JC (John Cholewa)'s Journal

Okay. I'm starting to get the whole fundoing thing down pat again after a bit of a break. Next week, things should start to get a lot more interesting, but ( I did stuff on Saturday night )

( And on Sunday, but not in the city )

Old Forum stuff
Hell. I wish I could search the old scanned pdf version of LOG 17 for text, but OCR doesn't handle 28-year-old chickenscratch. See, in log 18, K'Lisa is chatting about how Lunacon '81, whom she went to with Jeff (probably Warner?) and someone named Margaret, was fun, and I just noticed that LOG 18 is from November of the same year (real edit: LOG 18 is March immediately following the November of LOG 17). So I'm looking to see if anybody in the Forum then went to Philcon.

Ah well, searching it the old fashioned way isn't too bad.

BTW, baked for the first time in many months. Made cheesecake for tomorrow's T'day overfeast. Looks like I still have the ability there, despite risk of rust.

Fake Edit: Jack, whomever that may be, was asking JAM about Phil-Con in a post, but he scratched it out and replaced it with "Thanksgiving Comic book Con". No, wait, wait, there's more Phil-con references after that. Oooooh!

And I'm back from Philcon!
This convention was overall quite nice. It was very highbrow, with a lot of panels heavily and seriously discussing science, literature and fandom (not usually all at the same time). The panels varied widely and were populous enough that there was usually at least one interesting enough to watch in any given hour time slot.

The general setup was pretty good. The vendors' room was expanded and more varied than it used to be, the gamers still had their hallway, there was a limited e-gaming room which really usually just had Rock Band (though they were playing Wii Sports Resort at one point). There was an "anime" room, but it was for anime panels, not straight showings of full anime shows or films.

Now that I looked into it, they definitely have a lot of room for, say, random hooping. I had a cold throughout the weekend, so I didn't feel up to bringing my hoops out, but I did use the stairs extensively and I used the gym for a couple half-hour sessions of playing with dumbbells. Anyway, in the gripe session, they chatted about having some space set aside from activities like poi, so it'd be nice to steal some of that space for a while to spin and such. Maybe next time I'll bring a ton of pvc tubing, tape with interesting patterns, and a few spare ratcheting cutters and host a brief workshop. That could be fun.

The parties were a little better than I expected. They were generally all the walk-in-and-grab-chips type of con party, though three of them were boozy, and one of them were playing cool stuff like "She-Ra: Princess of Power", "Rocky Horror" and something that had Mothra in it. There was nothing on the level of Barfleet, Bronx Science or Wing of Chaos, but at my level of sniffliness, I think that could have killed me! Still, it was cool that somebody brought Bakon Vodka. Most people seem to hate it, but I enjoyed the shots I had of it. It smells like vodka but tastes like burning. :D

One BIG downside is that the attendance dwindled quite a bit from last year. This is a problem with conventions in general this year, because a lot of people can't spare the extra funds for a vacation. So we're getting mostly the core audience that you see everywhere else and little of the new blood that keeps the veins of fandom filled. Also, fewer pretty girls. >:|

(but yeah, can't wait for next con, etcetera, et al, and so on -- also, I did not mind being right across the hall from two of the five hottest women of the weekend ^_^ )

Current Mood: good

Philcon (quick phone post)
Con not bad. Small compared to last year, but that's been a general trend this year for cons. Panels have been really solid. Costumes have been a bit on the rare side. Con suite good, lack of dancing bad, more on it later. :)

"My Name is ... Philip ... Philip Fry"
So I gave Stargate Universe a few more episodes after the kinda blah first couple. The episode with the atmospheric braking and the one immediately following were really, really good, even though the resolution of the latter episode was completely obvious even before the former episode ended! They felt like I was reading a quite enjoyable novel and not just a random 'splosion show. Those episodes and the line quoted in the subject here just won me over I think.

Anyway, looking at the inside of a house today. It's not a very big house, footprint-wise, but the lot size is good, it has most of what I'm looking for (it doesn't have two bathrooms, which would be nice, though), and it's listed as being in "Good" quality, which is a step above most that come up in my searches. After checking it out, I have to zoom over to lolhouse to pick up the garage light we installed (the fixture stays, and I hold out for compensation there, but the light itself is my father's) and the fold-up ladder we used to install it.

