Since it’s New Year’s Eve, I figured I’d reflect on what I accomplished for 2008 and what I expect out of 2009. If you’re not into these “year-end wrapup” type of posts, just scroll over to Slashdot now.

In 2008, my main goals were to re-evaluate my graduate school plans, finish a half-marathon in 2 hours, run a 5K in 25 minutes, and buy a house. I am pleased to report that I succeeded in most of my goals.

I took the Database Systems qualification exam in the Spring and passed. That was a major hurdle in my willingness to continue taking them and pursuing something beyond a Masters. I also took the Data/Text Mining for Computational Biology this Fall and await the grade (on pins and needles). If I pass that exam, I am 2/3rds of the way to completing that requirement.

I have not run a half-marathon this year. I wanted to do the DRC Half again, but decided against it due to my educational requirements. I have a half marathon on January 25 that I’ve always wanted to do, the 3M Half Marathon. Let’s hope for the best (likely target is 2:05).

During the RunOn! McKinney holiday social run, I finished the 5K course in 25:22. There were about 40 people, nearly twice as many, and I came in with the lead pack. In fact, I was the fourth one to finish. That’s a rather impressive time for me considering I struggled to maintain a 9:00 pace last year. It’s not an official time, but I’m still going to count it until I do another 5K and can beat that time.

In October, we bought a house; well, technically it was in September. We had been wanting to buy a house for nearly 3 years. We aggressively saved, struggled through having to buy a car, unemployement, paying for graduate school, and huge tax payments. We are now the proud owners of a nice home (3/2/1, 2000 square feet). It requires more work and more money, but it beats living in an apartment any day of the week. I will eventually get some pictures up (one thing at a time).

So what do I expect out of 2009? Well, I hope to accomplish just as much. My better half will should be a CPA this time next year and I will be nearly complete of the Masters program. I also hope to be moving towards the PhD program, possibly look into other universities.

I think next year we will get a dog for the empty dog house out back. We might also consider having rugrats of our own, but we don’t want to be neglegent parents (with school’s demand). We’ll have to see how that pans out, her biological clock is ticking loudly.

I want to do a half matarthon in 2:00 and finish a 5K in 23 minutes. I would like to travel to do a race as to keep things fresh. There are still no marathon plans yet because I haven’t grown bored of the half; plus the training for the half allows me ample time for my many pursuits.

Lastly, I intend on committing more effort to my faith. Since I have no problem waking up at 6am to run, I have no excuse to not make early service on Sunday. I won’t make a lofty goal like I did with the Daily Bible. Keep it simple and you’ll surely succeed.

Anyways, I have to finish celebrating the New Year and so should you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

A few days ago, I started a 13 day vacation for the hoidays. I haven’t had a real vacation since February 2007 when we went to Seattle (pictures will surely follow). Tons of things have happened in the last few months, so I’ll run through them since I have been very negligent of most things. I’ll make a separate post about Christmas and what I expect out of 2009 soon.

We bought a house in October. We moved in and tried unpacking. Until the day before family was slated to visit, we were only half-way unpacked. We now only have the master bedroom to finish.

I finished my Data/Text Mining For Computational Biology course. The workload was lopsided with October and November having the bulk of the work. I also took the qualifier for this class. There were only 2 people taking this exam, myself included with only 1 person having attempted it before. It lasted 3.5 hours and was most definitely written by committee. I don’t know what my final grade is because the website is closed right now (seriously, who “closes” a website?).

I’ve started the Great Music Archive Project. I intend to have every music CD we own ripped to FLAC by the end of the vacation. So far, I am at least half-way done and have a whole box I have not unpacked and checked their status. Afterwards, I’ll start the Great Music Tagging Project.

Speaking of archiving, I’ve started the Great Photography Archive Project as well. This is nearly complete and will begin the Great Photography Publishing Project shortly thereafter.

I signed up for the 3M Half Marathon finally, since I have been training for it for the last 6 months (2 months off can really do damage). The event is on 25 January 2009. I usually loathe reading other peoples’ race reports, so I will gleefully force mine on the few readers that remain.

I also have a plan to start daily perl6 development without altering my schedule. I will post details once I actually start. It involves a laptop and a morning commute. Sounds dangerous, doesn’t it?

Anyways, I must continue my archival projects now since I plan on accomplishing no real work while on vacation.

It has been a long time since I have posted anything, but I found a couple of stories that I simply could not go on without sharing with the masses. I have always been weary of the holiday “potluck” luncheon, and these articles exemplify my opinion of these situations. Attending one of these things is like being a politician on the campaign path, visiting a small town where they stick some foul smelling food in front of your face, and you feel forced to try it; grimace, and say how good it tastes all in the name of (office) politics.

Happy Holidays!!!

Holiday Potlucks Where Bacteria…

Grossed Out by Holiday Potlucks? Join the Crowd

I am testing out the new QuickPress posting tool on the (finally) revamped Wordpress dashboard. This new dashboard looks much more useful than the unintuitive dash on the 2.6 release.

Anyways, it’s been hell getting everything setup. IPCop seemed to clear out my dyndns setting and wasn’t updating even though the site had been up for 2 weeks. I’ve been crammed with too much work in the last month for my current class, so I haven’t had time to do much.

We have moved into our house, but maybe 50% of stuff is unpacked, so we’ll have to finish that after the semester is over. I don’t have any pictures of the new house, but I will eventually post a curbside photo.

Back to the grind. Good to be back and up finally.

