kjp

* History of the area. What was there before the housing development
* Local shops - occupancy / being rebuilt - as per comment
* Bigger shops nearby - Taigum, Toombul, Chermside.
* Door from garage to house - lockable?
* Types of locks on the doors - for insurance
* Check down pipes - one of them was iffy?
* What types of cars are in driveways nearby - sign of wealth / derro-ness
* Space in living area - shape of the space - usability of the space
* garage wall is on the boundary of the property - what can my neighbours do to it - i.e.: what happens if they put a hole in it.
* research BankWest - backers, financial viability
* Slope of the land / drainage.
* Once I have a signed contract, then I go to the home loan guy again to sort out the finance
* Contract conditions: what are required??:
- Date
- Signed by both parties
- "Buyers Choice Finance" (i.e.: I can choose the bank that will lend me the money)
- Finance at least 14 days, preferably 21 days
- 14 days (preferably 21 days) building and pest inspection
- 42 day settlement
- subject to pest and building inspection
- sunset clause --> "This offer is only available for 3 days" --> so that they don't take their time to accept, preventing me in the mean time from looking for other places.
* Safety deposit box at the bank for the deeds / land titles / important bits of paper / my passport?

Hey! I haven’t proof read this (not going to) – prefer to sleep. You’ve been warned! :)

So, there’s this place that I went to on Saturday – I’m thinking about putting an offer on it. Needless to say I’m a tad stressed about it. Anyhow.

It seems that some of the major risks when buying a place are:
* you buy a dud – there’s something majorly wrong with it. Maybe this is ok if you’re a renovator, but that’s not me. Can mitigate this by building / pest inspection, etc.
* you pay too much. Can mitigate this by doing heaps of research, and having a good idea of the market / getting a professional valuation.
* you don’t buy what you want – you get dragged into something bigger / more expensive than what you want.

For me a worry is that I have looked at only 3 houses - all in the same part of the same suburb – and nothing elsewhere. This is simply because I’d looked at a townhouse and flat or two, and had gotten onto the idea of a house. I haven’t done much research at all into prices, etc… haven’t looked at realestate.com.au – just been going to open homes (as advertised in the local paper).

The first couple of places I looked at were a flat and townhouse. In both cases I wasn’t happy with living right on top of your neighbours – I want to have a little bit of space around me. It’s the intensity / proximity of being so close to your neighbours that is of concern to me: having random strangers walk past your front door is just a bit wrong. So after checking them out (a few weeks back), I pretty much decided on a house, or a flat / townhouse that was separated a bit from the neighbours.

The thing is, for me, financially, if I want to be very close to work with a reasonable place, then it means a flat. But being ridiculously close (like I am now – 3 minutes), is a bit unrealistic. The place that I’m looking at is close still – it would be about 10 – 15 minutes drive to work. It’s a bit further out from town, though....

By a house though is tricky, in some ways I want as much land as possible – that’s the part that goes up in value – but this isn’t realistic (from a $$) perspective; and I don’t really want heaps of land – more work for maintenance, etc.

On reasonable price – at an auction of a similar type place just up the road, that house went for a bit under $350,000. So the price for the place I’m interested in is probably realistic – maybe a tad high?

Issues with the place:
* flatness of the land / drainage in the case of flood / storm water drains
* location of main room within the house – at the front of the house – cars (sound, lights) going past at the middle of the night: especially in summer (open window) – but I don’t need to sleep in the main room.
* noise - from the major road that is ~0.65km away at rush hour; train noise; plane noise
* fans / air-conditioning?

To do list:
* Talk to the home loan guy about the amount I can borrow, my savings, portability of the loan with the company he suggested – ING loan? (tomorrow, 8 am)
* Ring up the real estate agent to say I’m interested in it (she’s likely to ring me, I suspect)
* Check out the place on Saturday morning with a sensible head (hi mum!)
* Check out realestate.com.au and get an idea of prices for the alternate suburbs around where I’m thinking of
* Figure out what I should offer (assuming I make an offer).
* Learn a bit about the history of the development… what was there 15 years ago?

I’ve finally finished reading The Consolations Of Philosophy (by Alain de Botton). I’ve had it on loan for a while – a year or two (or more?) – and I’ll have the opportunity to return it this coming week (mums in town for a gig on Saturday). Well, I’ve read parts of it several times in the past – each time getting distracted and put it down.

Anyhow, it’s very easy to read, interesting look at six philosophers and six ideas: consolations for unpopularity, not having enough money, frustration, inadequacy, a broken heart and difficulties.

For me at the moment, I found the bits on Epicurus and what is needed for happiness (friends, freedom, thought, and basic necessities – shelter, food, water); along with difficulties / struggle / hurt is a perquisite for fulfilment. Aka: I shouldn’t stress about my housing (more on this later, tonight hopefully), and my lack of a partner.

