cleverswine.net

2009 is upon us. We as a country have a lot of improvements to make this year. I, as an individual, don’t have a lot of change in mind. My only big resolution is to lose some weight and get back into shape. I’ve let myself go since meeting Bren. I feel bad for her, because she thought she was getting involved with a lean, mean, programming machine. Now, I’m an unemployed fat slob (okay, that may be an exaggeration). Anyway, happy New Years and good luck in 2009. I’ll be eating my black-eyed peas and cabbage for sure this year!

I just installed Windows Live Writer as a tool to publish stories to my web site.  It has some promising features, and works with Wordpress (yay MS).

I also just installed DropBox because I’ve been meaning to find a way to create offsite copies of some of our important files.  I haven’t tried it yet, but I hear good things about it.

Hmm, now that I’m about to publish, I’m wondering if it will handle Wordpress tags… it did not.

Tonight we bought and installed an over the stove microwave oven. The most impressive part (or, the part that I’m proudest of) is that we wired up and installed a new electrical outlet. There was an old (70s) vent hood above the stove, and we severed the cord and rewired it to an outlet. All in all, it was a lot of work, and I’d be inclined to pay someone next time.

I’m at the Chicago office this week, helping out on a .Net web project. I haven’t seen much of the city yet, but my first impression is that it’s big and old (old != bad). I’m staying about .75 miles from the office, so I might walk back to the hotel this evening and check things out on the way. I probably won’t get out much while I’m here, but if I do, I’ll be sure to take photos.

What’s good after a long day of intense yard work? Peanut butter cookies. I made them from scratch, with very little help from the wife. My only mistake was spraying cookie dough all over the walls with a poorly aimed electric beater. Oops. Now we’re going to watch some recorded episodes of Boston Legal and chow down.

Click image for better detail

This is a satellite view of the Portland metro area. In the lower right of the map, you can see all of the less populated space. According to rumors, that space will be the next piece of Portland to fall to shopping malls and crowded suburbs. We’re considering a house where the red dot is (next to Powell Butte).

Since we’re searching for a house to buy, I’ve also been researching various neighborhoods around Portland. I’ve lived here long enough to be pretty familiar with all of Portland metro, but sometimes hard numbers add a little something. PortlandMaps.com has a decent tool for showing an overview, and details, of crime in Portland. The darker the red, the more crime there was in the past 12 months. I have to say, I’ve lived in some of the dark red areas (inner SE) and always felt safe. Still, it’s a nice overview.

We’ve started looking seriously at houses to buy. We even have a real estate agent (Leslie, a family of a friend). It’s supposed to be a buyer’s market, but I’ll tell you, houses in Portland are still outrageously priced. I believe I read that the average price here is more than $300k. However, I get the idea that sellers are more than willing to come down quite a bit in price. After looking at just a couple of houses, they were practically begging us to buy the place.

As for location, there’s a dilemma. Without assigning blame, I’ll just say that we require a large yard, a large house, a modern house, a safe neighborhood, and a close-in location. Those things put together, especially the location, are hard to come by. The closer you get to Portland, the smaller the yard and the older the house. Mind you, we both love old houses, but times have changed and most old houses don’t accommodate our modern luxuries. At this point, we’ve found some places in the far East - around the Mt. Scott area.

It’s been a house-like weekend. We started the weekend by continuing our search for a house to buy. We have a couple on the radar, but nothing perfect yet. Today, we inadvertently started rearranging furniture in our house. We’ve made the living room look much larger and nicer. It was a bit exhausting and we had to cancel our plans to see the new Coen brothers movie. We may see the movie tomorrow afternoon. That’s all I’ve got.

We had a lovely rehearsal dinner last night at Bryant Station in downtown Gresham. We had guests from Texas, Missouri, and Okinawa.