Growing up, I had two burning desires for my life, in regards to career choices. A mechanical drafting class in eighth grade lit a fire in me to become an Architect. I had a good friend in grade school who…
Property Tax Assessment Appeals
We’ve been home owners since 2003 (well, my wife has been, I’ve been a homeowner since marrying into her house in 2005.) We lived in the house she bought until 2016, then moved to our current home. In the first…
Social Media Update
Inspired by Trump’s new “social media” platform, I wanted to update my own social media situation. I still have a deactivated Fakebook account, I haven’t been booted from Twatter yet (any of my accounts,) though I rarely post to any…
What a Scare!
Yesterday I was poking around over on echozoe.com when the site suddenly went down. First, I got a “database connection error.” Then there was just NOTHING. That site, this one, and several others I own are all hosted on the…
Is Your Family’s Structure Sinful?
For nearly a decade, my family (well, mostly my wife and I) have struggled with an issue over our family structure. When we dated, and were first married, we both worked; she as a lawyer, and me as an intern…
Our Summer Home Buying Experience, Part 4: Wait, There’s More!
After over a year of getting our house ready to put on the market, and a summer of Real Estate process, we had two signed deals. We had a new house to look forward to moving into, and our old…
Our Summer Home Buying Experience, Part 3: What I Learned
After a summer of Real estate searches and dealings, I learned a lot. We had bought a new house, and had just gotten a deal signed to sell our old one. Here’s what I would do over again, and what…
Our Summer Home Buying Experience, Part 2: Selling Our Old House
We spent our summer deep in Real estate; selling one house and buying another. It had been the culmination of more than a year’s worth of work, preparing our house for the market. In the first post, I described the…
Our Summer Home Buying Experience, Part 1: Buying a New House
Over the course of last summer, we went through the process of selling our house and buying a new one. Our family is growing, and the house we had was closing in on us. We also had a healthy amount…
Thwarting Telemarketers
I’ve posted before about Asterisk, the computerized phone system I’ve been using in my home for about a decade now. One thing I love about it is kicking calls over to special functions based on Caller ID. Known telemarketers get…
Bitten by the Home Automation Bug
Not quite two years ago, I wrote about a little timer I made using an Arduino microcontroller and a simple relay. The purpose was to turn a couple lamps on in my living room automatically at sunset, and off around…
My Reality Show Idea
It seems I’m the only guy in America that doesn’t have a reality show. So I came up with an idea to get one. A little background is necessary. My reality show would be food-based. I’m not the pickiest eater…
HTPC: Revisited
Almost two years ago, I posted of my transition away from cable/satellite TV to using only internet & over-the-air and a Home Theater PC. Since it has been almost two years, I thought it a good time to update how…
My Twitter Philosophy
I’ve been on twitter for a while, two years as a regular user, almost six since I first created my account. I think I tend to be a typical user as far as who I follow and what I tweet.…
HTPC: The Build
I’m currently in the latter stages of transitioning my family away from cable/satellite for our TV service toward just using over-the-air, along with the internet. I’ve been a DirecTV customer since the summer of 2001, and the service, along with…