I Like to Talk Episode 7 – Happy Birthday to Mark
A long time ago, on the internet, Rob made a fake blog. Sometime later, Rob and I made another fake blog, making fun of the original fake blog.
Today, as it nears the honest, real Mark’s birthday, I’m posting an episode of I Like to Talk that Rob and I made for Mark. It’s the most awful rendition (my fault) of Happy Birthday ever. Like in before and after Christ ever.
Happy Birthday Mark. Make sure to read through the fake blog postings we made over the last year. The question remains, just who is really the real Mark Jackman?
Day 23: Nothing has exploded
Janna and I have reached day 23 in our 35 day escrow process in the purchase of our first home. I haven’t posted very much about it because there hasn’t been much to post.
We asked for work on the house to be done prior to closing, and the repairs we asked for were accepted.
There have been no surprises. No horror stories like some of my friends have shared with me.
And maybe this is the best time to acknowledge my friend Geoff. Geoff didn’t have the worst time buying his house in San Francisco, but he didn’t have the best time either, and he told me about everything that he learned during the process, like:
- How to do extra detective work against the title of the house
- Questions to ask real estate agents and loan agents
- What to look for when doing a walkthrough
- How to watch for vacations and holidays during the closing process
- Always gently reminding me that it really is a better idea to ask all questions that I have, no matter how ignorant, no matter how much I already think things are handled
In short Geoff told me about every mistake he made, everything he would do differently the next time he buys a house. He must have spent more than a handful of hours total from all of the discussions we had, all of them having one central theme: be critical when buying a house.
Not critical like negative, rather critical like serious. Critical like honorable. Critical like dealing with each and every thing that comes up, no matter how difficult it is.
Sure, accidents in life can happen, but this buying a house thing has made me wonder what would the rest of life be like if we just took it a bit more seriously than we currently do.
A man’s bathroom
King Cobra, where it belongs.
Day 14: Contingencies released
I thought buying a home would be more exciting. More dramatic. Would contain more to write about. Nope. Day 14, right on schedule, and we released contingencies. Will we actually be home owners?
From the wife
Janna must be telling me something. 
Unexpected Flowers
For the time that I’m staying at my current place with hot wife, I do a bit of zen gardening. Prior to the rains in California, I had dirt outside of my above-garage-shack. How I have wild grass and dandelions. Because I’m most likely certifiably insane, I decided to go out on the weekends, and odd ours of the days, and trim up the grass by hand. After seeing some TED talks, I’m now a firm believer that “bio-diversity” is much better than a sterile lawn.
For the past three weeks dandelions and weeds have grown, and I go out once or twice a week and purposefully cut them down but don’t yank out the roots.
A few days ago future-botanist wife and I were going out to dinner and she commented on the flowers. I forget what she said, but essentially they’re not weeds, they’re some sort of edible.
Point: I had no idea what I’m doing other than enjoying some stress relief. I cut down dandelions in order to give some other plants a chance. And what pops up, a flower that I would have never seen if I would have blatantly mowed down everything. Quite cool to me.
Oh yeah, and I’ve seen the first bees I’ve seen in the last two years.
There really isn’t a point to this article, other than nature is sometimes more fun than just a lawn.
Day 6 – Waiting for the inspection report
The days go by, the check list grows, and we check more items off the list. Buying our first home is definitely exciting/nervous making, and depending on the time of the day, hot wife and I might tell you it’s both, one, or neither. This post will go up on Day 6 of our “in contract” period. Everything looks good so far, but being the cynical ass I am, I’ve got the pest inspection and repair on my mind. Turns out there’s this thing called “Section 1″ repairs that need to be done on almost every house in California. Pest reports come back with 2 sections to them, Section 1 and 2, go figure.
In almost all instances, especially in the new economy, given we didn’t buy a home as is, the banks who are underwriting our loan will, 99% of the time, require that anything that ends up within a Section 1 of the pest inspection be repaired PRIOR to the home actually exchanging ownership.
And Janna and I are waiting for the general inspection to be sent to us. In other news, it looks like there is no problem with the loan coming through, and my boss officially welcomed me to the “poor mortgage people club.” I never had any idea owning a house could add so much to my cynicism power. I say +20 cynic points, YAR!
And there’s this thing called liquidated damages. It’s a funny concept that I’ve learned a lot about from my friend Geoff. I’ve gotta say, I agree with his assessment of the whole thing: it’s a chance for the agents and the seller to take a chunk of the buyer if they fail to come through on the purchase. A bit of a new feeling to see the bank account show a deduction of the “deposit” today. What are liquidated damages? In our case, it’s 3% of the cost of our home, and an agreement with the seller: if, after 14 days of entering contract we are confident we can buy the house, we will release our contingencies and agree with the seller that we are really, truly going to buy their house. For the most part, it is not a problem, but it does open a whole new “what if” scenario. For example, the seller will not actually begin fixing up our house until we “release contingencies” and make our final commitment to buy. Seems a bit fucked up to me, but hey, that’s how it works.
Between this, and discussions with my friend Charles, it makes me want to take the Bar exam in California. Who knows, I might actually pass.
Does anyone have mad linux April Fools skills?
I know, I’m a day late, but a mix of Boston Legal and messing around with linux lead me to this question:
Anyone know how to make the ‘whoami’ command spit out:
Denny Crane
when used as root, without just rewriting the whoami binary?
The spam bots are getting smarter
This was a spam comment at the top of my spam list yesterday:
Submitted on 2009/03/31 at 9:18am
You’re a good but lazy blogger.
bathrooms@racecare.info
bathroom accessories
spam
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