I feel a bit under the weather. Had a sore throat for a while. I imagine that if there's a cold involved, it'll be past by next weekend's Philcon, though I'll probably have that annoying two weeks of non-communicable, post-cold snifflings. BTW, for those in my room at the con, I'd like to connect you guys together so that we can all make sure we're all good. From what I can tell, it looks like the both of you know, or have met,

thevirtualjim and

ktpinto, so keep in mind that you can contact them if you ever have problems getting to me.

Also, I'm still looking for a fourth ~~victim~~ person for the room to help keep costs down, as well as people who'd like to carpool there and back. If yous hear anything, let me know. :)

So that house with the 80x100 lot turned out to be not so great. It's okay. Out of the three houses I looked at, I did find one that looked really nice. The brick house that I'd noticed earlier looked pretty good. I was looking during my lunch break -- I had forgotten the whole holiday thing and tried to go to the Hempstead's Town Hall during my lunch break, but luckily I knew about some houses in the area that were on the market.

The one I like is a brick house from 1950 with 7 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a full basement, a two car garage and a 70x100 lot. A cursory examination showed me that it has a dormer in the back, looks to be in decent shape and is located very close to the Hempstead train station, which is very good for visitors but possibly bad for noise (though maybe not, as this station is the end of the line) and possibly bad for crime and property values. Area looks safe, though. The house is $160k, which is about ten thousand dollars over my target price. I might be able to argue them down a bit, though, and depending on the results of a closer look, this might be a pretty ideal house.

My parents have been looking, too. Here's what they came up with

( more boring house descriptions )

So there's a bunch of interesting stuff to look at. Later today, I'll be contacting my real estate guy to ask if I can set up some time to look inside some of these houses (maybe not the el-cheapo one or the expensive one that lacks a basement and garage). And I'll make a renewed visit to the Town Hall to look some of them up. My goal this time around is to close before January 10th.

Current Mood: determined

House search reboot
Okay. It looks like it's time for me to start looking for a house to buy. That last ditch effort didn't pan out even slightly, so it's time to enter the "gimme money back!" phase of that particular deal. But instead of going into lurid details on that, here's the results of my first search....

I'm searching a range between $100k and $160k. I'm not seriously considering anything below, say, $130k, in general. I'm finding that while the location is far from optimal with the houses being returned by the search, I will get the added benefit of a full basement, a real garage, and annual taxes that are between $1500 and $3000 cheaper than what lolhouse had on the books.

Most of the properties within my looking range are older than I'd like, but results from a cursory examination of the structure itself will be more important than the number of years that the house has existed. The houses that have been popping up have been in the villages of Hempstead, in which one has to be a careful shopper, and Uniondale. Lot sizes range all over. The most interesting house so far is a pleasant five room affair with a pretty crazy 80x100 lot.

The other one that I'd consider very compelling is the only brick house that I've found in my searches -- it has seven rooms, two bathrooms, and it looks like it has a two car garage, and it's younger than my parents. Its lot is 70x100, which I consider oversized. It's ten thousand above my target price, but I guess it couldn't hurt see what happens if I pop out a $150k offer. Public transportation options are amazing, with a train station and a bus stop very nearby. This might be annoying, though, and possibly a little dangerous, since tracks are just a block away.

So since most of these places are in the Town of Hempstead (not the Town of North Hempstead, which has given me lots of grief this past quarter year!), I'm going to spend my lunch breaks, starting with tomorrow, visiting the local building/zoning department for information about these houses. I will also be looking at the homes themselves, of course. Now that I know what to look for, this will be a far more rewarding and interesting experience.

School
Oh, also, we didn't get the midterm back in my Algorithm Concepts class yet. The teacher only graded like the first question, apparently. He said that only two people got the question right, and he criticised much of the class for being unable to finish all of the given questions. We were basically told the exact questions in advance, sans data sets. Anyway, he singled me out as having done well, so I'm pretty optimistic for this test.

Later today, I will likely get back my Computer Architecture midterm. This one is less certain. I hope I did well.

