The heartbreaking loss of that house numbed us emotionally forever towards buying a home. I’m not saying we won’t buy one, or that we won’t like what we buy, but we’re literally at the point where putting in an offer is now more business than the pure adrenaline excitement it was before. It has come to that point where emotional detachment is better, saves you from being kicked in the stomach when things (more than likely) don’t work out.

Such it was for us that these feelings came as the next real opportunity to own our own home was presented. A friend of my brother’s was getting ready to put their house for sale, but knew that we were looking to buy and asked if we’d be interested. Their home is located on the next street over from my sister’s house (you can see the back of theirs from the front window), and 2 streets from my brother’s house. We went to see the home, and definitely knew we would like it since the floor plan is nearly identical to my sister’s. We gave them a straight up number we could go at, and they rejected us outright on it, said it was too low. That’s okay, right? No hard feelings, move on.

Well, just a week or so after they rejected our price they came back ready to re-negotiate (something we hadn’t counted on) and within a day or two we had a deal struck, where we both gave a little and took a little. It has been utterly refreshing to work with people we know semi-well, especially because the seller’s wife is the agent. For a while there, Dustin didn’t have to do much at all because my wife and the seller’s wife were doing all the communication. We eventually handed it back to Dustin and he’s been handling things wonderfully. 

Today we had the home inspection done, and it passed with nearly flying colors. Tomorrow is the appraisal (cross your fingers), and next week if all goes well we’ll have signed on our very first home! Due to some scheduling issues with Christmas and whatnot, we’ll be moving in somewhere around the 1st of January. We are super excited to get things all wrapped up, have a great christmas, and then get moved in. BTW, you’ll probably be getting a call sometime around new years to see if you’re willing to help us move. You have been warned. If your cell phone rings once (or not at all), I’ll assume you’ve gone incommunicado for a few days as a result, and will not hold you accountable. 

Wish us luck!

Oh, and one more thing. We’re planning on doing an Open House / Birthday party for me a few weeks after we move in. Homemade Sushi will be served (as well as other asian cuisine for the not-so-sushi friendly crowd). So, you should plan on being there, cause it will be a good time.

This post is part 4 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

By this time, I was tired of seeing houses. This came mostly because I don’t have nearly as strict a set of criteria as Angelee does, so when we’d go see a house that I really thought had potential, she just didn’t have any eyes for it at all. Eventually we came up with a system where she worked with Dustin at getting lists of homes to go see, and then if any were of high potential on her list, I would go see them and we’d decide whether or not to put in an offer

The first home she found using this system she was ecstatic about. She had almost not even taken the time to go see the house, even after they had pulled up and were looking right at it. In the end she went in and immediately fell in love with the interior. She took me to see it that night, and we had an offer sheet drawn up the next day. After nearly a week of drama in counter offers, where we came up 20k from our original offer price and the seller had only come down 3k from asking price (with their agent putting his entire commission toward the sale in order to make it happen), the seller actually signed the Offer Acceptance as well as the Seller’s Disclosure.

Sadly, even getting to this point in the contract, everything fell through. They signed the acceptance on a thursday, but by Monday we were already hearing from the selling agent that they wanted to back out. The seller’s wife called my wife, the seller called me, all in attempts to weave a sob story about how their agent had duped them about the house they were looking to buy. They said if they couldn’t afford the house they were looking at buying, they didn’t want to leave. I was straight with him that I wasn’t going to sue him, but was so frustrated and disappointed that he felt like he could honorably dispose of the contract. I guess a million sorries really are worthless. In the end we agreed on a cash settlement, and they got to keep the house. We once again walked away (mostly) empty handed, mere weeks from owning our first home.

This post is part 3 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Just like before, we went through a lot of crap houses before we found one we really felt would work well for us. Once again, it was down near my family, and only a few streets over from the first house, and only 2 streets from my sister’s! Angelee absolutely loved this one also, so we went for it. The house was the last house in the subdivision that hadn’t been purchased, and had been on the market nearly a year, so we felt like we could snatch it pretty low. The selling agent told us another offer had gone in on the house a few hours before ours, and so (once again) entered a bidding war. Only this time, I had a sneaky suspicion that the agent made it up because we offered so low (I think it was 60k less than asking price). In the end, we only came up 15k to our ceiling price, and the builder wasn’t willing to sell for less than 20k below, so we lost out again, not willing to move the extra 15k they were asking for. 

