While it’s technically still premature to say things are a done deal, we now have a new house in West Virginia. After a full month of searching mostly online and partially in person, including at least one failed bid, we’re now in the contract phase where all that’s left is the paperwork.
We have a closing date of July 28th. The home inspector has already been through and given his approval of everything, the financial paperwork should be on its way back to our bank in North Carolina as of this writing, and the movers are scheduled to show up at the old house on the 31st, meaning we ought to have our stuff in WV by August 4th. (That said, I know of a couple friends who just moved from New York to Florida who spent a miserable 42 days (a coincidental number?) while their possessions were locked up in various warehouses and tractor trailers, completely out of their reach. I’m hoping for a bit more competence from our moving company.)
So far, I like this little building. Compared to our cramped little starter home in NC, this will have a lot more room. It has two stories, the top comprising of the living room, kitchen, and three bedrooms, while the lower level is split about 40/60 between the two-car garage and a spacious den. We’ve already picked which bedroom will be the baby’s room and which will be the office. The living room and den will be quandaries, however, as we don’t really have enough stuff to fill both. It’s especially difficult deciding where we’re going to put the massive 57″ widescreen TV; getting up the hill or those stairs into the living would be a pain, and it would be shame lot to put it down in that huge ol’ den. Of course, being the geek that I am, I’ve already been trying to decide where to put the cable modem router to get the best possible wireless signal throughout the entire house. (I’ve also got a plan for running Ethernet into the office to the 16-port switch, but that can wait.)
The house cost a bit more than we originally wanted to pay. However, in the same frame, I think we may have been aiming a little lower than we needed to in our pricing. Once the financing calculations were done, we found out that the mortgage payment won’t be significantly higher than what we’re already paying in NC. And since we’re notorious savers and have an obnoxiously sparkling clean credit history (we’re too goody-two-shoes for our own good), we’ll be able to comfortably pay the big ol’ 20% down payment directly without having to finance that as well. (I say “comfortably” in that we’ve got the liquid assets to do it, not that it won’t hurt. Of course, it will help that our estimated return from the sale of the NC house will almost completely reimburse the down payment on the WV, but that’s part of the “comfortable” part as well; we should be able to buy the new house first with the cash on hand, then worry about making up the return on the old house later.)
So now that you’ve been updated on the house, I’ll throw in one meta-blog update as well: When the move finally occurs, the machine hosting this site and the GPF Store will be moving as well. Since I physically control this box, I’ll be breaking her down, packing her up, and setting her up in the new house myself. The good news is that I should be able to do this with a minimum of downtime, perhaps only a day or two, depending on how quickly we can get cable service set up. The bad news is that it could be longer if there are unforeseen delays, such as delays in getting the cable set up, the movers require enough of my attention that I can’t take time to set up the network, etc. So if you can’t reach the blog or the Store for a while around the end of this month and the beginning of this month, that’s why.
Oh, and one other note: I was able to finally sit down and actually draw line art for comics this week. I’ve set up the art desk at my parents’ house temporarily, and was able to squeeze in a week’s worth (of the old schedule, one “Sunday” and six “dailies”) in a couple nights. I honestly can’t remember the last time I physically drew. I had drawn up a couple weeks’ worth of line art some time back, when I first started the new job, and I’ve been doing the digital half of those strips until I recently ran out. It was both refreshing and exhausting at the same time, like I was getting back to something I enjoy that I’ve missed, but that also takes a great deal of energy to accomplish. Either way, it felt good to be back in the GPF saddle.
Oh, and maybe one more other note: There may be a baby update tomorrow. We’ll see.
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Jeff – That is great news. I’m glad to hear that things seem to be moving forward easily as far as the move goes. My wife and I are polar opposites of you when it comes to saving (it’s mostly me), and so getting a house was a bit more difficult. Also, you’re getting a bigger house than we could ever hope to afford in California. Here’s hoping that things continue to go well… and has the store been up? Last time I went out there (maybe it was because I was looking for the perl T-shirt), it seemed to still be down.
On a side note, I’ve been in intensive perl training all this week (today’s the last day), so I’d wished I had the shirt to wear. However, I was able to find an image of the back of the black T-shirt, so I was able to show it to my instructor.
Again, I’m glad to hear things are going well with the house buying/moving.
I’ve heard all about the housing prices in California. As much as I’ve enjoyed my visits to San Diego over the years (wish I could get up to LA, San Francisco, or even the mountains some day), I doubt I’d want to live there. I doubt I could ever *afford* to live there!
The Store is officially closed until after the move is complete. I originally took it down because of the failing hard drive, but after I replaced it, things were getting so hectic with the move that I felt it best to leave the store down until we could get settled in WV. Of course, recent events now mean the store should reopen in early August. (This assumes, of course, I don’t have any problems hosting the site over the cable modem.)
I’m glad you were able to find an image of the Subliminal Perl code. I always get a kick out of people trying to parse it in their heads. If your instructor decides to do so, I’ll point out one major pitfall: the code uses the variable $l (“dollar ell”), which many people missread as $1 (“dollar one”), which every Perl hacker knows has a special meaning. This was a poor choice of variable names on my part (hint: the “L” is for “length”) and it’s tripped a lot of people up, especially if they tried typing it in to verify that it works (which it does).