Arisia seems to be by far the most expensive SF Con out there. In addition to the extra day, which adds fifty percent to the hotel bill just at the start, the room cost is pretty much among the more expensive Convention hotels of those that I attend, and on top of the cost you have to slap on a pretty astounding $35 for parking, something I've not experienced elsewhere. On top of that, for me in particular, it is the longest ride out to get there, ergo the most expensive, unless I can use one of those one dollar Bolt Buses, which may make for a hassle.

I'm entertaining the idea of skipping this one. I hesitated to buy the alternate hotel, as the last time I had to deal with an alternate hotel was terrible, and now the only rooms available ... well, it *says* when you initially check for rates that it is $99, but when you actually click to check out it adds $30 a day on top of that because there are four people. And that's ignoring the $24 a day parking fee.

The event itself seems like it may be a lot smaller than last year, largely because there simply won't be as many people at the hotel. A lot of rooms are unavailable, and that probably includes some of the party suites.

Ah well. I'm probably just complaining because I'm miffed that the local subway system took a really long time to get me to my car today. Displaced discontent, or something. I'll feel better sooner or later. And I'll likely decide this matter for sure in about two months.

Tonight was fun. I went to a Brazilian Pool Party in Manhattan. Lots of music and dancing, the water was warm, people tossed around inflated balls and balloons and splashed at each other. There was also a steam room and a sauna. I had a pretty decent time there. My photographs came out very poorly. Thank goodness I have a new camera on the way!

Current Mood: sleepy

So "Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka". It seems to have been well taken, saving one bit of drama that it helped cause. It also makes nerds giggle for some reason. I brought it to a Halloween party on Friday because it fits with the theme of my costume. The costume went well, even though I have yet to do a few remaining parts of it. Met some cool people, too.

( Saturday: Giant Dumplings, Marshmallows ammo, Zombies, Punch, et al )

Sunday, I went to the gym (for the first time in weeks, damn my schedule!) then hung out with my video game and pro wrestling watching friends. For the first time in the greater part of a decade, our host opted not to order a WWE Pay Per View, which was pretty surprising. He says the show is turning more "PG" lately and the main events keep repeating (like, the same two guys over and over again with maybe the slightest change in stipulation), which kills a lot of the variety. I can take it or leave it, and we had fun anyway watching episodes of Star Trek ("The Omega Glory") and G. I. Joe ("The Traitor") and playing Smash Bros (we finally unlocked all the characters and a new two player mode which was quite fun). We almost started on co-op RE5 but didn't end up doing it, as our host has the interesting habit of putting his game systems in cold storage whenever he's not actively using it, so we would have had to tell him far ahead of time if we wanted to use them.

( And another house update... )

Hm. Bank's getting cranky and thinking of pulling out of the deal due to the delay which their own mortgage division created. We're seeing if bribery works. I'm thinking of offering to compensate their ongoing tax/mortgage/utilities cost while resolving the issues that are blocking me from buying the house. It's retarded but one of the things I was prepared for. There's no logical reason for them to pull out once the house is no longer a financial burden to them. Therefore, whether or not they accept this is totally up in the air. :P

Dad's in surgery right now to fix a shoulder problem. Hopefully, it's going well. Tonight, I'm staying home in case he needs me and also to finish my costume.

lolhouse: the battle continues
Today, I acted on the permit disapproval which I'd received yesterday. I called up my lawyer and real estate guy and informed them of the issues. I then called up the architect to help make head or tail of how to go about resolving the question. He called most of the issues silly and excessive, but most of them he could fix by redoing the plans and letter (not changing anything illegally, I mean putting in the additional requested stuff, like smoke alarm locations and bathroom vents and soforth. For the remaining issue he gave me questions to ask the plans examiner.

( what I learned from the plans examiner )

I called up my lawyer to let him know of my brilliant strategy. He warned me that a variance could take an amazingly long time and be prohibitively expensive. He gave me a barrel of questions to ask. At lunch, I went to the Town Building Department. Amazingly, I waited about two minutes before being sent to the proper location (the usual wait time is about seventy or eighty minutes). I told my sob story to the lady in the Appeals room. She seemed initially a bit dismissive ("You know English, right? Read!") but was in the end incredibly helpful and friendly. ( Here are the steps I need to do )

Luckily, it looks like the total cost will just be the filing fee plus the cost of certified mail. I don't know if my lawyer needs to be present for the hearing.

