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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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Tuesday, July 26, 2005 |
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Letter to the Credit Union | |
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July 26, 2005 Arapahoe Credit Union 3999 E Arapahoe Rd Littleton, CO 80122 - 2076 To Whom It May Concern: First, please accept this letter as a formal change of address request. My member number is xxxxxxxxxx. My new address is: 2767 West Riverwalk Circle, Unit H Littleton, CO 80123-7101 Second, I would like to complain about the amount of work it has required for me to do the change of address. With every other single business I have dealt with, over thirty of them, during my move, I have either been able to change my address via the internet or the telephone. However, your bank, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that customer convenience is a luxury, not standard practice. I was told that a simple change of address could only be done by fax, regular mail, or in person. I can think of other things, such as your hours and days of operation, that make it very hard to bank with your institution. Finally, I received a call a week or two back indicating that the checks I received from the bank, printed for me over eighteen months ago that I have been usingsince then, were printed with the wrong account number. I do not know why it took eighteen months, and many checks, for your organization to discover this. After my move is complete, I will have to come in to close my account. It is unfortunate that in the many years I have used this credit union the service has only declined. Regards, John Bullock |
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Monday, July 25, 2005 |
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High Speed Internet | |
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One of the perks of the townhome we are living at between houses is "free" high speed internet. It is provided by Qwest and is DSL. I can say that after a couple of days use that I really miss my Comcast internet. Comcast is SOOO much faster. At least it is only temporary. I also have to gave another thumbs up to Comcast as they allowed us to keep our E-mail addresses and my blog up and running even though we don't currently have any service with them. I guess while I'm singing the praises of Comcast, I will say one other thing. Even though I don't watch lots of TV, I definitely have grown accustomed to their digital service. I feel like we have gone back to the dark ages with regular basic cable. I know Suzanne is definitely jonesing for their On-Demand service which allowed her to watch what she wants, when she wants (what a concept). | |
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Thursday, July 21, 2005 |
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Goodbye 10288 Halleys Way | |
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It is official now, we have sold our old house. The closing was this morning so now we just have to wait about 36 days before we close on our new one. We have been staying at my in-laws this week (they have been gone) but our rental is ready today so we will be staying there for the rest of the duration. BTW, our carpet was installed at our new place on Monday. We have not been able to go in since they have done this but it looks nice looking in from the windows. I think they have all of the major items done now, they are just doing a lot of touch-up and who knows what else for the remainder of the time. I think our first official walk-through is mid-August. | |
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Working Daze | |
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 |
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Update | |
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It has been a week since I last posted anything to my blog. Here is a quick update.
Exciting stuff eh? I think today will only be for working and then we are taking Wednesday off and getting the few remaining items out of the house in preparation for closing on Thursday. As we packed all the beds on Saturday, we couldn't stay at home any longer. Luckily, Suzanne's parents are out of town and we have been able to stay there. They return on Thursday which just happens to be the day we get to move into the town home. We are all desperately looking forward to some normalcy in our lives like sitting down to a simple home cooked meal at home. I can't say that I recall the last one I had. One good thing has come from all of this (besides the fact that we are selling the house!) which is Suzanne's parents have basic cable which held my attention for about 1.5 episodes of MASH before I had enough. I perused their book shelf and found a copy of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code that we bought for Suzanne's father and I start reading it. I have been wanting to read it for a while but nobody had been willing to loan me their copy. I cruised through the first eighty pages before I realized that it was 12:30 and time for me to get to bed. As I mentioned, tomorrow is for working on the house, Thursday is closing and back to work, Friday is just work, and then the weekend. Soccer games start back up and this time Lindsay is playing as well. She has her cast off and is flying around like nothing ever happened. I also had to take my Honda Pilot in for it's 60K maintenance and to have them do a minor repair on the "fin/spoiler" on the back end as it appears a screw has come out and it is no longer seated properly which makes all sorts of horrible sounds when the back end is opened now (unless you manually hold/direct it while opening). |
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 |
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Latest House Scoop | |
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Quite a bit has happened since my last house update. We were finally able to go inside and see what they have done. As my last update indicated, they had started installing tile. Well, they have completed installation of all the tile which includes the kitchen, butler's pantry, front entry way, powder bath, kids bath, and the master bath. They are looking great. They have also installed sinks, toilets, outlet covers, and light fixtures. On the outside, they have complete all of the landscaping out front including the sprinkler system, rocks, bushes, trees, and grass, as well as most of the light fixtures. I think the schedule indicated the carpet is supposed to go in next week and I think that is the last major item to be installed except for the appliances. Then they will be working on fixed all the remaining holes, scratches, dents, dings, etc. to make the place really shine. We got our firm closing date yesterday, which is August 26th, so we will just a hair more than a month in the town home before we can start moving into the new place. This first photo shows the front of the house which is now landscaped! The only thing missing is the wing fencing.  This is part of the view from the master deck. It is overlooking the two house behind us that are under construction now. 
