With interest rates being so low, we refinanced again (we’ve only lived here 18 months).
We used Ally Bank to refinance and was able to lock in an interest rate of 2.375% for a 15 year!
The savings from the previous 15 year loan at 3.5% will be more than $35,000.
A few weeks ago, a friend used our car to drive the kids home and they suggested they wanted to watch a movie (which we never use, since ugh DVDs are awful).
The disc was loaded incorrectly into the CD drive and it wasn’t in the tray right. It’s a six disc changer and if it’s not in there right, then every time you open the door (even with the key off), the CD player tries to get the disk ready to play with 15 seconds of clicking.
It’s extremely annoying and I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I decided to take the thing apart and rip the disk out if I had to.
Getting the radio unit wasn’t hard. Two pieces of trim needed popped off, then four bolts removed and a bunch of wires were unplugged.
Twenty eight screws later, I finally had the disk out. Problem solved!
One of my good college friends flew down from the Indian Lake area (about 75 minutes away) to deliver a jacket he posted on Facebook.
He’s a pilot for American Airlines and has been flying on the weekends to get more hours so he can move up to bigger planes (and higher salaries).
The kids got to sit in his plane as well as the replica plane in the Wright Brothers museum. Though I think they liked sitting in the Model T better, ha!
We spent 10 glorious days in Florida in January.
I snuck some dumbbells in the back of the car and it was so nice to do some workouts outside, in perfect 70 degree weather.
How much longer will it run? 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix. We’ve had it for more than a decade and have put on nearly 200,000 miles.
I’d like to get a pickup, since my commute is six miles taking kids to school. And I’m tired of taking the car seats out of the SUV all.the.time.
Maybe I’ll upgrade next decade 🤪
We started the month off anticipating that we would be moved in by month’s end, but due to a few delays, everything wasn’t finished up.
One of the big delays was about the driveway. The engineers had spec’d the driveway to be a width of ten feet wide, but the HOA covenants states that all driveways must be 16 feet.
This all took an extra two weeks to figure out and ultimately we got the wider driveway. It will be nice when our kiddos are driving to have the extra space.
Other than the driveway, here’s what happened during the month:
We finally have a close date of December 13th. This will give us two days for moving / unpacking before we head out on a trip with Melody’s family.
I write this on the plane as we are heading to the annual mid-year pharmacy conference. Melody is giving a talk and the rest of us are tagging along so we can go to Disneyland for a couple of days.
The house will be all done when we get home. I said it was going to be like the big reveal on an HGTV show. The only way to keep me away for the final touches is for me to be on a trip 😀
Another month has come and went and they are still working on our house 🙂
Even though it seemed like there were a lot of days where nothing happened, progress was made. These things specifically:
We’ve got a busy month of December, so hopefully all things will be completed this month so we can move during November.
September has come and gone and we are getting closer to a completed house.
Not a lot happened at the beginning of the month, with lots of days of no progress. This is because nothing else could start until we got concrete in the basement.
The sliding basement door and basement steps couldn’t be installed and HVAC crew didn’t want to start when there was no basement floor.
While we were waiting, we did get the front yard torn up to get the city water line and sewer connections made.
On September 18th, we finally got concrete. The crew arrived early and since the house was built and bricks were delivered and sitting around the house, the concrete had to be pumped into both the basement and garage.
Once the concrete work finished, activity started to pick up.
The remaining doors (sliding door in the basement and the exterior door off the kitchen) were installed and the last window in the basement was added. The framers came back and added the steps to the basement and then the mechanicals started.
The HVAC crew (just one guy) was there for four days and the plumbers started last Friday.
While the work is going on inside the house, our crew of two came to start bricking the house. They’ve got quite a task ahead of them, since they mentioned our house will have 14,000 bricks!
Hopefully nearly all the work will be done in October and we can finally move in and organize our belongings 🙂
There have been a lot of new visual changes in the second half of the month.
On Monday, August 20th, the framers continued framing on the second floor and got all of the interior walls completed. It was a bit wet, so I didn’t take many pictures.
Tuesday the morning was spent preparing the rafters and continued work on the inside of the second floor. The fireplace was frame out and closets were added.
Wednesday was a fun day to watch (which I spent a couple hours at the site 🙂 ) as the roof trusses were put on and they started the adding the plywood.
On Thursday, they finished getting all the plywood on the roof. And it really looks like a house from the outside now!
The framing crew finished up on Friday by getting all the walls ready for drywall and removed all the temporary bracing.
This past week we got most windows and doors (Tuesday) and a roof on Thursday. I’m pretty sure the roofing crew was waiting on a day that was less than 90 degrees.
Up for this week is to get the water / sewer line hooked up from the road and get the basement floor poured.
The basement floor was supposed to get done last week, but there was some “concrete emergency” on another job, so we were pushed back. There’s rain in the forecast this week, so we might get priority over some of the other jobs since ours in all inside.
