David Luyer

Property "appraisals"

2009-12-02T16:45:06Z

When you buy a house in the US, one of the required steps to get a mortgage is the "appraisal".

The "appraiser" is meant to locate a small number of comparable recent sales, apply adjustments for differences in property features and quality (such as more/less bathrooms, kitchen quality, condition, location and square footage), average the results and come up with a value for the property.

This is the value used in computing the loan-to-value ratio; if it comes in below sale price, the sale is likely to fall through (or the sale price may be renegotiated; appraisal is a contingency on the property transfer contract).

When I purchased my house, I was dealing with two potential lenders, so I asked each of them which appraisers would be acceptable to them, and then directly contacted the appraiser and once the appraisal was done, provided the report to both lenders. The report contained all the relevant calculations, and then gave a value which exactly matched the listing price of the property.

When I refinanced my loan, approximately a year after purchase (the interest rates had dropped quite a long way), the appraisal again included very precise calculations and pages of pictures and justification, and came to the conclusion that the value was exactly what I had paid for the property.

Now, I'm in the late stages of purchasing some vacant land. The appraisal was ordered by the bank, and the bank informed the appraiser of the pending purchase price. The value? Exactly the proposed purchase price.

This is not a science of exactly calculating property values. It is an art of manipulating numbers to match a desired outcome.

In the wake of the WaMu failure, there was talk about appraisers who had been giving artificially high values to properties, resulting in borrowers trapped in loans with properties they could not sell, or on better loan terms than they should be (since the loan to value ratio was artificially high; since US banks sell loans to underwriters, it is in their interest to manipulate the situation to make loans look more attractive than they really are). I was under the mistaken impression that the fall-out from this was that appraisers were to produce more accurate property appraisals. However, it seems that they continue to produce manipulated reports. In the case of the property I am in the process of purchasing, the realtor claims that the appraiser mentioned to him several times that the property was "great value" and had "amazing views" given the price.

Back on Facebook

2009-08-24T05:43:48Z

Now that my dad is on Facebook, I've decided that it's time for me to rejoin it.

So, I'm back :) No app requests, please.

Married

2009-08-24T04:52:44Z

Nicole and I are now married. The wedding was amazing, Nicole did a fantastic job with all the planning. We are both so happy that so many of our friends and family could make it. Now we're sitting in the airport lounge waiting for our flight to Cancun.

Phil's Caddy; Helpful people in downtown San José

2009-07-30T06:43:45Z

For those of you who don't know, my brother and family are visiting very soon for the wedding. My brother has bought a black 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Sedan (basically the same as the limousine model, but without the glass divider) to drive while he's over here and then decide what to do with (and to take back to Australia at some point in the future). It seats nine, or six with a *lot* of legroom.

It's actually quite impressive for its age - a 1970 car with climate control (set the temperature and forget), power seats, power windows and passenger controls for air conditioning and lighting, for example. And it's an extremely smooth car to drive, with comfortable seating - it's easy to see it was a "top of the line" car in its day.

If you're not interested in cars, you should probably skip the next section :)

The car has had a few teething problems, partly since it had been sitting idle somewhere in Nevada for the past 12 years or so, and partly due to poor maintenance. Fortunately it's a very simple car electrically and mechanically, so these are relatively easily and inexpensively fixed, and mostly shouldn't happen again for quite some time, but all of the initial problems put together have been quite time consuming.

On the good side, there's a few "practically unused" things on it - the tires and battery, for example, were changed many years after the car was last registered (it was only driven around 300 miles in most of the years it was unregistered, and the previous owner's ticket for driving unregistered on the same day as the new tire receipt in 2001 was sitting in the glove box as a hint as to why; it appears it was last registered in 1997).

When it first arrived it had no gas cap, probably because the pipe to the gas tank was severely bent and the cap wouldn't go on properly with it over to the side. Instead they'd stuffed paper towel in the pipe. That was one of the easier problems.

The neutral safety switch (controlling automatic brake release, starting, reversing lights, etc) fell apart almost as soon as I tried to use the car, so it wouldn't start -- took a while to work out that was the cause, though, as the symptoms were just that when I turned the key, there was a click but nothing happened; we spent a little while suspecting the starter or the starter solenoid. Fixing the "switch" meant rebuilding the part, as it is a hydraulic and electric part which is no longer manufactured and not easily substituted.

