, 2 car garages with much storage, external storage buildings, have yard animals, about the same distance from I-40, quiet, front facing garage, and mature trees.
None of the houses with shops had much lot, yard, or size of house. I was strongly dissuaded from washer/dryers in the kitchen, larger bathrooms were much more attractive. Small, unchangeable, and narrow is what took the Linda street house out. Open kitchens which a joined kitchen and dining area is very good, but not it’s not good to join the kitchen, dining, and living area. “Good” houses had a wall. Cheap carpet is a turn off and not too common. You can’t throw a rock in Amarillo with out hitting a brick house. New houses 7 yr or younger are cold, manufactured, and really creepy even though they may be very pretty inside. Back facing garages take up too much lot with unusuable concrete. Compare the distance of the front of a house to street with the back of a house to the street. Face the garage in the direction of the shortest distance. 1 house had a pond, the rent house I saw today. I plan on adding this, size depending on the yard. Manicured is nice, but I like the natural feel of mixed flowers, grasses, and bushes. Cut to shape doesn’t look good on mature shrubs. There are holes. Closer to I-40 is better than closer to I-27. The interstate is louder when it’s 18 degrees than 60 degrees.
An update on the vandalized house. It was repainted and recarpeted and available for sale today. Probably, be a good deal for someone since some of the painted elements would require painting or replacement of woodwork like banisters, desks, kitchen oven, stove top, etc.
YouTube Videos
Thursday, February 15th, 2007Gates vs Jobs
How to train a cat to operate a light switch
Wet Cat I would not have believed
PC vs Mac Spoof: Gaming
PC vs Mac Spoof: Networking
PC vs Mac Spoof: Security
PC vs Mac Spoof: Upgrading
PS3 vs Wii (PC vs Mac Parody) *** The best ***
The duplicates really suck. How many people really need to upload the same thing? There are more dups than originals by far.
House Link
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007Latest (last?) house link. The first and fourth houses look interesting. Three of them have contingency contracts.
The Next? Version of Windows
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007I had conversation today about the next version of Windows. What would it look like? It’s is one of those topics I don’t generally think about, but upon being asked I had a strong opinion. Especially, after reading the entries from MS’s Windows Home Server team.
Those “guys” keep focusing on ease and simple. Security is always a concern and recently backward compatability in Vista is at times questionable. To be fair the same could be said of Win98-WinXP. I believe the next frontier is virtualization.
Imagine a core Windows system, which might never connect to the Internet, that simply hosts Virtual PCs. These virtual PCs could emulate any version of Windows to date. In fact, this can be done today with MS Virtual PC. From within the VPC sessions you could switch to other sessions. Each session would have different purposes. For example a Game VPC would cause a reboot and run low level like the old DOS games. Another session hosts the browser, Instant Messaging, and internet applications. Another session manages users, backups, network maintainence, etc. (Control Panelish). In current VMs, the VM designers know it’s a VM and don’t hide the fact. This may inhibit your understanding of me. The work to be done would be to hide the VM manager, switching, and eccentric details. Call them Profiles or Desktops. Provide some basic ones. Make deletion and recovery easy.
Right now my aunt and millions others slowly accrue Malware, viruses, and bad performance until they can’t stand it anymore and turn the dang machine over to the Geek Squad. Who very overpricedly clean it and return it. This is bullshit. Provide a recovery console that doesn’t simply restore from a checkpoint, but provides a new machine. On OEM boxes, this uses the existing favorites and a few other config preferences copied into a base image identical to the factory one. There is no other way for my aunt to clean a machine than starting from “scratch”.
This is the new windows. This is what we (customers) need.
Maximum compatability, even more than ever before as old Windows, DOS, and Linux versions are available on the same machine with little effort.
Maximum security through the isolations of VMs. This exceeds process boundaries, stacks, heaps, kernel security, and all the other difficult, laborious, and inevitably patchy work involved in “securing” Windows.
This should make MS’s job easier. Not having a monolithic installation that has to do everything for everyone. No on can even use all the features available in Windows today. A Home Media Center edition would contain only the necessary features and limited Internet capabilities. A Home edition lacks Active Directory, remote user preferences management, and remote deployment. Not that those features are disabled. They aren’t in the code base.
VMs are being used today in production critical business environments. Citrix farms are a decade? old. VMWare and MS VPC offer free versions, meaning the business versions make enough money they don’t care about workstation version piracy, but encourage it.
