Buying a House
August 30th, 2011
Ok, I’m buying a house. Let me first start by saying, IT”S A VERY STRESSFUL PROCESS! Got that out of my system. Created a Facebook page so that friends and family could follow and comment on the process (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Annettas-House-Hunt/155530511184945). The whole process has been a learning experience. Made an offer that I felt was reasonable and they accepted. From that point on, my life changed. The ball went into motion and they pushed it along by accepting (which was great). I’ve been on and off looking for 3-4 years, not really working with an agent until the past few months. Working with an agent sped the process up. After a few homes, I felt like my agent knew what I was looking for. Zillow.com is a great resource and they have a very nice iPhone and iPad app.
What motivated me to finally call and work with an agent? My apartment of 4 years got flooded by a main sewage backup that took 2 weeks to get reasonably cleaned up. I had the lease renewal signed and sitting on my kitchen table the night it happened. Intended to turn it in earlier, but missed my opportunity due to working late. Thankfully I didn’t! Sitting at the table waiting for maintenance to show up, watching sewage backup, thinking.. Why do I want to stay here? The very next day I crossed out my intention to renew and made up my mind to get serious about finding a house.
There is so much mixed and good advice on the internet, let me just say. Inspections are stressful… appraisals are worse. are they going to find something wrong? are my instincts right about a fair price? Everything I read, said DON’T SKIP inspections or appraisals! I can’t agree with that more, after both completed and found acceptable. My stress level dropped significantly.
There are still a few things that I can’t find answers on. The question that bugs me the most is can the seller and buyer talk during the process? Nobody seems to agree on that answer, when I asked my agent about getting 15 minutes of their time before closing day. I get the run around (maybe not intentionally). I was driving by the house with friends and noticed the sellers packing out front. It was kind of an awkward moment, do I say hi or keep driving? Nobody could agree whether to roll the window down or just driving. I would really just like to talk with the sellers, pick their brain on maintenance, things to watch out for and get a house tour (who else is better qualified to give it!). They took good care of the house and I want to do the same.
Here are few sites that I hope help others going through the same process:
LifeHacker: 10 ways to improve your credit score. – VERY MUCH WORTH READING
http://lifehacker.com/5834187/10-ways-you-can-improve-your-credit-score-right-now
Fearless homebuyer – Good tips, worth reading
http://fearlesshomebuyer.com/
Zillow.com home search (If you have an iPad, try the app, it rocks!)
http://www.zillow.com
Zillow mortgage app for iPhone is a different app than the house search. It allows you to very accuratly calculate payments, how much house you can afford. It’s a great app and can’t recommend it enough!
The Body Odd – SAD in the summer? Sunshine depression rare, but real
July 2nd, 2011
Finally, there’s a name for what I have. Warm weather depression!
I love winter so much that I’m thinking about winter in the middle of summer. I do enjoy the warmer days, but I’d prefer to be in a colder climate (preferably where it’s snowing). Might have something to do with having growing up in Southern California and seeing the nice white capped mountains around me. Who knows? All that matters is there is a name for the condition!
The Body Odd – SAD in the summer? Sunshine depression rare, but real.
My first Mac, 1 week review of MacBook Air 13″
March 19th, 2011
I’m a loooooonnngg time PC user. I got back to the early DOS days with two floppy drives. In fact I love DOS so much, that I’m a heavy into FreeBSD (UNIX like), there is just something about a stable OS with a command line. Anyways, I had Windows 95 from the second it went on sale (at mid-night), a beta tester for Windows 98, loved Windows XP, hated Windows ME, liked Windows Vista and love Windows 7.
Just purchased my first Apple PC. Well, a MacBook Air 13″. I’ve got to say, I’m pleasantly surprised with it’s performance (in fact with the SSD drive, it exceeded my expectations by a factor of 2). I’m not a gamer, and don’t push most video cards to their max. However; I do utilize high resolution displays and really like having a higher resolution notebook screen (The Air has a smaller screen, but higher resolution that my HP counterpart). My first impression of using OS X is that it’s a good OS. I like it, but there are things I like better in Windows 7. So it’s really a wash at this point. The apple Keyboard (with it’s “fn” (function), “control”, “alt/option”, and “command” keys) are confusion coming from a pc world. It’s actually driving me nuts. I’m always hitting the wrong button. I knew this when I bought it though, it’s not windows, and that’s where the line stops. Apple not only makes the OS, they specify the hardware it will run on. That translates into reliability and stability between the OS and Hardware. My favorite feature of the Air… The touch pad, it’s mutitouch and it’s pretty smart.
This machine (MacBook Air 13″ (late 2010 model), 4GB ram, 256 SSD and 2.13 GHz dual core processor) out performs my dying Windows 7 notebook from HP (that’s only 2 years old). I don’t think the hardware is actually physicially failing, but something is incompatible between the OS and hardware (and it came that way factory!!!) My HP notebook has a clunky power adapter that sticks out 2-3 inchs (1/4 of an inch on the Mac), weighs twice as much (6lbs vs. 3 lbs), only has a 2-3 hour batter life (5-7 hours on the Mac) and runs much noisier and hotter than the MacBook Air (The Air runs silent 90-99% of the time). Start up time on the Windows 7 factory was around 1.5 to 2 minutes, it’s running closer to 3-4 with Antivirus and a few utilities I use (17 seconds on the Air and oh yeah… Sleep actually works on the MacBook Air, and it works incredibly well). My guess is that with the SSD (Solid State Drive, no moving parts) and the OS X software comes with the exact drivers that are 100% compatible, it doesn’t have to sit there and attempt sanity checks for hardware during boot up.
