Steve Eck's Blog

Weekend

2009-12-07T21:09:00.000-06:00

With the holidays and everything else going on, it seems like things are pretty busy. This weekend was no exception, as it flew by.

On Saturday we went to the builder's design center to try to pick out new carpet for the house. The previous one was discontinued, so we are trying to work out what we can get in time to keep the house on schedule without blowing the budget. Then we visited the house in the afternoon to see the progress. Saturday night we went out to dinner with Paul, Laura, Matt, Jenny, Brenden, Allison, Fred and Robin, which was a lot of fun. We also got to see the Brenden and Allison's new house nearby and had a good time playing games over at Fred and Robin's later that night.

Sunday was a full day as I took one of my co-workers who is visiting the US out for some sight-seeing. We went to the MN Zoo to see the animals, and it was interesting to compare it to the Bannerghatta zoo. I also took him over to Buck Hill because he wanted to see snow and had never seen downhill skiing and snowboarding. We didn't do any other then take pictures and watch what people were doing, but that was fun.

By the time I got home, it was time for Dinner and then watching the Vikings get destroyed on national TV. And next thing you know it was Monday and time for work again. Where does the time go?

House: Week 12

2009-12-06T16:43:00.000-06:00

Last week the progress on the house was all exterior work, with painting, driveway installation, etc. This week it was all about the interior.

The baseboard and window trim was installed. All the doors were hung, and virtually all cabinets were put in place, with the exception of the kitchen island. The trim, doors and cabinets really make the place look like a house as there are very few visible holes in the floor left, closets are closed off, etc.

In addition, the furnace has been installed along with what looks like all the venting and the fireplace was put in. While we were at the house the painter was dropping off equipment so that he can start painting and staining the place on Monday.

I'm excited to see what the house looks like, especially after seeing the stained fireplace.

Lucky Timing

2009-12-03T21:48:00.000-06:00

On Monday we were finally able to lock the rate for the loan on our new house. The time limits on rate locks meant that for the last four months we were floating in totally predictable rate territory. I wasn't even watching the rates because I figured it would just make me nervous about something I couldn't control. Imagine my surprise on Monday then, when I found out that it happened to be on a day that set historical lows for rates.

Strangely, home loan timing appears to be the only thing on the planet that I am lucky at. The previous two times we refinanced loans was in April '03 and April '04, which as you can see in this chart were near random significant temporary dips in rates.

Clearly we will have to try hard never to refinance or move again, as it can't possibly work out a fourth time.

Empty

2009-12-02T21:06:00.000-06:00

This morning on the way to the bus station I realized that I should probably stop for gas, so I went a little out of my way to a BP station. Only to find out that they had covered up all the regular and premium gas pumps and had only mid-grade available. That seemed a little weird so I decided to go to the station across the street. Which had no gas. None. They had little signs on the pumps that said "We have no gas, sorry".

How poorly do you have to be mismanaged in order to completely and utterly run out of gas as a gas station? They still had lights on in the convenience store section, but if you wanted to be a grocery store, there are probably better ways to go about that then to first buy a gas station and then sell all the gas.

Rather then going back to the mid-grade-only station, I just went back to the bus station. Tonight I ended up buying gas at the formerly mid-grade-only station, which was restocked. The no-gas station on the other hand, was still out of gas.

Thanksgiving

2009-12-01T21:47:00.000-06:00

I had a good Thanksgiving this year, like basically every year. What's not to like about spending time with family, eating all kinds of good food, and getting extra time off work?

Back at work this week, of course, the topic of conversation the past few days was how the holiday was for various people, what they did, etc. The interesting thing about Thanksgiving is that basically everyone does something for it, which means almost everyone feels safe asking others about it.

Where as for something like Christmas, everyone dances around actually asking what people did for Christmas, asking how their holidays were, or whether they enjoyed the extra time off work, etc. Only with closer work friends do people seem to talk about the actual holidays, once they know it is a mutual subject.

