Office Monkey

Everybody needs some monkey sometime

Alternative Nano?

So in less than a month NaNoWriMo starts. Mandrina, of course, has everything planned out. She stole an idea or two from me — or at least didn’t mention them to me when I thought I was being all brilliant about it. (I love you. 🙂 )

A couple of the Hydrophobic Ducks went out to dinner last night (last year’s core group), and people were chatting about their ideas — or lack thereof — for this year’s Nano. So I got to thinking about mine.

I had been planning on writing a how-to-esque book on how to be an evil genius — Diary of an Evil Genius as the unbelievably creative title. For the last few months I’ve known this idea existed. I had a few nifty novel-structure ideas — such as mini-biographies of former Evil Geniuses at the start of each Chapter, a la the various book excerpts that headed each chapter in Dune. I had a general idea for a plot — VERY general. More in terms of, “Oh, that’s going to happen” than anything resembling a storyline or even an arc.

But I didn’t have a point of view. And I’ve been stuck on this for months. None of them seem right…

But take a glance over to the right. You see that poll?

I made a one-off comment last night that just kinda stuck. We were talking about religion and sin and… “Well, you know, God’s become senile in his old age…”

So! Nano possibility TWO!

What happens when a god gets old? God, Retired as a slight less creative title than the other…

It would be a humorous novel, most likely. I would hope. Don’t smite me, please don’t smite me…

Look right! Click! Vote!

Filled under: Uncategorized By: Andrew Tags: 
 Posted on: October 8, 2005 4 Comments »

Making an offer…

It took longer for me to get a mortgage preapproval than to find a house. I should be making an offer on it later today, although it’s a question as to whether or not they’ll accept it.

I know that there have been no offers on the house in the last month that it’s been listed. So… *shrug*

It’s a bit far away — Everett-Redmond is about a 45 minute commute. Which on a daily basis is a hassle and a half. But it’s not that much farther than Bothell.

Here’s the miscellaneous links — reply fast, people!

Floorplans — I made them myself, don’t criticize too much. The exact placement of rooms might not be exact, but room sizes and relative positions should be fairly accurate.

House listing

Pictures:

PhotoMax, which might not work

Flickr, which might work, is below.

www.flickr.com

Filled under: Living, Real Estate By: Andrew Tags: 
 Posted on: September 29, 2005 No Comments »

APPLICATION SUBMITTED

Here I first wrote about applying for a mortgage.

Today, I finally signed the paperwork to get preapproval. *sigh*

This weekend we might be able to start looking…

I’m having flashbacks to applying for college. You spend an awfully large amount of time filling out paperwork to say, “I’d like to give you money for somewhere to go for the next four years, and then a piece of paper at the end.” And then you spend a long time waiting for a reply.

Matter of fact, they are very similar…

Filled under: Real Estate By: Andrew Posted on: September 15, 2005 No Comments »

Should I ban her?

Mandrina is not very good at video games. She admits to this. She randomly calls to me, “Can you do this?” with some random game I had bought for me to play months ago, but had never had a chance to open. As long as it isn’t Prince of Persia or Ninja Gaiden, I’m unlikely to be upset.

However, even as she acknowledges her low competency at video games, she gets REALLY upset whenever she is getting frustrated. Now, I understand getting frustrated. But hitting my sofa? Yelling randomly (not cursing, mind you)? When she acknowledges that she’s not that good?

Mind you, this is the second night in a row that I’ve gotten stuck watching her play on MY Xbox on the TV she insists is just too big.

I think I should ban her so I can get a turn, and my couch can stay safe.

Filled under: Woman By: Andrew Posted on: September 3, 2005 4 Comments »

Have you ever had an “Oh, Fvck!” moment?

As I wrote earlier today, getting approved for a mortgage has been, to put it simply, a hassle.

I managed to get free access to my Transunion credit report a minute ago. Nothing terribly interesting, everything I knew… except for one thing.

Way down at the bottom, an account I had zeroed out for this “mortgage” and “rescoring” bit had a balance.

*gasp*

I logged into my credit card, and sure enough, it had a FIFTY dollar balance on the account.

Why?

Despite my several thousand dollar payments, I had apparently missed one autodebit. So my ReplayTV billed me at the end of last month for $10. Where did the rest of the balance come from?

Since I didn’t have a zero balance at the end of the billing cycle, they take the average of my account balance over every day and apply the APR. I got billed interest for my paid off balance!

*grumble*

Filled under: Day-to-Day By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 2 Comments »

Ain’t she sweet!