By this time, I was tired of seeing houses. This came mostly because I don’t have nearly as strict a set of criteria as Angelee does, so when we’d go see a house that I really thought had potential, she just didn’t have any eyes for it at all. Eventually we came up with a system where she worked with Dustin at getting lists of homes to go see, and then if any were of high potential on her list, I would go see them and we’d decide whether or not to put in an offer.

This post is part 2 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

In March we found an absolutely fantastic home in provo near my family. The house had everything we wanted. The location, size, layout, and sheer awesomeness of the place was really really cool. Only one problem. There was already a buyer on the line and they were pretty close to closing. Well, we wanted that house something fierce, so we went after it and went into a crazy bidding war on it (mind you, it was a short sale). In the end, we lost out on the house, which was semi-devastating at the time. A look back on it now,what a blessing we didn’t get it. It was WAY out of our current budget, for one thing. I had at the time a fairly high paying job (highest I’ve ever been paid by a long shot) and we felt very secure there. As I’m writing this, that company has been out of business for nearly 4 months, and I’m still owed two final paychecks that I’m not really banking on anymore. Long story short, it is a good thing we didn’t get it!

After we lost that house we kinda lost faith in house hunting. The budget thing came to a head and we realized that we would’ve died had we gotten that mortgage (just like all the other in-over-their-head mortgage owners causing this fabulous financial crisis). Also, Anders was due to arrive mid July and we didn’t have much heart to get set on a house in the midst of the business end of the 9 month haul. Once we felt settled with Anders near the end of July, we felt like it was time to get started again.

This post is part 1 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Angelee and I were married in June of 2004. After a brief stint staying at her parents house, we moved to her sister’s newly purchased home that had a basement apartment. This is where we lived when we had Bella, and were there about 6 more months before we decided to move into my parent’s basement apartment, which was a sizable space and kitchen upgrade. We’ve been there ever since, over 3 and a half years! While my parents have been so kind to let us stay, and we love that our kids are so close to Grandma and Grandpa, for close to a year now we’ve been really hungry to get a place of our own. With Angelee’s brother Dustin as a real estate agent, we’ve been searching for a home since January-ish.

We’ve tried to keep an open mind throughout the process, but definitely have our criteria that we try to match up to our supposed dream home (at least for this stage of life). My major concern was that I didn’t want us to buy a home that we would be forced out of due to space issues when our 3rd and 4th kids come along. That being said, if within 5 years we’re ready to skedaddle… as long as it’s financially feasible, why not? In other words, we wanted the length of tenure at our first home to be on our terms, not forced on us by unwieldy family size. So, space being the main issue, I made sure that nearly every house we saw was at a minimum of 2500 square feet. In the end I was pretty sure that even 2500 was pretty small for what we will likely need to grow into, so my secret number was really at 2700 :).

We found some houses early on that were semi-promising except for the single cockroach in the ice cream: The Lehi house was far from family and at a super wacky angle on the lot, so bizarre; The Cedar Hills house was gorgeous but also far away from family (though close to AF canyon climbing… but we all know that didn’t hold a whole lot of clout in the discussions).

What follows is a series of posts about our house hunt and other family-related stats. It seemed easier for readability to break this into multiple posts. I actually had it all in one, but it seemed kinda bogus, so here are a list of the posts in this “House Hunters” series:

1. Too good to be true
2. Too stingy to be sane
3. Too dishonest to be worth it
4. How about just perfect
5. Interesting stats about our family

Okay, I am seriously crying over here this is so good. This morning I came across a post from Dvorak Uncensored that I am still laughing hysterically over: 10 things I hate about Star Trek. Dvorak actually just posted a link to a forum post, which is where the original list is at.

I must confess, I am (or used to be) a hard core Trekkie. Admittedly I haven’t watched the show in years… but I cannot rescind my past Trek obsession and the awkward sense of pride I have in it. Not that it matters much, but I was definitely of the TNG generation, don’t get much enjoyment over TOS.

