Older blog entries for zbir (starting at number 10)

Buying a House

Don't ever let people tell you that buying a house is scary. Don't let them tell you that getting approved is hard. Especially if you have a steady job, and aren't a complete basket case with your credit. Getting pre-qualified was about as easy as breathing, and I was a basket case ( back in college - still hanging with me, though ).

Now, finding a house is an entirely different matter. Looking over different neighborhoods, realizing what you can get for your dollar, trying to decide whether to buy a ready-to-move-into house or a fixer-upper.

My gf and I live in Richmond, VA. We looked at some historic neighborhoods, we looked at up and coming re-development neighborhoods, we looked in the suburbs, we looked in the boonies. We finally settled on a nice quiet neighborhood close into town on the north side called Bellevue/Ginter Park. We made an offer on a house and the owner accepted.

Now we go through the process of getting the Inspectors and Appraisers in. See, the house was For Sale By Owner ( known to our Realtor® as a Fizbo ), and the owner didn't want to contribute to closing costs or agent commissions, so we had to inflate our offer to compensate for these factors. Now the house has to appraise at our inflated offer price or more, or we can't get the loan.

Actual Work Stuff

Not much going on here. Been Zoping still. Writing a data validation module in Python to handle lots of form stuff. It's fun.

So I lost my Apprentice Cert.

Heh. Figgers. Well, time for an update then. Perhaps that will bring me back in the good graces of the Powers That Be.

I've been Zoping like mad lately, trying to get a project out on time and in spec. Despite the fact that we were brought in as subcontractors, with no say in the initial project design. Design? What's that? Since our company is still in start-up mode, we can't turn away work. Because of that, we dabble in web development in addition to our core competency of managed hosting. I vacillate between wanting to follow in the footsteps of BOFH and ditching the sysadmin stuff to work on web devel projects full time.

Zope is such an amazing beast.

Man. I'm bad at this. I suppose I'd be better with a project? Ah, who knows.

Started my new job at Baymountain, Inc. Back to the comforting and reassuring hum of a server room. Not to mention the rigorously maintained temperature control. *Brrrr!* Need to get some good headphones. Anyone impressed with the inexpensive Koss R/80's? I don't have hundreds to spend on quality Sennheisers or the like.

Man, well over a month since my last entry. Over a month and a half, actually. Well, certainly a lot has happened.

I resigned my post yesterday, and accepted a position with a Linux company in town called Bay Mountain as a Systems Engineer II. I'll start almost as soon as I get back from vacation in Curaço. I'm going for two weeks of lobstering, diving, and snorkeling.

More on the new job once I've started.

Had some more thoughts on the co-op idea today. Perhaps I can get a draft together by this weekend.

Been wrestling with PHP+ODBC+FileMaker Pro today. Why do they always insist on the hard way? Not that I'm one to back down from a challenge, but c'mon.

`ldconfig` is your friend.

Spent today and yesterday staring at my screen.

Spent the afternoon looking at all the other Zacs on Advogato.

I seem to be stuck in neutral.

VICE is cool.

Wow. All me old droogs from Kiva are here. Only Matt seems to be absent from the egomaniacal journey that is the Advogato online diary. But he's too busy actually working. Or working at looking like he's working.

Read through some of Ed's diary today. Gee, I seem to have plenty of time to read everyone else's diary.

The more I think about my decentralized co-op idea, the more I want to set it up. I'd need just a small raise for a while, so I could drop some hours and work on it. Heh, "Boss, can you subsidize my plans to leave and compete?"

That'd be great.

I've been thinking about starting up a computer collective/co-op. So many of us easily trade freedom for security in our day-to-day jobs. I know personally that I make a (tiny) fraction of what I'm billed out for. I've been listening to a lot of anarcho-socialist stuff lately (lots of Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco's combos) and being generally disgruntled about that disparity. I mean, sure, my boss started out risking his own personal worth, and ultimately he owns the capital resources, but aren't we both intimately entwined in this whole venture? Who needs who more? The risk is entirely his. I can more easily find new work than he can find new capital. Should this all fail, I'm looking at a job hunt, while he's looking at bankruptcy. I'm in a strong muddle about all this.

I feel that there is a better way. Sometimes it seems that the key to being a successful freelancer is akin to being a remora, and finding a successful external company to latch onto as the "consultant".

I would like to be a part of something like Garp's Mom's place. I want to form a "Zac's Home for Wayward Sysadmins/Programmers". A big old antebellum house wired with ethernet everywhere, a big fat SDSL line, and lots and lots of servers. I want a place where programmers on the lamb (or just exploring) can stop by for a few nights or weeks. Where they can learn one-on-one with other programmers. Oh, hell. It'd be great for fiction, I guess. Not very realistic, though.

Mostly, I just want something different. I suppose we all have dreams of working independently from the sea shore with our wirelessly networked laptops, guzzling Rum drinks while collaborating with fellow hackers across the globe. All while getting a fat check in the (albeit slow) Caribbean post...

Personally, I think that Anarchy can work on a local level. Where everyone knows everyone. I can imagine that a tight group of dedicated individuals can make a distributed profit-generating co-op feasible today.

Anyone interested?

It's eleven o'clock and I'm so ecstatic. Finally get to work on just systems stuff. Recently shuffled back to LinuxPPC from Mac OS X Server on my G4 at work. Feels like getting back into comfortable jeans. MOSXS is pretty sweet. I used NeXTSTEP back in college a few times. Came pretty close to nabbing a NeXT slab, ran OPENSTEP on my intel box. Bah. Still a pain in the ass.

Got to write a long winded letter to Chris today. I've been reading his diary entries, silently agreeing with him. When I worked with him back in Indiana, I really coveted his job.

sidenote: I've noticed that Matt hasn't posted any diary entries. I imagine he's got lots to say, but I reckon I `talk` the productivity out of him.

I don't really have a plan for urbanape. I had the notion once that I'd try it out as a living resume. Put up lots of the functionality I create for clients: logins, dynamic content, nice design. Bleah. Who knows? Really, who cares? A friend pointed out, looking at the s00perfly site of a web design firm, "Now there's a place with no clients." Seems true. Busy firms don't always have time to have the prettiest sites.

One of our instructors gave me a brand new IBM WorkPad c3 (basically a rebranded Palm Vx). Sweet little machine. I've got half a dozen Infocom games on it. Get my daily news from half a dozen sources. Got Froggy and Bubblet to feed the monkey on my back. Getting contacts in there one at a time. I love it. Can't seem to use it for "real" work though. Can't seem to bring myself to care.

I want out of this design gig.

Anyone here get out alive?

Haven't done nearly the work I'd like to on urbanape. Started to work on a Five-Letter-Word-Game CGI, and it's currently on the back burner. Hopefully, I can turn it out into a nice little game package. (Coming soon to a project page near you...)

In related news. I'm more interested in internal web-app solutions than I ever have before. The more I work with a external web client, the more I want to strangle someone.

Internalized Web Project Conversation #1:
Client: "How can I best track users on our site to extract the maximum number of dollars from their wallet?"
Me: Strangle, strangle, strangle