Kelli and I have been house hunting. We're to the point in our lives where we'd really like to buy a bigger house - a place to call our own - and settle down. Here's the great side of this story: we have found a house! It's a great 3-bedroom with a really large, finished walkout basement and a "ginormous" garage. We've agreed upon a price with the sellers and they're just about ready to hand over the keys.
Now here's the bad news: naturally Kelli and I don't want to be making two house payments, so we're not closing on the new house until my house is sold. Even worse: who goes house hunting or even buys in the winter? The way we look at it, we're stuck living in my small 1-bedroom house until spring. Now don't get me wrong, it's a great house and I like it a lot. I think the two of us are just ready to upgrade to someplace where we have a bit of room to stretch.
If you know of anyone who would be interested in a 1-bedroom house in Kalona, IA (just 15 miles from the south end of Iowa City!) give me a shout!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Wives are great for venting to
...and so, it seems, are blogs. The following is a rant from me to Kelli which was prompted by the slew of nonstop rumors and speculation regarding upcoming Apple products on tech/gadget websites such as Ubergizmo.
Dear freakishly obsessed people who are dying to eat up everything produced by that particular company: the iPhone 5 will look EXACTLY like the iPhone 4S with the following minor adjustments: The screen will be slightly larger but not enough to make any serious improvements in how you use your current phone; the charging/connector port will be reshaped/resized because Apple thinks that doing anything standardized means doing something WRONG and they want you to have to go out and buy new adapters and speaker docks which cost an out-of-this-world amount because they're specialized for this one device and thus haven't been mass produced like mini (or even micro) USB cables have; and lastly, the front-facing camera will shift half an inch from its previous location just to give freakishly obsessed fans something to talk about.
Furthermore, Ubergizmo posted an article last night titled, "iOS 6 and new iPhone plays your favorite song as an alarm". Is this something to get excited over? I've been doing this since owning my first smartphone, a BlackBerry Pearl, which I got around 4 years ago. The above-mentioned article concluded with the statement, "iOS 6 is certainly shaping up to be a mobile operating system not to be trifled with." Because I can finally wake up everyday to the bliss that is "Rock You Like a Hurricane"? Sorry Apple, I've been doing that for years.
Click here for an article that shares my sentiment on the suspected iPhone 5 design.
Dear freakishly obsessed people who are dying to eat up everything produced by that particular company: the iPhone 5 will look EXACTLY like the iPhone 4S with the following minor adjustments: The screen will be slightly larger but not enough to make any serious improvements in how you use your current phone; the charging/connector port will be reshaped/resized because Apple thinks that doing anything standardized means doing something WRONG and they want you to have to go out and buy new adapters and speaker docks which cost an out-of-this-world amount because they're specialized for this one device and thus haven't been mass produced like mini (or even micro) USB cables have; and lastly, the front-facing camera will shift half an inch from its previous location just to give freakishly obsessed fans something to talk about.
Furthermore, Ubergizmo posted an article last night titled, "iOS 6 and new iPhone plays your favorite song as an alarm". Is this something to get excited over? I've been doing this since owning my first smartphone, a BlackBerry Pearl, which I got around 4 years ago. The above-mentioned article concluded with the statement, "iOS 6 is certainly shaping up to be a mobile operating system not to be trifled with." Because I can finally wake up everyday to the bliss that is "Rock You Like a Hurricane"? Sorry Apple, I've been doing that for years.
Click here for an article that shares my sentiment on the suspected iPhone 5 design.
Friday, August 3, 2012
For those waiting for an update...
...this is it.
Where to begin? Since I haven't posted a single thing since November, there's a lot to run down.
First: because my previous post expressed my woes over not being able to play Portal 2, let me assure you that those feelings of sorrow have been laid to rest. I bought a brand new Xbox 360 last November and played through Portal 2. Twice.
Furthermore...
I'm married. June 2, the ceremony and reception were fantastic! It was a total blast!
Completely unrelated to the above mentioned, I've been trying to educate myself on technological matters. Using some internet assistance, I built a tiny half-watt audio amplifier out of Radio Shack components. I've also gotten back into computer programming to a small degree. My hope is to really dive deep into both fields as they're both subjects that I find interesting.
Lastly, I'm trying to get in shape by running. In mid-July I even entered myself in a 4-mile race, placing 56th in the "Clydesdales" division. At 48 minutes even, it was easily the fastest I have ever ran 4 miles.
If you're reading this, post a comment to let me know you're still alive!
Where to begin? Since I haven't posted a single thing since November, there's a lot to run down.
First: because my previous post expressed my woes over not being able to play Portal 2, let me assure you that those feelings of sorrow have been laid to rest. I bought a brand new Xbox 360 last November and played through Portal 2. Twice.
Furthermore...
I'm married. June 2, the ceremony and reception were fantastic! It was a total blast!