Now, whether someone in MS realizes this is another manner. Anthony thinks it 2 version away (~2013). I might agree, depends on the next window. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be. MS could start and finish this project in a year to two.
I have not analyzed the business aspects, but there are several ways they could milk this in typically MS fashion. That wouldn’t really be a concern. MS’s latest Windows didn’t really offer customers anything. The security better, great. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me think my aunt would not need to take her computer to the Geek Squad in a year.
Closer to the Bottom of the List
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007Jessica went with me today. We saw a couple of new houses. One too close to I-40 and the other I didn’t like. Looked at the Hansford st Belmar house again and ruled it out. The Linda st house is still good, but not as good. The living room is huge, kitchen is large. Bedrooms are a little small and the bathrooms have no space to work with.
Looked at the Parker st (second house) from Sunday’s Open House and liked it just as well the second time. There might be a delay in moving in. It’s one of the only ones currently occupied. The L shape is a quite prodominate design and it works very well to make the space appear larger. Each space except the master bedroom, kitchen, and sunroom wrap a little. The kitchen provides openness by having three doors. The lack of a third bedroom is made up by the sunroom. Which is the only house I have seen that provides a room with views to the whole backyard. The bathroom is surprisingly large with an L shape to it.
Yoga/meditation in the second bedroom, which already has a wood floor and faces the street. Computer in the sunroom. Living room/dining room wrap around the kitchen and into the sunroom. Need a flat screen TV (like the current owners) in the kitchen. Fix the backyard building up a little; holes in the roof and generally poor structure. I’m curious about the chickens. If they lay eggs I might like to keep them. They take up no space and are already settled. Actually, the current owners keep every type of animal. We saw a cat, three dogs, chickens, parakeet, and fish. No animal smell in the house. Hay in the dog areas perhaps for easy sanitation? The backyard is not a minefield.
The price is a little high, even considering the area. I’m checking the Amarillo Realtor’s site again. I want to make a decision by Friday.
Windows Home Server Notes from the Forum FAQ
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007What is Win Home Server? Here
Multipler Network Adapters? No
Act as a Router/Firewall? No
Rename the computer(instead of SERVER)? Use the standard dialogs in Control Panel before installing the Connectors on the other computers
What is “Enable Folder Duplication”? Any folder that you select “Enable Folder Duplication” will duplicate… More
What Can I Install Win Home Connector on? Vista and XP More
Max Limit on Number of User Accounts? 10
Max Limit on Number of Backup Computers? 10
What user name should be created during install? Need the same name/password on server and connected computers… More
What machine specs? Not much machine More More
Another Night of House Hunting
Monday, February 12th, 2007Update: 2/13/07
Haha! oops. We went to the wrong house yesterday. This refers to a 2600 sq ft $185k home.
I think I found it tonight. Jessica and I will see it tomorrow. Almost made an offer when I saw it, but maybe I’m just excited. I’ll sleep on it. It has the most striking feature of any house. You would swear you had time traveled back to the 60’s or 70’s. Perfectly maintained curtains, wall coverings, door handles, doors, ceilings, paint, tile, heating and cooling grilles in the floor, and a radio/intercom built into each room with a control center near the kitchen. Everything extremely well maintained almost like new even though it was from the 70’s.
That is except for the dishwasher and stop top. The dishwasher I love. Not so much the appearance. It’s stainless steel. But the complete lack of buttons, knobs, or controls visible fromt the outside. There are four buttons and a panel on the top edge of the door when you open it. This screams simplicity and mid-high end. Most products treat those two things like opposites.
Manicured (I mean it) front and back yard. Newly laid, circle drive in the front. Basketball half-court in the back yard. It was raining lightly today and you could tell the concrete was perfectly smooth. Roof looks newer and an unfamiliar type of roofing material.
I got the strong feeling that it was an elderly lady’s house who died recently. My realtor couldn’t determine this tonight. But the house has been on the market for 8 days and the price seemed low to me.
Two detractions. It’s kind of near Bell, about a block to block and a half. The other would be changing the appearance, updating it. For that it feels like I need permission, because it is so absolutely clean and well maintained.
I would like to replace the stove top with a glass surface model. It would go very nicely. The radio intercom needs replacement speakers and an update with a wirelessly controlled mp3 box. There’s an odd cabinet space (Grandma would know what it was for) that would house a DVR, DVD, Media Computer completely unnoticeably. One room needs wood floor for Yoga.