Getting the driver's side mirror into position was also a non-trivial task, I couldn't get it to sit in the right position the first time I drove it, so I was in the slow lane the whole way that day. Eventually I worked out a position I could put the controls in and successfully move the mirror into the right position manually.

After not much more use, the positive lead on the battery stopped conducting at a connection point which the previous owner had added (causing the car to cut out just as I was pulling into the driveway, when a tree branch swung down and hit it -- positive effect from that one, it was then very easy to convince the owners of the place next door to do some extreme pruning on their street tree). Again, once it was found, this was very easy to fix.

Another early discovery was that there's possibly a problem with the alternator; I needed a jump start the very first time I drove it after sorting out registration and insurance, to take it to the DMV for odo confirmation and plate checks, and the person who came to do that noted that it was only at 12.5V after starting, so I've been charging it overnight each time I use it. It also has a mild starting problem; it takes a while to start it the first time in the day, but subsequent starts on the same day have always happened the first time I turn the key.

By the way, the DMV couldn't find the FMVSS plate - I noticed where it was the next day, but they didn't mind that it was missing since it was a 1970 car and the FMVSS plates are noted on the form as "1970 and newer", so they weren't 100% sure if that applied. The odo reading is a bit of a joke as it's a 5-digit odo, so nobody has any idea how many times that's wrapped (based on the paperwork that came with it, it's wrapped at least once).

A little bit later, I discovered that it had a loose hose on the radiator which was causing engine coolant to boil off, but that was easily pushed back on and re-clamped, and now the coolant level seems to have stabilized. The engine oil was just a tad below "add 1 quart", I topped that up today so it's close to "full", doesn't seem like there's any major issues there either (touch wood).

And now we get up to today's issue...

Until today there was an unidentified problem where it would steam or smoke from under the hood, often the first time I stopped at a stop light in the day. It turns out the most likely cause was that the transmission fluid dipstick wasn't properly in place (it was out a little distance when I went to check the level), and the transmission fluid had been gushing out onto the top of the air cleaner, the engine, the underside of the hood and other nearby areas (as well as leaving a large puddle on the ground). Today, it ran out of transmission fluid completely.

The result of this is that it was sitting on a street corner, where people would normally turn, with hazard lights flashing.

Doing this in downtown San Jose doesn't seem to make people think "lets go around, he's having trouble". Instead, they react by sitting behind you and tooting you. Opening a door and waving them past doesn't help either. The only way to people them realize something is wrong with the car seems to be to have the hood up.

Anyway, I'm going to write about the car's issues here, then jump back to the people who helped me, or didn't help me, after the end of the 'cut' segment.

After I worked out that this wasn't something I was going to be able to identify and fix without help, I decided to try and get the car away from the corner. When the car was being pushed, I had all kind of trouble with the steering, it basically had no power steering when the transmission was out. But with a lot of effort, we got the car to a be parked outside my house, facing the wrong direction on a one way street. In the end, I called Nicole's dad, got some advice, worked out the issue, and fixed it.

I also hooked up a vacuum line which was disconnected on one side and covered over on the other side by the prevous owner. At least, the line there was around 2 inches long and that's the only potential place to join it to in the nearby area, so it better be correct :-)

After topping up all the fluids, I took it up to the local Kragen store to get a little more transmission fluid, and just as I was pulling in to the parking lot, the power steering cut out on me. It seems to be cutting out at low speeds and/or while braking, hopefully that's just a coincidence and not a systematic problem (I should probably try disconnecting the vacuum line I connected just to be sure, but it's highly unlikely any vacuum line is related to the power steering).

For those who haven't ever tried it, I'm sure you don't need to try to realize -- it's rather difficult to turn a 21 foot car with no power steering. It cut out on me three times today; other drivers were not understanding at all when I didn't make a tight turn at some lights and then had to go back and forward a number of times to get around, and it was a greater than five-point turn into both the Kragen lot and my driveway today. One theory on the power steering is that it's somehow related to the automatic transmission fluid running out, but I may not get to look into that for a while (the previous owners could have re-routed the power steering to use transmission fluid, which would mean there would now be air in the lines). (All the standard stuff on the power steering looks fine: the belt, the fluid level in the power steering reservoir, etc, and the power steering had never given an issue before today except for some noise the first couple of times I drove it, attributed to dirt on the belt.)

