There have been requests for pictures of the house. Here is it. That is the blight of the neighborhood's existence.

I will post more pictures (and more entries) once things calm down a bit.

Well I’m off to a rip-roaring start with my neighbors-to-be.

Wait… It dawns on me that I haven’t mentioned that we bought a house! We bought a house. YAY us! About 6 weeks ago my wife and I were returning from our weekend latte run when we saw some open-house signs.

“Interesting,” I said, “I didn’t think that there were open lots over here.” This piqued our interest as it is a fabulous location but one usually devoid of new construction. Lucky for us, there were 5 new homes being developed. To make a long story short, we ended up buying one. It was quite a find – nice street, bright house, tall ceilings, granite countertops, a back yard for a dog, etc. We’re quite excited.

Let’s fast-forward to yesterday and the meeting of the neighbors. I had already met our neighbors to the right. They, like us, bought one of the 5 homes built by the developer. Our neighbors to the left built their own home. This is common for the street. Of the 13 homes on the cul-de-sac 8 are (or will be) custom homes in the million dollar+ range. As such, it’s safe to say that we’re the low people on the totem pole (house-wise). With that said, we’re far from putting the wheel-less Chevy on cinderblocks in the front yard. By any reasonable standard, it’s a nice house. Heck, by any reasonable standard it’s a great home.

Well… yesterday I did a little drive-by inspection. The builder is in the process of doing the final touches and I like to check out the progress. When I got there my neighbor was in front of his custom-house-in-progress. We had never met, so we politely said hi and pointed out our respective houses. After establishing whose house was whose, he pointed at my house and said, “Yeah, I should have bought those lots. Those houses just don’t belong on this street.”

“Nice to meet you too, JACKASS,” I thought.

I sat politely as he explained that most of the houses were “over a million.” I did my best to pretty much ignore his utterly rude behavior. I explained that the location was just perfect for us. I explained that we just couldn’t find a plot to build on. I said, “It’s a nice home. It’s got a great floor plan. I’m sure that you’ve poked around it.” His response was an exhale of disapproval and “Yeah, all five are the same.” OH THE HORROR!

I made a little chit chat as he dropped “I have money” clues like Donald Trump drops names until I could gracefully excuse myself. I walked into my house and smiled. To hell with the jackass!

This should be interesting. Wish me luck.

There are very few things scarier than the sight of me buying tools. No – it’s not the actual purchasing process that’s frightening. It’s the impending doom that comes with the shiny new steel.

The problem, as I see it, is that if I’m buying a new tool, I have no real training with said tool. This inevitably leads to “on the job” training. If you combine that with the fact that it always seems to be easier to dismantle something than it is to … uh … mantle it, you start to get where I’m going.

After a quick stop at Sears I returned with some metric tools in hand. “Metric?” you ask, “What can he possibly be working on that’s European?” There is a brief hesitation and then you then realize that there is a beautiful 993 sitting in the garage. “Damn you tools! Damn you to heeellllll!”

Now I don’t know why I would think that it would be good idea to futz with my car. Am I a mechanic? NO! Do I have any training? NO! Could I change the oil if I had to? NO! Yet, somehow, it seemed like a good idea. You see… I’ve always wanted to be a handy guy. The key phrase in that sentence is “wanted to be.” I’m not.

Reading the Porsche forums I began to think that I was one of them. They read the forum and can take tools to their cars. I read the forum; ergo, I can take tools to my car. There possibly could be a logical fallacy in there somewhere. Anyways… With the turn of a socket wrench I felt the blood rush. I was alive. Bolts were removed. Well, first they were tightened, but then they were removed. The click of the socket wrench was the sound of beauty. Before I knew it, the seats of the car were removed. You didn’t think that I would start with the engine, did you?

I don’t really know why I needed to remove the seats. I told myself that I was looking for that money clip that I swore was down there. I also told myself that I would add a keyless entry to the car (but I didn’t have the parts). I had a lot of time to think about it as I tried to put the seats back on. The perfectly aligned bolts that came off with the ease of a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction just wouldn’t align. For the life of me I couldn’t get those damn seats back on.

40 minutes later…. I finally got the bolts to align. The seats are back on and I’m ready for more tools! Anyone need their oil changed?

Did I not get the memo? Is 4/15 no longer Tax day? I've seen surprisingly little about it. Blogs are quiet with respect to taxes. What am I missing?

For me today marks an historic occasion. This is first time ever that my taxes were done on 4/15. This year there will be no extensions. Whee!

"After learning the hard way that what goes up must come down, she vows never to shoot her arrow straight up again."

"After learning the hard way that what goes up must come down, she vows never to shoot her arrow straight up again."

As we've been inundated with a "Bush ignored the threat" clamoring from the media I feel some need to address the issue. It’s 100% posturing from the left and the media.

Terrorists could have bought air time on CBS (Well...Fox maybe) and announced their intentions. It wouldn't have made a bit of a difference. People need to step back and recognize that the public wouldn't have supported the steps needed to stop such an event. Do you think that people would have been willing to get intimate with an airport security wand? There is no doubt that our lives are more inconvenient these days. Without a galvanizing event such as the NYC attack people would have rebelled. Even in a post 9/11 world we still wouldn’t be willing to undergo the security screening of countries like Israel.