Still haven’t figured out what to do with the El Camino. A two car garage lets me hang on to it easy, but I would like to use the space for wood working. An it’s not good looking enough to leave outside in a nice neighborhood. A storage/shop building could be placed on the basketball court, but access wouldn’t be as easy as attached to the house.
There a three trees in the backyard that look familiar, but I haven’t identified them. I think they are not supposed to live in this climate like Magnolia trees, but they are in a microclimate. Square trained topiary hedges in the back might go in another growing season. I tend to favor a more natural looking multiplant gardenish feel.
Anyway, enough free writing. The other houses weren’t anything. We saw 4 more; too close to 45th, no backyard, new with rear garage, and too close to I40. Time to pack so more. Next up will be the final selection, the contract period, financing, closing, moving, and conclusions. Maybe, I’ll pull these posts together, edit and expand them when I’m done.
Japanese Toilets
Sunday, February 11th, 2007Last night, I was brainstorming improvements and got into toilets. On TV, I had seen a toilet that shoots a stream of precisely warmed water on your ass and then blow dries it. This of course is in the high end hotels. It comes from Japan and in looking for it I took a strange trip.
Turns out that most countries have different bathroom facilities from each other. The biggest difference between squatting or sitting. Japan has been both. Squatting facilites provide a hole in the floor, foot places, and flush plumbing like sitting toilets. The process for using a squat toilet is pull your pants to your knees, put you feet on the marked tiles facing into the stall, do your business, and use the appropriate flush(big or small). This is the traditional toilet in Japan, but that changed during the American occupation.
Due to a variety of cultural changes (increased population density, foreign influence, whatever) the Japanese began to innovated. Water conservation is important. So, the top of the tank has a fountain which flows automatically when the toilet is flushed. The water from the fountain is for rinsing hands and is used by the next flush. There is a small and big flush. The toilet used to be outside the house or in an unheated section, so heated seats are available. And of couse the feature I’m looking for the bum washer/dryer. Which has an additional setting for the female gender.
I checked bidet to to see if that was similar. It’s not and the history of it looks a little disgusting. A modern bidet is a low wash basin with sprayer that can drain liquids. Combination bidet toilets are expensive ($2000?).
So what does one of these Japanese toilets run? Can I install it in my house and have a unique selling point? It’s surpriseingly expensive. Only the toilet seat is necessary to offer all the features. That can be affixed to any standard toilet. You’ll need a hot water connection from the nearby sink and an electrical outlet.
$500 gets you one with a weird electronic control panel on the side. The cheaper ones look highly unsanitary. Seriously, nobs and switches. Are they high? $1000 gets you a remote control and normal looking seat. I’m still looking into it. These prices seem unrealistic with the internet, ebay, etc. There is nothing at all from American Standard or Kohler like this. This seems odd. Perhaps, there are more Virgos in Japan than America.
Open Houses Today
Sunday, February 11th, 2007Today, was very busy. I went to 3 Open Houses and checked out 4 other locations. One of them is on the short list.
The yards a little small. There is a falling apart shed in the back. Sunroom added a long time ago. 2 fireplaces, mock and real. 1 bathroom, not bad. Lots of storage in the garage. Hardwood and carpet floors. Kitchen isn’t small. Bedrooms are ok size. What I really like is the location and the pretty sure resale. It’s about 2 longways blocks from Woflin St. Good part of town with lots of huge trees, nice houses. The sq ft is a little small at 1430. This is probably better than the Belmar house and slightly worse than the Paramount house.
This week there are 11 houses to review. Writing this after each night should help to keep them straight. And help balance out why I like certain houses. For example, I like the house above alot, but it’s harder now to see why. It doesn’t meet some criteria. Yet, there was another house today that did and I was not attracted to it very much.
FHA vs Conventional Loan
Saturday, February 10th, 2007I’ve always heard that about people getting FHA loans, but what does that mean? There were no problems getting pre-approved for well beyond the house I want to buy under conventional loans. So, what’s the difference between a conventional loan and FHA loan.
