June, 2003:

I can find a place. That’s easy. There are hundreds of open apartments near my work that I can afford. And, maybe the answer is… just rent one and stop caring. But, I’d like to make one last attempt at finding something better than… average. I’m going to use a different kind of search engine: word of mouth.

Recommend something to me. Maybe you live there. Maybe you used to live there. Maybe you know someone who lives there. Maybe you know of a really good site for searching apartments. Maybe you know of some little known lofts. If you can, provide a link to a webpage with more info. If you can’t just a name, address and phone number will do. Below is a list of what we’re looking for. None of these things are set in stone. We’re just looking for as many of them as possible.

• We’d like to live as close to Las Colinas as possible, since that’s where I work. However, I don’t mind driving up to 45 minutes each way if the apartment is worth it.
• We’d like to live close to restaurants and retail shops (or the dart rail) so that Jess wont require a car right away.
• I love to cook, so we want lots of counter space in the kitchen… or… a kitchen with enough floor space that I can add additional counter space myself.
• Jess really likes Garden Tubs. We have one now, and she absolutely loves it.
• I really like stand-up showers. They are easier to clean, take up less space, and I think they look nice.
• I’d prefer something other than carpet on the floors. Hardwood, ceramic tile, fake hardwood, laminate flooring, concrete… even plywood… anything really.
• I like lots of windows.
• I prefer one big open space to many tiny spaces.
• We only need one bathroom. However, if there is only one and the apartment has actual bedrooms, we’d prefer that people didn’t have to walk through our bedroom to get to the bathroom.
• Washer/Dryer connections would be nice.
• Air Conditioning is preferred.
• We need a space to sleep in, a space to live in, a space to eat in, a space to cook in, a space to compute in, and a space to shit/shower/shave in. In most cases, this corresponds to a 2 bedroom apartment with a kitchen, a dining room and a living room.
• I like high ceilings.
• We’d like to pay no more than $900/mo.
• Town Homes, Lofts, Urban Lofts, and studios are all “different” in our eyes since we’ve never lived in them.
• A unique floor plan with lots of unique things catches my eye. Skylights. Sunrooms. Bookshelves. Greenhouse windows. Bay windows. Half-walls. Bathroom windows. Staircases.
• We want to be relatively safe.

If you are responsible for selecting our next apartment, when we throw our housewarming party, you will be the honored guest.

I could draw the floorplans and list the features of 90% of the apartment complexes in DFW in my sleep. Not because I’ve seen them all (although, I’m rapidly coming closer to being able to say that I have) but because they are all the same. All I want is something different.

The only thing “different” that I can find in this area is that some apartments are nicer and more richly appointed than others. So, we figured that was a place to start. Jess and I scoured the metroplex and finally found a place that we both really liked.

It has some pros and it has some cons, just as everything else in life does. First, the cons:

• It costs $50 more than I have ever paid for an apartment. If you remove the cost of the apartment I am currently living in, then it costs $150 more than any apartment I have ever lived in.
• It’s in North Plano. As North as you can go and still be in Plano. That means I have a 45 minute drive to work every morning, and I can’t see Jess for lunch everyday as I do now.
• The closest usable freeway is the Dallas Tollway. This means that I’ll have to add about $40/mo in toll expenses unless I want to drive out of my way extending my commute time.
• It’s 40 minutes (without traffic and going ABOVE the speed limit) from my parents house, 20 minutes from Dallas, and almost an hour from Fort Worth. In other words… it isn’t close to anything but itself.
• If you add up the increase in rent, the toll costs, and the cost of additional gasoline it’s like getting a pay cut of $0.72/hr. If you factor in the cost of my time to drive everyday (assuming that my time is worth what I get paid for it at my place of employment) then it’s like getting a $5.50/hr pay cut. Of course, my time isn’t really worth that much… I’m just using it as an illustration.
• The living room is smaller than I’d like.
• It isn’t within walking distance to places of employment for Jess, which means we have to buy another car… soon.

On the good side however:

• Of all of the floor plans I’ve ever lived in, it is my favorite. The layout is wonderful.
• The kitchen is HUGE.
• It has both a stand-up shower, and a garden tub, which makes both Jess and I happy.
• All of the appointments are upgraded. Ceramic tile in the Kitchen. Berber carpet everywhere. Crown Molding. Tile back splash in the kitchen. Delta faucets. Beautiful countertops.
• It’s got a HUGE patio.
• The community itself is beautiful.
• Even though it isn’t close to Dallas, there is LOTS to do within a 10 minute drive: 2 malls, lots of restaurants, walking trails, nature areas, etc, etc.

In the search for something different, we found luxury. Unfortunately, everyone is giving me negativity about the choice we’ve made:

• Joel says it’s too far away and doesn’t make any sense to live way out there. He’d prefer that we live closer to him.
• My mom thinks we should find a place in Keller, so we can be closer to her. She thinks the rent is too high, the drive is too far, and the toll road access is ridiculous.
• Rachel pointed out that we could most likely find an apartment just as nice much closer to where I work, since they aren’t paying much more than we would be and they have a very nice place.