When we were in England on the other hand, even though it was the end of October, the big topic of conversation at the office was making plans for a fancy office Christmas dinner. Where to go, who could come what day, whether other groups had made their plans yet, etc. Not a "holiday party", or "end of the year dinner", it was always called a Christmas dinner.

I thought the difference was interesting.

Movies: Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-11-30T21:35:00.000-06:00

On Saturday after visiting the house, Linzy and I went to go see Fantastic Mr. Fox. The lack of other movie choices, and the insanely high rating on Rotten Tomatoes (92%) swayed me to go see it despite the previews only looking so-so. Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy it.

I didn't hate the movie either, but it didn't really resonate with me. I enjoyed some of the humor, and liked the 'look' of the film with stop-motion puppets, but overall I didn't think it was particularly interesting.

In a lot of ways, it reminded me of some of Wes Anderson's other movies like Life Aquatic, or The Darjeeling Limited which I thought were OK but not as great as many people do. If there had been alternatives, we definitely could have waited for Fantastic Mr. Fox on Netflix.

House: Week 11

2009-11-29T19:48:00.000-06:00

It had been well over a week since I had last been out to the house, when we stopped by this weekend and there was major progress on the outside. The garage floor was poured, the driveway was in, and the exterior was painted. That was exciting news as we weren't expecting either the painting or the driveway.

The mild weather this November enabled them to complete things that were going to wait until spring. In the case of the driveway, that will save us from parking in the street all spring after the snow melts and the driveway turned into a mud pit.

Unfortunately on the inside, there wasn't such dramatic progress. The mudding and taping was all finished, and the knockdown ceiling was applied and painted. They also sanded all of the floor joints. Lots of work, obviously, but nothing that makes for a major difference when you walk in.

Looking ahead on the schedule, we should have more visible changes as the cabinets and trim are installed. Progress has gotten to the point now where it is getting very hard to remember that we still have two months to go.

Moved

2009-11-24T21:22:00.000-06:00

I got back from Boston today after a seven day trip to move our Cambridge office to a new location. It was sad to see the old office go, as I have always thought it was cool. The new office is fine, but not nearly as unique as the old one.

The work activities were very successful, but took a huge effort and trying to coordinate everything was stressful. All those long days in a row (with three 16+ hour days over the weekend) took their toll. But everything is done and now it is really nice to be back at home. I got first class on the flight home, so that helped start the process of relaxing. Now it's one more day of work and then a long weekend!

On the Road Again

2009-11-17T22:14:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow morning I leave for Boston, taking what is hopefully the last work trip until next year. This will mark my second week-long trip in a month, and when you throw in a random trip to Chicago in between, it feels like I've been doing a lot of traveling lately.

This trip will be good as it is the culmination of 5 months worth of planning a move project. At this point we've gotten everything done that we possibly can in advance, so it's just a matter of doing it. I'm looking forward to having everything completed.

Interestingly, despite the clustering of trips at the end of the year, I actually only had 5 business trips this year. That's one less then last year's six trips and right in the 'every other month' ballpark that I typically tell people who ask how much travel I do.

The trips this year were a bit longer this year then the average trip last year, so I ended up being away 36 nights total for the year:

March - 5 nights (Boston)
Jun - 12 nights (India)
July - 4 nights (Boston)
October - 9 nights (England)
November - 6 nights (Boston)

In 2007 I was away 44 nights, in 2008 it was 29 nights. Despite this being the third year of looking back at travel amounts, I still don't have a good handle on what normal will be. Since my job responsibilities keep changing, the travel requirements have changed with it.

I would assume that next year will bring more change, possibly a few more, shorter trips. It seems unlikely that it will bring significantly less travel overall.

Movies: 2012

2009-11-16T21:25:00.000-06:00

On Friday night Brenden, Paul and I went to go see 2012 on the monster screen at the Burnsville theater. Paul set things up as apparently he is a big end-of-the-world disaster movie fan. I appreciate a good special effects driven film as much as the next guy, so I was up for it.

Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy it. The special effects were certainly impressive, and I did get a kick out of Woody Harrelson's, but the film felt way too long. The amount of explosions and buildings collapsing after a while started to lose their impact. Apparently there is a limit to the number of times I will watch people fly a plane and narrowly avoid disaster after disaster.

I did enjoy spending time with my friends, but I after an hour and a half, I really struggled not to keep checking my watch.

Books: The Gathering Storm

2009-11-15T21:20:00.000-06:00

Three and a half years ago, I pessimistically posted that the Wheel of Time would never be completed. To my pleasure, though Robert Jordan passed away they selected another author to complete the series. Since the announcement, I've read four Brandon Sanderson books and found that I generally enjoy his writing style. While not my favorite author (that'd be Steven Erikson with Patrick Rothfuss a close second), Brandon also has benefit of being an extremely prolific writer.

At the end of October the first of the final three books was released. Despite being on spending lockdown, I couldn't resist a new Robert Jordan book and Linzy was even able to get me a signed copy from Uncle Hugo's which is pretty cool.

I raced through the 766 pages in about a week which was far faster then I read normal books. This was mostly due to spending a lot more time reading then I normally do, but the book's fast pace kept you wanting to read more. There were at least two evenings when I went to bed much later then normal, because I had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next.

I really enjoyed the book, at least partially because stuff happened. The plot moved along, some things finally got resolved and it generally felt like we were hurdling towards completion. While Knife of Dreams (the previous book) was good from that perspective as well, the previous several books had gotten mired down in details and felt like you read 800 pages where nothing moved forward.

One of my favorite things about Robert Jordan's books is the worldbuilding that has been done over the the twelve books, and the deep characters that have developed. I thought that the book still felt like a Robert Jordan book, which I take to mean that Brandon Sanderson did a very good job of staying true to the characters and world and history of the books and I couldn't really identify sections that were written by Robert Jordan versus Brandon Sanderson (though I didn't really look).

I can't think of too much negative to say about the book, except a common complaint that because of the breadth of the plot in Robert Jordan's books in a given book there are inevitably characters and plotlines that get little or no attention. For example, Taim and the black tower hardly even get a mention. I understand why this must be, but it is still always disappointing.

The good news there is that according to Brandon Sanderson's blog, Towers of Midnight is already 70% complete, which gives us a good chance of the next book being out in a year.

All in all I really enjoyed The Gathering Storm. I had forgotten how much I enjoy Robert Jordan's world and books. Despite being a combined effort of two authors, The Gathering Storm still felt like a true Robert Jordan book. And really, that probably says everything you need to know about the book. Even to a fan who has read most of the Wheel of Time books at least twice, it felt like a Robert Jordan book. If you like his books, you'll like Gathering Storm. If you don't, then why are you still reading this?

Total Agreement

2009-11-12T21:41:00.000-06:00

At my cousin's wedding last weekend, I sat next to my cousin Barb and her son Marcus. Marcus is about 11 and a very good kid. I talked to him for a while about video games (he likes Call of Duty). After a while the talk moved to TV shows, when I asked if he still liked the Simpsons, which was his favorite show when I saw him last. The conversation went like this:

Me: So, do you still like the Simpsons?
Marcus: Yes, but I like South Park too.
Me: Oh, you like South Park?
Marcus: Yeah, I like Cartman.
Me (to Barb): Mom is OK with you watching South Park?
Barb: Yes. No Family Guy though.
Marcus: I like Family Guy.
Me: So you let him watch South Park but not Family Guy?
Barb: Yep
Me: Seems kind of arbitrary.
Marcus: Yeah!!

Barb just looked at me and rolled her eyes. Immediately after I said it, I felt bad. But Marcus' agreement was pretty funny, and the distinction did seem kind of arbitrary.

House: Week Nine

2009-11-11T21:24:00.000-06:00

It's a good thing we're building a house, because otherwise I would have nothing to post about here other then traveling. That traveling, and the associated busy schedule has meant that in the past three weeks I've made exactly three trips to the house. The good thing there is that every time I go, there's been tons of progress.