In summary, I paid more (about 2x the price of my HP Windows 7 computer for this mac), but after hearing nothing but good things about Apple products and owning an iPhone 3GS myself and by some miracle I walked into BestBuy the first day the iPad came out and got one of the last ones that day. I’ve changed my option of Apple, I never understood what makes an Apple product an Apple product until I owned one and then another and now another. I’m happy.
Everything I use my Windows 7 PC for is still there, Firefox, CrashPlan (backup software), iTunes, Remote Desktop, VPN, Picasa, Microsoft Office, Handbrake (free video conversion software), Eye-Fi software, Trillian (instant messaging), TrueCrypt, virtual box, FileZilla and even a native twitter application from the Mac App Store. And if it comes to it, I can buy a boxed version of Windows 7, click a box in OS X and install Windows 7 along side of the OS X. After checking out the reviews on YouTube, it’s looks pretty straight forward.
I also found the following website to be interesting reading to those of us who like to push performance of the Intel Based Macs:
Which Is More Sanitary: Hand Towels or Air Dryers?
November 12th, 2010
No surprise here. Not a big fan of air dryers.. but I am surprised about why Air dryers spread more germs. Never thought about the ones hiding on your hands.
I’d never use one of those towel dispensors that have the blue cloth that unwinds and winds back on the spool. You never know if they washed it thoroughly and if they used bleach!
AX 2009 EP Development CookBook – The Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal Blog – Site Home – MSDN Blogs
November 11th, 2010
Going though a nightmare debugging Dynamics AX EP C# code right now. This has some great information that I recommend having handy.
There is a downloadable Word document that is nicely formatted.
Problem solving in Dynamics AX – A quick check-list before tearing your hair out
October 27th, 2010
Found this list on another blog. This is a great reminder / best practive list and is something I’ve mentally used myself. Huge thanks to Klaas for sharing it.
Art Of Creation – Dynamics AX Blog » Problem solving in AX.
Sometimes, when developing, AX doesn’t work as expected, or behaves weird.
Here are some of the things you can try if you run out of ideas, roughly in the order I do:
Try again
You probably already did, but make sure you can reproduce the problem. If it only occurred once, it’s not a problem.
Check your code again
Check your code carefully for errors, and maybe ask a colleague’s opinion.
Compile
Your project might contain compile errors, so compile it to be sure.
Close the debugger
Sometimes, when the debugger is active, AX will keep executing ‘old’ code. Close the debugger to make sure the latest code is executing.
Compile forward
When you have modified a class that is inherited by other classes, you might want to compile forward this class.
Synchronize data dictionary
You may have made changes to application objects that haven’t been synchronized with the database. Open the AOT, right click on the Data Dictionary node and choose Synchronize.
Restart AX client
Simple as that, close the AX client and start it again.
Reset usage data
Go to options screen (AX button > Extra > Options) and click the Usage Data button. Click reset to remove this data.
Check the application event log for clues
Open the event viewer on the AOS to see if the AOS service has logged something in it. Messages here can help you a great deal. You can also check the event log on the database server or your client pc.
Google it
If you receive an error, just copy and paste it in Google. Most likely you are not the only one having that problem.
Check your client version
Check your AX client version. You might for example be connecting to a SP1 application with an SP0 client. You can check this in the about screen: AX button > Help > About. The kernel version indicates the client version, below that is the application version.
Refresh AOD, Dictionary and Data
You can flush cashed information using three option in the Tools > Development tools menu: refresh AOD, refresh Dictionary and refresh Data. This can be useful when you just imported an xpo file, or when you are developing for the enterprise portal.
Delete AUC file
The application Unicode object cache file, if there is one, is located at C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Application Data for xp, or C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local for vista. Delete this file while the AX client is closed.
Check if other users are having the same problem
Knowing whether you are the only one that’s having that problem or if it’s a general problem is a big step towards solving the problem. For example, if you alone have the problem, restarting the AOS probably won’t solve it, but removing usage data might.
Check security settings
When only some users have a problem, big changes are that it has something to do with security settings. Security can be set up from Administration > Setup > Security, on the Permissions tab.
Check configuration key setup
Some features of AX won’t work if a configuration key is disabled, be aware of this.
Full compile
Open the AOT, right click the AOT node and select compile.
Restart AOS
Sometimes restarting the AOS solves your problem just fine. If you can, it’s worth the try as this doesn’t take long.
Remove .aoi file
When the AOS is stopped, you can delete the .aoi file from the application files. This file will be rebuilt when the AOS starts.
Horror of Texas tornado caught on video… This guy was close!
October 25th, 2010
One word… WOAH!
Thought I’d share this link, This guy was really close… TOO CLOSE!
Horror of Texas tornado caught on video | The Upshot Yahoo! News.
iPhone Passes Blackberry in Global Shipments – Yahoo! News
October 22nd, 2010
Interesting. I’m starting to see the shift more towards non-blackberry devices myself. In fact, I attended a conference last week and saw iPhones outnumber Blackberry and Android devices.
Global Shipments don’t mean too much. Especially if Apple doesn’t continue to improve their products along with Blackberry and Android.
It’s great to finally see real competition in the smart phone market.
ThreatExpert – Automated Threat Analysis
September 4th, 2010
Think you might have a virus, not sure what a registry key is.. or a unknown file is.. This site looks promising and the reports look very detailed.
Simple progress counter – Dynamics AX
August 24th, 2010
Short and simple progress counter in Dynamics AX.