Category: Just Saying …

Catching up on all the changes here.

Last week: Monday was the final packing day. The last 10 percent of the packing seems to take the most time. There were boxes everywhere.

On Tuesday, the two guys we hired to pack the truck arrived at 9 am. I called them Mutt and Jeff. They were just about as efficient. I thought it would only take about three hours to load the truck. They ended up taking over 7 hours. But the truck finally got loaded – we filled it up.

We had some help cleaning up the place. Once the house was emptied, the entire house was vacuumed, floors cleaned, etc. There were a few rooms that needed rug cleaning, so we arranged to have that done the next day.

We had thought that we would load the truck Tuesday, and travel on Wednesday. But we decided that was a bit too optimistic. There was some minor cleaning that needed to be done Wednesday, so we decided to stay at the hotel two nights instead of one. But we got it all done by noon. We left the keys and some notes for the new owner, and headed back to the hotel.

So we relaxed at the hotel. Wednesday night we had an impressive thunderstorms, which are unusual for the area. There were lightening flashes every few seconds, and a few brief downpours. An impressive show.

Thursday morning, it was back to the old house to get the other car (we left it in the garage). A final check around the house, and we were off in separate cars to Utah. The weather was really nice – partly cloudy, temps in the 70s (F), and a few very brief showers. We got to the Jensen’s house (daughter’s family) about 830pm.

So, homeless, we’ve been staying at their house while the new house gets ready for closing. There were a few minor delays, but we finally got to sign all the papers yesterday afternoon. The sellers were supposed to sign today. So the purchase should be finalized by the end of today.

Tomorrow (Thursday), the moving truck will arrive by noon. We’ll have some help unloading in the evening. And there’s lots of new furniture that will be delivered tomorrow.

And there’s lots of details that we’ve been working on: utilities, phones, Internet, satellite TV, etc. Lots of phone calls that Pam has made.

But, with any luck, Thursday night we’ll get to sleep in the new house.

And then the unpacking of boxes will begin.

Almost. Going into the last two weeks of the job; my last day here is the end of the month. I’ll still be available virtually by remote connection, but next month will be using up all the leftover vacation and sick leave time.

At the office, working on finishing up several projects, including documenting settings, etc. It’s unclear who will be supporting things, but I want to leave all the necessary information to get them started. And I am slowly cleaning out 23 years of stuff out of the office, along with the same amount of disk files that need to be deleted or saved.

On the home front, our house sale is waiting for the final underwriting of the buyer’s loan. They seem to be a bit backlogged, so it’s taking a few days longer than we thought. As for the new house, the builder has accepted our offer, and we’ve locked in the financing at 4 1/2%, which is a pretty good rate.

So we’ve planned on moving day to be the first week in June. Have arranged for a truck (from the www.u-pack.com guys, and some bodies to load it). We’ve made arrangements to give away some unneeded furniture to friends and relatives. Just about everything is in boxes piled high in the garage. A bit more packing is on the agenda tomorrow.

We’re making progress in the move. Exciting times.

Lots of changes. Our house is sold, and closes the middle of this month. We’re staying there (with the permission of the new owner, of course) until the end of the month.

We went back to Utah last weekend, and found a nice house close to the Jensen’s (daughter’s family). It’s actually a ten-minute walk away. A nice one-story ‘rambler’ with a full basement; three bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. One of the two downstairs bedrooms will be transformed into a nice scrapbook room for Pam (and visitors), the other will probably become an office area for me. The basement also has room for a family room that will be finished later.

Pam and I turned in our retirement (that’s a funny word in my mind — retirement is supposed to be for old people) papers yesterday. We’ve arranged for the moving truck and a couple of strong bodies to pack it neatly. The new house is going through the usual escrow stuff (inspections, loans, etc).

And there are boxes everywhere in our current house. We are about 80% packed, I think, but Saturday will be another packing day, including (probably) the rest of the garage and the office.

Trying to wind up some projects at work. Some are progressing well, others are just time-consuming.

Lots of changes.