Here are a few of the questions that had me rolling:

1. Seatbelts.  Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you’d think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain’s head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, “You know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening.” So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that’s locked over your thighs. Oh, I’ll bet THAT feels good in the corners. “Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk’s torso!”

2. A Star Trek quiz:  Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and ‘Ensign Gomez’ beam down to a planet. Which one isn’t coming back?

Okay, so a lot of people may not find those funny, but there is no question in my mind that any respectable Trekkie’s (current or otherwise) are just dying at those reasons. In case you missed the link, here is the original forum post.

On September 9th of this year, I woke up at about 3 am for some unknown reason. I’m quite a deep sleeper, so I was surprised that I didn’t just fall right back asleep.  I kept tossing back and forth and couldn’t fall back asleep. For what reason I don’t know, I kept thinking about the upcoming Presidential election, more specifically about the campaign slandering that is so prevalent in politics today. I worked myself into a fervor fairly quickly just being so frustrated over the issues in the election and how neither of the candidates seemed to be addressing them. The only things that the media reported on (at least in the limited attention I gave to the media) were campaign slandering practices.

Pretty soon I gave up all hope of going to bed since my mind was so entrenched in frustration. What follows is my 4 am brain dump I wrote and delivered to each candidates websites. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Dear Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain, Mr. Biden, and Mrs. Palin,

In a state dominated by the Republican Party, I am what you would term a “swing-voter”. Formerly thought to be a Republican by upbringing, I can find no decisive reason to vote on the Republican ticket in the upcoming election. What’s more, in an election race that seems to be incurably bi-partisan, it seems that my only other option is to vote on the Democratic ticket. As I do my best to sift through the media’s interpretation of the messages that both camps are trying to convey to their respective voters, one message continues to ring loud and clear from each side (if you’ll allow me to paraphrase): “You should vote for us because the other guys are not qualified, and indeed, are liars.” Forgive me for not believing either of you.

The sad truth about our current political climate is that the general public have a general distrust for most of what comes out of a politician’s mouth. But I find it sickening that a day does not go by where I don’t hear a smear from either camp. The attacks are political propaganda, one-sided information that is cooked up in order to unseat the opponent by making him look foolish, like a liar, or a cheater. In other words, “Mr. Neilsen, please vote for Me because He is clearly an incompetent fool.” I’m tired of it. If you want to talk politics, let’s talk about YOUR politics. If you want to talk about policies, let’s talk about YOUR policies. If you want to talk about change in America, let’s talk about the change that YOU intend to make. I don’t care what you think the other guy is going to tell me. It doesn’t matter, you have no control over it. What’s worse, it makes YOU look foolish for trying to do it in the first place.

At 25 years of age, I am a relatively new voter. I’ve voted in a few previous elections, and generally haven’t taken a lot of time to weigh all the options before making a decision. Like most people, based on a limited amount of information, I rely on my morals and judgement to determine which politician would best lead me. The four individuals this letter is addressed to stand in a phenomenal position. You stand atop the political climate of this entire planet. When elected, two of you will literally have the executive power to change this country, and indeed the power to change the world. Why then would I base ANY decision to elect MY President based on a message where all I can hear is “He said, She said”.

I’m fed up with this style of campaigning. I call on both parties to end this ridiculous charade now. I call on both parties to start talking about the benefits this country will receive if you were to be in charge of it. I don’t want to hear why you think the opposition will do a bad job, tell me why you’ll do a good job. I feel like I cannot make my point any more plain.

Real frustration comes to me because in the end, were I to vote “Democrat” or “Other”, because of my geographic location my voice will inevitably be drowned in the crowd. Because of the Electoral College voting system, the 5 votes from Utah will inevitably all be for Mr. McCain, regardless of who I wish to become the next President. But I still believe in Democracy and the chance that we the people have of controlling the destiny of this country. That is the reason for this letter: to exercise my right to free speech and tell two would-be presidents the kind of message I am looking for. As it stands, neither candidate will receive my nomination this november, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Obama’s skin is a different color than mine, nor has it anything to do with Mr. McCain’s age. It’s because I haven’t heard a defining voice cutting through the barrage of insults and smears. Gentlemen and Lady, please tell the American People what you will do for us, and we’ll take it from there. Thank you for your willingness to serve our country.

