As we have bought a house, and are having way too many trades people tweaking on it, it is time to plan our vacating of this apartment. This entails giving “notice” of our intent to vacate. Having read the fine print of the lease (I know, shocking) we know that breaking the lease early is going to cost us 2 months’ rent. A bit of a hardship, but not unexpected. Of course, we...
While the outside of the house has pretty decent paint, the inside was a bit, uh, hideous. Nothing too awful, but it clearly hadn’t been painted in a long time. The bedrooms had some odd paint colors on some walls, and one was obviously a child’s room with some odd trim. Add to that the awful 70’s vintage “popcorn” ceiling, and you have a mess. Fortunately, our real...
Before moving into our new house, we are having a lot of work done. While the “bones” of the house are in good condition, it is clear that some of the extremities were in need of some massive overhaul. The Kitchen Appliances are one of the worst offenders. As a former professional chef, I am lucky (cursed?) with the ability to make anything “do” around cooking. Old stoves...
The last post was about an innate understanding of scale and scope, and how this lead to a general understanding of magnitudes. A real world example, and one that is top of the news lately is the whole “anti-vaccine” movement. This is the increasing tendency to choose to not vaccinate your children due to the faulty belief that vaccines are worse than the disease. Leaving that...
I wrote this a couple weeks ago, before we closed so I wouldn’t jinx the process. The process of mortgage underwriting is completely f*cked up at this point. This post is some of the zaniness I had to endure. The last house I bought, in Chandler Arizona was a breeze. We bought it in 2012 (i.e. well after the global financial crisis), and apart from documenting my wages, and supplying some...
With 5 months of riding, it is time for an update of the 2015 Specialized Crave Expert. A few hundred miles in, with about an even mix of road and off road riding, there are a few things to update. I still hate the tires. I haven’t replaced them yet, but it will happen soon. They are a bit squirrely on hardpack, OK on loose/hard dirt, and awful in the mud. I am not a big mud rider, so this...
When I was in school, calculators were new enough, that they really weren't something that the average student had. They were expensive, and quite limited. Hence, we learnt how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper. In those days, the lesson plans were written to be approachable in a reasonable time frame to students to solve problems with pencil and paper easily. Even in my physics class...
Netflix has sabotaged my time again. This time with the drama “Blacklist)”, a show about a US Naval Officer who dropped off the grid, going rogue and criminal, and then becoming a high value informer for the government. Spoiler alert: if you haven’t watched, and are interested, you might want to stop here and move along. The Pilot was fairly compelling, but a bit cheesy. Raymond...
I have long enjoyed riding the train. There is something soothing about the sound of the wheels on the track. The stops, people getting on and off. What is their purpose for traveling? Why did they choose the train? My first experience with Caltrain was when I was fairly young, probably 8 or 9. I had a step brother who lived in San Francisco, and I would visit occasionally on the weekend, so my...
Like most Americans, I took the usual high school level history classes. At the time, they seemed dull and worthless. Memorizing dates and events, and the bland US history they cram down your pie hole, it is no wonder why I was nonplussed. Then my 3rd year of university, I took a real US History class at SJSU and my eyes were opened. The professor was not very dynamic, but the subject was...