Month: January 2005

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Peering through bars

Along with the condofication of the apartments, there’s a lot of other stuff going on. A number balconies are being completely rebuilt, new landscaping, people driving around slow gawkingchecking out the place and installation of a gate. That’s right, it’s going to be a gated condominium community.

So now I have visions of us driving in late one night and suddenly finding the gate closed and locked and having no way of getting in. Whatever code we need to punch in to get in is tacked to our door (our usual way of getting messages from the apartment people) but of course we don’t know that because we haven’t been home yet.

That would probably suck.

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ECMAScript/Javascript menus

Just an entry to remind me of an interesting ECMAScript (formerly Javascript) menu system.
Found at 456 Berea Street.

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I think we found one

After a weekend of doing a lot of driving around checking out places with our realtor, we found a place that we decided to put an offer on. We saw a lot of places that we were interested in, but most of them already had contracts written on them already so they were out.

The one we decided to put an offer on isn’t too far away from where we are now. Our realtor wasn’t able to get in touch with anyone from the selling agency over the weekend so we won’t find out until this morning if it’s still on the market or not. It’s a pretty big place at the end of a cul-de-sac. It’ll take us pretty much to the edge of what we can afford, so it’ll be tight for the next couple of years until our credit cards get paid down. But after that it should be smooth sailing barring any unforseen financial calamities.

Financing has been secured. Next step is to have the contract reviewd by a real-estate lawyer, then drop it off with our realtor and ‘earnest money’ check and hope someone hasn’t already beaten us to the punch.

Update: Gave the signed contract to our realtor and went over to the selling agency with her to check out our various options for things like flooring and cabinetry. Haven’t chosen anything yet, that will be Saturday. The selling agent didn’t seem to think there would be an issue with the builder signing the contract, so I think we just bought a house!

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Counting bits

The Christmas tree and Snowman have been put away on the shelf to wait for the next holiday season. But thanks to my brother, I now have this sweet binary clock sitting on my computer.

Although I’d seen the action shots posted at ThinkGeek, I was still surprised at how small the clock was. For some reason I was thinking it was a little bit bigger. But it’s a decently readable size at about 9.5×9 cm. Some rubber feet would have been nice to keep it from sliding around, but those are easy enough to find and put on yourself.

Setting the time is easy enough with the two buttons on the back for setting the hour and minute. Just press the buttons to increment the counter by one until you get the correct time. And if you’re a real geek, you’ve already got at least one clock that syncs with a stratum 1 or 2 NTP server somewhere. Pressing both buttons at the same time will reset the seconds counter so you can get the clock synced to NIST time.

The LEDs are surprisingly bright and easy to read even in a brightly lit office. Instructions on the box and in the manual show you how to read the digits. Easily visible from almost any angle too (except from behind). Doesn’t take too long before you’re able to decipher the lights into numbers. All it takes is a little bit of practice. Keep the box around for a quick reference while you’re learning.

It will be fun watching my colleagues stare at it trying to figure it out.

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All the Far Side you’ll ever need

I’m having a delightful time reading The Complete Far Side, an absolutely monstrous collection of all the Far Side cartoons. This thing is massive. 2 volumes each weighing in at 4.5 kg each. A lot of the cartoons are in full colour and all of them are hilarious. Comes in a solid hardcover binding with an equally solid slipcase. Even if you’ve got all the Far Side books, this one is well worth adding to the collection. The occasional editor’s notes and reader letters sprinkled in add some additional insight and humour to the collection. It’s so nicely put together you feel like you should be wearing gloves while reading it so you don’t leave any smudges on it from your grubby paws.

Now all I need is The Complete Calvin and Hobbes and life will be good.