So I paid for a joint expense, with the agreement that Mandrina would cut me a check thereafter to reimburse me for her share.

She handed it to me this morning while we were driving to work (after which point I had my tire go flat, so I was a bit distracted). I finally got a chance to start doing some of those nasty necessary things, and just got to the check she had written me.

The memo field reads, “FOR: Being cute.”

Love you, too.

Filled under: Woman By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 No Comments »

Mortgages take time and paperwork…

So my first post on getting a mortgage was on July 22nd. As of today, I should start actually applying for a mortgage.

Yes, that’s right. OVER A MONTH.

It’s not anyone’s fault, nor any incompetence. On the first run through, Charles determined my credit wasn’t good enough (a trip to Romania was a good idea until someone decided the flight should be first class) so I needed to do something about it. Several thousands of dollars later, I started rerunning my credit. I get a statement from my credit card company saying, “Andrew’s credit limit has been raised to ${insert insanely unusually high number here} and his current balance is $0.” I forward said letter to Charles. Charles talks to a company that will act as a go-between — verifying that new information with the credit card company and informing one of those blasted credit bureaus. Some time later, the go-between completes their communication cycle, and tells Charles that my credit score has changed to XYZ.

So we do this once. Then Charles comes back and tells me that one of my scores is too low — BY TWO POINTS. So I have to do the entire routine again.

Between the go-between taking WAY longer than expected, a Florida trip, and laundering money (legally), it’s just taken this long to get to the point where I can actually give Charles paperwork such as W-2s, paystubs, 401k statements, etc., in order to get a mortgage pre-approval started.

So sometime next week I might actually have a mortgage pre-approval so that we can go shopping for a house.

Filled under: Day-to-Day, Living, Real Estate By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 No Comments »

What a life…

So I haven’t posted in a few days. I’ve been busy with loads of exciting things. I have some pictures, which I’ll put up eventually. In the meantime, however, here’s the summary:

  • 17 hours spent at the Opera. What, might you ask, would require anyone to sit through SEVENTEEN HOURS of Opera? And not just Opera, but GERMAN Opera. Because you haven’t experienced real life until you’ve sat and watched a bunch of fat opera singers sing the same thing fifteen different times in slightly tones of voice. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Because Mandrina REALLY wanted to see it. She owes me BIGGGG.
  • Guy’s Night / Jamie’s Jonathan’s 21st Birthday – I’m sorry, I can’t comment on this. Aside from saying that Godiva Chocolate Liquor, Creme de Cocoa, and Cherry Brandy work really well. And Bacardi 151 doesn’t work very well for someone who’s never drank before…
  • VJ Day Celebration. In Vancouver, Washington, where Mandrina and I had gone for my birthday — which made my birthday feel slightly less special, but I guess that just means Mandrina will have to make it up to me for my next birthday… But it was interesting, a bunch of World War II veterans and equipment. Mandrina drooled over the planes, some of which still fly. But the highlight was a visit to the only remaining PT Boat in the world that still floats. As Mandrina’s grandfather served on a PT Boat in World War II, we were allowed below decks as VIPs, where Mandrina got hit on by an 85-year-old man. “If we had a girl like you on the boat, we never would have stopped fighting!” Which is true. I’d bomb several foreign nations for her.
  • Game night! Abigail hosted a game night — wherein I discovered I should not be allowed to provide clues in Taboo. Mandrina fortunately won Scattegories, so I didn’t have to have her upset on the way home — she might be a wee bit overcompetitive.

That would be about all. Work, but who cares about that?

Filled under: Day-to-Day, Woman By: Andrew Tags: ,
Posted on: August 30, 2005 No Comments »

Work bit…

My current assignment at work is to code review a component of Office.

code review – To read through every line of source code and examine it for potential security risks.

This is even more boring than it sounds, but everyone has to do this around me as well, so it’s shared misery. Not halved, mind you, but shared.

So I’m currently reviewing a particular ActiveX control, and am looking at it’s WndProc — for the unitiated, it’s the generic Windows function that handles, well, almost everything — it’s the way Windows communicates with components, by passing messages. For more information, cf. Programming Windows 5th Edition by Charles Petzold.

So this particular control goes through and performs a series of checks to determine its current operating condition. It then does absolutely nothing with these checks and always calls the same function.

I’m sure it made sense at some point…

Filled under: Office By: Andrew Posted on: August 25, 2005 No Comments »
1 … 37 38 39 40