Countdown to baby time!

Baby Dave is going to arrive sometime in the next few weeks. Everything has gone smoothly so far, and we'll have another ultrasound next week. I guess I should sleep while I can... :o

Brrrrr...

We've had a bit of a cold stretch in San Diego with the temperature approaching freezing overnight (and getting below freezing in the mountain regions). Last night we woke up with the temperature at 25 degrees! The added suprise was discovering that there was no hot water. Troubleshooting things a bit, the cold water was fine, we had heat, power, etc. It appears that something in the two solar water heater units on the roof had frozen up, preventing any water from getting to the water heater in the house. By the time we left for church (~9:00am) the outdoor temp had warmed up to around 32 degrees and we were getting trickle of water from the faucet. As the sun warmed things up further on the roof we eventually got full hot water flowing again.

Yet another thing to keep in mind with a 40-year old house...I'll add the disclaimer that I'm writing this sort of "tongue in cheek" after having grown up in the midwest. The blood thins out pretty quick!

Ode to owning a 40 year-old house

The realities of house hunting in the San Diego market of 2004 were :

1. that all indications were that the market was going to continue to skyrocket (and it did for a time),
   
2. you had little choice but to bid high in the hopes of getting your offer accepted, and
3. we weren't interested in being so house poor that living on 1 income was going to be a major struggle
   

When the smoke cleared, we found a 4 BR ranch built in 1957. No home owners association/fees, no Mello Roos (extortion fees for newer developments intended to fund new infrastructure).

One of the joys of buying an older house has been discovering all of the strange ways people chose to maintain it (or try to modernize it) over the years. Granted that in '57 they couldn't have dreamed of multiple phone lines (or 1 line with multiple extensions), cable TV, cat 5 ethernet, etc., but you'd think they could have at least considered something like insulation in the walls!

Over the last 2 1/2 years Laura and I have done a lot of upgrades, motivated more by making it a nicer place for us to live than any grand delusions of cashing in when we try to sell. Upgrades have included:

1. New carpet in all 4 bedrooms
   
2. New wood fencing
3. Ice plant and irigation system on our 45-degree hill in the back
4. Stucco resurfacing/repair and new color
5. Upgraded electrical service to 100amps
   
6. Knotty pine beadboard in the kitchen
7. Removal of popcorn ceilings
8. Repainted all 4 bedrooms, replacing some hideous baseboards in the process

Possible remaining projects:

1. Repair and repaint wood trim
2. Clean-up phone and cable wiring (all exterior to the house, running under the eaves
   
3. Garage improvements (drywall? seal floor?)
4. Stain concrete patio
5. Stucco cinder-block wall in backyard to match house stucco color
   

So this is blogging...

So after years of creating manually-generated homepages that ultimately suffered from bit-rot I figured it was time to try out this blog thing. I can't say I have a grand plan for what to write here in fugure blogs, but I'd guess it will be a mix of tech-related comments and other observations. As we're a couple thousand miles from family back in the midwest this could be another way of trying to keep connected with family.

As someone whose first exposure to the internet was back in the early days of usenet news, gopher, anonymous ftp, etc. it's interesting how new communications and networking tools have emerged with the internet over the years. Tools like LinkedIn, yahoo groups, message boards, have taken us far from the "early days".