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Thoughts on just about everything from rock-n-roll, sports, kids, to geek speak -- by John Bullock About John Subscribe to this blog  |
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February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 September 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 |
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Monday, January 31, 2005 |
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Too Much Time | |
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Some people just have too much time on their hands. Here is a link to a web stie that demonstrates this all too well. | |
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Thursday, January 27, 2005 |
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Standard Options | |
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We signed the contract on the new house yesterday and gave them a check for our earnest money. Now that it is officially official, I thought I would talk a little more about the house. There are a few things that come standard on all the Ryland homes in Chatfield Farms that might not in other Ryland communities. I won't list everything but some of these items include:
The standard list is much longer but these are items that catch your eye going through the list. In addition to these standard items, we also picked a few other options. First off we decided on the study in lieu of the fourth bedroom. This will be for me and will be my work area. We also added the glass sliding door and deck off the master bedroom. We are hoping to have great views of the mountains from here! The loft in lieu of the fifth bedroom. The loft will be the kids entertainment/play area. The rough-in for the service entrance to the garage. We opted out of the sewing room so we will even more space in the garage that will be home to the freezer and maybe another refridgerator eventually. We also had to pick our elevation and we choose B. Although not required, we also picked our house and stone color sections. We were the first ones on the block to do this. It is a good thing because if others had picked what we wanted, we would not be allowed to do the same thing. That's all for now but I still plan on posting some photos of the model. |
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Monday, January 24, 2005 |
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New House | |
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Suzanne and I had a slow Saturday early last fall so we decided to go walk through the model homes Ryland built to attract sales for the subdivision they are building in Roxborough. We really liked the models but did not put much thought into it at the time. A couple of weeks later, I ran into our realtor who helped us purchase our current home. I mentioned that we saw the models and thought they looked interesting. A week or so later our realtor called and we setup an appointment to talk and take another look at the model homes. Ryland is building new homes in Roxborough (technically Chatfield Farms), Highlands Ranch, and Castle Rock. They have different models in the three locations (some overlap) so we decided to visit the homes in Highlands Ranch as well. After visiting the Highlands Ranch models and talking with our realtor, we started thinking more seriously about getting a house. We talked finances and met with our financial advisor. Basically we decided that we need to wait to get a new home until the kids start first grade (significantly less day care expenses). Not only that, but the lot that we thought looked interesting was not available yet so we put a hold on it and have been waiting impatiently since last fall. In the mean time, we had been debating which model that we wanted and decided on the Pinot Grigio. This weekend we finally got the call saying the lot was available and that we needed to let them to know ASAP as there was supposedly another couple interested in the lot as well. We have been discussing moving, finances, logistics, etc. as well as visiting the model of the home we like in Highlands Ranch so we had pretty much made up our mind to do it. So we went in and started to get the ball moving. We are supposed to sign the contract this Wednesday and hopefully have the house in the July or August time frame (after the kids have started first grade!) On Sunday when we went by to ask more questions, we also decided to get some pictures of the lot before any work, besides the leveling and adding streets, had been done. There is not even a foundation yet. I'm hoping to take photos throughout the entire process so that you can see it built over time. I will also blog more soon about the options we want as well as show some photos of the interior of the model Pinot Grigio. One thing that really excites us about this lot is that it almost a quarter acre (over ten thousand square feet) which is well over twice the size of our current log. The dog and kids should have plenty of room.
This photo is a picture of our lot from across the street.You can't see the entire lot but you get a feel for where it will be. 
This photo shows what I think and hope the view will be from the desk off the master bedroom! 
This last one is a view of the lot looking from the back towards the front. You can tell there is a slope in the back that the landscapers will have to work with. 