While I’m rambling…. I am a little sick of the liberal bias of the media. That is not to say that there isn’t equal time. Hannity, Rush, etc. are nuts on the right. However, they announce their positions clearly. They scream, “We’re on the right. Come here for shockingly conservative points of view.” Katie Couric and her brethren do something far more insidious. They pretend that they are just reporting. Heck Katie probably has herself fooled. I really don’t like the NBC crew. “Stop and catch your breath, Anne.” I want to scream as she leans in and breathlessly asks, “Reeealllly?” Arrghhh.

This seems to have turned into a big rant. I shall depart and await for the wrath of the liberal element which I seem to attract. Hmmm… now that I think about it – they’ve been quiet lately. Perhaps I should be a little more controversial. ;)

I'm doing a little site cleanup today. This got me to wondering. How many people have noticed that the sidebars on the left are expandable and that their preferences are remembered (per machine)?

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
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One interesting aspect about life is that the relationships that you have with others aren’t static. You grow. Other people grow. Your interests change as do the interests of others. As a result people drift apart and people come together based on commonality (or lack thereof).

I suppose that is what makes families so darn interesting. Families are often a glob of people who, under normal circumstances, would not be close. In some cases they wouldn’t even like each other. Yet, due to a shared history and a desire to remain “family”, they work with each other to preserve what in chemistry might be considered an unstable bond.

My sister and I have, in the past, epitomized the unstable bond that is a family relationship. It is safe to say that, were it not that we were brother and sister, we would not have been close. Heck – even with that bond we went through large patches where we didn’t speak to each other.

We are two very different people.

In our youths my sister and I filled two different roles within the family. Hers was (unintentionally) to make me look good and mine was to give her a justification to rebel. We both fulfilled our roles with aplomb. The roles weren’t always fair but they were familiar. As such, they continued.

Somewhere along the line (and I don’t know where) these roles changed. My sister is now someone for whom I have a great deal of admiration. She picked a great guy with whom to settle down. She excels in her profession. She marched into home ownership and family with confidence and preparedness. She was the person to whom I turned to settle my nerves about being a first-time home owner.

We are still fairly different and I have no idea if our common interests (outside the scope of family) would be enough for us to be non-family friends. With that said, it is one of the most special relationships that I have. Being brother-sister forced us to share the full cycle of life. It is rare that you get to see someone’s growth, warts and all. It hasn’t always been easy, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

"I can too stick my fist in my mouth"

"I can too stick my fist in my mouth"

When I was 16 years old my father was in an horrific bicycle accident. In this accident he traded an arm and a lung for a lifetime of searing phantom pain and pharmaceuticals. Apparently when you pull an arm back so far that it touches its own shoulder blade, nerves are ripped right out of their sockets. The result is something akin to a live power wire downed in a storm. Sparks fly and pain ensues.

By all accounts he should have died in that accident. However, a combination of luck and modern medicine saved his life. Twelve years later he was diagnosed with a rare form of internal melanoma. He did die from that.

While we were fighting the cancer battle he said something that I found interesting; “In the not-too-distant past nobody would have had to pay for my chemo. The accident would have killed me.” It’s an incredibly powerful statement when you stop and think about it. It’s also a statement that portends economic woes for the medical profession and, quite possibly, society.

There is nothing to thin the herd. Accidents, heart attacks, etc. are being converted into lifetime draws of Methadone, Lipitor, etc. Events that once kept lifetime medical costs down (due to death) are now contributing factors to our impending Medicare disaster. SSN is in trouble, in part, because a) people won’t die and b) people need money for medicines that weren’t available 30 years ago.

Perhaps it’s time to regulate drug costs. As a huge believer in capitalism and a lifetime libertarian I have always been against such regulations. I felt that companies should be able to determine their own R&D costs. Without R&D how can we expect progress? How can we expect better drugs?

Perhaps better drugs are the problem. We need no more drugs whose purpose is to prolong life. Society can’t handle the responsibility of 100 year+ lives. Society is unable to do a cost-benefit analysis. We have this belief that we should spend equal resources on all forms of life. Let’s spend a million dollars to keep a premature birth baby alive so that s/he can live with a lifetime of mental retardation. Does that make sense? I don’t think so.

It would be interesting to track the lifetime dollars consumed on medicine by decade. I would guess that a 70 year old in the fifties would have consumed a tiny fraction of their 2000 counterparts' medical costs. Furthermore, I would venture to guess that this is a trend that is likely to worsen. At what point does this stop?

The only clear solution is to stop innovating.

Many of you might have been asking, "Where have you been over the past month?"

"We can't live without your insight and your wit,” you continue.

How kind you are!

Over the past month I have been very busy with a secret time-machine project. It was my hope that by this date I would have conquered the time-space continuum. I failed.

I must now revert to "Plan B." From now on I will be counting in base 13. Congratulate me; I just turned 24!

Invigorated by my newfound youth I will start my near daily writings.