Anyway, now onto the real topic of this post. The helpful and not so helpful people in downtown San Jose.

When the car first cut out, the first "not so helpful" people were the other drivers, who were completely unhappy to go around, even though the street was mostly empty and I had the hazard lights flashing.

The first helpful person was an african american, who saw that I was having car trouble, asked me if there was anything he could do to help, put down what he was carrying, and started asking other passers-by if they would help. All the passers-by in the next few minutes were either white or hispanic. The response of the passers-by was very consistently split across racial lines. The hispanics were all happy to help, and with their help the car ended up in a sensible resting place. All the whites had an excuse. "I have a bad back". "I'm disabled" (what?!). "I wouldn't be any help". You get the idea.

Once we had the car in a semi-reasonable position, the people who had originally helped me all went off to wherever they had been going to, and an older white couple came past - older people often admire this car, and these were no exception; they saw I was pushing it to get it into a proper marked parking spot (with steering difficulty, the best we'd been able to do was put it in a parking spot outside my place, facing the wrong way on a one-way street, rather than in the driveway). They asked if they could help, and I pushed the car into position and then got him to hold it while I went and applied the break, so it was neatly taking up one parking spot.

The next kind person was the parking inspector. I vaguely remember him as most likely the same parking inspector who insisted on writing me a ticket when I had gone into my house for five minutes to give something to Nicole, many months ago, and had left my SLK in the street without putting coins in the meter. But this time he was very understanding; he asked why I had a car the wrong way on the street in a spot with an expired meter, listened to my story, then told me to not bother paying the meter and put a note on the windshield for other parking inspectors to not ticket it, asking only that I get it into my driveway somehow by the end of the day.

Finally, some of my neighbors came past and asked if I wanted help pushing it into the driveway (since this post is partly commenting on how most of the kind and helpful people today were non-white, for completeness, these neighbors are hispanic). By this point I'd talked to Nicole's dad and was reasonably sure I'd be able to fix it quickly, so I declined, but they of course said that if I needed anything I should drop by. And not too much later, just after I'd got it running again, I was off to get something to help clean up, checked I had keys in my pocket, shut the door, and of course they were the wrong keys -- my house keys and the keys to the car were both still in the car. Neighbors to the rescue :-) ... they found a wire coat hanger and, with quite a bit more effort than would be required on most cars, we managed to get a door unlocked (one of those things you want to be a difficult exercise, and it was).

The bottom line: my experience today was quite disheartening if you look at it along racial lines, in that those of my own race were fairly consistently unwilling to help (with the exception of one older couple) with an issue of another, but those of the other races were all very willing to help. Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised.

Honeymoon update

2009-07-10T01:59:54Z

Now I have my I-94, we have considered our options, and we will be going on our originally planned honeymoon, with a one-day detour to Mérida to visit the US Consulate there (which will require hiring a car and driving along a single freeway for around 190 miles each way).

We have re-booked the same room at the same resort, for around $1000 less than the original price.

I-94 replaced

2009-07-06T21:28:44Z

Received in the mail today (delayed due to Independence Day long weekend, as I receive mail at the office): one form I-797A containing a replacement I-94 bottom half.

Receipt date: June 8, 2009
Notice date: June 29, 2009

That's pretty good for a form where the service center in question's website stated had a 2.5 month processing time.

It looks like USCIS are doing well with the expectation management here -- they tell me to expect 2.5 months, and it takes less than a month, so I'm more likely to be happy than to be thinking "but this piece of paper took [more than] three times as long to replace as my entire passport" (and cost more to replace than the entire passport).

Dinner

2009-06-21T05:42:58Z

I was 153lb this morning.

We went to La Fondue tonight.

I'm 160lb right now.

So worth it.

:-)

Fence

2009-06-12T06:04:46Z

Thanks to our neighbors, we have a new fence! :)

It is tall, solid, level and straight. Such a big change from the old one on that side of the property.