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005 |
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Yankee Pledge | |
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Find out what it means to be a Yankee fan and take the pledge to make sure you are holiding up your end of the bargain. | |
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Monday, January 17, 2005 |
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X-mas Follow Up | |
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I had blogged earlier about some of my favorite x-mas gifts and wanted to follow up on these items. Although I will not do it in order, I will comment on most all of the items. For starters, my brother and his wife bought me Stars Wars Battlefront. I have lost way too much sleep playing this online just about every night since I received the gift. The regular version of the game is OK, but the real character, challenge and fun comes out when you play against other players online. You can play as part of the Empire or the Rebels (bad or good guys as Alex would say), play all sorts of different characters, use different weapons, and even use many different vehicles. Basically no two games are the same. The other video game I received, from Suzanne and the kids, was The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Although I've only logged a few hours on this, I can tell this will be a ton of fun. It has an online option as well, but I have not tried to play it online because I do not I am skilled enough to compete or support another player that has logged more time than myself. This one will be more fun by myself for a while. My guess is that it will be much like James Bond: Everything Or Nothing, where I play by myself for quite a while before I discover the joy of playing online. While I'm on software and computer items, I want to talk about two other things. The first is the Ximeta Net Disk that I received from Suzanne and the kids. This is an 80GB hard drive that was very easy to setup and get working. It took my all of about 5 minutes and most of that time was while the software was installing. This thing just works. The cool feature about it is that it can plug into your router, and be accessible to all the machines on your network. However, it is not assigned an IP address so is not available to anyone outside of your network. It is very quite and has a sleek design. A great option if you want additional storage that is external and/or a network device. The other item I received is the Prismiq Media Player. This is a really cool item. It is very small, the size or a book, that hooks up to your network via ethernet or wirelessly. You have to install the software on a machine on your network and then configure what media you want to be available to the media player and then you are good to go. This one has been a blessing and curse. The player itself is a great idea and works well. As a matter of fact, I'm listening to the Rolling Stones, Singles Collection: The London Years Disc 3 right now via the media player. Nothing better than putting on the tunes, playing video games, and losing even more sleep. Basically, the media player allows you to play audio files, many different formats, that are stored on your computers via your home stereo in addition to viewing you video and images files, also from your computer, via your home television. Finally, you can also IM, E-mail, and surf the web via your television. The last set of features is much easier if you have the wireless keyboard (which I did receive too!). It has been a bit of a challenge though. Although it works well, I have been having issues, that I am still diagnosing, separate from the media player. Under certain configurations, which I want to run, the audio was skipping or stuttering very badly. I am not sure if it is the speed of the NetDisk or the fact that still have an old 811.b wireless card in my laptop. I will be trying to use the 811.g wireless card I got for the media player, in my laptop (and plug the media player into the DLink wireless bridge) to see if if that gets me anywhere. In the meantime, I've plugged the NetDisk directly into the laptop and the audio quality has been excellent for the most part. It is amazing to think that less than 18 months ago I did not have any kind of home network setup. Now I have a wireless network with four separate devices attached and used regularly. I know that even my wife is a fan of the wireless network although she would never admit as much :) Off of the geek products and onto music. I received several items. One of them is No Doubt: This Singles. This album is a greatest hits package. It has all of their songs that I like and am familiar with from the radio. It is probably better that I buy this rather than all their albums and I'm not sure I would like all of their music. However, this album is exactly what I wanted and will get it's share of play time. The next CD I received is Jewel's 0304. I like Jewel and have bought all of her albums so figured that this one should be no exception. However, if you are not a big Jewel fan, you probably want to save your money for something else. There is one hit song on it and maybe another one to two high quality songs on it, but the others are nothing to write home about. It seems like every other album with her is high quality which is what keeps me coming back for more. Not unlike Jewel, Alanis Morisette is another one that has occasional good music. Her first album was amazing but she had struggled very hard with trying to publish a follow-up album suitable of her rookie efforts. Because she had not had a quality album since her first one, I decided to wait until I heard some of the music on the radio and could sample others online before I decided if I really needed this. I heard some encouraging stuff and decided to take the plunge. Thankfully I was not disappointed and got the worthy follow-up album, So-Called Chaos, that I had been waiting for. There are several rocking songs and many other quality tunes that will make this a good listen. I actually listened to it yet again this AM with the kids. The final album I received was Avril Lavigne's Under My Skin. Wow! Talk about a quality album. Even my punk-rockin' friend Brian liked this one. It is very rocking and amazing work for a woman of just 19 years of age. It was so good, I had to buy her first album. Unlike Alanis that struggled for many years to find a worthy follow-up album, Avril exceed her rookie album with an amazing sophomore smash! Her first album was almost a let down after hearing Under My Skin. I wish I had bought them in reverse order but I'm not going to complain. It is not fair that somebody so young has so much talent. I am eagerly looking forward to many years and albums from her! |
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Masked Man | |
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Have you seen this masked man?
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Dog Days of Winter | |
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Wednesday, January 12, 2005 |
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Shocker! | |
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Who would have ever guessed that we would never find the WMD in Iraq? | |
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Friday, January 07, 2005 |
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Play Ball! | |
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I know that the Broncos have not even officially lost to the Colts yet, but I'm ready for baseball season to start again! | |
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Wrong Again | |
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I guess I was wrong about American athletes giving money for the victims of the tsunami. At least my Yankees are ponying up even more! | |
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Thursday, January 06, 2005 |
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Big Unit's Contract | |
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The Yankees finally got their man today when they agreed to a new contract with Randy Johnson. I found the details of the contract that I had never seen before. I has deferred money (old contract was with interest, new one is without, awards to special achievements (e.g. MVP, all-star, etc.) and a no trade clause. However, I thought the very bottom of this article had the most interesting items such as Suns and Diamondback tickets (still to be covered by Arizona), and a personal services contract (whatever that is). | |
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Smoking | |
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Yet another reason not to smoke... | |
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