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Friday, July 08, 2005 |
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Exciting Weekend | |
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I think this about sums up my upcoming weekend:
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Thursday, July 07, 2005 |
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Deck | |
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We got our deck installed last week. It should have some nice views of the adjacent foothills. The construction crews have put in the foundations for the two houses behind us so we are starting to get a better feel for how much of our view will be blocked. However, with the master deck, we are guaranteed some views of them! This week the workers have installed tile in at least the kitchen, butler pantry, entry way, and on the fire place. We have not been able to go it but we are also supposed to have some amount of tile in the master bath, second bathroom, and powder bath. In addition to the tile, they started the landscaping out front. The put in the sprinkler system, rocks, tree five bushes (everyone gets five) and the posts for the wing fencing. I'm not sure if they will be doing grass soon or not. I can't say that I would mind then they are footing the watering bill when they water every day and will do the mowing and such. I'm not sure how many more photos I will be posting as most of the work will be on the inside and I don't know how much access I will have. We had our current house inspection this week and there was nothing major. However, we also had the furnace certification that failed which meant we got to buy a new furnace that we will never use. We are supposed to close July 21st which means we will have about a month between houses. We have secured temporary housing near Santa Fe and Belleview in a fully furnished townhome. We have arranged for a POD to be delivered about a week before we have to leave and then they will store it for us and deliver it to the new place. This way we don't have to move all our stuff twice (once to an apartment and again to the new house). A picture of the house from the rear which contains the master deck. You can see one of the new houses they started building behind us. 
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First Graders | |
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Alex and Lindsay started first grade on Tuesday. BTW, why does the school district make the first day a day immediately following when kids stay up late watching fireworks? Doesn't sound like very good planning to me.
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Friday, July 01, 2005 |
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Cabinets | |
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Wednesday evening, Suzanne and I packed up the kids and headed to the house to go take another tour. The had just put the cabinets in throughout the house and started working on the deck off the master bedroom. While we were there, we met one of new next door neighbors. It is another couple, Paul & Paty, with one kid who will be a senior in high school this year (although we didn't get to meet him). There were very friendly and we gave each other tours of our new houses. Paul is also a mountain biker so we are already planning on going our riding (another great example of the MTB community I wrote about earlier. This photo is the cabinets in the butler's pantry.  This is the photo of the kitchen bar/island.  This photo shows the built-in desk, pantry and opening for the double-oven.  This (bad) picture shows the main cabinets in the kitchen. 
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MTB Community | |
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I have some bad mojo going on the past couple of days as this will be the second time I've tried to do this post. I was about 70% done with this entry yesterday when my machine encountered the blue screen of death. :( Anyways, I wanted to share some thoughts on the mountain biking community as I've had a couple of recent experiences that got me thinking about it. Last Wednesday, I went riding after work at Apex Park. I was at my car getting ready to go when another car pulled up next to me. I think there were 3 young men inside. I was friendly and said 'hi' when they got out and we had some idle chit chat. However, one of the guys asked me if I wanted company on my ride. As I was alone I said sure. Turns out he was just visiting some friends here but was from New York (he didn't seem impressed with my Yankees sticker though!?!?). My guess is that he was about 20 or 21. His friends had run at Apex and suggested to him that he should go riding there. So I got to play tour guide but I'm not sure I did that great of job. He was very nice but I definitely held him up. He could ride up or down anything there and I'm not sure I ever saw him get winded. I did offer a couple times to let him go by himself so he wasn't waiting on me but he didn't seem to mind at all. After the ride, I started thinking that there are not many areas of life where two complete strangers can hook up just based upon a common interest. I can just imagine the looks and responses that I would get if I stood outside a movie theatre asking people if I could go see a movie with them. Most interactions I have with other mountain bikers, on or off the trail, and most always friendly and positive. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The rules of the trail dictate that mountain bikers yield to all other trail users. The only exception to this rule is if the other user is another mountain biker then the uphill rider has the right of way. Most bikers do a pretty good job following these rules. However, I know that I've apologized to other trail users for mountain bikers that don't follow these rules (riding out of control, running hikers off the trail, etc.). I've also had issues with bikers not yielding to me when I'm trying to ride uphill. To these few bad apples: either learn and follow the rules or don't use the trails. The start of my post mentioned that I have some bad mojo today. It started off with the dog being sick (vomiting) so I called the vet to see if could get him in. No appointments were available but they said they could look at him if I could leave him for the day. When we got to the vet, he was out front so I was talking to him and he decided to see Toby right away. This meant that I had to hang around for the appointment, take him back home, then get into work (2 hours late). I had made plans to go riding over my lunch break with my co-worker Steve so we met outside when we were ready. We decided to only take one car so we transferred my bike over to his car. During this, Steve discovered that his tire was totally flat. After further inspection we saw that his muffler had completely melted part of his tire and caused a blow out. We made a quick stop by the bike shop by work then headed out. The ride was pretty good but on the way back, my bike kept trying to fall of his bike rack. He bought it last year and had nothing but trouble with it. Apparently that was the straw that broke the camels back though because he sent an E-mail to Performance customer service basically saying that bike rack sucked and didn't deserve the Performance brand on it. The responded quickly saying even though it is about a year old he could get a refund for it! So although Performance screwed up on this one product, they made good to fix the problem. We will both continue to give them our business. |
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