(For those who know my house: this is the fence on the south side of the house, against the empty 2-story Victorian, and by 'neighbors' I mean the people who own all property from my place to St John St, as well as the tower at 152 N 3rd St. They also plan to re-ashpalt all the ashpalt areas of their lots within the next week, which should make them look somewhat nicer.)

Passport, Honeymoon

2009-06-06T20:41:05Z

When I returned from Sydney, or shortly after, I somehow lost my passport.

Being a foreign worker in the US, this means I actually lost three things - my passport, my I-94 and my US Visa. I fortunately have a I-797A which establishes my employment status, but is not useful for re-entry into the US.

I went to the Australian Consulate in San Francisco to apply for a new passport. I applied on the 28th of May, they deposited my check the next day, and I received my new passport on the 4th of June. Waiting time -- less than a week. Replacement cost -- US$209 (including lost passport penalty fee).

The US documents -- the I-94 and visa -- will be much more difficult to replace.

The I-94 is the little piece of card from the bottom of the form you fill in when you enter the US, which gets torn off and stapled into your passport. It is nothing more than a piece of paper with a number stamped on it. Nowhere near as complex as an e-Passport. To replace it, you file a form I-102, provide as much documentation as you can, and pray. I've sent in the form and a check for the US$320 filing fee -- the check is yet to be cashed, and I haven't had any response. Apparently I shouldn't be surprised; the USCIS have released some information on their form processing time which suggests it should take around 3 months to process the form, and external parties claim a time closer to 6 months.

Of course, the situation for me is nowhere near as bad as it is for many. If this was my first entry into the US for employment purposes, I would be unable to get a social security number, be paid or get a drivers license, for several months (which is also possible through just filing for the social security number too soon after first arrival). However, I cannot leave the US until my I-94 is replaced, and that in turn will hold up replacing my visa. Which brings me to the honeymoon. We had planned to spend our honeymoon at a resort in Cancun, Mexico. Without an I-94 or visa, that is not an option, and I am trying to determine if we can safely visit Puerto Rico (the CBP site repeatedly says that US Citizens do not need a passport to travel to or return directly from Puerto Rico by air, but is completely unclear as to what non-citizens need). If not, we might end up delaying our honeymoon.

Mixed luck continues at LAX

2009-04-27T04:06:25Z

On the negative, my flight was delayed to 1am (from ~11pm).

On the positive, I was bumped to business class, and that gives me business class lounge access. (Normally I get regular AA Admirals Club lounge access due to the card I book on; the LAX Qantas Business Class lounge is definitely a step up from those lounges.)

I've never actually booked business class on an international flight, but I've flown it a number of times. This time I finally booked Premium Economy, so in terms of tiers it's not as much of an upgrade as the Economy to Business upgrades I used to get relatively often when boarding planes in Asia (which I attribute at least in part to height), but on such a long flight it is definitely appreciated - Skybed seat will mean there's a chance of me being awake in the office, even if having AC power for the laptop keeps me using it longer :-) It's the best I've had on a trans-pacific flight - my only previous upgrade on this route was on United, from Economy to Premium Economy.

LAX airport - bus to bus

2009-04-27T03:24:37Z

I had a nice flight down from SJC to LAX, on an ERJ140, partly due to the good luck I seem to have with airline seating. This time around, I was booked in an aisle seat near the back, which wouldn't have been great, but I was next to someone whose friend was in the exit row window. So, I ended up in the exit row window, with lots of legroom.

It was a very nice flight - I've had a lot of good experience with small jets (as opposed to turboprops, which have never been so great). On the way back, I'll be going from one extreme to another of jet sizes - connecting from an A380 to an ERJ140.

According to the staff at SJC, my flight was arriving at Terminal 4 and I would be departing Terminal 4.

In reality, my flight arrived at the American Eagle satellite terminal, where I took a shuttle bus to terminal 4, to wait for a shuttle bus (every half an hour) to TBIT, which is what I'm currently doing.

Fire!

2009-04-26T18:28:08Z

Somewhere around 5am on April 4th, 2009, our housemate woke us up and told us that there was a fire out the back of the house. Nicole called 911, found Midnite and we all got out of the house and got the car out of the driveway, and Nicole went and banged on the neighbor's door until they woke up.