I don’t mind the negativity. I’d rather know upfront that I’ve considered everything than to realize I haven’t in the end. Unfortunately, everything seems so normal and unappealing.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t spend more than $700/mo on an apartment. However, unless we either settle for a one bedroom, live far away from my work, or live in the ghetto… that just isn’t possible. However, there are some places to be found for $750. And an unlimited number of options for $850.

Unfortunately, apartment search engines don’t let me search the way I want to search. On top of that, the prices advertised are ALWAYS higher than the going rate, so you have to set your limits higher and call everyone to see what the actual price is.

So… with all of these new things to consider, I’m starting to wonder if maybe there isn’t something better or closer or cheaper out there.

Can you help?

After all of these credit issues, I thought it might be wise to look at my credit report from all three agencies in order to make sure there is no other incorrect or unknown information on them. Each of the agencies make the credit reports available to you online. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, for two of the three companies, if you are entitled to a “FREE” report (because you live in certain states or because you have been denied credit due to that report) you have to order them over the phone or in writing and wait for them to show up via US Mail. TransUnion is the only company that verifies your eligibilty for a free report and issues it to you immediately online. That’s the way it should be.

It seems rather unfair that an agency in the United States can hold, duplicate, and distribute possibily fraudulent or misrepresented information about an individual. Especially since this information is never distributed to the person it describes unless a formal request is made. Additionally, since the contesting process takes so long consumers should have a method of being notified immediately of new information so that it can be corrected as soon as possible.

However, most people are of the impression that, if you paid your bills on time and in full, you would never have an issue. Unfortunately, this is not true. If you look at my case against SouthWestern Bell, my bill was paid in full over a year ago, and yet, according the credit agency, I still owe them money. Additionally, Jaclyn comes to mind with her case of stolen identity and the possible negative effects that could have on her credit.

However, it isn’t illegal to hold and distribute information about someone if that information is accurate. And, since no company or individual is required (nor should they be required) to tell every person and corporation every little piece of information they’ve heard about them in order to ensure its accuracy. Therefore, there are only two ways to correct the process. One way is to convince those companies that use the information that they should find an alternative source of information. That’s a difficult task. The other option is make the information held by these agencies so corrupted, that it is no longer of any use. If EVERY person who ever BELIEVED that ANY person or company owed them ANYTHING reported this information to all three credit agencies, I doubt there would be many people or companies with a clean record. Have so much possibly inaccurate data in the system will cause the system to either breakdown or be reformed.

For instance, even though I paid the two apartment complexes the money that they claimed I owed them in order to clear up my credit, I don’t believe that they money was justified. One of the apartment managers demands that the assement they made was correct. The other doesn’t bother to call me back. In both cases it is easy to say that I made an attempt to retrieve the debt that is owed me. Especially if you consider that I was never even contacted by the first apartment complex and yet a mark was placed on my credit. If, as a consumer, I could issue a statement to the credit agencies claiming that these companies (and the individuals that represent them) owe me money, the system would be more accurate. Unfortunately, it seems that, without the proper credentials, it is not possible to get these credit agencies to accept your information. I’m going to look into what it would take to allow me to make negative reports aganst another person.

Yesterday, Jess and I drove to Mesquite for lunch in order to pay off the last of the apartment bills. Now everything is taken care of (and we’re $1101.30 poorer). Next, we need to drive to the new apartment and show them that everything has been taken care of. Then I’ll make copies of all the information and craft one letter for each of the Credit Agencies and mail them off. That should take care of all of my credit issues for the time being.

In a 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court declared a Texas State law banning private consensual sodomy between same-sexed individuals to be unconstitutional. There are currently five states that prohibit such activities. There are an additional nine states that prohibit sodomy between heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. This decision renders those laws unconstitutional as well. [via Mark Pilgrim]

With this ruling in place, consenting adults can do it in any way they please… legally. In honor of the return of rights we should have never had taken away in the first place, I hereby declare today, June 26th, sodomy day. In honor of this ocassion, consenting adults are urged to get out there and do it anyway they’d like — oral, anal… anything but the way God intended.

And by all means, post pictures showing your support.

Just so that this is documented somewhere, below is my wishlist for bBlog. Some of these things are so trivial a monkey could implement them. Some of them are so specific to my needs that no one else would ever use them. Others would require so much recoding it might not be worth it. A few of them, are actually useful and doable. Regardless, here is the list.

