The longer you wait

The more you need to post, and the more you have to post, but the less you want to sit down and post. :-/ ;-)

Here is a long needed update going back to the beginning of October:

Josh's Wedding

From josh-wedding

Since most everyone who reads this was there, I will leave out the details and mainly say that Em and I both had a blast. Its always great seeing the old gang together and we will definitely need to find an excuse to do it again real soon. The wedding and reception were great (gotta appreciate all of the hard work Josh and Amanda did). Both Em and I were honored to be in the wedding and be able to celebrate with you guys. You guys are going to do well for eachother.

Regarding the decorating of Josh's car. I think, overall, it went over very well. However, it was over-engineered and under-delivered. I blame myself. Despite our best laid plans (much of which can be found here, and in numerous emails) as well as a random Yahoo Answers post by yours truly ... it didn't quite live up to what I had in my head. Still, as Josh agreed, we get points for using helium (thanks Kevin) and for being different than years past.

From josh-wedding

Oh and thanks to Kevin and Sarah for having us over to their new house and Chaz for driving us around.







Em's Cousin's Wedding

From stl

From stl

This wedding, while not nearly as fun for me, was a good time and by FAR the most over-the-top wedding I have ever been to. Being a family afair rather than a college roomate's lends itself a different dynamic, but they made up for it by far in extravagance.

The wedding took place at the St. Louis Cathedral Bascillica, the largest church in town which is insanely gorgeous. To go along with the beautifully huge church, the wedding party was equally huge and the music was excelent (violinist from the STL Symphony, pro singers, organ, harp).

From stl

The reception that followed that evening was at the StarLight room at the Chase Park Plaza overlooking downtown STL and Forest park. Cocktails and hore-devers were servered prior out on the balcony including a featured drink of the night (mojito) and monogramed napkins. Dinner was high-end (although I actually think I liked Josh's better food wise), great cake, some interesting toasts and a great live band (2 main singers, backup, real DJ, 1/2 guitarists and a drummer). All in all it was pretty crazy and a good time.








Apple Butter

Last weekend we made Apple Butter in our backyard as part of a continuing tradition in Em's family. You can read more about it and see pictures at my food blog.

From stl

From AppleButter2008

Semi-related ... Em and I went to Eckerts the other weekend to pick fresh apples (Fuji) and got ourselves two nice pumpkins from the field.

Jolie

From stl

Jolie is doing well. She was "sick" for a week or two in there but is fine once again. Since we had gotten her, she had developed a bad tendency to pull on our walks (still doing 3-ish miles a day) which we weren't helping. In an attempt to reduce this we considered buying a stronger "harness" collar for her so that she wouldn't hurt herself but on the great advice of one of her friends, didn't. She said that a harness would just allow her to pull harder without knowing it and suggested we get the Gentle Leader instead. Basically its a type of collar that fits a different way, moving the point of attachement to the front under the nose. This means that when she goes too far forward, her head is pulled around. While its not perfect it has made a HUGE difference and I would recommend one to everyone who is having a similar problem.

Attic Insulation

Our house inspector warned us that the insulation in our attic was a little light and that we might want to add some before winter. So, once the cold started to kick in I finally got around to calling a contractor Em's aunt recommended to get an estimate. After taking a look around he said that while he would love the work, that the cost of blowing in another 6" of insulation wouldn't be worth the amount of time it would take to recoup the costs. He said we were indeed a little low but that it would take 7-10 years to recoup the costs. So, we will wait it out and see if the heating is bad or not and then decide ... either way I really appreciated his honesty.

FYI ... his estimates (which I didn't compare to anyone else) were roughly $1k to blow 6" of cellulose covering an 1200 square foot attice given that we have joists 16" off center and a very low roof line (hard to move around in). Rough estimates done by myself at lowes suggested materials by themselves would cost $400 (30+ bags and free blower rental), plus I would need to borrow a ladder and get safety equipment ... AND there would be no telling if I could have blown it in consistently or how long it would have taken me.

Work

Work has been interesting. I finished my brief stint on a large government enterprise architecture project and have moved back to working on a .Net web application with one of my friends.

Last week we had a production push to move ~3 months of work to the live site which resulted in a very long night. We were set to start at 10:30 pm but didn't until closer to 11:30 b/c the other guy's car was over heating on the way downtown. The actual push took a couple hours b/c of a couple stupid issues that were eventually resolved and then the same coworker had car trouble leaving (borrowed car with what turned out to be a bad battery). Nothing to get upshook about, but it resulted in me not getting home until around 2:30. On a bright note, Jolie sounds like one huge pissed off dog at 2am when you wake her up by coming in the front door. Good Dog!

On an interesting and very cool note ... there is a good chance I will be traveling a good amount for work in the next few months. Our company is going to be starting a new phase of a project with a large health care company in California doing Agile mentoring and coaching. Myself and one other guy are the leading candidates for the last spot on the team. It would be 2 weeks a month ~35 minutes outside San Fransico for 6 months (through the begining of the summer). I would be coaching one or more teams, working with their PMs and Scrum Masters to support their agile adoption, provide guidance, help to identify problem areas and work with their developers to do better agile and solid OO work on a dialy basis without feeling the need to have numerous meetings for every little task.

To be honest, I am a fair bit anxious about the idea of being put into such a "coaching" role and of the large amounts of travel .. but I am lucky enough to have a wife who is nothing but supportive and am super excited about the opportunity.

To go along with my normal work, I also gave a Lunch-n-Learn talk a while back on a Ruby GUI tookit called Shoes and have posted a few articles on my tech blog about the LnL, some misc scripts that helped me at work, user acceptance testing with Selenium, and a new side project of mine (List-It).

Thats all for now....

Lots of stuff

Em has been bugging me for a week or so now to post ..... ;-)

Since the last post we have been keeping busy.

On the bad side, several members of both of our families have had medical issues in the past few weeks. As it stands right now everyone is ok or doing better which is a good thing.

Even Jolie wasn't able to get past the last few weeks without seeing a doctor ....she has had three seperate "minor/treatable" issues since we got her. First was an ear infection (lab + shar pei ears = problem area). Next was a cut on her lip where she bit herself chasing a squirel. Finally, she is currently having some gland issues which we are treating. :-(

As far as the good stuff ....