It’s been awhile since I checked in, but mainly because we’ve been traveling and the bulk of the home work has happened in the last 7 days 🙂
Since my last post, the basement plumbing got completed and passed inspection. Our roof trusses were delivered (weird, since no other wood has been delivered) and the steel beams in the basement were delivered and set in place. And the dirt piles have been moved around the house.
On August 8th, the framers began to form up the walls for the basement. At the end of that week, is when the beams were put in place.
On Monday, I had a bunch of reading and catching up on all the things that happened since I took 10 days off work, so in the morning I took my camp chair and watched them frame from the neighbor’s yard.
Here are a few pictures from Monday:
On Tuesday, the first floor flooring was completed and walls started going up:
On Wednesday, they finished constructing all of the load bearing walls and started adding the wood for the floors upstairs. Thursday it rained all day around here, so the framer’s weren’t around, but another steel beam was added in the garage.
Friday started off a bit wet, but dried out throughout the day. The crew was there and they finished up the upstairs floor. They also started to work on some of the walls upstairs.
Today, the worked a “half-day,” but they were still there when we peeked in at 2pm. The steps have been added between the main floor and upstairs and all of the outside walls have been completed.
The guys are super nice and they don’t mind me coming and watching and usually spend a few moments chatting with me. They said today that they’ll be here one more week and they’ll be done with everything. They only handle wood, so that means the trusses and roof will be all complete as well as all the interior walls.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen the most amount of changes to our lot, yay!
On Tuesday, July 10, the forms for the basement walls were delivered and set in the basement. It sure looked like enough of them!
The next day, the crew spent the afternoon taking a gazillion measurements, since our basement isn’t four square walls (you can see this in some upcoming pictures).
On Thursday, the team was there all day and they continued to set up the forms in preparation for the concrete.
On Friday, we were scheduled to get concrete, but they weren’t quite done with all the forms and there was no pumper truck available, so no walls on Friday.
Then, on Monday, both the team and the trucks were available, yes! I ended up working from a camp chair in the neighbor’s yard (using their wifi) for the afternoon.
On Tuesday, the team came back and removed the forms and got them all packed up to go to the next project. (Which they said they have 100 projects on the books, good thing we aren’t at the end of that line!).
Wednesday the forms were picked up and on Thursday the walls got waterproofed. On Friday, it poured, so no additional work was done. This week we are scheduled to get the dirt moved back around the walls and the underground plumbing will get worked on.
Week three started off with a bang as we finally got the footers poured for the basement walls. This was 11 days after the footers were set. The combination of rainy weather and waiting for an inspection was the reason for the delays.
Over the next two days, the forms came off the poured footers and Kellen and I got to see them “sling” rock into the hole. That was definitely cool.
Then all progress stopped.
Another 11 days and no activity. The 4th of July holiday fell into this window, which played a part in the scheduling.
After talking to our project superintendent, it’s not like anyone was purposefully stalling, it’s just that all the crews are building lots of houses this summer. And there’s only a handful of companies that have the forms for the basement walls.
One thing that I did this week (because I’m super impatient 🙂 ) was I set up a Ring doorbell on a stake in the corner of our yard. This way I can see if anything is happening before wasting time driving past.
You can’t see too much detail, but I see if walls are brought in and when framing happens, I’ll be able to see that too.
We’re scheduled to get the foundation this week. Let’s see if it happens!
My wife and I are building a new house and after what seems like months (well, it really was months with decisions and selections to make) they finally made a call to the excavating company to come and start digging on June 12.
The digger was set to be on site at 8:30am, so I packed up both kids so we could see the first scoop of dirt. Turns out, the machine needed gas and they need to do some other prep work, so we weren’t going to be able to see the first bucket full before we had to leave to take Kenley to Bible School.
The operator was super nice and he scooped and threw some dirt around for a bit and little man loved it. I didn’t take any pictures of him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the big yellow machine.
Since we are building a house on a walkout lot, there wasn’t too much dirt (for a digger of course, it’d be a lot if shoveling by hand) to remove and they were done shortly after lunch time.
The next day the same crew was back to dig a channel at the back of the house for the footer wall.
On Friday / Saturday of the first week, a team came in and got the forms all ready to go for concrete. It was neat to watch them get the stakes in the exact right place. It made the basement much easier to visualize.
After seeing so much work done in week one, it was hard to not see much done in week two.
On Monday the inspector was supposed to come and check the footer forms, but there was address on the lot, nor blueprints left on site so no inspection happened. The inspection did happen on Tuesday and that was it. Knowing that we have a set time when we have to be out of the rental unit we are in, it hard to watch these two beautiful days slip past us with no visual work.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were a wash with rain on the first two days, then too muddy for any work.
Here’s to footers and maybe basement walls in week three!
As someone who loves to be on time, I found this laugh-out-loud funny 😂
I’m a big fan of Apple’s AirPods and they are normally connected to my phone to listen to a podcast.
