Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Great photography and a great cause—what more could we want.

This weekend my wife and I went house hunting. We thought we had our loan in hand—more on that latter—so it should have been as easy as finding something we liked and going from there. It wasn’t quite so easy.

First, there is the little issue of how much home we could afford. We didn’t want to stretch our budget too far. Unfortunately, an entire Saturday was spent depressing ourselves with just how expensive property values in Portland are becoming—or more appropriately how run down and off the beaten path an affordable home is becoming. We finished the day with a short list that wasn’t all that reassuring.

With thoughts of rent dancing in our heads, we visited the first home on our list. Ack! While my kids thought an empty house with oddly shaped rooms and a floor that echos when you jump was great, Diana and I are a little more discerning. The house was at the top of our range, and we thought, “well, with another $20,000 we could make it livable.” One down.

The second place was a long shot. We were only looking at it because it had three bedrooms. The outside was/is…1950′s California ranch. Not bad from the street, but not the height of architectural elegance either. The drive by the day before was a fading memory, and we kept getting it confused with the 15 other houses we’d looked at. Then we walked up to it. Nice flower bed on the front of the house, well trimmed yard, it was beginning to grow on us. When we stepped inside, our attitude towards the day did a 180.

Suddenly, the thought of home ownership was exciting. The enterior had a few updates, but more importantly it was clean and spacious and had a kitchen that met all our requirements. The backyard was huge by urban standards. The only thing it lacks is a garage for the bikes, but it has storage and we could easily replace the carport with a garage.

It all seemed too good to be true. We followed the realtor to one more house that we didn’t even want to see, then followed her out to her office to fill out the paperwork to make an offer. Things seemed to go from a lull to full speed in a matter of hours.

The next day, we were a ball of nerves. The realtor called to say the offer was in and the current owners were talking to their realtor. What seemed like days later, but was really just later that evening—when do they take off—the realtor called to say the offer was accepted. We were in the neighborhood—despite the new neighborhood being a 20 minute drive from our current townhome—and were thrilled.

Now, I’m sitting at the computer a little over 24 hours later telling this story. We still don’t know if the whole thing will work out. The lender hasn’t got back to us with some needed paperwork that we have to have by 2:30 p.m. tomorrow. We are stressed and excited and nervous and everything else you can be.

The New York Times > Books > An Essay: Computers as Authors? Literary Luddites Unite!

Little did I know my computer was secretly one-upping me yet again. While I pound away on the keyboard each day, typing out a living creating the web, my computer – aware of the many insults I have slung its way – has been secretly plotting to set out on its own as a cut-rate paperback writer. (Key Beatles hit.)

So maybe we are years away from a computer creating anything of real worth, but if the current trend towards self-help-psychology-for-dummies-that-are-complete-idiots publishing power is any indication, it shouldn’t be too long before we see an enterprising young corporation try to pawn off computer generated fungibility to the world.

Let’s see a computer try and give birth to a sentence that portrays the flexibility and depth of the human language. Ah, but now I’ve done it. Once Google has indexed this page and shared it with hundreds (I would say thousands, but I shouldn’t kid myself) of its fellow computers, I will surely reap a quick and demonstrative punishment not unlike a hegemony upon a oil-rich nation-state.

Or perhaps, I will simply be allowed to languish in anonymity.

Okay, so their site could use a lot of work. RacePhotos.net is an IE-only (try to browse their photos with Firefox), screwed-up-background, in-need-of-some-optimizing website. Maybe I should offer my services.

Regardless, here is a picture of me, halfway up a very steep hill. If there is a slight smile on my face, it is only because I am laughing at the irony of the goofy “smile” poster sitting next to the guy with the camera.

I don’t look half as wet and miserable as I felt at this point—about 20 miles into the 100 mile jaunt. Fun.

I made it… well… kinda. What should have been my first century (100 mile) ride in the Mt. Hood Challenge ended with both a sense of accomplishment and mild confusion. An incredible amount of rain forced a change in the course. The race organizers failed to properly announce the course change before the start of the race–or for that matter at the 25 mile rest station–and I ended up taking a wrong turn that lasted nearly 18 miles.

I don’t know why I kept riding along with the guy who I correctly assumed was as lost as I. By the time we got back on track, I had completed 50 plus miles–according to his odometer, mine was on the fritz–but I knew that I would need to add a little mileage or risk not making the full century, so I started up the course detour for at least 5 miles–perhaps more–before turning at the 100 km rest station.

Now the realist in me says that it is unlikely that I completed as long a race as my friends who started the race with me. (I should not have left them behind in search of a port-a-potty.) On the bright side, I finished at least 2 hours before them and had to have completed at least 90 miles total–perhaps it was a little closer to 100, but I won’t know until I map out my modified route. The fact that I did not spend two additional hours in the pouring rain without a rain slick probably saved me from a case of hypothermia and a trip to the hospital.

Now that I’m safely sitting at my desk at work, I can say that it was a grand accomplishment. I can also whole-heartedly proclaim that I never want to experience such a miserable ride again. So when is the next sunny-weather century ride?