Em started up at work again and has had some good, unussual and terrible parents to deal with. I have been plugging away at work also; this is the last week of our current project so we are trying to clean up all of the loose ends. In a call this past week with our client, we were informed that a new listing had gone up on their site that we had to check out. This place is CRAZY. If it weren't for the fact that its listed at 5.5 million, I would so think about buying it just to check it out. Who needs drugs if you live in a place like this?

A week or so ago I had to call Charter (or cable company) up to dispute some charges on our bill and while I was on the phone I mentioned a very random ad I saw on the TV a few days prior saying that if new or current customers called up they could get HBO+Cinemax / Showtime + XXX / some other premium channel free until the end of hte year. Well, it worked and now we have HBO and Cinemax free until next August (the ad said until Jan, but the women told me 12 months, so I didn't complain). I would never pay extra for the channels, but for free they are great!

A while back Em finally found Mariokart at a Target while she was picking up some other stuff so she bought it for me. I will post/send my friend code out if anyone who reads this still plays. Its a pretty cool game and I am enjoying working my way through all of the levels. Toad for the win!

Last week was Em's and my 3 year aniversary. Wow, I still can't believe its been that long already. To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner at the Top of the Riverfront. Its a local restaurant downtown at the very top of the Millenium hotel. The main feature is that the restaurant is circular and the whole thing rotates slowly so you get some amazing views. The views were great and the food was good. Plus, they were having a special that week with 24 other restaurants downtown where you could get a 3 course meal at any of them for $25. :-)

Finally, my father in law pointed me to a piece of legislation I had missed in the last few months. It seems that will one of the economic/housing bills passed this year to attempt to shore up the economy, was a provision for a federal "tax-credit" for first time home buyers who purchase their first home between April of this year and sometime in the spring/summer of next year. I still haven't fully researched it, but from what I have read, it isn't so much a tax-credit as an interest free tax-loan. Basically if you purchased your home this year you can get up to 10% of your home's purchase price up to $7500 as a tax credit on your '08 taxes (below the line, meaning straight savings). The catch is that you have to pay this money back. Thats right, no free ride here. Basically, a year after you get the credit you start paying it back in the form of $500 extra on your taxes each year for the next 15 years. If you sell your house before hand, you pay all of it back that year out of your procedes. If you die, its forgiven. So, basically its an interest free loan with really slow pay-back terms. Will this help the economy? I don't know. Will I gladly accept the money and use it to either A) make the final push past 20% on the house so that I don't pay PMI any more or B) buy a TV and laptop. I haven't decided but either way it should be good. :-)

Removed pests, painted room, and A DOG!

First the "less" exciting stuff ....

This past week Em took it upon herself to paint our office "Harvest Gold" and it looks great. The racing flags (it was a nursery before) and offwhite color just weren't doing it for us. Now the place looks great in a golden color that complements the furniture and looks very nice (great job babe).

original paint job


primed


new color making the windows and the molding stand out

Two great finds while getting supplies were the roller that had an extend-able handle that was only 1 dollar more than the one that didn't and the paint tray with the teflon coating ($1-$2 more) was great b/c there was no cleanup. Just let it dry until the next day and peal the paint right off in one big chunk.

Yesterday, with Em doing most of the work, we managed to remove all of the poison ivy we could find in our back yard. After wo days of spraying it with Roundup Heavy Brush Remover, I soaked down the area heavily to loosen the soil and then Em, fully clothed despite the heat and wearing double layers of gloves pulled it up along with the other ivy we don't like and cleaned the place up. So far no itching and now we can more easily manage the problem if it comes back (anything coming over the fence gets sprayed).

.....

Now for the big news ... we got a DOG! :-) Her name is Jolie (her original name, think Angelina) and she is an almost 3 year-old fawn shar-pei and labrador mix. Em had seen her online and this morning we went to the MO Humane Society and picked her up. She has a great temperment (hasn't barked, niped or groweled yet) and while the other dogs were bouncing all around she was fairly calm and is affectionate to anyone who is willing to pet her. I have been trying to do all of the tips that I have read online and seen on The Dog Wisperer and things are going well. She is still getting adjusted to the house but no problems yet. Only semi-problem so far is that she isn't seeming too hungry, but that will change in time.

The previous owners had adopted her but didn't have any time to spend with her. On their form they put that she wasn't totally house trained b/c she had a few accidents ... but it also said that she was in a crate for most of most days .. :-(. The guy who was taking care of her at the shelter said that she was his favorite and had never had an accident. [crossing our fingers]

I will post more pics when I get some better ones but these will have to do for now. :-)

A fixed doorbell and an unwanted guest

First the good news ... I fixed our doorbell. When we moved in we noticed that the doorbell button was cracked and so one of our first weekend in the new place I went out and bought a new button. Simple thing with two mounting screws and two screws to tighten the wires around. Not even two minutes of work and the things were switched. Great!

Or so I thought.

Our doorbell (the actual "bell" part) is a two tone thing (e.g. diiiiiing doooooong) but after I switched the buttons it was more of a dingg do.......zzzzgnzazx. To the untrained ears, I assumed that the problem was that the power wasn't being supplied long enough for it to complete the "bell" and that there must be some reason for the new button only applying the juice for a second when the old one did it longer.

A few weeks past and I finally got around to googling the problem and after a bit of searching found out that it was my fault. On the back of the original button was a small electrical "thingy" attached to the two poles without any obvious use and which didn't seem to have come with the button. When the new button didn't work I had tried putting it on the new button, but nothing changed so I pitched it with the old button figuring it didn't matter. Well I was wrong.

Evidently it was a diode thats is somehow important to having the power supplied correctly to the "bell" and which I needed to fix my button. After a bit more reading I found this site and several more like it which confirmed this so tonight I was off to Radio Shack. Thanks to the sites helpful hints I found it (part numbers were right on) and installed it. Viola! Now it works like a champ.

One place I read about diodes said they were polar (ie aren't symectrical and have a "flow" to them) so its possible that I had just tried it the wrong way and it would have worked the other way. But either way, its fixed now, I know I need one, I don't know any more about diodes other than that you can pick up a pack of 2 at Radio Shack for 99 cents. :-)

Now the bad news....

My uncle noticed when he was touring the house during the party that in one corner of our backyard on our retaining wall near the fence is several poison ivy plants. GRRRRRR. This is quite a problem in a multitude of ways first and foremost being that I (and my dad) are VERY alergic to poison ivy (e.g. when I was a young lad and in the boy scouts I got it a couple times, the last resulting in bad blisters, horrible bumps all over and my face swelling to the point where I couldn't really open my eyes). Secondly, we really want to get a dog this weekend and we can't have that around if its going to be sniffing around the backyard and coming inside.....

