revjim.net

October, 2007:

Save The Date: Welcome back to Texas party!

UPDATE: This day isn’t going to work. How about this one instead?

Jess and I planning to host a “Welcome back to Texas” party. If the going away party wasn’t without enough purpose, this one will be filled with even less, and, in my mind, that makes it even better.

Tentatively we’re looking at the evening of Saturday, October 20th. If you can make it, a quick “aye” would be appreciated. More so, however, if this date conflicts with something else you have going on, please say so now or forever hold your piece (and your peace).

Also, since I have a new phone it’s fun time again. Send your favorite photo of yourself (or MY new potential favorite photo of you) to danielphone AT inklog DOT net so I can see your pretty picture every time I look in my address book or receive contact from you. Isn’t technology FUN!?!?

I need some spare muscles

If you’re not doing anything tomorrow around noon-ish I could really use a hand picking up a piece of furniture at a place near my house and bringing it home. It’s not all that heavy, just a bit too awkward for me to lift alone and Jess is a bit too pregnant to help.

Thanks in advance!

New Email Setup

In order to get the most flexibility out of my Blackberry, I’ve decided to move my mail over to Yahoo.com since they are currently the only non-corporate email system that works in flawless two-way synchronization with the Blackberry.

So my personal account is on Yahoo while my Web account is still on the server. This way I can test both and see which I like more. If I stick with Yahoo, I’ll pay the $20/yr for Yahoo! Plus Mail to remove the ads from outgoing email and all that. Until then, you’ll have to ignore the taglines at the bottom of my personal emails.

If Yahoo! Plus Mail just included IMAP service as well, it’d be a no-brainer. Silly Yahoo, POP is for kids.

What sucks even more is that Yahoo can do IMAP. They do it for the special iPhone service. But the iPhone has some magic in it that figures out the right user name to use over IMAP, and that magic has not been made known to me.

So send lots of email to my personal account (daniel AT inklog DOT net) and my web account (jim AT revjim DOT net) so that I can really play with it.

This always happens

I got a call this morning from my Lawyer’s office again. She had two pieces of information.

1) She talked to the relocation division of my company and didn’t feel confident that my assigned relocation agent knew what she was doing. Then again, this may not be a common occurrence, so maybe she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

2) The bank that held the old lien got the release in yesterday afternoon and, at this point, we are 100% ready to close if we still want the house.

I told her “no”. I told her to start negotiations with the other lawyer to get us released from our contract. But I can’t say that my heart wasn’t heavy as I said those words.

It figures. One day after we decide we’re not waiting any more and that we’re just staying here and everything finally comes together.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

Today has been incredibly stressful and I feel as though I had to bear the weight of it alone despite the fact that I am not the person really making any of the decisions here. I don’t like this one bit.

Even mentioning backing out of an offer makes everyone mad. My agent is mad because she thinks she wont be getting paid. The seller’s agent is mad because he thinks he won’t be getting paid. The seller is mad because he moved into an apartment to vacate the house quick enough for us to move in. I don’t like making people mad. I don’t like creating hardships for people.

The agent and the seller are now jumping through hoops to get us a closing date. Why they didn’t do this weeks ago like I had begged them to I don’t know. But at this point, it doesn’t really matter, so they are doing this work for nothing.

I spoke to the seller myself and got a “price” from him regarding how much he’d want to release me from the contract. That coupled with the 7% that goes to the agents and it’s a pretty hefty chunk of change. I did this because that’s what I thought my employer wanted me to do.

After doing all of that I found out that my employer would have accepted almost any offer and that the relocation company should be negotiating this, not me. So, now the my company’s relocation group is working through this and they’ll contact me when they need something from me.

It’s not over yet, but it’s much, much closer. The general gist of it — though I’m reluctant to say anything without having it in writing and even then I’m not sure — is that we’re staying in Texas. Stay tuned for the “Welcome Home Daniel and Jess”  party announcement.

I haven’t been this angry, confused, frustrated, and mentally exhausted in a long time. Send me something to cheer me up or take my mind off of this. Please.

Lawyer Up, Buddy! (aka, the Worst Day Ever)

I’ve had three different people threaten to sue me today. That’s a new record by about… three. And it’s not even 9:30am yet.

Hooray!

The Tollway, baby!

After many months of anticipation, the Dallas North Tollway has finally reached US-380. This means that after a 3-mile drive from my house, I am on the Tollway.

Despite the nearly $5 each way in tolls I’ll have to pay I decided to give it a try this morning. I left my house just before 6:40am and was in my parking garage by 7:15am. That’s about 25-40 minutes shorter than my usual commute.

I don’t even know how much I was paying in tolls before, but, I’m certainly going to do the math now and see if the time savings are worth the difference in cost.

I do think it’s pretty shitty of DFW to fund it’s highway infrastructure by charging people like me $200/mo ($5 one way, twice a day, 20 days a month). But, I guess that’s the way of the future and certainly incentive to move a bit closer to work.