The main advantage of a fha vs conventional loan is that the credit qualifying criteria for a borrower are not as strict as conventional loan financing and the down payment or Equity requirements are less. In comparing a purchase money FHA loan against a Conforming or A paper loan, the FHA loan will generally have the least amount of money required to close and the lower payment, see fha vs Conventional loan comparison (pdf file). FHA loans will allow the borrower who has had a few “credit problems” or those without a credit history to buy a home. An FHA Underwriter will require a reasonable explanation of these derogatories, but will approach a person’s credit history with common sense credit underwriting. Most notably, borrowers with extenuating circumstances surrounding a bankruptcy that was discharged 2 years ago can be approved for maximum financing. Conventional A Paper financing, on the other hand, would require 4 years to have passed to be eligible for consideration and relies heavily upon credit scoring. If your score is below the minimum standard, you will not qualify or you will be place in a higher rate Subprime, Alt A or A minus loan product.
from FHA Info
Many people make the mistake and assume that FHA loans are only available for first time home buyers. This is not true. FHA loans are available to anyone, whether your first or fifth home and can be used to purchase a home or refinance a home. If refinancing a home the current loan DOES NOT have to be an FHA loan.
from FHA Info
FHA
- Helps with past Credit issues
- Allows a gifting entity or person to make the down payment
- Mortgage Insurance
- Potter and Randall lending limits $200,160 as of 1/1/06
- Gray lending limits $200,160 as of 1/1/06
- Documents need for an FHA Loan
- Transferable to the new owner of a house if you sell
- Mortgage Insurance isn’t canceled when you reach a target equity
- Allows non-occupant co-signer
- Can apply for 97% of house purchase price
Conventional
- No upfront Mortgage Insurance
- Higher loan limits
- Drop Mortgage Insurance when equity reaches target amount
- Can apply for 107% of house purchase price
House Update: The Big List
Friday, February 9th, 2007From this link I’m looking at the houses below. Plus, I’ll be checking open houses on Sunday. This is like a part time job. So far I have been to 8 houses.
5715 WINKLER DR, Amarillo, TX 79109
List #06-37385
5606 SHADY LN, Amarillo, TX 79109-5835
List #06-36475
2827 PORTER DR, Amarillo, TX 79110-2215
List #07-38121
6506 GARWOOD RD, Amarillo, TX 79109-6935
List #06-36498
6209 BOWIE ST, Amarillo, TX 79118-7885
List #06-37305
4421 CLEARWELL ST, Amarillo, TX 79109-5232
List #07-38007
7305 ELMHURST DR, Amarillo, TX 79121-1415
List #07-38160
7509 GAINSBOROUGH DR, Amarillo, TX 79121-1421
List #07-38294
5715 37TH AVE, Amarillo, TX 79109-4204
List #06-36429
5708 53RD AVE, Amarillo, TX 79109-6272
List #06-37259
6215 ADIRONDACK TRL, Amarillo, TX 79106-3405
List #07-38253
5302 ANDREWS AVE, Amarillo, TX 79106-5114
List #06-37548
Update (2/11/06):
Remove:
7305 ELMHURST DR, Amarillo, TX 79121-1415
List #07-38160
5715 37TH AVE, Amarillo, TX 79109-4204
List #06-36429
Add:
3004 MOCKINGBIRD LN, Amarillo, TX 79109-3333
List #06-35767
House Update
Friday, February 9th, 2007I saw two excellent properties today. The 1st and 4th houses on this link. We were going to see the last house on the list, but it was bought.
The 1st house is in Belmar across the street from the school. The pictures don’t do it justice. Some things not on the spec sheet are: Wood/gas fireplace, all carpet, security system, larger washer/dryer room, open kitchen, entry way area, nice bathroom, good kitchen tile, good size yard, a good front yard tree. Easy access to I40, but not loud. Close to mall and food places. 67 gallon water heater and roof from 2005. The tree next to the door has suspicious holes in a large dead part, an old fire on the brick above the fireplace. Taxes are ~3000/yr. This house is $132900
The second house is in Paramount/Mays, near Jessica. The pics are good, but they don’t quite do it justice. The wood half wall height panels look good. Wood floors throughout, pier and beam, largish open kitchen with large window views to the backyard, handbuilt stone cooker, good formica countertops, newish kitchen appliances. Large tree in front in the middle of a very square yard. A backyard tree would shield half the house from afternoon sun. Washer and dryer in the garage which is a little beaten up, 1950’s house, could use new windows like Jessica’s house. Small bathrooms. Interior doors are that ultra thin stuff with some light damage like the first house. Taxes are ~2500/yr. This house is 129000.