So this week we are going to try and get rid of it. And by we I mean me for moral support and Em doing the work very carefully b/c so far she has never had a reaction to it and we are hoping won't start now.

What I have read so far (aprox 15 minutes of googling) is that we will talkt our neighbor about it and given her consent, proceed to purchase and use a "large" amount of a good herbicide to kill the any and all plants we can find while trying to kill as little of the plants around them. Several people have suggested using Roundup (or other with gyphosate?) which gets absorbed and kills down to the root and then a day or two later soaking the whole area with tons of water to loosen the soil and then wearing protective gear which can be thrown away, pulling out all of the plants, putting them in plastic bags to be thrown away and washing every one and thing after.

So, that should be interesting. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. :-(

Good Party and thinking about a dog

The party was a success with 35+ family and friends stopping by and enjoying a burger/hotdog and a drink while getting to see the new house. More people than we expected were able to make it and we appreciated everyone stopping by. It was a nice time being able to throw a party like that in our own home with a good amount of space. When it wasn't raining we even got in a few games of cornhole in the backyard.

Sometime between now and next weekend Em and I may be getting a dog. We have pretty much decided that we want to get one now and just need to do a few things and find one. We will probably be getting one from the Missouri Humane Society since they have a ton right now. We are planning on getting a "smaller" medium sized dog that ideally would have hair on the shorter side ... but we might just end up getting whatever wags its tail at us first :-) Em found these two great looking dogs on their website (Sadie and Chance). :-D

Oh, and I found this link today ... chess and boxing? I was picturing something closer to "wizard chess" but with real people but this seems just as strange.

Checking in, happy belated 4th!

Not too much is going on.

Big party this weekend at our house (anyone who reads this and wants to come is invited). Should be a nice time with friends and family and food. BYOB but we will have some, plus hot dogs, burgers, snacks, soda, cornhole, music, etc

Brined and stuff pork chops tonight .... mmm mmm good.

Been doing a lot of yard work this past week(end). Weed-B-Gone works wonders but the bottle you need to be careful with the bottle with the hose attachment. There isn't a good way to tell how much your applying or how fast you should be working across the lawn. FYI if you put ~50% more than what is suggested on your lawn ... the tips of your grass will turn yellow too. But damned if it doesn't kill the weeds.

We had a tree service come today (actually they came out of the blue today, we had asked them to come out but they couldn't tell us when they would be available). They too two limbs off the tree closer to the house. The tree has some other problems which are stressing it out, but at least this way it will be a little more symmetrical and less prone to fall on the house ... and fill the gutters with leaves..

Em and I went to see WALL-E this past weekend and it was pretty great. Not quite as good as Finding Nemo or The Incredibles but a very good movie none the less (highly recommend). The plot is a bit more "kid-ish" but there are plenty of more adult jokes that the kids miss and plenty of just plain good fun. Oh, and Disney is evidently coming out with some HORRIBLE looking movie about chihauhuas in Hollywood. I will NEVER get that 2 minutes back.

Other than that, just work and softball. This week I am working on an internal Rails project and spent several hours this weekend getting some stuff setup on my home machine to try and learn about it before this week ... well the setup took longer than expected but I learned a ton. Hopefully I will post about it soon.

Em and I joined the local municipal recreation/fitness/aquatic center. Its actually a very nice facility and very cheap compared to other gym memberships. Em got the fitness + pool b/c she will use it and I just got the fitness center and will pay the local resident rate when I go with her. I don't like sitting out like she does, but the aquatic center has a full lap pool, water slide, kids area and lazy river. I do the lazy river.

On the topic of working out I am once again trying to get back(for the first time) into the swing of things. To that end I am trying out several online tools to track your workouts, progress, etc. I am hoping to post a review shortly after I have tried them out for a couple of sessions.

That is all.

Busy and work, busy at home, listing to Pandora

It seems like 80% of my posts start with me saying something about being busy.

Well, lets continue the trend.

Its been a busy week[end].

This past week our National Sex Offender Registry project started back up after a new statement of work was signed so we have been hard at work implementing a couple of additional features to our original application. Its nice to be moving forward with this again and nearing the finish line. Good projects are always a good thing, but if you don't ever finish and hand if off "done" to somone else, there isn't the closure that should be there. However, trying to jump back into a project after a few weeks of working on completely different stuff in a different language leaves you with a few hours where you feel like your running around with your head cut off trying to figure out where things are :)

Also this week we finished up some work on an internal application and found out that another project I am supposed to be helping out with (.Net realty website) will be starting soon so I will have to try and juggle some work for both for the next couple weeks. Should be fun and make for some really short and some really long days.

This weekend was a packed one. We cleaned our apartment for the last time and turned in the keys. It was a good apartment and served our needs well but I found that I didn't really miss it. Leaving Cinci was definitely harder (leaving jobs, friends, etc) but this time it just seemed like an upgrade which is a good thing I guess.

Along with cleaning we purchased and put together (took forever) a couple of nice bookcases for the office, fixed the drain to the washer (and it doesn't leak ;-) ), got fertalizer and fertalized and sprayed some weed stuff on the lawn, unpacked more and had a nice cookout tonight with some of my family and enjoyed the unseasonably cool weather.

This week .... work, Em works a day, softball, cleaning the gutters and hopefully finding some time to relax. Oh and since Em's parents are going out of town for a day and half ... Harry their lab is coming to stay with us for a two nights. It will be cool having a dog here but interesting to see how he deals with all of the hardwood floors and the new environment. Wish us luck :) It should be a good trial run for getting a new dog (next on our list of things to do).

Oh, and I have been listening to Pandora a ton this weekend. I remember reading about it a long time ago but never really checked it out. Its pretty impressive. Give it a few seeds of songs/artists you like and it plays really good music for the most part, online, and free. Can't beat that.

Officially Moved

With the help of friends and family, yesterday, Em and I officially moved all of our stuff from our apt to our new house. :-D

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who helped. Everything went much smoother and faster than I had anticipated.

That being said, the move went well. The only small hiccups were when we found that a piece of furniture we were picking up from Em's grandparents wouldn't fit in our moving truck standing up, when I found out that the moving-pads I had requested weren't in the truck, and when we got done so fast that my parents had to wait at the apt to give my aunt the couch we were giving her. All in all very minor things.