Since the pre-drywall walkthrough last week, they have: finished pouring the basement floor, put all the vinyl siding up on the sides and back, installed the cedar shakes and 90% of the stone on the front of the house, applied the exterior foundation insulation, put in the interior insulation, and hung all of the drywall.

That's getting after it.

It was pretty cool going through the house today, as the rooms really look like rooms now that the walls and ceilings have sheetrock. I'm excited to see what next week brings.

Chicago Trip

2009-11-09T21:12:00.000-06:00

Linzy and I were in Chicago this weekend for my cousin Susan's wedding and to see our family there. It was a quick trip, we flew down on Friday after work and then flew home this afternoon.

The wedding was in downtown Chicago, right on Michigan avenue, so we got to experience a part of the city that we don't normally. Despite having been to Chicago more times then I can count, we've mostly either been visiting people in the suburbs or going somewhere specific downtown. This was the first time in a long time that I've spent time wandering around downtown.

It was interesting to see all of the shops on Michigan avenue, and we had a tasty lunch at Gino's East. The wedding was a lot of fun, and was quite fancy. We had a good time visiting with family and also got to spend time with family on Sunday and Monday before coming home.

The flight home was interesting as we happened to get upgraded to first class, which was cool, except that the flight from Chicago to Minneapolis is only about 50 minutes. So it was mostly pointless. But we did get to sit in row one, and have fancy snacks.

It's nice to be home. That will only last until next Wednesday when I leave again.

House: Week Eight

2009-11-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

There's been lots of progress on the house over the past two weeks, but almost none of it is particularly photo-friendly.

The closest we've come is the shingles on the roof. But in addition, they completed all of the HVAC vents, plumbing, electrical, low-voltage wiring, and poured the front porch and basement floor. We've been through the pre-drywall walkthrough, and they start insulating the walls tomorrow. In addition the exterior coverings have been delivered, so I expect next week we'll have the start of siding and/or stone coverings.

We found out today that it is unlikely they will paint the exterior of the house this winter. While I would like to have it completed, I am glad that they aren't going to try to paint in temperatures that are far too cold for that to be effective.

There's a little over two months to go, but it is encouraging to see all the progress and feel like we're creeping up on the point where we can start locking down financing and other arrangements.

Movies

2009-11-04T20:38:00.002-06:00

I watched a few films on the flights back and forth to London, thanks to the on-demand movie system.

On the way over, I watched Terminator Salvation and was unimpressed. It was enough to keep me aware, and perhaps would have been more exciting on a larger screen with better sound, but it wasn't particularly good.

On the way back I watched two movies:

Fighting, which I had put on the Netflix queue a few weeks ago, and ended up liking. Terrance Howard annoyed me a bit, but the storyline was interesting despite being terribly predictable. And the fight scenes were pretty exciting. The plot was completely what you would expect, and gave me the impression that someone wrote Rocky + Fight Club on a napkin at the bar and out popped Fighting's script.

State of Play, which was entertaining but not terrific. I liked the twists the storyline took, as well as the way the investigation unfolded. It wasn't terrific, but it kept my interest.

There were quite a few other very reasonable choices, but after two movies on the way back, I had had enough and had to move on to other ways to pass the time.

Other Side

2009-11-03T21:50:00.000-06:00

One of the things that I was nervous about for our trip to England last week was driving on the other side of the road. I originally was going to drive from London to Reading and then Reading to St. Albans. I ended up changing plans and taking the train to Reading, but I still had to drive to St. Albans and then around that area to get to and from the office.

When I drove to St. Albans it was night, which made things somewhat more difficult, at least in terms of navigation. Without a GPS, and with fairly questionable directions from Google Maps, it was a bit of an adventure getting to the hotel. The following morning finding the office with written directions was again fairly sketchy. There were a few wrong turns and one near accident. Amusingly the guys in the office also made me drive everyone to lunch that day. Hazing the new guy, I guess.

After a day though, I pretty much got the hang of things and it wasn't a problem anymore. By the end of the week, it was starting to feel much more natural. I was quite surprised at how well it went overall.