Jessica and Patience both liked the LaSalle house and I did too from the photos. That first one is great, but the house is an odd mix of replace/new/newer with old and beaten up. The large sq ft comes from a large addon of a living room, small dining room, washer/dryer room. The hot tub was very inviting. In fact it was on(steaming) and clean. But the backyard fence was a waist height chain link fence. There was good looking new wood flooring in front of the kitchen, but the floor didn’t feal stable. Child’s bedroom had very beaten up door framing. All the doors were damaged. The garage was tiny; one car period. Nothing else in it at all. Again kitchen oven older than me. What stuck out the most was cheap easy things were not done. Some of the light switches were the old heavy thunk kind, different light covers on all switches. The house looks good on paper, especially at 126000, but you need to put 10k in right away and some things like the weak floor who knows. It reminded me of the houses I grew up in.
I’m still going through the big list. My house is very likely in one of the lists I have received so far. Just waiting for me to realize it.
Marshal.ReleaseComObject 2
Friday, February 9th, 2007A while back I wrote about an issue with COM and .Net Interops. Well, a related issue has arisen. The specifics still seem a fuzzy and a solution hasn’t been implemented yet.
The most reproducible scenario goes like this: User A logs in and opens the web app. User B also logs in and opens the web app. User A decides not to complete the form and logs out. User B continues to use the web application, when it refreshes to get a list of codes web app dies. Obviously, this is very disconcerting and didn’t get tested a lot.
There’s one testor and one developer. Each person opens one session and runs through the app. In this mode the error is difficult to reproduce, though we suspect it is possible. I banged on the app very hard this one and could not make it fail. However, the scenario above is very simple and causes lots of problems.
From a technical point of view, it seems very difficult for the two sessions to interfere with one another. Yet, everything seems to confirm this. When session B initializes it gets a reference to a CodeManager and holds that at the class level. It seems that when session A closes all its references it also closes the CodeManager reference of session B. Session B only gets a CodeManager when it initializes, the first time the page is displayed. After that it assumes the reference is good and that is incorrect in this case. The call to get codes generates an RCW error.
A few of solutions have been tried at this point. If there aren’t enough CodeManager references make sure there are extras. That worked in the past. But not this time. I saw it generate the error then session B logged out and released 3 CodeManagers.
Another solution is to move the scope of the CodeManager variable from class to method. This works, but increases the number of CodeManagers created and destroyed. This is not a strong point of .Net/COM. In fact, some of the existing calls should be re-evaluated to move the calls from method to class scope.
The solution that seems to work the best is to detect the error with try/catch and re-reference the CodeManager like when the object is initialized. From then on code would execute as it expected. This looks like the best solution, but it requires refactoring the code to put suspect calls to CodeManager in a new function. This new function needs to call itself again if the first time fails due to an RCW error and throw an exception if it doesn’t. It’s also not elegant or attractive looking in the code.
We’ll see what happens.
Update 1 (2/7/07):
Today was spent exploring solutions to this problem that would 1) resolve it 2) in the least amount of code changes to reduce the amount of testing necessary. The try/catch method about definately resolves the issue. However, in this case it requires more refactoring than I like in a patch.
The solution I went with was to move the variable declaration and disposal from class level to method level. Testing showed that this was still susceptible to .Net losing it’s COM object. Amazingly, I saw one instance where a variable was declared, the next line called a method, and .Net generated and RCW error. Another happening was IIS crashing with a pop up box from the operating system about memory error. So, in some cases simply moving to a method level variable was insufficient to address the issue.
What always seemed to work was using a full reference to the root object like “codeList = MasterCOM.CodeManager.GetCode()”. The problem with this solution is that it makes an additional COM reference, but leaves .Net without an object to dispose. Every call to GetCode() increases the reference count.
My solution was to use both methods. Switch from class to method variables. Don’t use them. Use the full reference from the root object. Instead of releasing one instance of the method variable use FinalRelease to run multiple times if necessary. This isn’t the FinalRelease from .Net 2.0, but a custom one that Releases all but 1 reference. That reference is disposed when the root object is disposed.
So, when an object wants a code list it creates 2 CodeManagers. 1 is released. The next object wants a code list. 2 CodeManagers are created and both are released. The application closes the root object and releases 1 CodeManager. All the blessed COM object counts balance (equal 0 on application close). And no RCW errors are reported.
Update 2 (2/9/07):
The patch seems to be running very well. Before the patch. Load testing showed ~80 errors in 30 minutes. Some due to timeouts, which mean more errors could have happened in the same amount of time. After the patch 2 errors due to timeouts. It’s very exciting when a critical defect just evaporates. In the end, I don’t understand why it works. Hopefully, we’ll get to spend a few days on that.