The house still looks big, but less big now that all of our stuff is in it. We did some minor unpacking the rest of the day but will still be doing it for the next week or so. Last night was our first night in the house and it was really nice waking up there. :-)

I will be sending out an email to those of you who read this and aren't family shortly with the new address.

..............

In other news, this past Friday our company had an all-employee all-day set of meetings off site. As scary as that sounds, the whole thing ended up being very good. Along with the normal status of the company information, sales pipeline presentations, etc, there was a focus on making the company better (however it might be). To that end, two separate sessions of Open Spaces groups were setup, each with arpox 10 simultaneous talks going on where the topics focused on ways we can make hte company better (e.g. ways we can improve our working environments, ways to deliver better software to our clients, ways to document what we feel our core skill sets are and ensure that all of our developers are at certain levels across the board, etc). I sat in on discussions about the core developer skills and training as well as on an idea for a company wide cross-project Testing-festival-day. After that there were several presentations/talks on business and tech topics. It was pretty amazing seeing ~100 people all discussing how they do their jobs and making real efforts to find ways to do them better. It was a long day, but a productive one.

Saturday, along with having our patio set finally delivered late (for a second time) in the middle of a freak rain storm, was the company picnic. They put together a pretty nice one including games, tons of catered food (including cotton candy and snowcones) as well as games and events for the kids. Also, as Em pointed out, you can really tell that the average age of the company is fairly young by the shear number of young children that were running around. Good times.

This week, its unpacking, getting our furniture delivered tomorrow, and finding out where Em unpacked stuff when I wasn't around.

Bye Bye Money, moving, and a new-new mower

Its been a busy few days with the new house. We closed last Thursday and have spent good parts of each day over at the house cleaning/fixing/gardening/packing/unpacking/etc. Em has been a huge help in moving tons of the smaller stuff over there the past few days and will be there most of the week as delivery people start bringing stuff.

Empty dining room from the living room and kitchen minus fridge


Living room facing backyard and backyard from kitchen


Our out front living room windows

Some of the highlights of the last few days and of the next few are below:

• We are hoping to have almost all of our smaller items (things that will fit in a car) moved before this weekend.
• We bought our washer and dryer last week from Lowes. We decided on the pair we really liked despite the fact that the dryer was too big for the doorway. Saturday Em's dad and I knocked out one side of the frame to make room. Easier than expected.
• We bought a refrigerator from a local retailer also last week. We were on the fence between and expensive one and a more expensive one (we got it for a good deal under list price luckily) ... and decided to go all the way b/c it something that should last 10+ years and while the amount more wasn't nothing, given the nicer features it was worth it.
  
• Note: when purchasing ANY appliances or things that are bigger than you can carry in your arms ... verify that it will fit where you want it before you buy ... and verify that it will fit through every room/door way between your front porch and where you want it before you buy (we realized that our fridge will only fit INTO the kitchen without the doors, which they said wouldn't be a problem for the delivery people) .... also, if your spending 1k+ at a store, you should be able to get free delivery if you push them for it.
• We bought our furniture last week too (yeah, it was a helluva week for the our wallets). We got a really nice looking bedroom set and couch+love seat from Ashley furniture. They had the living room stuff in stock, but had to order the bedroom set so we won't get either for ~3 weeks. We wanted it earlier, but were willing to wait.
• We are contemplating re-sealing our hardwood since right now is the best time we will ever have to do it before we move everything in and eventually get a dog ... still not decided though.
• Its still amazing how much stuff you have and even more amazing that it could all fit into a rental truck (or our new living room) if so motivated.
  
• I rented a truck this past week for Sunday from BudgetTruck.com. While I was checking out I noticed their promo code box and figured I would try for one last time one of the random web catalogs for those kinds of things. Well, for the first time I found one that worked and RetailMeNot.com came through with a 20% discount!
  
• Its also amazing how big a house feels without anything in it and how much you need to buy to feel like its full
• We dropped a few bills at Home Depot this weekend getting stuff for the yard/outside/house. Some of the highlights were caulk which Em used in the bath to seal a tile, an electric trimmer, hoses, rakes, hardware, a couple tools, and a mower.
• Em has spent a good deal of time cleaning up the landscaping and has made some excellent progress.
  
• The mower. Initially I was contemplating a cordless electric mower and joking that it would be funny to try a manual push mower .... I ended up purchasing a self-propelled gas mower. :-) I went this route b/c there was a deal at Home Depot for a really nice one which should serve me well for many years and with the hill in our front I didn't want to push a heavier (b/c of the batteries) electric mower up it ..... but wait theres more.
• The mower is a Toro with a Briggs and Straton engine. Setup consisted of unfolding the handle, clicking it into place, adding the included oil, and filling the gas tank. Simple. The thing started on the first pull and ran really smooth .... HOWEVER the handle bar that initiates the self propelled feature was installed wrong and I can't get it to go. I can push it ... but I didn't pay the amount I did to have to push anything. So I call around: Toro customer service says to bring it into a service center to be fixed under warranty. Home depot says to bring it back to get a new mower (I opted for this). Today I convince my father in law to bring his van by, we load it up and take it to the store (not far), bring it in and the guy at the return desk says this:
  
  "Sure we can exchange that .... oh, does it have gas in it?"
  To which I say, "Yes, of course, I just filled it up".
  "Oh, well I can't take it back if it has gas in it. You have to take it somewhere else and drain it or run it dry before you can return it"
  
  A bit or arguing, talking to a manager, and watching the father in law make a guy look stupid later ... I had to go buy another gas can and go in the parking lot to drain the mower. Its not like a gas can costs a lot .. but when you buy something that expensive and heavy/awkward and it turns out to have a manufacturing defect ... the last thing you want to be told is that you have to drop another $4 just to return the damn thing. 10 minutes later I had a new mower.
  
  First let me say that while I understand the policy (fire hazard), it still doesn't make it right from a customer's perspective. What is the first thing you do with a mower ... fill it up! I understand you don't want to be responsible for random customer's gas coming into your store ... but you sell gasoline engines for pete sake ... have some policy and/or procedure in place beyond "we can't do it, take it somewhere and bring it back empty".
  