• The ability to send specified TrackBack pings with each new post.
• The ability to receive TrackBack pings on each post.
• The ability to connect a TrackBack URL to a category and have that item pinged everytime a new post is made in that category.
• Auto location of all TrackBackable items that are linked to in a post.
• Allow comments to be turned off on a post (either from the beginning, or after a period of time).
• A function to GetComments.
• A function to get the next entry.
• A function to get the previous entry.
• A function to get the next entry in a cateogry.
• A function to get the previous entry in a cateogry.
• A method of creating a plugin that will interact with a post after it has been posted.
• The ability to create a list of TrackBack URLs that are commonly pinged, so they can be selected when making a new post instead of having to type them out each time.
• Paging in the admin archives list.
• Paging in the admin comments list.
• A listing of the comments on each post when editing it in the admin interface.
• A different method of providing configuration information to the application. Requiring a database hit is a lot of overhead for something that rarely changes. Additionally, setting and accessing them via define is not the best way to go.
• Separation of functions in bBlog.class.php so that the comments stuff is in a comments class, and the weblog stuff is in a weblogs class, and the database stuff is in a database class. Smarty’s register_object function comes in handy here.
• The ability to hide a category from the category list.
• The ability to access the posts by name instead of by number (or in addition to).
• A more abstracted comments module that doesn’t require $_POST[] and/or $_GET[] to be populated, but instead relies on that information being passed to it as a parameter. This makes it easier to export certain things via XML-RPC or to use them in ways the author hadn’t intended.
• Paging on the index page.
• Support for binary attachments to any post.
• The ability to MOVE a comment into a thread in the event that someone doesn’t do this correctly.
• The ability to subscribe to receive an email for new comments on a post by post basis, for an entire category, or for the weblog as a whole.
• Completion of the email comment notification code.
• The removal of all English and HTML from non-template files. This includes the word “Posted” in the since function and the words “One” and “comment” in the comments module.
• Conditional GET support.
• A spell checker.
• A search function.
• Cookie based user data storage to save users from having to type it in every time.

I’m sure this list will change in time… but that’s it for now.

I’m sure you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you. The new engine behind revjim.net is bBlog. My setup isn’t stock, but it’s close. Let me go over some of my changes.

Of course I’m not using the default templates — I’ve rewritten them all to my liking. It’s fairly easy to do given the flexible nature of the template engine behind bBlog: namely, Smarty. I’m using the cleanurls option, which isn’t something you can turn on with a single click. It takes a little configuring to get it going. Additionally, I threw away the included rss.php file, and just used Smarty to handle that as well. It seemed like the right thing to do. The “comments” urls and the “archive” urls are also not included. However, they are pretty easy to do. Just copy the “item” script (which is used when you enable cleanurls) and modify it to do whatever you need to do. By creating additional template files (aside from post.html, which is what is called by item by default) you can have different URLs call different template files. This is exactly what I’ve done.

I don’t use the {posts} block provided by bBlog, and instead use the {getrecentposts}, {getarchiveposts} and {getpost} functions, which are all included (thanks to my CVS commits) with the bBlog source and are self documenting via the admin control panel. For my needs, those functions work better than the block functions.

Additionally, I’ve added in email support, so that commenters can receive notification of replies. This isn’t in CVS, because I just added it quickly so that it would work and, because of that, it isn’t fully templateable (yet) — the subject line and message body are hardcoded in English, currently.

I wrote a small script to convert all MovableType Categories, Posts, and Comments into bBlog. Some information in MovableType is ignored, such as the “excerpt” and “extended entry” information, because bBlog doesn’t support it (yet!). Additionally, TrackBack data was NOT moved over. As soon as bBlog supports TrackBack, I’ll modify my script to include the conversion for that as well. If you’re interested in using the script, let me know and I’ll send it to you. It isn’t very clean (you have to edit the source and configure it manually) and it only supports MySQL based MovableType blogs, but it’s useful anyway.

Let me know if you have any questions regarding how it works, or how to use it for your own needs. I’d be more than happy to help you along and show you the ropes. If you’re a control freak, like myself, I bet you’ll like it.

Jess and I are house-sitting for my parents in Keller while they go on a short vacation to New Mexico. They should be back Sunday night.

It’s very odd to live in this house again. My bed isn’t here anymore, so we’re sleeping in my parents bed (with clean sheets, thank you very much). Everything here is very familiar, and yet very different at the same time.

At one point, Keller was in the country. There was nothing here. Nothing at all. One grocery store, one movie rental place (and it wasn’t even a BlockBuster). This place has grown up a lot. Regardless of that, it’s still more country than anywhere I’ve lived in the past 8 years. The nights are darker, and quieter. Yet, in that quiet and darkness, there is so much light… so much noise. It’s beautiful.

My drive to work, however, has gone from 2 minutes, to about 45. So I’d better get in the shower and get the day started.

Movable Type sucks. So… bye bye.

Some stuff is broke. I just don’t care.

Leave a comment.

I really need to just shut off the left side of my brain for a while. So I’m considering going out to the Across the Street Bar for the Wednesday night Drum Circle. Are there any other drum owners that would be interested in going?