The fire department were already aware of a 'car fire' but it seemed like Nicole had a hard time convincing them this was something more (the flames were around 3 houses high and there were sounds of explosions; we later found out the "explosion" sounds came from five cars that were burnt out).

Before the fire department arrived, I grabbed the hose and started spraying down my back yard. When the fire department arrived, I went up to my back porch and tried to get some of their attention to point out that the cottage at the back of our neighbors' house was someone's house, not just a garden shed. By the time they noticed, it was too late (fortunately, the guy who lived there wasn't home). After I'd got their attention, I went back to spraying down my property; it was quite some time before one of the firemen came around to our place and told me we had to evacuate.

The firemen told us we could go back into our house sometime later, probably between 6am and 7am, and we went back in and went to sleep; when we woke up again around 11am that day, they were still working on the fire (as they'd decided the structure was unsafe and that they would only fight the fire there from outside it).

The end result was that the garage of the property diagonally adjacent to ours was destroyed, five cars in that garage ended up looking like burnt out cars you'd expect to see in war-zone news articles, and our neighbor who lived in the back cottage lost his house and all his possessions. One particularly sad part of this for him was that he
lost his fish: they survived the fire but the building was condemned and the fire fighters would not re-enter to recover them or permit anyone to enter to recover them; eventually, they passed away.

If you want a different point of view (about how the firefighters "quick attack saved a lot of other people's homes" and callers "quickly hung up after only saying a car was ablaze"), you can read the San Jose Mercury News article (which also gets the address of the destroyed home wrong: it has a 4th St address, the apartment block which lost its garage is on 5th St). There are also much better pictures on that article.

These photos were taken around 5:30am on April 4th, 2009 (exact time below each image). Unfortunately none of them show the full height of the fire. Click any of them for a larger picture.

05:22:27 - View past the back of my house, from my driveway. Flames over the top of my back shed.

05:22:50 - Looking over the shed/fence.

05:23:05 - From my balcony - at this point the firemen are still focusing on the garage.

05:23:44 - From the balcony again - there are some firemen looking at the cottage now.

05:24:04 - Photo of the shed in my back yard, with fire seen over it.

05:30:34 - Firemen start getting a little more serious, they bring a ladder around to the cottage.

Visiting Sydney

2009-04-26T16:57:12Z

I'm heading off to Sydney today (arriving Tuesday), and returning to the US on May 8th. Nothing currently planned except for work, so if you want to catch up, let me know (my email address is the same as always!).

Electric Chainsaws - The Green Way to Clearcut

2009-04-20T16:04:14Z

I finally gave in and bought a chainsaw, as it was far too difficult to cut some major branches around 12 feet up by hand (previously, I'd always cut down trees by hand). However, I did choose an electric chainsaw. I have to wonder why they exist - much less convenient than a petrol chainsaw, they still need oil for the chain, and the total initial cost (including, say, a 100ft 12/3 extension cord, as they draw quite a bit of power) comes out somewhat higher than the traditional approach. Is it just for those who want to feel that there is something not quite so eco-terrorist about their tree removal or pruning?

Previous posting

2009-04-06T08:11:34Z

Sorry about the last post here - the wedding is going ahead as planned, we both just let wedding planning stress get the better of us.

Vacation - conclusion

2009-03-24T13:53:07Z

The vacation is over. We didn't catch up with as many people as we'd hoped to, or as much as we'd hoped to, but otherwise, it was great.

The last half a week involved getting some things done online, introducing Nicole to more local restaurant options (including local variants of junk food), and building a computer for my parents, so we didn't go out so much.