  That being said ... despite my frustration I ended up a fair bit ahead. Before we left to drain the mower Em's dad said in no nice terms that the manager should go get us a new mower while we did it so that we could leave as soon as we were done. When we got back a new mower was on a cart waiting for us .... and it was the next model higher than the one I had purchased. I noticed right away b/c they have big numbers on them so that you can find them on the floor away from the display models ... but figured either A) the manager had done it on purpose to compensate us for the hassle or B) I wanted it for compensation for my hassle and the guy had grabed the wrong one. I decided to not say anything figuring that the guy ringing up the return would probably catch it and have to get another one or that I would find out he meant to do it. Well there was no mention of why I was getting a #12 and not a #11 but I kept my mouth shut and now am the proud owner of a 6.75 HP mower (instead of 6.5) with self pacing features (you gently push the mower forward and the handle adjusts the speed automatically so that it matches your speed without you doing any work ... instead of a manual lever) and it has an automatic primer instead of a manual one. So all in all I am happy, questing my morals, but happy :-) original .... new hotness
  

Thats about it. Friday I have all day meetings at work at Windows On Washington (the other portion of the same place that we had our wedding reception) and then on Saturday we have our company picnic. Sunday is the big move with the rented truck and should be our first night in our new home! :-D

I thought I had lots that I wanted/needed/should do before. Well, my new To Do list puts the old one to shame.

Closed : Home Owners

Yep ... its official. Em and I are the proud owners of a mortgage! Err... I mean a new house!

We met up for our closing this morning (I took the day off) and after signing and initially what seemed like a mountain of paperwork (more like ~40 pages) we were officially the owners of a mortgage (we also had to run to our bank and get a cashiers check for by far the largest amount I have ever paid and turn that over too).

A few hours of waiting and buying house supplies the sellers had closed and we officially had our house. :-)

The previous owners were great, they were gone well before we got there, had mowed the lawn since the walkthrough, left the window treatments that we liked along with a few small pieces of furniture and a bottle of champagne on ice :-) We spent the rest of the day/evening making plans, doing some minor cleaning, and showing the house to Em's sister and my parents. We capped the evening off by ordering pizza to be delivered to our new house.

Tomorrow, Em is going to spend a good chunk of the day cleaning (everything was in good shape but its the only shot we will have to really clean it before things are moved in) and doing some arranging. This weekend we have a BBQ and a family picnic along with Father's Day festivities. Also, sometime between now and next Wednesday I need to figure out how to take apart a doorframe in our basement so that the washer/dryer set we bought yesterday (yep, we started saying goodbye to our money yesterday) will fit. We ended up only finding one set that would fit throught he doorway and decided we would rather have the hassle of taking it apart and putting it back and have the ones we wanted .... than have ones we didn't like.

Next up is a huge list of cleaning/fixing/setting up/etc things around the house, packing and moving smaller things and gennerally getting things set up. Also we will probably be buying our fridge tomorrow (if we can decide between the expensive one we like and the more expensive one we love) and a bedroom set and living room set soon.

Hurray for debt! Its the American way, right?

So Close I can Taste It

Monday we had our final walkthrough and I am happy to report that everything looked good. Our only concern is if the current owners will be out in time. When we walked through they still had the majority of their stuff there (much of it packed in boxes, but still in every room). Hopefully they took off yesterday and/or today and moved it all ... but we shall see. We close in the morning on Thursday and they close around lunch time, so if all goes as planned, we will be able to go in our new house in the afternoon. :-)

Another concern that turned out to be a non-issue was a small leak the current owners had reported to us via the realtors. It turns out that sometime last week they noticed a small amount of water coming from the wall in the basement ... but on the other side of the house from where they had had problems in the past. This worried us, so we told them to have someone come out and look at it, figure out what it was and hopefully fix it. They did. It turns out that there was a small opening where the gas lines enters the foundation ... and only b/c we had had so much rain recently that a small amount of water made its way through the opening next to the pipe (this is on the side with a hill going away from the house). They had someone out yesterday to fix the opening and that should be that.

So other than trying to pack some more and wondering if they are all moved out, not much is going on until tomorrow. :-)

Oh, and we lost our softball game. We are now 1-1-1-2-4 (win/loss/tie/bye/rain). My hitting was solid (3:3 w/ ~3 RBI and 2 runs) but our defense had some really poor innings (this included me .... I have to remember to not try and barehand hard hit grounders, they don't pan out well).

Zoo Pics and Excitement

I love the St. Louis Zoo. Not only is it a world class zoo and completely free to the public ... but if you get there when it opens on a Saturday then its pretty much deserted and you can walk right up to the animals who are very playful at 8am.

If you can't figure out what Em and I did this past Saturday, then just look at the pics....

Huge grizzly bear scratching his back on a tree


Baby orangutan


Code Monkeys
Honestly, Em saw the CDs in the cage and thought up the joke, I take no credit


Chimps in silhouette

I have a few videos that I am uploading the Google Video at the moment and will post later.

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On the house front, the excitement is ramping up. Tomorrow we have our final walkthrough after work. Basically we need to make sure that the house is still in the same state as when we saw it before and note any problems/changes. Also, its our chance to measure several things exactly so that we can purchase appliances and furniture. Thursday is our closing (9am) so God willing, Thursday night we will be ordering pizza to be delivered to our new home. :-)

The only big thing between then and now is we should get the final number from the title company on what we will owe at closing so that we can go to the bank and get our cashiers check made out (by far the biggest check of any kind I will have ever written ... and probably will until our next house). Exciting!

Parks, Hidden Parks, and more

As always, its been a busy few days

This past weekend Em and I took in the few hours of nice weather and went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (where they had the orchid show a few months ago). Along with all of the really cool plants and gardens that they always have they also are featuring artwork for the Niki collection. The huge and ornate sculptures were pretty amazing.

Em's favorite Niki sculpture


The ever-hungry koi and irises


Another Niki sculpture and some cool glass floating things

Later that night, Em and I went to Bailey Chocolate bar to formally and finally fully celebrate her getting her new job. The place had a great atmosphere and the food/drinks were really good. Em had a couple mojito sorbet martinis to drink while I had a very crisp New Belgium Sunshine Wheat and a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (very intense and filling, but good). To munch on we had a sampling of cheeses (a camembert, a drunken goat cheese and one other) that came with assorted nuts, fruit and breads. For desert we had a delicious banana split that had Baileys ice cream and more chocolate.

