Many of you know I’ve been using a Windows machine for what feels like decades. I’ve owned Mac’s since 2005 but never used them as my full-time machine. Instead, I used them for trips and casual computing.
Until now.
I recently purchased a nice new MacBook Pro with a nice new i7 processor and 8 GB of memory. This thing flys. And with Vmware Fusion running Windows in the background, I can still run a few programs I need. I switched for a number of reasons, but the timing was because my other computers were getting old.
I’ll have to write more later about my experience switching. I tried once in 2005, but it didn’t work out. Today, the tools are much better. We have Dropbox for synchronizing projects, and fonts now work cross-platform, and I love Sparrow (instead of the Mail app).
Well, I’m 30 years old. God has been good to me! This is a photo from my birthday (the lunch order number was 30, which was funny). Here is a photo that Kent took while we ate lunch.
Today marks 1-year since I bought my first house. It’s been an adventure, to say the least. Here’s a list of improvements:
Raised the block wall in the back yard, added stucco, and painted it white.
Raised height of gate.
Filled in sunken living room with concrete.
Wood floors in the living room and dining room.
New baseboard in living room and dining room.
New carpet in entire house.
Painted entire house.
Cleaned, then painted garage floor blue.
Fixed sprinkler system.
New toilets.
New sink / cabinet in half bath.
Repairs to kitchen cabinetry.
New stucco on indoor fireplace and new paint.
Installed crown molding in living room.
Repairs to sprinkler system and pool backwash piping.
Installed recessed lights in foyer.
New knobs on kitchen cabinets.
Besides all of that, I bought a lot of new and used furniture and my mom and dad helped me decorate and set everything up. They’re a big reason that list above is so big. Without their help I would have never accomplished so much in just one year.
What’s next? I need to get some additional artwork on the walls and get busy finding me a wife!
I’ve been working on making my home office the best home office in the world. I’ve recently added a new second monitor, and also some shelves in my office closet. Here’s a video I made that gives you a walk through.
Sometime down the road, I plan to do more videos showing the rest of the house.
Well, I purchased my first home and it’s going great. Here is a photo. I’m currently working on setting up my home office and just painted my desk a slick black. Having lots of fun maintaining the backyard, too. Everything from mowing the lawn with my push mower to cleaning the pool.
On Saturday I went on my first balloon ride! If you’ve never been, I highly recommend the experience. The balloon ride lasted about an hour and a half. Since the wind was moving in different directions at different altitudes, we were able to land only a quarter mile away from where we took off.
I’ve been looking at houses now for a couple of months. I’m not in any hurry and my Realtor and I have been looking at all kinds of houses. Many of the tips about buying houses say that you’ll have to look at a good dozen houses before you really know what you want. That’s true.
On Saturday, we looked at 7 or 8 houses and the last one was a house in Scottsdale near Shea that turned out to be pretty cool. It’s cool enough that I decided to put in an offer (watch the video of the house). I won’t know for 10+ days whether I have it (because it’s a “short sale”) but it sounds like my offer was “in the drivers seat” according to the broker.