I will admit though, the first night driving on a two-lane road with the headlights coming on the other side of the road freaked me out. My brain was firmly convinced that we were going to die.

London Trip

2009-11-02T22:08:00.001-06:00

Last week I had to go to England for work. Linzy was able to come along and so I went a little early so that we could spend a weekend in London. After a few days of commuting out to Reading, we went up to St. Albans to visit another office. We stayed there for the rest of the week and then flew back on Saturday. It was a pretty busy trip, between the traveling within England, work, and trying to fit in some sight-seeing. But it was fun nonetheless.

London was interesting because I haven't been there since Brian, Chris and I went back in 2000. Since Linzy had never been there, we did a lot of the normal touristy things like visiting the Tower of London, going across the Tower Bridge walkway, and seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

St. Albans was interesting because it was a much smaller town in the English countryside, so it had a completely different vibe then being in the center of London. Linzy did far more sight-seeing then I did in St. Albans, but I was able to go visit the Cathedral with her, which was very cool.

The Tower Bridge at night

The changing of the guard was exactly like I remembered it being: packed with people.

The St. Albans cathedral had some underground tombs that were visible through grates on the floor.

Sheep grazing in the countryside.

Charlie the peacock putting the moves on the Puegeot.

Lots more pictures in the Flickr set.

Time Change

2009-11-01T20:40:00.000-06:00

I woke up this morning at 5:30am thanks to my normal returning-from-Europe jet lag. Apparently 7.5 hours of sleep is plenty as far as my body was concerned. Unfortunately with the end of daylight savings, that was actually 4:30am.

The good part of being wide awake that early was that I got a ridiculous amount of things done this morning. By 10 o'clock I had already done two loads of laundry, read the paper, did work e-mail for a few hours, exercised, and paid the bills.

If I needed so little sleep that I could get up at 4:30 every morning, I could probably rule the world.

House: Week Six

2009-10-21T21:10:00.000-05:00

This week progress on the house was painfully slow for the bulk of the week. The framers spent most of the time plugging away at finishing the roof sheathing, which took far, far longer then I would have imagined. This appeared to be because of the slow nature of making all the angle cuts where various sections of roof met and also because they seemed to run out of wood not once but twice.

Then, on Monday there was a flurry of activity as the last pieces of wood finally showed up so they could finish the roof, the windows were delivered, the eaves were finished, and the house was wrapped.

On Tuesday they installed all of the windows in the house except the one over the garage, and had the shingles delivered.

Then on Wendesday, they didn't work again. Two steps forward, one step back. But at least we are really, really close to being sealed from the weather.

LED Lights

2009-10-20T22:13:00.000-05:00

I watched the first season of Big Bang Theory on my iPod going to and from India earlier this summer. Prior to that I had seen a few episodes here and there, but hadn't watched it regularly. Lately, Linzy and I have been watching it pretty regularly.

I get a kick out of the humor, particularly Leonard in season 1, but now Sheldon in the current season. Linzy also seems to enjoy it. Although I regularly get the feeling that to some extent she is laughing at me.

One of the things that I am regularly amused by is the Dell XPS laptops that they frequently use on the show with LED lights and colorful add-ons. We bought a dual-SLI XPS laptop at work for a new particularly graphically intense application's on-site sales demonstrations and the sales team mocked it mercilessly. In the end we settled on sweet Sony Vaio laptops that are probably somewhat slower then the SLI monster, but work much better for the sales people.

But watching Big Bang Theory, every time they show one of the XPS laptops I envision a buttoned down English sales guy pulling out a 17-inch noisy laptop with a power brick the size of a college textbook and having the rear LEDs start flashing during the demonstration. Totally unrelated to actual humor on the show, but it still makes me laugh.

Subconcious

2009-10-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

Normally once I fall asleep, I sleep like the dead until the morning. Because of this, I very rarely actually remember any dreams that I have, and even more rarely actually have nightmares. My sister remembers all kinds of crazy dreams, but I don't remember a thing except turning off the light the night before.

