House :)

Posted on by

life has been updated, since it’s again the end of a 4-month period. Yay life.

House is happening, slowly. We’re in the contingency period through next Monday, and it’s been a whirlwind of phone calls and appointments and papers to sign. I’m really glad I had last week off of work, because even then, I didn’t have a chance to go and do non-house related things until Thursday afternoon. (I guess a day and a half off when you take a week off isn’t too bad, when the rest of the week is buying a house. :P)

Today was the home inspection with the awesome Russ Kowalik, who I would totally recommend to everyone looking at buying a house. It was basically a 5-hour careful tour of the house, examining everything that could be wrong or problematic (inside and out) and pointing out the things that could, should, and must be fixed so we have things to ask the sellers for. He was really good at pointing things out and talking to us and giving us information, and was also extremely thorough.

The good news is that there are no structural issues or other huge dealbreakers. The inspector commented a lot, actually, about the great shape the house was in. Of the issues, I think the biggest ones for us are the lack of grounded outlets on the second floor (which we’ll need to fix if I’m going to work from home and plug lots of computer equipment in), and the potential mold in the walls from when the roof had previously leaked (which, yeah, needs to be dealt with).
Amusingly, the things that would be the most expensive to fix (third-floor air conditioner is dying, and chimneys need repointing) are things that probably would affect our day-to-day lives less, even though they probably do need to be done soon as well. (You certainly don’t want chimney bricks falling on the roof shingles…)

So yeah. House! With luck, the sellers will be reasonable about things and give us some credit so we can get things fixed. Closing is in October. Then we shall have an awesome dwelling and we can start filling it with things.

San Francisco, House!!!

Posted on by

I had a trip to San Francisco, with the usual week in Phoenix afterward. It was a nice trip.

The flight out connected through Dallas. Apparently it was the first Pittsburgh-to-Dallas direct flight (after the Wright Amendment expired and let Southwest fly the route direct), so Southwest did their usual awesomeness and decorated the gate, and handed out Texas-shaped cookies to everyone:

The trip itself involved the usual meeting up with people, and also an unusually high number of meetings. I was going from meeting to meeting to meeting most days, with a small break for lunch (with team members). But I think we got a lot of planning done, which was the entire point of the trip, so that was great.



Also there were randomly puppies at work one day, so that was cute.

The San Francisco to Phoenix leg of the flight hit a snag though. Apparently Las Vegas was having lots of rain and flooding and unhappiness, so the flight was delayed more than 5 hours. So that was fun. Vegas seems to always cause problems… the delay brought back unhappy memories of being stuck in Vegas for 12 hours.

More photos of the trip are here and here.

In any case, the big happy news is that we probably have a house! Our offer was accepted this evening on an awesome 5-bedroom house a couple blocks from where we live now, so assuming the inspection doesn’t turn up terribleness… we have a house!

This makes two houses that we’ve made offers on while I was not in Pittsburgh. At least this one didn’t involve trying to sign legal paperwork while boarding a plane and while on the BART from the airport…

Softball Piccaring

Posted on by

Life goes. I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow for work (followed by the usual week in Phoenix with my parents), so that’ll be interesting. Traveling across the country is such a pain.

Work itself has been significantly better this week, now that the craziness of feature freeze has passed. I spent the week fixing tests and cleaning up bugs, which I can do straightforwardly, and doesn’t involve arguing with people on other teams, so I think that helped a lot.

Greg’s softball season came to an end last Tuesday after losing to one of the top teams in the league, in the second game of a double-header that had them win the first game handily. And all of that came after a Monday game that saw heavy rain that grew heavier by the end. I had the interesting experience of taking (actiony, quick-shutter-speed-y) telephoto photos in dark and rainy conditions while trying to hold an umbrella in my shutter-button-hand. So that was a new thing.

Here’s a bunch of softball photos:









Yay photos.

Life things

Posted on by

I’m probably overdue for an update, especially if I want to make sure I don’t skip a month completely.

Life goes. Work has been ridiculously stressful lately, for a variety of reasons. Needless to say, it’s extremely fortunate that feature freeze is this week… hopefully next month (and next release) will bring somewhat less craziness in terms of sheer workload, cross-team coordination, internal infastructure problems, and conflict. (So much conflict. D:)

I’ve been worse than usual at physical activity. I stopped climbing because my fingers were seriously not liking it (I think I rely too much on my middle fingers, and am pulling the joints apart or something when I put my whole weight on them), and stopped ITG for reasons that I’m not entirely sure of. At some point I should start getting a regular schedule of activity again, but it’s so hard to get motivated to do it when it’s always so hot outside (and inside) and all you want is to sit in front of the fan and be lazy. Blah.

Greg’s been playing softball lately, and I’ve been taking pictures, so here’s some softball pictures.








Jurassic World, People Wars

Posted on by

Greg is away in Seattle for the week, so the apartment is quiet and lonely this week. Max and Yubin rescued me from isolation last night by inviting me along to dinner and a movie, and it was a nice experience.

We saw Jurassic World in 3D IMAX. The latter two parts were probably unnecessary, but the movie itself was surprisingly well done. I was expecting one of those terrible sequels, but they did a good job introducing just enough nostalgic things (yay Jurassic Park music clips in the soundtrack!) while still having a story that could stand on its own. I don’t think most of the characters were really well-developed or consistent, but it didn’t end up mattering anyway because dinosaurs. :D
(Also, as per Jurassic Park, the terrible people get what they deserve, along with a few innocent ones. And you think they’d have learned a few things from the first time, but apparently not…)

I think this is something like the third movie I’ve seen in theatres in something like a decade. (Previously was Frozen and the Lego Movie.) I’m not sure it’s worth the price anyway… the $15 ticket pays for 1/3 of a nice board game, and board games give a lot more enjoyment, and more social interaction besides. But it was still a nice experience.

Owen paid us a visit this past weekend on his way to Harrisburg for family things, and it was nice. We played board games, hit up Dobra Tea, had food, and made a trip to the pool after he and Greg failed at kayaking downtown due to rough waters.
Mars and Dan are supposed to be visiting Pittsburgh starting Wednesday, so that’ll be nice too. Yay for people.

I also got off my butt and finally finished the latest People Wars expansion: Interruptions. I don’t think I really fleshed out Interrupt events as much as I needed to, but meh. Now there’s a new event type that can be played during other things (much like abilities and powers, but with an aspect of surprise), and card effects that let you play them during other players’ turns. So that’s fun.


Hooray for things.