Anyway, I let my lawyer know about how this is all going. He wasn't thrilled about the hearing date, as he's worried that the lawyers for the other side may decline the extension that he is filing today (it's for January 20th, which is the wait for the hearing plus the time to fix that room-needs-a-window issue, which should be the only remaining problem after all the above is resolved, plus the time to finally get the certificates from the Town and organize everybody to meet. I called up the architect and the surveyor to let them know what I need from them. The surveyor is ready with four shiny new printouts now, but the architect has to do some redesigning first to satisfy those many smaller issues, and that will hopefully be done on Friday. I'll pick up the extra surveys right after work, and hopefully I'll get from him what I need in time to file the zoning appeal before the Town's work week ends.

And ow. Last week, I knocked my cheekbone into my car door. Today, I smacked the door into my jawbone. I don't know what's wrong with my face and my car lately! If I'm not careful, I might end up catching my nose while trying to close the door one day.

For today's lunch break, I went to the Town of North Hempstead Bulding Department to deliver a fixed version of the survey which had been sent in several weeks ago but had a previously unseen glaring flaw. While in the waiting area, I was about to cut a hundred fifty 2.5"x2.5" squares out of felt.

This afternoon, the home owners insurance lady called up to let me know that they have to refund my money for now, because too much time has elapsed while we've been waiting for the legalization of zoning records that the mortgage company has required. So after the zoning stuff is done with, I'll have to redo that particular step. I will also need to shortly contact the mortgage company to ask why the revised rate lock agreement has not arrived in my mailbox, be it physical or electronic.

BTW, this Chinese knockoff phone that my parents bought me? It seems to be working decently. The only major QC issue is that the accelerometer appears to work backwards: It shows pictures in landscape format when you're holding the phone portrait-style, and vice-versa! Luckily, cellphone cameras are generally horrible anyway, so I always use a dedicated camera. I've coincidentally put in an order last night for a new camera. The deal was really good and is still pending, but I hope it goes through because while it isn't supernaturally cheap, it was easily the lowest price I found for the product and on top of it had no shipping cost or taxes attached.

Hmmmm
Fake Android phone is not bad. It's nice to finally have wifi again on a handheld device. I'm posting from it here, in fact. Opera Mini is a decent barebones browser but limits my LJ posts to 512 characters.

All weekend, lots of trial and error for my costume. Looks promising, finally.

Saturday, went to a Burning Man sub-event with lots of costumes and acts and dancing. Too much crazy to fit in here.

Tomorrow, I study for this week's midterm and go shopping for halloween costume components.

Pfffft!
lol. My father surprised me with a new "Android" "G2" phone. Turns out it was a knockoff from some previously unheard of Chinese company using their regular OS themed and modified to look and act a little bit like Android. It's the model that came after the one you see in the linked video (ah, here it is), but I think the only difference is that this newer one has WiFi support.

The interface is stylus based, and it uses all Java apps. The built-in software is decent, and I would probably rate it as an above-average pre-iPhone phone.

On the upside, it has a charger modeled after the cute Android logo. The plug comes out of its butt, and its eyes glow depending on the charge state.

This seems like a decent, cheap phone. I'm seeing if it grows on me. They were nice enough to pack it with two batteries (although you can't charge the batteries separately from the phone, so arrrrgggg!).

In summary, lol. And I'm going to a crazy party now. :D

Bad work
So remember that survey I had done, the one that got the street name wrong and had to reprint everything so that I could deliver accurate paperwork to the Town?

Think again. Rinse and repeat. It turns out that they got the house number wrong. I should have caught this, not on the survey, where I had trouble recognizing the error even after being told of it,but on the invoice, on which it was as plain as day. It just so happens that I never looked at the invoice, being happy to stare at the survey for hours on end with glee.

My lawyer gets credit for finding this problem. I didn't even know about it until the surveyors called me asking if I wanted a copy of the fixed survey. So after work today I will go over there and get it. On Monday, I will be able to -- once again -- go to the Town of North Hempstead Building Department during my break and hand it in to the records room lady.