Completely unrelated to the above mentioned, I've been trying to educate myself on technological matters. Using some internet assistance, I built a tiny half-watt audio amplifier out of Radio Shack components. I've also gotten back into computer programming to a small degree. My hope is to really dive deep into both fields as they're both subjects that I find interesting.
Lastly, I'm trying to get in shape by running. In mid-July I even entered myself in a 4-mile race, placing 56th in the "Clydesdales" division. At 48 minutes even, it was easily the fastest I have ever ran 4 miles.
If you're reading this, post a comment to let me know you're still alive!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Still no Portal 2, and aggravation ensues
With the Xbox 360 fixed (see previous post), I took it over to Andrew's place and we managed to knock out Halo 3 in under 24 hours. I had placed a hold on Portal 2 for the 360 through the public library and after several weeks of waiting for others' checkout periods to be up, and after approximately 10 minutes of gameplay, my Xbox froze. When I restarted, the Xbox gives me a general hardware error.
Bless my sweet fiancee: for my birthday two weeks ago she was going to give me Portal 2. First for Xbox, until she discovered that my 'box was dead. She returned it and picked it up for PS3, until I informed her of my PS3's inability to play that game (see previous post).
Now I am utterly frustrated at not being able to play this one game. How long have I been waiting? Now I have to buy a new Xbox plus the game. Target currently has a pretty good deal on the system, but I took a look at my finances and realized that I had better do the responsible thing and hold off buying. Just more frustration. I was hoping for some good Black Friday deals, but most early predictions are that the 360 will sell packaged with the Kinect, which would probably end up being more than I care to spend. Alas, wait until Christmas?
Bless my sweet fiancee: for my birthday two weeks ago she was going to give me Portal 2. First for Xbox, until she discovered that my 'box was dead. She returned it and picked it up for PS3, until I informed her of my PS3's inability to play that game (see previous post).
Now I am utterly frustrated at not being able to play this one game. How long have I been waiting? Now I have to buy a new Xbox plus the game. Target currently has a pretty good deal on the system, but I took a look at my finances and realized that I had better do the responsible thing and hold off buying. Just more frustration. I was hoping for some good Black Friday deals, but most early predictions are that the 360 will sell packaged with the Kinect, which would probably end up being more than I care to spend. Alas, wait until Christmas?
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
No Portal 2...yet
I was saddened the other day when I took Portal 2 home and put it in my Playstation. Upon startup I was told that my PS3 required a system update in order to run the game. So, close the game, connect to the internet, and run the update. There's one small problem with that: I don't have internet at home.
Now, unless I were so bold as to take the Playstation and a small tv into the public library to jump on the free WiFi, I was up that particular creek without a paddle, if you see where I'm coming from. Took Portal back to the library without a minute of playtime. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
Onward to more recent dates - I purchased an Xbox 360 from an online auction rather cheap. I say 'rather' only because the system was barebones: no controllers, power adapter, video cables, hard drive. Its one redeeming quality was its HDMI output slot. This meant that the proprietary video out was superfluous. I'll try to sum up what happened since then as quickly as possible.
I acquired the necessary accessories for the 360 but it only worked partially. It 'red ringed' (this is bad) and over a series of attempts, finally managed to make it functional. Today over lunch I purchased a 120 GB hard drive so tonight I can finally save my game progress. What this all means is that I should be able to play Portal 2 on the Xbox. This has me once again quite excited.
In other news, I fixed an Xbox 360! Call me for your video game repair needs!
Now, unless I were so bold as to take the Playstation and a small tv into the public library to jump on the free WiFi, I was up that particular creek without a paddle, if you see where I'm coming from. Took Portal back to the library without a minute of playtime. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
Onward to more recent dates - I purchased an Xbox 360 from an online auction rather cheap. I say 'rather' only because the system was barebones: no controllers, power adapter, video cables, hard drive. Its one redeeming quality was its HDMI output slot. This meant that the proprietary video out was superfluous. I'll try to sum up what happened since then as quickly as possible.
I acquired the necessary accessories for the 360 but it only worked partially. It 'red ringed' (this is bad) and over a series of attempts, finally managed to make it functional. Today over lunch I purchased a 120 GB hard drive so tonight I can finally save my game progress. What this all means is that I should be able to play Portal 2 on the Xbox. This has me once again quite excited.
In other news, I fixed an Xbox 360! Call me for your video game repair needs!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tonight
I'm going to be playing soooo much Portal 2 tonight! The public library in the big city allows you to check out current generation video games - for FREE!!!! I was stoked to see they had Portal 2 in their inventory. Of course it was checked out when I saw it in their catalog, so I placed a hold on it. They put it on the hold shelf for me yesterday and I'm going to pick it up in about 2 hours. Yay Portal!
Engaged!
An update: since I haven't posted since December or so, here's the big news - I'm now engaged to my super awesome fiancee Kelli. We're thinking of setting the ceremony next June, but nothing is set at this point. There will probably be more details on that on a later post.
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