A Penguin in Purple Clothing

Tuesday February 01, 2005

17 Bennington St.

My fiancee, Aubrey, and I recently bought a house. It still hasn't closed, but it has been a long road to where we are today.

We first saw the house back in November druing a public open house. 17 Bennington St. had been on the market since September, a long time in the bay area. When we went in, Aubrey fell in love with it immediately. Although I love Victorians, I was a bit more reserved having noticed the plethora of issues including water and termite damage that I would have to fix. The house had great curb appeal -- bright yellow with beautiful detail -- but the rest of it is old, rotten, and in need of much work. When Aubrey pulled me aside and said she wanted it, I gulped and made sure she was thinking clearly. She was.

I went over to the dejected listing agent and talked to him a bit about the property. He was a brutish Russian fellow who was very forthcoming with the situation: the house has been on the market a long time; it is a probate sale; there have been five offers all of them rejected; the seller is old and a bit nuts. In any event, we took down his name and number and left.

That was on Sunday, November 21. I called the listing agent on Monday and asked if the house was still available. He said it was, but that another offer was going to be presented on Tuesday, the next day. At that point, I called Aubrey and asked what she thought. She wanted to put an offer in as well. I spent that day calling banks and loan officers trying to get the funds ready for the ten percent needed as a cash offer (this is necessary in a probate sale). I also got a real estate agent of my own to represent us.

That was a mistake. Apparently, the listing agent had inferred by our conversations that he was representing both the sellers and us. This caused a bunch of consternation, but was eventually worked out. Why can't this all just be done on computers (like buying gas) without human intervention?

The other (sixth) offer was rejected on Tuesday before we even got ours in. But, we were higher than that one, and the seller's agent assured me it was going to be enough. Then, we got the call on Wednesday before Thanksgiving: they had accepted the offer and would sign it next Monday. We celebrated.

Next Monday rolled around and I didn't hear back from anybody. On that Tuesday, I called. There had been a screw up. The sellers hadn't signed in ink. There was some sort of language issue. They thought the seller had verbally agreed, but apparently not. The seller was an old Filipino woman who didn't speak much English. She wanted full price. Well, Aub and I were devastated. We had offered as much as we could afford and couldn't go any higher.

A week passed and the selling agent called my agent: if we could raise our offer just ten thousand dollars, the seller would take it. And the listing agent would reduce his commission that same amount so it would be a wash to us. That sounded great so we agreed to put in another offer. Once again, we went back to the agency to sign pages and pages of paperwork.

Then, we got another call: they rejected that offer. What?!?! In any event, we couldn't do any more, so we said goodbye to the whole situation.

After that, I did a little online digging and found out that the probate sale is only for 25% of the property. Plus, there were close to eight other people CC'ed on all the paperwork for this sale. I called up the agents to ask what the deal was and finally I learned the sordid truth: It turns out the man who died left the house to his wife, but he had lived a separate, secret life with another wife and set of kids. Everybody had a stake in this sale and it was a total mess.

Aubrey and I reluctantly let go of the house. We moped our way through xmas break.

When we got back, a few days into the new year, I got a call from my agent. Apparently the sellers had reconsidered. If both the seller and buying agents would reduce their commission, they would sell for only 5K over our original offer. Not to let 5K get in the way of our dream house, we agreed. The paperwork was drawn up, offer submitted, and it was finally accepted in writing.

But alas, this was a probate sale subject to court confirmation. We had to present our offer in front of a judge. And once our offer was tentatively accepted by the seller, it went into the public record. That meant, anybody who wanted to could bid just 5% over our offer and then come to the court and snipe the house from under us. We had to wait til January 24 for the court date.

On the 24th, I went down to the court house in downtown San Francisco and presented our offer. Luckily, there were no other offers on the table, and the judge approved the sale.

So, now we are in the 30 days between approval and closing. Let's hope there are no other glitches in ths already hectic process. And without further ado, here is a slide show of the money pit we bought in San Francisco.

(2005-02-01 19:39:28.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday September 17, 2004

I won a DVD player

Ha! Who would have thunk it. I don't think I have won any thing ever in my life. So, on Thursday, Xerox came to the Sun cafeteria to show off their warez and services. They had a little drawing that you could put your name into for a DVD player. And guess what? I won it. Cool. Although getting a $30 Apex AD-1110WM isn't the most exciting thing in the world, I did want to get a DVD player for my downstairs guest bedroom. So, now I have one. Coolio.

(2004-09-17 14:00:00.0) Permalink

Tuesday September 14, 2004

Fixed my thinkpad

Yeah! I fixed my Thinkpad. I took the screen off of my old one and moved it to the one I got off of Ebay, and all is well. I have a working laptop again! I also moved the memory, put a new harddrive in there (cause the old one was making lots of noise). And I got a new battery out of the whole deal that holds a charge. All for only $100.

It is funny, cause the laptop I got off of Ebay had a sticker on it saying "DOD Sanitized". So, I can only imagine what this guy was used for before. Better not to ask.