Mar 17th: Dinner at Hog's Breath Cafe. Good steak. Dessert at the Northbridge Geláre. Good waffles.
Mar 18th: I'll update the post if I remember what we did Wednesday... I'm sure we did something :-)
Mar 19th: Went to MSY and bought the computer parts. Lunch at Hungry Jacks. Went down to Cottesloe Beach to take some pictures of Sculpture by the Sea, ran into Shay and Fe (third time running into Shay on the trip).
Mar 20th: Built the computer. Family dinner (Phil and Kate came over for a BBQ, but it rained, so we ate inside - I think this was the only rain on the trip).
Mar 21st: The last real day in Perth. Notified by Qantas that our SYD-SFO flight would be delayed by a couple of hours, but the later PER-SYD option would still be too late, so we still needed to be on a 5:45am flight out of Perth. Visited the old asylum in Fremantle and did some last minute shopping at the E-shed Markets.
Mar 22nd: The flight back. In Sydney, due to the flight delay, we grabbed a cab to Circular Quay and I gave Nicole a very brief tour: 'look, a bridge' (Sydney Harbor Bridge). 'look, a silly white building' (Opera House). 'look, some old stuff' (The Rocks). Lunch at McDonalds, our only visit to McDonalds in the entire trip. We tried to grab a train back to the airport, and I was confused when the machine insisted on a very low fare (the city loop fare), but then when I got on the platform and saw there were no trains to the airport, it made sense: the fare was to get us to Central, then it was a free bus to the airport.

H1B

2009-03-16T15:02:40Z

Very fast turn-around from the US Consulate - I dropped my passport off on the 12th, and it was returned by registered post which arrived on the 13th (however as I wasn't home, I had to take the registered post slip down to the post office and pick it up today). So I now have my H1B visa stamp.

Ongoing holiday summary:

Mar 13th: Cottesloe to Albany. A few stops on the way, such as Kojonup, the Mongolian Yurt in Mt Barker (Nicole found a couple of kangaroos to say hello to here) and visiting my great aunt near Mt Barker. Albany Fish and Chips for dinner, which we ate on Middleton Beach. Stayed at the Pelicans Holiday Village in Albany, which I recommend to anyone.
Mar 14th: Albany to Walpole. Visited The Gap and Natural Bridge and the Blowholes in Torndirrup NP, the Albany Wind Farm, the Denmark Water Barometer, the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk, and the Giant Tingle Tree. We had to change a tyre near Walpole.
Mar 15th: Return from Walpole to Cottesloe. Rode the Pemberton Tramway, climbed a short distance up the Gloucester Tree (up to roughly the first major branch near the ladder, I'd estimate a quarter of the way up), checked out a couple of beaches near the Margaret River coastline, briefly visited the Busselton Jetty and the Bunbury Lighthouse. Introduced Nicole to Chicken Treat for dinner.
Mar 16th: Apart from walking down to the post office, having lunch at a cafe in Napoleon St and browsing some shops at the Grove Plaza (now renamed "Cottesloe Central"), mostly a day spent relaxing and working on things online.

The trip to the south-west was great, however we're not going to follow it up by heading up to Monkey Mia - it's just too much of a trip for the time we had left, and we haven't had the chance to do some of the things we were intending to do with our downtime while we were here (although I made a start on some of them today).

Vacation update, part 3

2009-03-12T04:08:59Z

Mar 8th: Visited Peter, Shay and their families who were doing something Sungroper-related, and took a look at their solar car at the same time. Drove along the river a bit, stopping a few times; dropped in at UWA and saw the peacocks and the sunken gardens. Dinner at Woodpeckers in Subiaco, walked around Subiaco a bit. Nicole looked at the menu at Santa Fe, but we didn't try the food there - we have much better Mexican all around in San Jose, so I'm trying to convince Nicole to not bother trying it here.
Mar 9th: Cohuna Koala Park - Nicole finally got up close and personal with a koala. And some kangaroos, deer and wallabies, too. There were also kookaburras, emus, ostriches, cockatoos, black swans, pelicans, dingoes, bobtails, owls, peacocks and more. Then we visited Serpentine Falls and Bickley Brook - it's very disappointing that Bickley Brook is now mostly closed to the public. Nicole had her third vanilla slice, I think she's over them now.
Mar 10th: Prepared visa documentation (DS156, DS157), got photos done and paid the second of three visa fees at the post office. Had a quick swim in the pool. Dinner at Nandos. I like Nandos. Nicole likes Nandos now, too.
Mar 11th: Rottnest, and dinner in Fremantle (at an Italian restaurant, which was quite nice). We did the gun and tunnel tour, underwater explorer wreck and reef tour, and went and found some quokkas.
Mar 12th: Visa interview at US consulate, very quick and painless. They didn't even want to see any of the massive stack of papers Google had prepared, just the DS156, DS157 and I797A.