Today Em and I both gave blood at our church after work and then, after dinner, we walked over to a local park. We had heard that there was a little park tucked away behind another church within walking distance but hadn't ever seen it or knew exactly how to get to it. Well, tonight we found it and were quite surprised. It was much larger than we anticipted, very close to our apartment, and featured among other things: tennis courts, basketball courts, a large pond with fountain and a bridge, two gazebos, well kept up gardening and a large playground. Not bad for being within a mile of our place. Too bad we just found. To go along with the other things, we also saw a ton of wildlife including a duck with ducklings, tons of large tad poles, tons of small fish, bunnies, and a large deer with one antler.

Twin Oaks Presbyterian through the trees

In house news .... there really isn't much news. We have our final walkthrough a week from today and in 10 days we close! Finally. Tonight I did clear up one thing related to taxes and insurance. Evidently I was actually thinking about it correctly, but thought I wasn't. With our lender, we pay slightly ahead on our taxes each month which are collected into an escrow account until November when they are paid. Rinse and repeat. Insurance is slightly different, however. At closing we will be paying for a whole year of insurance (through summer of '09) and each month we will be paying for the same month 1 year in the future. This is so that the lender makes sure that their collateral is properly insured. It stinks b/c its your money sitting in their account but once you get to 20% equity .... you can stop .... and if if you sell the house or pay it off .... you get your money back.

Not much else to blog about (not that most of this is very interesting to begin with). We did get a letter today saying we would be getting our economic stimulus check by the 6/7th of June .... why they didn't just send the check I will never know ... but at least it should be here soon. Also, since Em doesn't work during the summer she was given the option to get her final two months of pay up front, so this past pay day was a nice one :). Its a shame most of whats in our checking account at the moment will be leaving in 10 days .... but at least we finally get to start moving in :-)

Insured

Well, as of the closing date we are.

After work today I setup our home owner's insurance with USAA (we already have car insurance and some other accounts with them). All in all the process is fairly painless however I found a couple of things while doing it (at least at USAA):

• They mail you the policy info which you should get within 7-10 days and also fax a copy to your loan company for your proof of insurance ... so have a phone number and/or fax number for your loan company before doing this
• Also, the insurer needs to know the loan company's info for you policy (it goes into it somehow) and the info you gives them needs to be specific to your loan. Luckily I happened to find this in our loan documents just before I called or I would have given them the wrong info (there was a page all about what levels you must maintain and what loan company info should be on the policy)
• There are tons of options and things you can change, but the defaults seemed to work for most things for us.
• We will end up getting an additional personal property policy for Em's jewelry (even though it stays in the safety deposit box, b/c its over our limits) but I need to get the apraisal info and descriptions in order first
• I opted for the water damage insurance (10k insurance for any water problems due to sewer backups, sump pumps, etc other than floods) b/c it was a steal and its one of the few likely problems we will have
• Normal coverage doesn't cover floods or earthquakes at all. We don't need flood insurance but we will probably add the basic earthquake insurance on. Also, its more for earthquake insurance if you have a masonry home instead of frame b/c of the possibility of cracked walls due to an earthquake. It was a small amount more to extend your normal coverage (personal property, total loss, etc) for earthquakes but if you want to have your policy cover damage to the structure excluding rebuilding (e.g. repairing a cracked wall) its an extra 150? per year.
• Most other amounts are all based on your homes perceived replacement cost which they calculate using averages for the area along with details you provide (materials used in the home, size, shape, walls, floor coverings, etc). Its important to keep this number in mind when making additions/improvements b/c you want to make sure that in case of a major incident that your covered to actually rebuild your home like it was that day, and not just the way it was 5 years ago.
• We went with the $1k deductible b/c we save $110/year on it versus the $500
• A home burglary/fire/alarm system would knock off another $100+ bucks a year .... but I am undecided. USAA has deals for members with ADT but even then its $300 for installation and $25/month for monitoring. Thats not too expensive for a ton of piece of mind so I might still get it, but I haven't decided.
  

After numerous questions and choices on amounts (e.g. how much personal liability coverage do you want, etc) everything was done and setup to start the day we get the keys. It was actually about $10 cheaper than what Em's aunt had estimated so that was good all the way around and now pretty much everything is set for that week. We have our final walk through the preceding monday and get to sign tons of papers the morning of closing then its all ours! :)

An Inch Too Far

What am I talking about? Dryers.
And actually, they are about 2 inches too big.

Em had the thought a couple weeks ago about whether or not the washers and dryers we were looking at would fit through the doorway into the laundry room in the new house .... and if the curren't owner's appliances would be able to fit when the wanted to remove them (we think they finished the basement after they had them down there).

Through our realtors we found out that the doorway is 27 inches and they made no comments about realizing they couldn't get theirs out and would we like to buy them (darn!).

Well thats just dandy, but the two pairs we were trying to decide between both have dryers that are just a little bit bigger than that. The washers would just fit (~ 26.5") but the dryers have part of the drum sticking out behind.

So, we aren't exactly sure what we are going to do about it. We will probably look around a bit more and see if we can find a pair that will fit, but the most likely solution will be trying to remove the door frame while we move stuff in, and not break it too much.

Its a bummer (we had found some great deals this past weekend). But at least we know it in advance.

....

This past weekend was a ton of family stuff (celebrated Em's parent's anniversary by coordinating a surprise dinner at the same place we had our rehearsal dinner), barbeque's, and a trip to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery to see my grandpa's grave and pay respect to the veterans buried there (the boy scouts put flags on every grave each year which is nice).

Tuesday our softball game was rained out for the 3rd time. So far in 7 weeks of play we are 1-1-2-3 (wins/losses/by-weeks/rain-outs).

Grab Bag and Insurance

Lots of little things have been going on lately

• I won my companies Cardinals tickets again (almost missed out b/c I thought they were for the following week) and went with Em and my parents. It was good time even if they lost.
• Our car is back to normal (and has been since the repairs). No lasting ill effects I am happy to report
• Work has been all over the place: hard at work developing one week, a week of documentation and writing installers for our code, and this week has been waiting on the client and helping out another group while we wait.
• I have been able to muster a small amount of time for some personal tech projects lately (some notes about them and work on my tech blog here)
• Last weekend Em, myself and several members of Em's family partisipated in charity walk at a local park for brain cancer research (a relative of Em's died from it) which was a good time and a great cause.
• I got 3 or 4 recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn in the past two weeks including one from someone who works for LinkedIn about a new team they are starting. Its always good to know you could get a new job if you needed to (and its even better to know you love your current one :-) )
  

I am sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Other than that the only big thing to report is that I have been looking into homeowner's insurance which I will probably be deciding upon tomorrow. Luckily it looks like the company we have our auto insurance through has some decent deals so that will work out well. Its amazing how complex the stuff is, how many options you have, and how its just one more thing to pay for when getting a house :-p

Once I decide I will post some details of what we got, or at least why I got/didn't get things.

