Upgrading to Wheezy

The blog post will be abbreviated today on account of the software upgrade on my sons' eMachine. The last update was May of last year, and now that backups are done, it is time to become current. Long have passed the days of my Debian development, but I remember all of the valuable lessons of package management, systems installations, and upgrade dragons. Hopefully, this one will run smoothly.

Meghan, the kids, Peter, and I visited a few houses in the Stillwater and Lino Lakes area today. We fell in love with one house, newly on the market. Hopefully our house, which we recently reduced the asking price for, will sell quickly now. We spent our lunch at Red Robin for burgers, fries, and and rootbeer. I tried their Blue Moon shake, which had beer, orange liquor, and ice cream.  Pretty tasty!

I still haven't run yet today, but I'll get a late night one in after Nora goes to bed in the next hour or so.

Freaking Starving, and Houses

It's four minutes to midnight, and I'm starving! I've eaten three pickles -- no, four -- had a beer, had an amazing scotch that my parents bought for my 39th birthday, and I'm famished! (Why I listed alcohol as if it were a food group, I'll never know. Just stating the facts, folks.) Perhaps I'll drink some more water...

So, the house. We're sitting at a decision point: stay the course with our current price, or drop in hope that people will bite. We've had a lot of potential buyers see the property and walk away. "It's nice, but not for us." "Great upgrades, but not for me." The gutting: "I like it, but I'd like it more if it was $30,000 cheaper." Who wouldn't?!

I understand the buyer's mentality; I do it myself. You walk into a potential purchase with a budget in mind and a set of features or criteria that must be met. In order for a property to qualify, you consider its current price and the money you'll have to spend to get it where you want it. Now, we're terribly proud of the work we've put into our 113 year old house, but not everyone will see it. They won't have the context of "before" and "after", and frankly, they shouldn't have to worry about those details. To say, "You should overlook your misgivings because we've already done X, Y, and Z," is to be disingenuous to the nature of "buyer" and "seller".


I do hope that someone finds the same value in our house that we hold. It's time that we move on and let another family build memories here; I know we've build some great ones of our own. Could we continue living here? Absolutely! We could totally make it work, but we'd have to sacrifice sleep and sanity to do it; Nora and Meghan respectively. Frankly, I would like a rested child and a sane wife.

A Showing, a Movie, and a Loop

Saturday is generally a day for household chores, family events, or
just plain laziness. Meghan let me sleep in until nine or so, getting
up with Nora at 0730CDT, which covered my laziness for the day. After
that, it was a constant "Go" mode. We all needed to be out of the
house at 11:00 for a 11:15 showing. I took care of the kids and
straightening up the upstairs while Meghan took a short break - well
deserved - and took care of some last minute details.

We packed everyone, including our dog Peter, into the van and took a
short trip to McDonald's for breakfast, then sat in the van parked
half-a-block from the house to wait. Showings generally take 10-20
minutes, and Nora was having her nap postponed for the event. We
wanted to get back into the house and get her to bed as soon as the
visitors left.

When we did get back into the house, it was "quiet time" for Nora, so
I packed up the boys and we watched "Despicable Me 2". It was a
surprisingly good movie, and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly. For some
reason, I was exhausted after the movie and took a cat-nap on the
couch. It was short-lived, at best, and I soon needed to get up and
cook dinner. I made an old favorite, a tomato soup meat sauce and wide
egg noodles; simple but delicious. Nora enjoyed it, but was
over-exhausted and promptly brought upstairs for a nap.

After the boys were settled in and getting ready to go to bed, I threw
on my KSOs and ran an easy loop of Lake Como from my house
(approximately 7 miles in about an hour). I played around with some
FOSS software on my Android phone for the run: GPSLogger and
Pedometer, both available from the FDroid market app. GPSLogger has a
very simple controller display, with no visual map or charts to speak
of. I like it in that it seems to save battery over MyTracks and other
run logging applications. I still need to download and view the GPX
track, so it'll be interesting to find out how accurate it is and how
best to tune its settings for my use case.

Pedometer didn't work at all. Apparently the accelerometer is
unavailable when the screen is locked, and it doesn't appear to be
override-able. This brings up a beef I have with some of the Android
settings. There are applications we need running with resources we
need access to, even when the screen is shut off. Consider trying to
be as frugal with your battery as possible, where you don't need to
watch the screen to "use" an application. This simply needs to be
improved. There was a setting in the Pedometer application to keep the
screen awake, but I was already running at 30% battery when I
started; I needed it for the GPS.

In any case, it's high time that I do a proper backup of the data on
this phone; my next chore. Like my computer, it's a part of my
life. Without the data on it, I would be lost, or at least I would
suffer a major setback. Scary, huh?

Home Remodeling - Please Be Done Soon

There is a fine layer of dust on everything in the house, a constant reminder of the remodeling taking place to gussy up this old bird for sale. They're not big jobs, but they all take time and manage to push our usable living space from room to room. So far, we have the upstairs bathroom 95% complete, the dining room 95%, the kitchen 95%, the downstairs bathroom 95% (for three years now). The living room is at 75%, with lots of painting left to do. The upstairs bedrooms are 90% complete, with lots of trim painting and some touch-ups to do.

Why are we moving? Two reasons: space and schools. At ten months old, Nora is still a frequent napper. Quiet time is a challenge for the boys, who are six and eight and full of energy. We need to either send them outside in the back yard or get them out of the house, which is not always feasible. Having a finished basement family or entertainment room would alleviate much of the stress that permeates the house now. It would also be nice to give the boys their own rooms, since they share a smallish room now.

The second priority is education. Currently, the boys go to Highland Park Elementary, a Primary Youth Program and International Baccalaureate school. It's a relatively good school, when you compare it to other Saint Paul public schools, but it pales in comparison to offerings outside the Twin Cities districts. There's one exception to this, Capitol Hill Magnet School for gifted and talented students. Connor and Ryan both qualify, but due to a strict lottery system for enrolling students, only Connor will be admitted next year. The following year, Ryan's 2nd grade year, would give him precedence over lottery students, but we're not comfortable waiting that long for his education.

Taxes are done, so now we can apply for a loan pre-approval and find out how much house we can afford. The market is full of possibilities, and we've been looking at houses and communities for four months or so now. There are some favorites on the list, and a long list of must-haves. Hopefully, we'll remain reasoned and logical in our selection rather than be swayed by something on our nice-to-haves list.

I hate cleaning. I hate house work. I would really like this to be done now. If anyone wants to help paint, you're more than welcome to come on over! With Spring right around the corner, we're planning on doctoring up the outside as well for some curb appeal! Gardeners welcome!