Earlier I found a cool website: MapConnect by Geoscience Australia - where you can make your own topographic maps.

I've finally gotten around to sorting out the backing up of my computer. I've signed up with Carbonite - an online backup service. Basically after you install the program on my computer, for files / folders / drives that you specify, the program compresses all the files, encrypts them and puts them of a server in a data centre somewhere in the US (I presume). When it detects that a file has been updated, then the new version is sent up. If a file is deleted, the backup copy remains for 30 days, after which time the backup is deleted. Within that time frame files can be restored from the backup files. Files are available as another drive in "My Computer".

It suits me, because: I don't want to deal with lots of media; I'm busy most of the time, so I want it to be automatic; the backup is offsite (so no problems if my place burns down / my place gets robbed, etc); I can backup unlimited amount of data (good for my many many photos); I have a good internet connection. The downsides - it costs a bit (US$50 / year) - but that's reasonable for the service, I think; it's a bit slow on the upload (with no option to increase the upload speed - they've gone for very simple interface). It's not a online drive however - it's a backup service - so you can't easily access your files from an arbitrary computer.

The first thing I've done with it is to backup my photos. This has also been a bit of a motivator for me to actually sort them out - I've had folders and copies of folders of photos scattered all through several partitions on my hard drives. So it's a bit cleaner now, which is good. I'm effectively on the first backup (ie: full, not incremental backup), which is taking a while (is still going).

There's something very weird going on. Usually, I write my posts for this website locally in Word, and then copy and paste them into movable type when I ready. I've been having a problem with one particular post - relating to the fact that I actually do backups now. I can't seem to figure out the problem at all. After clearing the web browser cache, rebooting, and having the text in a txt file (Ie: no special characters), copying and pasting still gives me errors. Well, just one error: a 404 file not found (for mt.cgi) when I click the save button. If I get rid of two words in particular from the post, then it works. Also taking out the space between them works. But if I try putting it back in (with the movable type form), it fails. I don't get it at all?

I'm thinking that: maybe there's some junk in the mysql database? If not, then I'm just going to rewrite the post...

PS: sorry about all of the test posts for the last 12 hours or so... I'll get rid of them in a couple of minutes.

PPS: the two words in question are the first two of the title of this post, plus they're in this post as well?!?!

I'm getting a weird error message. When I try and publish a post that is longish (well, just 3 paragraphs), and when it is copy and pasted from word, I get a 404 file not found error (for mt.cgi) when I 'save' the post. But it also seems to be related to the length of the post... Huh??

Unfortunately for me, I scratched my car yesterday morning :(

Ooops.

No other cars... just my car, and a wall... how embarrassing. And yes, the wall is fine.

On Saturday I tested out my new headlamp - Black Diamond Spot. Seems to be very good (bright), good distance, light weight. Not the top of the range of what's available, but anything more would probably be excessive for me. It's good gear - I'm happy with it.

"Shepherd's Salad" from Turkey.

Several tomatoes - chopped finely
1 Red Onion - chopped very finely
Parsley and Mint - a fair bit - chopped
Cucumber and green pepper - chopped up. (Can drop either of these if required).

Combine, mix - done!

When I made it, I dropped the cucumber as I was having that in another salad.

This weekend’s rogaine was cancelled due to illness of my rogaine partner. So, having a weekend made free, and with an 8hr rogaine coming up at the end of June, I thought I’d go for an 8hr walk (training, fitness, try out my cool new headlamp, push my limits).

Part of my route (www.gmap-pedometer.com is great!) is below: along the bikepath along Nundah creek (? floodway), then Boondall wetlands, around the entertainment centre, cutting through Shorncliffe, then along Sandgate beachfront (although the southern bit is a big long bit of construction). Finish point was the Houghton Highway Bridge. Total distance was a bit less than 48 km. Elapsed time was 8:09:40, walking time 7:57:24. First half was a fair bit faster than the second: 3:52:40 (elapsed time).

Good conditions - coolish, bit of a drizzling rain in the latter part. No problems with blisters at all - I had my heals and biggest three toes taped with up Leukosilk. The endurance / fitness side of things isn’t the problem (wasn’t puffing for breath), just the time that my legs can keep going is the issue.

Probably my (unaided by Panadol, etc) limit at the moment is about 35 km. 40 km to 45 km really hurt, and was very slow (< 5 km/hr) - had to stop quite a few times to crouch down...

Yes, I am a bit on the crazy side.

I've just finished reading a book by Will Hutton - The Writing on the Wall - China and the West in the 21st Century. It's all about the economic situation, politics and the institutions that support these for both China and west (particularly USA), an argument being that China's current position isn't sustainable ('communist' government, growing markets that have fundamental problems in them). Got economics mixed in with history, politics. A really interesting read - I enjoyed it greatly.