Mr. BJ Neilsen

I cannot even describe how scary the federal bailouts are to me.

One of my favorite sites on the web for witty content is woot.com. They also sell stuff, but I’m more interested in their witty commentary on life and being weird (after all, we are ALL nerds). They rarely send a newsletter out (like once every 4 months or something), but it’s always jam-packed with great stuff. I just received their newsletter for the “holiday season” and thought it was so great I decided to post it. Without further ado, woot!

Attention, thelocalshred: 

Welcome to Woot’s first official recession-era newsletter! For the next 12 to 24 months, all citizens are expected to fret over, worry about, or even directly experience the nadir of a consumerist society - OMG! What will we do when we stop buying stuff? Economists now agree that we’re headed through a prolonged period of decreased consumer spending (you really need an advanced degree to come up with insights like that). Beyond that, it’s anybody guess. Will the only growth sectors in the economy be shoe repair, pipe salvage, and roadside apple sales? Or will we bring on a quick recovery by doing patriotic things like buying stuff we can’t afford and spending more money than we make? 

As a retailer, it’d make sense for us to fall in with the BUY STUFF, AMERICA conga line. But by now, you know that we at Woot never do things the “normal”, “sensible”, “rational”, “intelligent” way. We’re not about to follow the herd over a cliff. When we go over a cliff, it’s because of our own poor judgment, not someone else’s. That’s been our credo since about five minutes ago, when we first thought of it. And we’ve stayed true to it ever since. 

That’s why we’re encouraging you and your fellow wooters to save this holiday season. Save your money! Save until you pull a saving muscle. Horde your money until you are literally choking on it. Save until maybe, like, mid-February or so, when the market will be a-glut with great deals for the taking every day. You’ll avoid the crowds, take advantage of desperate retailers, and not have to hear “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time” even once. 

Sure, maybe you’ll disappoint some of your loved ones. But if they really love you, they can wait a couple of months, especially if your finances are at stake. Besides, if your so-called loved ones wanted you to set yourself on fire, would you? Of course you wouldn’t. And that’s the kind of independent thinking that will one day break the mindless conformity of our consumerist holiday ways. 

But be warned: you’ll want to stay far away from Woot.com this week. The breadth and scope of bargains we’ll be offering - especially starting Tuesday morning at midnight - will be powerfully tempting. They could even lead you back down the spend-spend-spend path with the rest of the sheep. And that would make us sad enough to cry while we’re taking your money. 

See you in February! 

Woot.com

I am currently tied to a ubiquitous 9-5 software job. There are things that I like and some things I would change if given the opportunity. Given everything, I’m happy to have a paycheck and get to learn some new stuff. Good. Great. All that being said, I wouldn’t be sad if a company came out of nowhere and offered a substantial pay raise and/or promised me the ability to fight off aliens with my custom regular expression engine. Translation: I wouldn’t be sad to leave if the right offer came along.

However…

What happens when said “sweep me off my feet” potential company calls my work phone to discuss possible employment opportunities? Such was the case for me this afternoon. I received an instant message from a girl in our tech support department saying that I had a Lawrence Jamison (do I know this guy?) on the line to speak to me. I was surprised at this since I’ve been at this company over 3 months and have not received (nor have needed to receive) any phone calls. I write code. Talk to someone else about the project details. I told the gal to send them to voicemail because I was “in the middle of a project” and “didn’t have time”. 

A few minutes later the voicemail comes through. Lawrence is apparently no one I know at all. He’s some guy I’ve never met wanting to “talk to me about some things”. He could be a member of the mob for all I know. Apparently he “found me on linked in”. So, I go to linked in and do a search for his name. There’s two results to the search, but one of the results has a shared connection to me, so I’m assuming that’s the guy. The best I can figure, he is a recruiter for a company looking to hire a Java developer. I’ve been investigating and it looks like a fairly viable opportunity, but I am wondering what in the world he was thinking by calling me at work. Isn’t that what linked in is for? Getting in contact with professionals in a professional way?

Maybe I’m just weird, but it seems like an odd way to go about things. Now that I know who this guy is (he didn’t even give me the company name he was with) I’ll call him up to get the scoop. Looks like a job offer, but we’ll see if his professionalism is better the second go around.

Note: names in this post may or may not be fudged.