It’s always a bit tedious to connect to my MacBook Pro for team calls, until now.
I found this great Alfred Workflow (at the bottom of the article) to quickly connect. It works great!
I never publicly posted my best nine photos on Instagram, so here they are.
It appears that I held a baby a lot in 2017!
In 2018, I’m going to try to document our lives better. In 2017, I posted daily from Jan 1 thru September, then fell off the wagon.
Let’s see if I can make it a full year this time.
This is a fun skit that pretended an Apple Store was in the subway and folks were lining up to buy the iPhone X.
Our little guy is going to complement sissy’s costume of Rapunzel as Pascal, her friend the chameleon.
First day of snow in Ohio.
I like the Siri watch face in WatchOS 4, as it normally shows my upcoming calendar appointments, but I don’t have anything, it shows a cute message like this:
Even though it’s 1:15 PM
How To Bypass Chrome’s HSTS Warnings
Simple article to point out how to get around Chrome’s error page when viewing an HTTPS site that doesn’t have a valid SSL security.
Simply type badidea on the page, and the site will load.
I’ve been giving the Firefox Focus browser app a try on my iPhone to have a more private experience while browsing the web.
Hopefully, I’ll see less ads (which are always blocked) and the sites will load quicker.
We took fall family photos tonight, even though it was 80 degrees outside.
Here’s one I snapped with my phone. I think the “real” ones are going to be 👍🏻
I’ve had the same Gravatar online for the past 5+ years and figured it was time to have some new headshots taken.
Here are the three that Jen took and I’ll be updating all my social profiles as I have time.
Thanks Jen!
My CrossFit gym, Bombers celebrated their fourth anniversary and it was roughly my second anniversary of participating in CrossFit.
To celebrate we had four team workouts which had us doing wallballs, deadlifts, pushups, pullups, squats, rope climbs and partner carry.
Each workout was tough, but a lot of fun to workout and compete with friends.
Another neat new feature from WordPress.com
Google Photos is one of the most popular ways of storing and sharing photos online. WordPress.com is one of the most popular ways to blog. Wouldn’t it be great if they played well together — if you could use photos you’ve uploaded to Google on your site?
We thought so, too: starting today, you can browse, search, and copy photos from your Google account right from your blog posts and pages. Introducing: photos from Google!
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If you are looking to improve your strategy on getting page views to your site, I’d recommend checking out this article about Tony Robbins’ site; it gets more than a million page views per month!
If you are looking for a mind game and want to waste some time, check out Game about Squares
I do not feel tall next to all of my tall colleagues!
This year’s group picture of Automatticians who self-identify as tall—and Rose for scale.
📸: Alex Shiels.
Previous: 2015.
Here is a slow motion video of someone splashing me in the pool on vacation.
After my two feats of fitness, I decided to do a simple walk around the Lost Lake while I caught up on a few podcasts.
It was quite brisk, but the views were worth it!
Today I went on a hike with some colleagues up Blackcomb Ascent.
> The Blackcomb Ascent Trails are three interconnected uphill hiking trails that meander through beautiful old growth coastal rain forest terrain from Whistler’s valley bottom to the Rendezvous Lodge on Blackcomb Mountain. Upon completion, the trails will travel a total of 6.1km with a total elevation gain of 1,200 metres.
It was definitely one of the hardest hikes I’ve ever done, but the views were worth it!
Today I ran in the worldwide WordPress 5k with my colleagues.
Finished in just under 23 minutes. Which I think is pretty good, considering the last 5k I ran was last year.
We had a scavenger hunt today with some teammates and we found this cheap mountain bike.
It’s fun to call home during a trip and I can see everyone!
The first day of the Grand Meetup is reserved for spending time with our team.
Luminus wasn’t able to make it, but with the magic of Photoshop, he made the team photo 😂
On my way to Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup.
We made it home from our trip yesterday, but I didn’t include this picture of how we navigated thru the Atlanta airport.
Way way way better than pushing a stroller thru the airport 🙂
We left the hotel at 5:15am and started our journey towards Atlanta. Melody was able to get our flight changed to be a day earlier, but we had to drive to the airport.
The journey should take about 6.5 hours, but with all of the evacuees heading out at the same time, we got there in 11.5 hours. We ended up taking alternative routes the whole way there so we didn’t get stuck in gridlocked traffic.
We also stopped four times for gas/bathrooms.
And the kids slept great once we got in. Buddy boy really likes the boy doll Grandma got him.
We are on vacation in Daytona Beach and the hotel staff is preparing for hurricane Irma by playing sand bags everywhere.
We will be leaving tomorrow before they evacuate the entire resort.
Learning to play putt putt golf with nerf balls is much harder than expected.
This little girl loved her first movie in the theater: Cars 3.
Waiting to go to the beach with Grandpa.
A sample run of both the car seats in their bags. Too bad I have to unpack them so the kids can ride in them to the airport, then pack them back up before flying.