I just wanted to post yet another heads up to anyone out there. This weekend, I will be making the final move of the office equipment from the old apartment into the new house. Today, the new house was connected, thus how I am finally able to post something. I signed up for Time Warner Cable’s 10Mbs package and I’m rather disappointed I can’t see anywhere near the the full speed (only about 2/3rd’s the speed of the u-verse connection).

Anyways, don’t be alarmed, the webserver, router, and workstation will be setup in my newly painted office this weekend. I’m tempted to install a second and third network card into the file server and run the router system through a virtual machine. That may have to wait until another weekend when I have a sliver of free time; right now every ounce of free time is spent either unpacking or on schoolwork.

No rest for the wicked.

Wow, has it been that long since my last posting? Well, I have a good excuse. For the last few months, the wife and I have been trying to make a big change in our lives and it finally culminated last Friday.

Back in July, I called a realtor and we started the process for searching for a new home – our first home. We weren’t looking for anything special: one-story, 3-4 bedrooms, and moderate backyard. We were open to various neighborhoods in Dallas: McKinney, Allen, Frisco, Plano, and Rockwall. We spent our weekends seeing upwards of six homes a day. The weekends were draining, especially since I was working overtime as well. One trip to Rockwall ruled it out; it was too rural for me. Plano never seemed interesting. Frisco was too far away from work for me. Allen is expensive unless you live in the “shady” part of town. McKinney seemed like a good middle ground.

It may seem like a strange time to buy a house, what with all of the complete financial market meltdown, but what seems like a bad market to some is really a good investment opportunity to others. We met with a Chase bank representative and setup a loan. We had actually planned and saved for the last three years. After running through the ammoritization tools and calculating things by hand time and time again, we knew exactly what we were able to afford. Our lender was amazed at how much work we had done to prepare. Our hardwork paid off later.

After seeing approximately 60 homes, we invited our parents up to see our top 5 homes. They pointed out a few things we hadn’t noticed. We talked about them for hours and hours. Finally, we settled on a house and wrote the offer. After waiting for 4 days, the sellers decided they didn’t want to sell their home after all. The home was taken off the market and we were back to square one.

Twenty homes later, we finally found something we both loved. It had wood floors, nice backyard, granite countertops, 3 bedrooms, a study, was in an established neighborhood, and was in good condition. The price was in the ballpark; the floors and kitchen were upgraded to our liking. Overall, it was what we were looking for from the beginning. It had only been on the market for two days and we made an offer and started the process.

The selling agent went on vacation after listing the house, so we were left to deal with her mother. This woman became the selling agent as the listing agent was away for a majority of the negotiations; she quickly became a major hassle. The buyers were working on buying a forclosure and were having trouble dealing with the bank. They procrastinated, fudged the contract, and gave us grief. The selling agent changed a counter offer contract after the sellers signed it. They quibbled over small things like the refridgerator and demanded a 3 day lease-back.

Finally, we finished the contract and scheduled the inspections. All of the inspections came back without any issues (we of coarse we went to our own inspectors). We asked for a few minor things to be fixed that could be potentially hazardous. The financing was finished and we were set for our final walk-through. Unfortunately, they had chosen not to do one of the repairs.

Our lender waited until the last second to finish their paperwork but it cost us about $800 less in the end. When we got to closing, I was pretty pissed off about the repair the sellers refused to do. We kept our end of the contract and closed in 2 hours. The title closer kept receiving phone calls. Turns out the selling agent was trying to prevent the title company from releasing the keys to us before the lease was over. This was audacious and we took them anyways.

Our agent worked very hard for us. She did what I would expect of an agent. She was understanding and patient. Considering that we looked at nearly every home for sell in the area, patience was a virtue. She stuck up for us when the selling agent was being a pain in the ass too. All in all, I would absolutely recommend her to other people.

So after the house was funded, we received a call from our realtor informing us that the listing agent had incorrectly listed the house as being part of the community with access to a pool. Under the threat of legal counsel, the selling and listing agent agreed to do the repair, give us a handwritten letter of apology, hire a maid service, and write a $1000 check for a washer and dryer. I didn’t care about the pool, so I was very pleased to be saving even more money ($800 off closing, plus $400 our lender owes us for trying to double dip a fee, plus this $1000 makes for $2200 in savings).

So we’re in the process of moving, changing services, and preparing for ownership. We own our first home now! We had been saving for 4 years and it finally happened. No more stairs, no more balconies, no more loud neighbors, no more full parking lots, and no more living on inches away from your neighbors. This is going to be fun.

I don’t really have anything to blog about right now, but I did want to just say that I am still around and as busy as ever. School has started once again; I have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7-8:15pm and Sunshine has class on Mondays from 7-10pm. I’m also officially on “mandatory overtime,” which to you lucky stiffs in the non-government sector means nothing. To me, it means “we want the whole department to work overtime to pull in contract sales faster, so we want you to do 10% extra a month.”

On top of all of that, we are in the process of buying a house. I’ll do another write-up this weekend about my experiences doing so, since there may be some other first-timers out there who’d like a scientists’ point of view.

Anyways, I’ve got a few posts scheduled for the weekend. I also have regular maintenance on erebus scheduled (cleaning, updates, security, etc). Lastly, I am going to update zero-blog and finish setting up the photography section already. I’ve been screwing around with that for a year and it’s time I just hurried up with it (I spent the few hours organizing and labeling my photots, so I don’t have any good excuses not to finish).

Don’t touch that dial; it’s a three day weekend coming up!