Fun stuff!

What are YOU doing with your stimulus check?

I still haven't decided. And since I haven't gotten mine yet, I am not committing the money to anything until its been cashed. But its still a good question. What are you going to do with a free $600 - $1200+ check?

From what I have read, the checks are not to be taxed income and will not effect next year's tax returns (if anyone can cite something that says otherwise, please let me know). That being said, assuming the money is free as in beer and freedom ... then I still don't know what I am going to do with it. From what I understand Em and I will be getting $1200 (married filing jointly) but we shall see.

My initial thought was to use it to buy some of the stuff we were going to buy anyway for the house ... but in the end that just means I stuck it into our saving account which doesn't seem very fun ;-)

Today when I had a few free minutes I came up with the following list, aprox. in increasing order of "fun" (which happens to be the inverse of the "responsible" things to do):

• Add to emergency fund
  
• Mortgage - hurray for saving interest and money for whenever we sell the house
• Em's last school loan
• Car loan - thats 4 months of of payments!
• Retirement - I took a small hit switching companies before all my money was vested, the new pay was worth it but most of that is going toward house improvements at the moment
• Upgrading some of the purchases we are going to make for the house irregardless (e.g. buying really nice washer/dryer or refrigerator instead of just nice)
• Extra misc house stuff we would like but aren't planning on buying
• Vacation fund - Em and I want to go on a big trip next year .... maybe
• LCD TV for downstairs (e.g. something like THIS)
  

Yep, the TV is sounding nice.

However, after making that list, I turned the piece of paper over and wrote down everything we want/need to buy in the next couple months related to moving into the house. Some of that list included.

• Bedroom furniture
• Living room furniture
• Yard stuff (rakes, shovels, mower, hoses, trimmer, patio furniture, etc)
• New exterior door
• Mattress, linens and towels for guest bedroom
• kitchen island thingy
• bookshelves for the office
• refrigerator
  
• washer/dryer
• window treatments
• paint
• cleaning supplies
• Ethernet cable and wall adapters (I want to run it throughout the house)

So, since that list is bigger and much more immediate I think we are just going to sock it away to use on some of those thing and the tons more that come with home ownership, moving and suddenly living in a space 3x bigger than you were a week ago.

So ... what are YOU doing with your rebate?

Break Even Point

Big Red asked what I meant by "break-even" on my last post so here is my explanation. He may have only wanted a brief description ... but my intention was to write up a detail description of the math I did (including charts and spreadsheets) ... but I am way tired for some reason so here is something in-between (skip to the example if you just want numbers) ....

(Any and all info may be wrong. This is what I believe to be true and what I based my decisions on. If anyone finds a mistake please let me know, but don't be surprised. It has happened once before. Maybe twice)

Lending money is risky. Lending large amounts of money is riskier. Lending large amounts of money against something that might lose value or burn down is even riskier. Therefore, mortgage lenders take out insurance against the situation where you can't pay them, and they can't sell the property to recoup their investment. Thus, Private Mortgage Insurance.

To make things even better, you the borrower get the opportunity (must) pay the PMI for your lender. Basically your paying for the insurance of you defaulting ..... if you have less than 20% equity in your home (someone, somewhere statistically decided that if you have >20% equity in the home then the chance of you defaulting AND them not being able to get their money back is low enough that they don't need insurance).

What is home equity? Basically the difference between the home's value and the loan against it. So, with each mortgage payment you pay starting with your first and until you have >20% equity built up (and have had the home re-appraised and gotten the lender to agree to remove it) you must also send in your PMI payment. The PMI amount is based on some percentage of the loan amount (I can't remember the exact formula) but for us its about 7.3% of a month's payment. After you have 20%, you don't pay it any more.

A second option our lender had was a form of "financed PMI". It boiled down to: A) you don't pay PMI ever, no matter the equity and B) your interest rate is a small bit higher. How much higher? Our initial good faith estimates put it at 3/8% higher. Under this plan, you pay a higher mortgage payment for whole life of the loan ... which is less than the original mortgage payment + PMI.

Assuming the "normal" monthly mortgage bill as our "zero", the normal PMI option added around $77 to our bill each month while the "financed" option added $33. However, the $77 is only paid until you have 20% paid off, while the $33 is paid for the whole term of the loan.

So ... after many paragraphs ... the break-even point I referred to is the amount of time (number of payments) at which point both choices are essentially equivalent.

For example:

If you wanted a $200,000 home and could put 10% down ($20k) your payments would be about $1,065 / month (not including taxes, insurance, utilities or anything else). Assume you pay the minimum each month and the interest rate is 5.875% (PMI) and 6.25% (financed PMI).

If you go the PMI route, you pay an extra $77 / month that doesn't go toward the principle or interest (total payment = $1,142). Since at the beginning of a loan most of the payment is interest, it will take you aprox 89 payments or 7.4 years to get to 20% equity ... at which point you don't pay any more PMI. However, cumulatively you have now payed a total of $6,853 in PMI.

If you had chosen the financed route, your mortgage payments would be $1,108 which is $33 cheaper than the PMI option. After 89 payments you will have paid $2,979 LESS than the PMI option. IF you took $1,133 of that savings and put it toward your principle you would also have 20% equity in your home and still be $1,845 ahead. However, starting with the 90th payment your now paying $43 MORE than you would be otherwise.

Essentially, each payment going forward is taking $43 out of the $1,845 savings and after 41 payments your at the break even point. At this point, 10.8 years later, with either option you would have paid the same amount of money.

So, if you plan on living in the house <10.8>10.8 years, regular PMI is the way to go. Simple, right?

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Thats the simplest version. If you put more down, then you will get to 20% faster and the break even point moves up (15% down with the same figures means a break even point of only 6.75 years). Also, if you plan to pay anything extra each month or at all, this can moves things up dramatically (mainly b/c at first the amount of principle you are paying is small, so extra contributions really add up). If you averaged just $50 extra each month, the BEP moves up to 9 years (6.6 years averaging $150).