Last night for some reason I had a terrible time sleeping. I kept waking up cold, or hot, or at some unexpected sound, and because of this I remembered a few of my dreams. The strangest one was not strange in terms of what happened, but it was basically a nightmare, that when I go to do my presentation next week in London, that I looked like an idiot and mess it completely up.

Which is just bizarre, because I'm really not worried about the presentation. Or at least I thought I wasn't, prior to this, when clearly I secretly am.

Poor Planning

2009-10-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

For several reasons, I've had a bit more free time on my hands the past month or so, which has allowed for some more video game playing then normal. A couple weeks ago I finished Shadow Complex and then finished Gears of War 2 (which I was about 50% finished with already) the following weekend. Since then I've been trying to figure out what I would be playing next as Grand Theft Auto 4, the other game I didn't put in storage, wasn't really keeping my interest. Eventually after some thinking, I settled on Fallout 3.

I decided to hold out for the Game of the Year edition, because that came with all five DLC packs and so seemed like a good deal. That version didn't come out until Tuesday (10/13) and I decided to save some money and finally use the credit I had gotten from trading in old DS games this summer.

Now in general I am morally opposed to used game trade-in business, for more reasons then I could list here but primarily because I feel that it takes advantage of young kids who have games but no money. They have limited options for getting rid of the games (especially before the rise of Craigslist) and the used game stores give poor trade-in value and over-charge for used games. Including charging more for used games then the going price of a new copy. There's a benefit of convenience, but the stores have various means to lock their customers in so that they are more-or-less forced to keep their business at one chain.

Anyways, one of these means is to stock few if any new games, and push consumers to used games. Which I am well aware of, but didn't really think through relative to wanting Fallout 3: GOTY the week that it came out. Of course the store didn't have any, and would have wanted to sell me a used copy instead (despite the fact that wouldn't have had the DLC).

Since I failed to consider this problem, I was in a position of wanting the game so I could play it this weekend, but now couldn't even get it from Amazon and save a few bucks, so I ended up paying more at Best Buy. Plus I didn't have my gift cards on me at the time, so instead of getting it for free (at the used game store) or for a reduce price (through gift cards or Amazon), I ended up paying full price for it just to have it 'now'.

Very poor planning and patience. And on top of that, I haven't been terribly impressed with the game, as the pacing is fairly slow and combat is far too frequent and takes forever to beat even weak enemies (fire ants for example). Perhaps I should have bought Borderlands.

House: Week Five

2009-10-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

As you may remember from week four, last Wednesday after a two-day work week the new house had exterior walls on the second level. This week we made quite a bit more progress.

First they built all the interior walls on the second level and finished up the main staircase

Then they added most of the roof trusses

For the past two days they have been working on sheathing the roof, which turns out to be far slower then I was envisioning.

They're actually a bit further then that picture shows, about two-thirds of the roof is complete. There is also some work being done with the HVAC and/or sewer, but no one can quite put their finger on what is being done. The house has also become quite the muddy mess after all of the rain and snow. I imagine that will only get worse before it gets better.

[ Total days spent framing at this point is 11 ]

Ear Trim

2009-10-13T21:51:00.000-05:00

Pippen went in today for her twice yearly haircut. Around 11am Linzy called me at work to say there had been an accident at the grooming parlor and they had cut Pippen's ear. She described them as having 'glued the ear', which I was envisioning as them having totally snipped the ear off and were trying to glue it back together.

Apparently there is a vet right next door, and since they couldn't get the bleeding stopped they took Pippen over there for assistance. It was the Vet who was doing the gluing, not the grooming place thankfully. They had originally told Linzy that if we wanted there not to be a notch, they had to put Pippen under so that they could stitch up the ear.

We made the call more-or-less sight unseen to not put Pippen through anesthesia. Which after seeing the cut would have been totally ridiculous, because it is very small. Pippen appears to be no worse for wear after the injury, and in fact was claiming to me tonight that it gave her 'street cred' and made her look more rough-and-tumble.