Tomorrow, we're off towards Albany, we'll be spending a few days in the south-west (probably Mt Barker, Albany, Pemberton, possibly Bunbury - I'll update what we actually end up doing once we've actually been).

Vacation update, part 2

2009-03-07T14:21:51Z

Mar 4th: My birthday. Went to Freo - visited the Roundhouse precinct and did a couple of tours of the old Fremantle Prison. Nicole had her first vanilla slice. Went to the Coolgardie Safe for dinner, had damper, crocodile, emu, kangaroo and marron, and a mini pavlova.
Mar 5th: Back to the beach, more swimming. Calmer waves today. We both ended up a little red this time, perhaps time to stop visiting the beach so much.
Mar 6th: Visited UWA (UCS, UCC, and some others). Nicole wasn't feeling too well from all the beach visits and sun exposure, so she didn't make it to UWA.
Mar 7th: Back to Freo. Visited the maritime museum, HMAS Ovens, shipwreck galleries and the markets.

At this stage it looks like we will probably drop Adventure World from our plans, and we're considering dropping Monkey Mia (it is a little far away, and our schedule isn't too flexible due to my visa appointment, so we'll have to see how Albany goes as the Albany and Monkey Mia trips would both have to go almost perfectly to fit in the schedule now).

0x20 years old

2009-03-04T01:50:42Z

I'm 2⁵ today! :-)

Cottesloe

2009-03-03T09:32:06Z

As per my previous post, I'm in Perth, or more specifically Cottesloe, having departed San Francisco on Feb 25th, arrived here Feb 27th, and recovered from jetlag a few days after that.

This is nicolerego's first trip to Australia; in fact, her first trip requiring a passport (until very recently, visits by citizens of the USA to Canada and Mexico did not require anything more than a state-issued ID such as a drivers' license; even today, these are possible with a "passport card" rather than a full passport).

So far:

Feb 25th-27th: 24 hours of travel (crossing the dateline, hence the date span). Ran into my manager's manager at the airport. Otherwise uneventful and a little painful due to my recovering ankle.
Feb 27th: Arrived. Quick visit to Kings Park, seeing the Boab Tree and the War Memorial. Local pizza. Booked in to visit the consulate while I'm here to get a H-1B visa stamp. Sleep very early.
Feb 28th: Walked to Cottesloe Beach, had a swim. Walked back via the Cottesloe Civic Centre. Swam in the pool at my parents' place. This is what summer in Cottesloe is all about. Fish (Gummy Shark) and chips. Sleep early, still jetlagged.
Mar 1st: Visit to Harbor Town. Went on the ferry to South Perth. Sleep a little later, but still not a normal time.
Mar 2nd: Visit to Perth Zoo. Kan Tong for dinner (yes, this does not exist in the USA, and there is no approximation).
Mar 3rd: Walked to Cottesloe Beach. Sculptures are being set up on the beach. A couple of topless girls at the beach - have the rules changed for this beach, or are they ignored now? Swam out along the groyne then across to the giant bubble, twice. Had lunch at the Cottesloe Beach Hotel.

The beaches of NorCal and Florida don't even come close to comparing to Cottesloe Beach. Florida's might, if it wasn't for the "sea lice".

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm not sure exactly what's going on yet, but I'm sure we'll find something to do.

We are still intending to visit at this stage: UCC (this Friday night), Albany, Monkey Mia, Cohunu Koala Park, Adventure World, Rottnest.

My computer is an alcoholic

2009-02-22T04:40:45Z

Well, actually it just likes to bathe in alcohol.

After a bottle of 95% alcohol (Polish Spirytus), it is back in action. Hopefully Midnite doesn't throw up in it again before we work out a deterrent to stop her spending so much time sitting on top of it.

Return to Australia

2009-02-21T06:10:05Z

nicolerego and I are heading to Perth on Wednesday (February 25th) and will be there until March 22nd. It will be the first time I've left the USA since arriving here on January 13th, 2007 (unless you count hopping through Texas airport on the way back from Florida - Texas is virtually another country). That's over two years in the one country - the longest continuous time I've been in one country since 1997.