Added project for the next week or two
I have to go to the DMV and renew my license. It expires on the third of November.

Tonight was fun but not entirely successful. I got a pair of pants for work, but I was looking for more flashy stuff. And I wanted to get some of that Buy Two Get One Free video game deal at Toys'R'Us, but the one I managed to stop is closing and is therefore almost completely empty (they're moving to a location on the other side of the Smith Haven Mall.

I got to the SUNY Stony Brook Student Union just as the Forumites were going up to their meeting. So I didn't get to lounge in the Forum beforehand. Still, the meeting was lots of fun, and the diner run afterwards was great and tasty.

Edit: Also, I now have an E-ZPass, so going to Philcon will progress much more conveniently. BTW, Chris and Jen, you're both still on my list o' people who are staying in my room, and I still have one slot left (I'll probably post something to the philcon lj group about it a couple weeks before the weekend to see if I can pick up a straggler).

Always with the house...

So, speeding up stuff. I called my lawyer today and mentioned the idea of a Financial Hardship Letter and submitting it to the Town of North Hempstead to see if we can speed up matters. He decided to instead call up the Town and see if he could speak with somebody to work out how to get us upped a bit in their priority queue (coincidentally, this is a term handled in this week's Algorithms class -- it's actually internally not a queue but a tree, but they call it a queue anyway). He shortly called back and informed me that they'd need a letter from the architect stating that the construction conforms to code. I was certain that this had already been delivered -- when I handed in the papers, the Town Building Department guy and I went down the checklist of things I needed to finish for the conversion, and this included that letter.

So I contacted my architect and had him fax a copy of the letter to me, as I had foolishly given the Town the original without copying it for myself (whoops). He was incredibly prompt, and I had it in under ten minutes. I then faxed it to my lawyer, who read it and confirmed to me that it was indeed proper. He also clarified that the person with whom he spoke on the phone didn't actually have my files in front of them and wasn't actually saying that the letter was missing. It was just that this was an important part to make sure we weren't missing.

So hopefully my lawyer will make headway with this. I'll find out more when he has hours again on Monday.

Until then, things go well with the Halloween costume. I have just about everything I need to make it happen and I finally know how to do each step. Friday night, I expect to do a lot of work. Sunday and Monday will be my main fallback days for the steps I'm not quite done with. I hope that will be enough. It's just a bit of painting and then learning how to tie something in the proper manner, but with me that could take decades. :)

Current Mood: good

Retroactive-to-now house post
I suddenly realize I didn't post about my last visit to the Town of Hempstead Building Department.

I believe it was Friday (the 10th). I went in to verify that all the necessary documents that I had provided for the legalization of the garage construction and the garage conversion would soon be processed. Back on the 3rd, the young gentleman handling my case told me it would take about a week and a half for the town's inspector to call me up. This seemed like a needless delay, but I would have to live with it.

This time, I went in to verify (1) that the certificates for the construction, the papers for which I'd delivered back on September 25th, would arrive in a timely fashion, (2) whether a delay in the delivery of said certificates also delay the inspection for the conversion in any way, and (3) that everything was on schedule for the conversion inspection. The much more senior gentleman I had this day told me (1&2) that the certificates for construction would not be issued until after the conversion stuff is done, and (3) that the wait for the inspector to get to me wouldn't be a week and a half. It would be six weeks. This person knows that I'm trying to get -everything done as rapidly as possible, so he was quick to hand me a form which I could possibly use to speed things up.

( How much time will a Consultant save? )

Luckily, there's an alternative suggestion: Yesterday, I called up the architect who had drawn up my plans. This I did at the suggestion of my real estate agent, who suggested that the architect would have some sort of inside knowledge of how the Town of North Hempstead works. The architect told me that six weeks is actually far better than they had been doing a year or even several months ago. Why, you ask?

( lolTown )

Anyway, the architect suggested that I should write a "Financial Hardship Letter" to the town. This may have a better chance of getting my case put through faster than hiring an outside consultant. I think I may opt to discuss what writing this sort of letter entails, and what the best way of delivering it is.

Current Mood: annoyed

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