Also, as I typed this, I realized something else that I hadn't thought of until now .... at the break even point you will have paid the same amount either way, but will have slightly less equity in your home with the financed option ... b/c your interest rate is higher, your paying less principle each month. This will move the BEP up slightly but I don't care enough to recompute the numbers.

AND this doesn't take into account 80/20 programs which I hear are more rare now, where you take out one loan for80% and another for 20% at a higher rate but don't pay any PMI since niether is >80. We didn't look into these so I can't really explain them much more.

Basically, if just depends on how long you think you will live there. If its less, the financed option makes a ton of sense (or if you think you could refinance to a lower rate but given how low things are at the moment, thats probably unlikely). If you think it will be more (our situation) then the PMI made more sense. If your anywhere close, then the difference will be small (a few hundred dollars) so it really wouldn't matter.

You can find a slightly screwed up Google Spreadsheet (imported from excel) with some of the formulas I used, HERE. Yes I spent too much time on it and yes its not complete but it did what I needed. Plus I am a huge nerd.

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Wow, that was a TON longer than I wanted ... hopefully it answers your question and makes some sense, and isn't completely wrong.

If anyone else has any questions please feel free to ask.


Oh yeah, its my birthday :-) so I am going to go to bed now. Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy one and thank you to everyone who didn't know but now feels guilty (don't be).

Apraisal, long week, sore arm

We got news today that our house was appraised for 5% more than what we paid which is very nice because A) it means we didn't pay too much for it, B) instant "return" on investment :-p, and C) thats 5% less we have to go toward 20%. :-)

I forgot to mention in my last post that I ended up deciding to go with the "normal" PMI route after all. After a ton of excel-spread-sheet-ing and going back and forth I decided that given the fact that we intend to pay a bit extra each month, it was more likely we would live in our house longer than the break-even points (I did the math was 10%/12.5%/15% and extra month payments ranging from $0 to $300). Now with the added "free" equity we get on the house with the numbers went even lower so I am guess-timating that the break-even point is around 4.6 years which should be much less than our stay in the home.

This week is shaping up to be a long but interesting one. This weekend Em and I are traveling to Louisville for a college roomate's wedding (90% of my 15 readers will be there) which should be a great time. In order to take off Friday and not have to use vacation hours (I don't have that many saved up since I started the new job) I am working extra each day this week. The good thing is that the work is really interesting right now and we are making some real progress on our current project.

Also, tomorrow night we have our first softball game of the season. It is going to be interesting to see how the league and the team plays (slightly different rules than what we had in Cinci) and I have heard we finished aprox. second last year which is promising. A few guys and I went out at lunch and threw a couple balls around for 30 minutes and many my arm is tired already. At least I know I haven't lost everything since the last time I played.

Speaking of games with balls and bats .... last week I was the winner of the company's Cards tickets so Em and I went with my cousin and his wife (we had a blast). The seats were real nice and we saw a great game which is always the most important part.

Oh, and today I finally broke down and wore shorts to work. ;-) I know, poor me. Its funny how you get used to wearing "real" clothes to work and how it still makes me feel weird going to work in shorts, tennis shoes and a polo. Nice, but weird.

The Earth Done Quaketh, and stuff

-- thank you Lewis Black

Yep, the other morning (as anyone who has seen/heard the knews in the past 3 days should know) there was an earthquake centered in south eastern Illinoise. While not real close to us in STL, any amount of close when talking about the earth moving violently up and down, is too close. The shaking didn't last long, but did last long enough to wake Em and I from our sleep. I only woke up enough to convince myself that whatever was making the noise wasn't my concern and to tell Em that "no, its not an earthquake, its probably just a train, go back to bed" .... evidently my brain functions when half asleep, just in the completely wrong way.

Other than being the first earthquake I have actually felt ... it wasn't a big deal. Many people I talked to sleep through it. This included my grandma who slept through it but thought she was going crazy when she found her china cabinet and grandfather clock doors open the next morning. She didn't immediately believe a friend she talked to on the phone, but while she was talking we got the first aftershock which quickly opened up her china cabinet doors again ... mystery solved.

The only thing new on the house front to report is that the sellers sent back our inspection report with what they were agreeing to have fixed. They agreed to everything except two things: 1) the plumber they talked to said that the downstairs bath was properly vented to code and would give us a signed letter stating it (fine by me), and 2) they aren't going to pay to have a new circuit run into the garage for the garage door opener (I wish they would, but not a big deal). Since they agreed to have everything else fixed, we went ahead and agreed and sent everything back. Oh, also we locked in our interest rate and got our final "correct" good faith estimate which was less than what we were expecting (yay) but a slight increase on the rate (changes every day, we ended up with 5 and 7/8%). Nothing to do now but secure home owner's insurance (or a letter stating that we CAN be insured), look at more appliances and furniture and start planning the move.

Work has been busy as ever. We finally got a signed SOW for our work with the National Sex Offender Registry so we have started on that (should be aprox a 6 week effort for two of us concluding with installation of web services at two states (TBD) and possibly presenting at a national conference in Baltimore). Its getting exciting, if not scary. I had to remember everything I knew about Java web services and learn a whole bunch of new stuff in a single day.

Also, we had our work's quarterly meeting on Friday (nice lunch and presentation) this past week. It was really nice. They discussed the financials (we are doing well and given the economy, very well over the past 2 years), recently awarded contracts, work in the pipeline, upcoming events, etc. Its amazing how much more ownership and connection you feel in a smaller company and how much you realize your actions actually effect the bottom line when compared to working as a contractor to a large international company. Plus its crazy and cool to find out that of the ~100 employees, we have 5 or 6 PHDs, a MD, the ex-CTO of NASA, and a 3-star General all working for us in various ways.

Last night Em took me out for a early birthday dinner to a Japanese/Asian Fusion restaurant we had never been to before and we had a great dinner (ordered way too much food, but thats an ok problem to have) and tonight she baked me a wonderful pineapple-upside-down cake and had our parents over for gifts (I got a new iPod-FM transmitter, a book on herb gardens, some clothes, and a large enamel-coated cast iron stock pot. ;-) )

Oh, and I went and hit some golf balls today for the first time in a few years. Happily I wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. Sadly, I was still very bad.