Almost forgot...

...that DirecTV upgraded the software on out TiVo. It is not about 3 times faster for every mundane task, like menu scrolling and fast-forwarding. But the best thing is sortable menus. Now your "Now Playing" list can be sorted by different meta-data. The best one is sorting by show name, which will automatically group the same show in its own "folder." Previously, everything was sorted by the date recorded, and the sub-sorted for what you asked to be recorded (at the top of the list) and the "suggestions" at the bottom. Now, the TiVo suggestions will be in their own folder for easy browsing (or deleting, which is most of the time). It is now easy to see that we have something like 20 hours of one-show-not-to-be-named (cough *Gilmore Girls* cough) and 5 "Grey's Anatomy."

The only one thing that I really want is a option to see how much time is left on the hard drive. Still don't have that one--we have to manually estimate.

I'm pretty impressed with this. It isn't often that a software update makes things faster, but this one has. And added functionality. Score one for DirecTiVo.

The weathermen were WRONG!

Once again, our local weather gang mailed it in. The prediction for this weekend was crap, crap, and more crap with a chance of crap.

But amazing things happened. Saturday: a little cloudy and cool, but nice. Sunday: still a little cool, a touch of wind, but beautiful. And Monday, so far: not a cloud in the sky and only a slight breeze.

That means it's biking time. 32 miles yesterday, hopefully something similar today.

So I guess we'll let our local "goof on the roof" get a pass on his lynching.

Houses built on sand

I was going through my newspapers from the last week--since I can't hardly get into them during the work week--but there was an interesting article that had some of the same questions I have been asking myself for some time.

But first, some background:
As I noted before, my wife and I are back into looking for our "next house." There is some pleasure in this ("look at that," "I like the way that one looks," "What the heck were they thinking painting that pink?") but there is also a fair amount of pain. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area real estate market is like a lot of others, in that the median values of houses are spiraling upwards at a pretty good clip. This has led to us inquiring about prices of specific houses only to hear "This property is priced at *insert $1,000,000+ value here*." (And no, you don't necessarily know prima fascia as to whether the house is a millioner, so we are not just being dumb)

Now my wife and I are both engineers and make a pretty good amount of money. Our debt level is low and pay our bills, contribute to our 401(k)s and all that jazz. But we can not understand a few things:

• How people are swinging the mortgage payments for these places,
• What the heck they are doing (careerwise) to get this money, and
• Do they only eat ramen noodles?

So anyways, this article in the Wall Street Journal had some answers for me, aside from posing these questions that had been in our minds. The gist of it is that people are taking interest-only mortgages and selling before the "real" payments are to be paid, they are taking multiple mortgages and using the equity to buy additional properties to rent, and generally living on the edge. One guy had something like $15 million in property and $12 million in debt. There was concern in the article that if the rental market doesn't keep up, this scheme falls flat.

But for me, I was pretty stunned. I'm an engineer, not a realtor. I do what I do best. The idea of many of my peers (or fellow citizens) doing this sort of thing really shocked me. Are they doing it because it is trendy? Are they hoping this will be the way to fund their lifestyles? Are they being smart about the investments?

Just more things to think about when we drive around, looking at all of the "million dollar babies."

A SALE at the Apple Store!?

So we were again at the Mall of America last night (those of you who know me know my acronym for this thing) and stopped by the Apple Store. My wife noted that our walking path had "conveniently" taken us by there. I can neither confirm nor deny this.

In any case, in the back of this store was an unassuming wire-frame shelf. I was curious. So we approached and reality dawned: Apple had a sale rack!!!

Apple never, ever has sales on the stuff we saw there. So we got a Bluetooth Apple mouse for our Powerbook and a pair of Shure E2C in-ear speakers. Total savings: $60.

Then we continued on our merry way to JCrew...along my designated route.

What's that ball of light-thing?

So we have some sun in the sky...for now. Minneapolis has had a generally crappy May, with lots of rain and very little sun. If you get any, you had better enjoy it, because it will not stay around long. The wind had also been pretty constant, making some outdoor activities (biking particularly) pretty frustrating. Nothing makes me more angry than hammering hard, looking at my speedometer, and seeing "8 mph" because of a 15-20 mph gusting wind.

Anyways, there have been some other random things for us here:

• We are looking at houses. Actually, we have found two subdivisions that look really good, so we will likely watch them really closely. But we will be getting pre-approved for a mortgage so if we see something we like, we'll go for it. This may cause some pain, since we have some things to do on our current house, but oh well. It will be exciting to get out of the townhouse into something, well, more adult.
• I hit a home run Friday night in softball. Oddest thing, I was 0-2 at that point and hitting like a gurl. Tried to relax, stay and wait on the ball, and got a good pitch. No one thought it was going to go out--it was a line drive to right center and never got above 30 feet. But it carried and went. My first "real" homer in two years (aside from the one that was an "out" in the state tournament, uugh!).
• Speaking of softball, the bat manufacturers are really ticking guys off. Now they are introducing their bats in the middle of the season. This is great for the ogres who are on sponsored teams or buy 5 bats a year--but for the rest of us--who still feel a little ill about the $300 we just dropped on the "hottest" composite we got in February--we've been betrayed! Seriously, so far I have heard of the following companies doing this: Miken, Worth, Easton, Anderson, and Mizuno. Only Demarini hasn't, and they are likely not far behind. Perhaps we should all quit buying...what, you said 10 extra feet? Sold!
  
• 155,000 miles are now on my '92 Sentra. Will the body rust through before the engine goes? My new goal is 169,000 miles, which would be 100,000 miles after I bought it in 1997. At my current rate of driving (1000 miles every 12 days), this would happen in about 5 months. Nothing like a good old car. Except when the sunroof leaks.