In the end, I guess the system board was bad (or maybe the CPU). I may fiddle with the old laptop at some point, try to get it to display to an external monitor, or something. But, after using a Fujitsu for a few weeks, boy am I happy to be back on my IBM. I still think Thinkpads are the best laptops on the market...

And my friend Mike finally made it to SF (actually Fremont, but close enough). We are having dinner tonight. I haven't seen him in ages (probably 6 or 7 years). Well, he emailed me recently, said he came out of the closet, and was high tailing it to SF. I don't really blame him cause West Virginia isn't exactly the most friendly places for queers.

(2004-09-14 08:39:42.0) Permalink

Tuesday September 07, 2004

Back to Work

I have spent the majority of today catching up on email. Man, there is a lot of it. I finally feel like I made a dent, but I still have quite a bit of catching up to do.

This Thursday, I will be meeting a bunch of the OpenIB guys at a hotel in SF to talk about the development effort. Should hopefully be productive.

In other news, my T21 parts laptop from Ebay arrived while I was gone. FedEx dropped it off at my neighbors (which I find somewhat convenient, but also a bit distressing -- what if I didn't know my neighbors?). It was missing memory and a hard drive. I put a stick from my broken laptop in and tried booting the Ebay one. It came up to a very messed up looking screen, but I could tell it was the BIOS POST. Tonight, I plan on plugging it into an external monitor -- I want to verify the motherboard is ok before I swap it with my broken laptop.

Also, Aub's desktop is acting funny. Maybe overheating due to the hot weather in San Francisco. She turned it off, and I should look into it tonight. So, I will be having a fun hair pulling evening ahead of me.

(2004-09-07 15:59:52.0) Permalink

Saturday August 28, 2004

Hair Dye and Ziplocks

I post this just before going to bed. Last weekend, when Aubrey's bestest friend in the world, Emily was in town, we went to the Haight during our tour of doom. Aub was psyched about getting hair dye for Burning Man. I reluctantly said sure. So, I got blue. I just got through dying my hair, and it looks...grey. I guess that is what happens when you mix brown with blue. Anyways, Aub looks awesome with rose red hair.

So, hours before we depart, Mr. Grey and Ms. Rose hit the hay with most everything ready and worries cast to the wind...right...

See ya'all on the playa!

(2004-08-28 00:41:06.0) Permalink

Friday August 27, 2004

Burning Man

Today is the last day before I head out to the Nevada Desert for Burning Man. This will be my second year going and I will once again be camping with the Spock Mountain Research Labs. I have my list of things todo before going and hopefully it will be shrinking quickly. I think I have everything:

• 24 gallons water - check
• bandaids - check
• AA batteries - check
• fixed bicycle - check
• ziplock bags - check
• baby wipes - check
• hat - check
• suntan lotion - check
• mister bottle - check
• biodegrable soap - check
• inflatable mattress - check
• work gloves - check
• large tarp - check
• large tent - check
• chairs - check
• googles - check
• dust masks - check
• beer - check

I know I am forgetting something. I always do this: go nuts before a trip thinking I don't have everything I am supposed to...

This year my fiance, Aubrey, will be coming with me. It will be her first time. She is quite nervous about going. I think things will be fine. I worry about the preparation. She worries about what happens when we get there. See, we have it all designated out so all the worrying is taken care of.

I will try to update this journal while out there. There should be Internet. Last year we had a satellite uplink (provided by ex-Sun'er John Gilmore if I am not mistaken) with 802.11b network. Rumor has it that this year, there will be a microwave uplink to Gerlach, Nevada. The org has a T1 there that they will connect into. This should be less bandwidth, but significatnly better latency. Making working from the playa potentially easier...but who wants to work on the playa?

(2004-08-27 09:35:24.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Wednesday August 25, 2004

IBM Thinkpad T21

I have for a long time espoused the virtues of IBM's line of laptops. So have all my friends. Thinkpads are the only laptops that can survive Burning Man. I got a used T21 a couple of years ago and have been nothing but happy with it. I run Gentoo Linux on it and compile everything from scratch. It is a work horse and I have never had a problem with it.

Until a week ago. Now, when it boots, it only lasts about 10 minutes before just shutting off. Then, it won't come back on for a half an hour or so. Sounds like a thermal problem, no? Well, that is what I figured, too. So, I opened it up, took off the heat sink and fan from the CPU. Lo and behold, all of the thermal grease had moved off of the chip. I applied some new stuff, put the thing back together, and thought I was golden. WRONG. The laptop still has the same issues. It shuts off after 10 minutes of use. So, I am at a loss. I don't have a working laptop to bring to Burning Man. :-(

UPDATE (8/27/04)I just won a parts laptop on Ebay (another T21 for $96; has a broken screen, but a working CPU/motherboard/fan). I will be getting this soon and hopefully, this will fix my issues. In the mean time, I am using a work laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook S6110. I like that this has a middle mouse button like the T21, but I don't like the keyboard layout as much. I installed Fedora Core 2 on it the second I got it. Most everything worked out of the box: display, sound, etc. I think this is supposed to have a builtin wireless, but I cannot get Fedora to find it. I am using a PCMCIA card instead.

(2004-08-25 12:06:05.0) Permalink