Anyone who feels like catching up while we're in Perth, let me know (comment here, or send me an email). It'll be Nicole's first time traveling anywhere she needs a passport to visit (US citizens could visit Mexico and Canada with their drivers' license until recently). I'm sure we'll come to UCC and have some pizza, it looks like I'll catch up with the AARNet guys (and some of the others from PARNet from when I was in Perth) while we're there, since I've been talking to them a fair bit recently about IPv6 and Google, and we'll probably head out of the city a bit (up to Monkey Mia?) and of course spend some time down at Cottesloe beach. And visiting Cohunu Koala Park so Nicole can hug a koala bear.

My old Nokia 9300 Communicator came off worse for wear after it was sitting on top of a friend's tesla coil (a picture of this will come later - my main workstation is temporarily out of service after Midnite was sick while sitting on top of it, where she sits to get the warmth from the fans, and it shut itself down and has refused to start up since) so I don't have everyone's numbers - I have a few, but again, emails would be appreciated :)

And just to make things interesting, on Tuesday, I slipped (embarrassingly, I missed a step no higher than a kerb) and ended up with a rather severe sprain of my left ankle. Right after doing it, I thought I was going to be OK, and walked back to my building with no problems (pain, but not unbearable pain), but by the end of the day I could tell I had a problem, and I took around 10 minutes to walk from my desk to the shuttle stop (usually a 1-2 minute walk). After a quick trip to a nearby urgent care facility and a few x-rays (determining no broken bones), I ended up with an air-gel ankle brace and a pair of crutches, both of which I'm still using, and the advice that I probably wouldn't be able to carry a suitcase by the time I'm flying out. I don't know what Qantas' policy on crutches on flights is, but there's a good chance I'll find out soon.

iPhone - no call blacklist, no call blocker in app store?

2009-02-08T21:29:30Z

nicolerego bought me an iPhone 3G (black, 16G) as an early birthday present, since we'll be in Australia for my birthday, and she wanted to buy the present before we went.

Which, of course, means I now have a developer G1 (aka Google phone), a Windows Mobile device (AT&T 8525), a Nokia 9300 (Communicator) and an iPhone - all I'm missing is a Palm, really :-)

So far, I'm very happy with the iPhone, and am likely to use it as my primary phone; I've transferred almost everything across from my AT&T 8525 and all the music from my iPod, however I still need to scan my CD covers to update some of the album art which iTunes couldn't find. It was even simple to set up multiple email accounts!

Simple reasons why I'm not using each of the other devices:

G1: Does not support AT&T 3G frequencies, and the other networks which it does support 3G on do not have good coverage of country California. Besides, I'm comfortable with AT&T, and don't have any significant desire to switch.
AT&T 8525: This has been my main phone since I've been here. I find the interface somewhat painful, although it does at least support cut and paste, which is one of the well-known iPhone deficiencies. The web browser was nowhere near as nice as on the iPhone.
Nokia 9300: This was my main phone for my last couple of years in Australia. The interface was far nicer than the AT&T 8525, and the keyboard was better. However, web browsing was even worse than on the AT&T 8525. Besides, I've shattered the small LCD on this, so I have to do most things on the large LCD, with the phone open.

Initial issues? I wasn't able to complete some forms in Safari on it, but that's not a big issue. I can't seem to find how to tell it that it should check for new e-mail messages in a specific set of folders, again, not a killer issue. However, there is one big omission. There's no call blocker/blacklist, and not even a 'silent' ringtone. I can upload a silent ringtone to it easily, but I also don't want the callers in question to cause my phone to vibrate if it's in silent mode; that's harder.

I searched for a while, and all I could find was MCleaner and iBlacklist; both of these require you to jailbreak your iPhone. Do Apple have something against blocking unwanted calls? Or is it just that nobody has written a call blocker to Apple's satisfaction? Does anyone out there know?

Sunny California

2008-12-11T07:07:59Z

Forecast for next Monday in San Jose:

Max 43F/6C
Min 36F/2C

Reminds me of when I first arrived in California and started this livejournal, with -3C overnight minimum.