Lots of changes…

We sold our house sold in about 30 days. Got a good offer, with a fairly quick closing date of mid-May. Nice couple with a teenage daughter that is excited about her ‘bedroom suite’ (the builder made one room out of two small bedrooms, so there is sort of a sitting area separate from the bed area). They are moving out from Florida.

The result is that there has been another flurry of packing. We packed up a lot of the house while de-cluttering to make the house ready for sellers to wander around. That meant that we had to keep the house really clean (nothing on the counters). That is a lot easier when it’s just the two of us.

Now that we have a sale, we’ve done some more packing. I worked on the garage last weekend; about 20 boxes worth. Had some help doing the bonus room which had a lot of books and DVDs in the bookcase area.

And we’re spending a lot of time with virtual searches of houses in the new area of Utah. Pam has been doing a lot of on-line searches, and last weekend we started funneling those possibilities through the Realtor in Utah. We made up a list of requirement to help out, and this weekend (and this week) we are fine-tuning the list a bit.

The next step is a trip to Utah to wander through the houses on our list. That will keep us busy for two days before we have to get back home for more packing.

The last day of physical presence at work will be the end of May, then I will use up vacation and sick time through June. The closing date on the house is mid-May, so it’s unsure where we’ll be living during the transition between old house and new house while I still have to be in town to work.

Perhaps there will be some room in Sacramento’s Tent City. I’ll have to ask Oprah.

Noticing that the Internet is still working after the big ‘Conficker attack on 4/1/09. But there are lots of computers with the Conficker malware, as shown by this map http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/ANY/InfectionDistribution from the Conficker Working Group.

That group also has a quick test for checking if you are infected is this Conficker “Eye Chart” http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html , which uses graphic images from web sites that are blocked by Conficker. A good quick test to see if you are infected with Conficker.

Conficker is still a threat, since there is no limit to what a bot-controlled computer could be told to do. The map shows that it is still widespread. But the attention of the anti-malware community will minimize it’s impact, I think. Or at least the details of the next attack will be known.

Stacy left for Utah today. She’ll be staying with her sister for a few weeks until she finds an apartment near her new job at the Children’s Hospital in SLC. Sorry to see her go; it has been nice to have her around the house. Even if she did complain about my tickling. So it’s two down, and two to go.

Had an ‘open house’ on Saturday, but just a couple of people stopped by. It was sort of rainy, and there’s a lot of kid sports going on now, so perhaps that diminished the activity (along with the general economy). We aren’t in a big hurry to get it sold, although a closing date of June or July would work well. In the meantime, we get to keep the house clean and neat, ready for a visit by a Realtor and potential buyers.

At the office, more server building. Working on three web servers, and four new mail servers. That will keep me busy

Working today on building two new internal web servers, one public-facing web server, and four mail filtering servers. All are on virtual machine platforms. They are Windows Server 2008-based. The web servers will have IIS7 installed, with ColdFusion 8, along with the usual TrendMicro OfficeScan anti-virus program.

Quite easy to set up, though, but a bit time-consuming. The mail filtering servers will take a bit more time to get all the filtering rules and configuration in place. The existing mail servers (four of those on individual physical boxes) handle about 700,000 messages a day, blocking above 91% of that mail as spam before it gets to our internal mail servers.

On the home-sale front, our Realtor had an open house on Saturday, with about 15 visiting groups stopping by. Although no offers yet, that’s not bad in this market. In the meantime, the house has to stay clean (which is easier without children) in case of other Realtors bring a drop-in. There’s more boxing and de-cluttering needed, mostly in closets and drawers.

Had a nice visit with my sister Cyndee and her daughter Galia and others on Sunday at my mother’s house. Galia is an professional belly dancer; she and her husband run an international talent agency for others in that industry.

And my brother Steve showed off his older Lexus. It is currently without wheels, seats and air bags. Apparently, a common technique for thieves is to use a drill to drain the car battery, thereby disabling the car alarm and allowing a quiet removal of those items while the car is parked in front of the house.