I suck at this.

Has it really been more than a year since a meaningful post was done? I should probably give up and just turn this into my political whining :/

So… rereading my own posts… you all know I was married… that’s good. So what has the last year brought? Sadly, I don’t think this needs to be a long post. That isn’t to say I’ve had a bad or boring year, it has actually been quite wonderful.

First of all… I finally bought a house!!! If you don’t remember my saga have a look over here for a laugh… or cry. With my move to Hatteras Networks, my buying power increased a bit and Theresa decided it was time to look again. I wasn’t really in the mood so I let her pilot the process for a bit. We found a couple of town homes that were the right price and features (both were foreclosures if I remember right) but we weren’t able to get either. I was actually surprised with the second because we offered what the bank was asking for the home and accepted the “as-is” status. After we lost the second house, I fell back into the don’t care attitude but had more or less settle on the idea that I no longer wanted a town home and I didn’t want to move far outside of the town we already lived in. With that in mind (and the prices I was agreeing to for the town homes) Theresa went to task (with purpose I might add) and found two potential homes in a community not more than 2 miles from the apartment. We immediately fell in love with the first. The home was 8 years old but was immaculately maintained. Everything seemed to be in good condition and while the price was a bit high it really seemed like a place we could call home. The second house, which was bigger than the first and a better price per sq.ft., was a shit hole. It was a rented house, and the current tenants couldn’t even be bothered to go outside on a beautiful spring day long enough for us to tour the house. The carpets and doors were in abysmal condition and I don’t think we could trust the tenants to be nice to the house when moving out (I got the impression the house was being sold “out from under” them). After looking at the second house, it actually only took us about 10 minutes to decide that we wanted to make an offer on the first. We didn’t tell the Realtor that, we wanted to make sure we thought about it a little bit, but we were actually pretty set on it right away.

Offering on and negotiating on the house was a bit of a pain. The house was initially priced well over market value and at first the seller didn’t seem to think that was a problem. Indeed, we were offering on the house in less than 30 days of being on the market so he may have thought there was really high demand (although, that probably had more to do with their realtor), but it was hard to get them to budge. The process was pretty involved, but the one thing that stands out is how truly horrible the seller’s realtor was. Seriously, she nearly torpedoed the deal all on her own.. twice. The first time was when we were doing the inspection. We scheduled the inspection with full permission of the seller and then the night before the inspection we were told it would have to be moved because of work in the kitchen. Then, during the inspection, we found water near the dishwasher after testing it. I can’t think of any reasonable person who wouldn’t want to know what work was done in the kitchen after finding water in the middle of it. The realtor actually told us it wasn’t any of our business and not to worry about it. O RLY? I did get a little too angry at that, but fortunately my realtor was able to keep things together. The second time, was because we asked for a sit down meeting with the actual seller. Because of various odd communications and difficulties in negotiations, Theresa and I thought it would be easier to work out a few last issues face to face than with two realtors as intermediaries. Their realtor told us a meeting was unnecessary and that we had no business talking directly with her clients… O RLY? It also turns out that their realtor never presented them our request to meet and even refused their request to meet us! Really… thinking back… its amazing how much my temper has calmed in the last 4 or 5 years because in college I would have gone absolutely nuts on this lady.

We didn’t actually move into the house for a month or so after closing. The house was actually bought at the end of April, but the seller wasn’t ready to move because of how fast I needed to close (I liked my mortgage broker, but the industry is kinda shitty). I was actually a landlord for 30 days! The sellers turned out to be great people and its a shame their realtor was such a piece of crap. Because of her, I got the impression that the seller was going to try to screw me out of anything that wasn’t in writing so I was pretty much the asshole buyer that put every last thing in writing and demanded the letter of every clause in the buyers and renters contracts be followed. Things could and should have gone much easier.

The other big change for me in the spring was Hatteras Networks merging with Overture Networks. There has been some interesting fallout as a result of this merger, but nothing I’d like to put on the open internet. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much confidence in Overture as I did in Hatteras, but we have a lot of headroom for things to change and I’m being as open minded as possible.

Much of the summer was based around me and Theresa trying to get the house situated (and furnished). Not many of you own homes yet, but you’ll find out one day just how annoying $200 is. I swear, every weekend I was spending $200 on something for the house. Lawn mower (by the way, if you own a house… you need one), area rug, curtains, garage door opener… the list is actually pretty long. We did have a couple of amazing respites last summer. First, we had family and friends (thanks for coming!) down for a 4th of July party and house warming. We have some fun stories out of that one. Second, we took a weekend vacation to New Orleans since Theresa had to fly down for an ALA conference (btw, I recommend New Orleans for only a short vacation… the novelty wears off pretty damn fast).

Yet again, we did go to QuakeCon and this one was one of the most fun we’ve had. I think that is largely due to the fact that we didn’t do setup or tear down and managed to spent a lot more time away from the actual convention (last years convention was far more corporate due to Bethesda’s acquisition of id and a lot more generic than former cons). After 2010’s debacle with file sharing, we had pretty low expectations, so last years ended up pretty damn good by comparison. Despite that, some of us are considering ending our QCon trips on that high note and instead putting our efforts into a more traditional vacation; perhaps renting a beach house for a week. Probably more on that in a post to come (if I ever get around to it… I have other draft posts that will probably never be published).

That brings us into the fall which was very slow and sad for Theresa and myself. I did have a bit of good news… I bought a new Xterra PRO-4X (I’ll try to link pictures later) and took it off-roading with Tim (not my best decision). Sadly my fun was marred by other events. Theresa’s mother, after 19 years of various battles with cancer and a final 3 year fight that no one could win, passed in early December. I’m happy she’s not in pain any more and so very thankful for the same, but am deeply saddened that the world has lost such a kind and generous woman and that I won’t get to know her as Theresa did. We will move on and I hope honor her life in a way fitting to the person she was, which can only be an improvement over the person I’ve been so far.