I’m not going to get longwinded about this, I just figure I will offer up a few observations about the upcoming season. Once again I don’t think the Giants will do well. Their secondary is weak and they’ve made offensive line changes that were needed but will take a season or more to take. Shockey will almost definitely have a very positive effect on their passing game but if the line can’t keep Collins safe (which it looks like they will have a lot of trouble with) then he will be giving the ball away again this season. This is also the year Ron Dayne needs to either put up the numbers or get lost. So far he’s been a bit of a bust. I don’t have a solid read on the linebreakers but I was very sorry to see Armistead go, he was and is a solid linebacker….
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Nick and I went kayaking this past sunday around Bailey’s island and had a great time. The weather was perfect and we had some nice 3-4 foot swells on one side of the island. I haven’t had a chance to process the images yet but I figured I would post something in the interim. This is a montage I took of the area we launched from. It started as about 8 images that I stitched together, none too cleanly but they’re good enough to give you a sense of the area. More to follow sometime this week.

Look at this. Who the hell are those people, and who are the fools subsidizing them? Michael in particular is looking real bad these days, but Brit isn’t looking to normal either. I wonder – if you asked them if they thought it was all worth it, would they say yes?

The mortgage company has gotten back in touch and upped my limit to $175k from the initial $150k. Now to find a house. When I get back to work on Tuesday I’m going to contact a couple of the local realtors and see who can come up with something for me. I’ll post links to the houses I have been looking at as I find them.

One thing I have concluded is that I need to get frugal. No more $8 lunches, no more ‘I feel like filet mignon and shrimps tonight,’ no more ‘I must have that $50 videogame now,’ no more ‘New videocard for the gaming rig, yee ha!’ every 6 months. I’ve been very spoiled the past couple of years. While I knew this would come it is still bumming me out. Even today I had to restrain myself from bidding on a game on ebay.

Poor me, crying about no new toys, he he. Oh well. I’ll whimper intermittently about this over the next few months I’m sure.

I’ve started the home buying process. I went to the bankers yesterday and got pre-approved for at least $150k. I was a little surprised by this. I had some financial troubles just after college and I thought that those would still be haunting me, but the bank ran my credit rating and she told me I had the second highest rating of anyone she had run in the past 10-15 years. It was an 813 in case anyone is keeping score.

Next step is the bank sends me an official pre-approval letter, at which point I can begin talking to the realtors. I’ve already started looking for houses. If you’re interested you can use realtor.com and input maine as the state, Brunswick as the town. There are several houses for under $150k, including one that is only a 10 minute walk from my office and another that is a 240 year old house on 3 acres of land. I plan on looking at both of them as soon as my pre-approval comes through.

I’ve also scoped out a few in Harpswell and Topsham. There’s a nice oceanview cottage in Harpswell that looks promising that I plan on looking at as well.

More to come as the process continues. I might actually be in a new house by this fall though if all plays out well.

Check out Perdido Street Station. I’ve been reading mediocre heroic fiction for about the last year and a half, intersperesed with batches of superb manga. I had lost sight of how engrossing a truly excellent novel can be. The story follows the adventures of a cast of characters in a sort of steam punk alterna-history london with some aspects of tolkien-inspired fantasy mixed in. Yes, it is that bizarre 😉 Two thumbs up from me though, by all means check it out if you’re looking for something interesting to read.

Buried deep in a mefi thread was a post about The ’74 cockroach attack. It sounded too interesting to pass up, so I didn’t. Worth a look for a short laugh. In brief: jackass army researchers inadvertantly unleash a horde of hard to kill giant cockroaches on a small town. Residents get pissed, the army denies, citizens ultimately prevail.

I was mulling over theGoogle Answers service and thinking of other models along the same line and came up with an idea. In case you’re not familiar with it, you can use Google Answers to find answers to questions. Any questions. Want to know what Babe Ruth batted in his rookie year, and you can’t find the answer? You can ask Google Answers, offer a sum of money for the answer, and if one of Google’s experts knows the answer or how to find it and thinks your fee is sufficient, they will find the answer, tell you, then take your money. It’s brilliant. It remains to be seen whether it is sustainable or not, but in theory it’s an excellent concept. We’ll call it….
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A few months ago my brother and I had an argument about satelite radio services. He thought they were a great idea, I thought they were doomed to failure. While both of them have been struggling, the jury is still out on their longterm prospects. One of my central points in the debate with my brother was that there was no way I would pay $10 or so a month for access to satellite radio when I get what I need for free already. Among his counterarguments was the quality (which isn’t there – they’re streaming 96kbs MP3 files. By way of comparison, I won’t play anything below 192kbs on my stereo) and breadth of programming. Which is actually true. But still, I was adamant – I wouldn’t pay and I seriously doubted that enough people would pay to make satellite radio commercially succesful.

I still think that. But the irony lies here – today, I sent $10 via paypal to Radio Paradise. Why? Because they kick ass. They’re tremendously better than anything I can get off of broadcast radio. They’re exposing me to new artists that I like, something that I’ve been trying to do myself, largely unsuccesfully, by hunting through usenet for recommendations. Yet the quality is not that good, it’s prone to interruptions, and most importantly, I paid for it. And I’ll likely continue to pay them periodically if they continue to deliver.

So I’m guilty of intellectual dishonesty I guess, or at least of inconsistency. But do give Radio Paradise a try. Check out their website too, it’s got a great ‘community ranking’ feature similar to ones like Game Rankings that I’ve linked to in the past.