20% seems like a lot, and it is, but that seemed to be the least of our problems. Here’s some more advice:

• Maintain a separate account for funding your laon. Have a separate account for funding your loan. Temporarily have your paychecks go there, have your gift money go there, stock sales, etc. This way you can build up your 20% without having to worry about miscellaneous income. E.g. I had some small amounts of money enter my account due to expenses that I filed with my employer. I had to paper-trail those.
• Get your funding in advance. If you can have the aforementioned account fully funded with your 20% a few months before you seek a loan, you could save a lot of trouble. Our mortgage officer seemed to only care about 2 months of history. However, this is hard since in a down economy having a large chunk of change just sitting there isn’t always a great idea.
• Link your accounts. Link all your accounts to the source account for your mortgage. If you have stocks, savings or other checking accounts make sure that you can quickly transfer money into your source account. Closing costs, interest rates and other seemingly minor details can force you to quickly sell something (like stock) and fund an account. I didn’t have my accounts linked, and I think I managed on funding from an unlinked source at the last minute. It was very tense.
• Know your transfer times. I’d give everything about a week to clear. It usually takes a few days, but every now and then it takes much longer for money to clear out of one account and into another. Keep a calendar open.
• Have everything ready to go a few weeks early. The tenseness of waiting for banks and fiduciary firms to get their acts together will give you endless migraines. Also, if everything is ready in advance, you may get your closing date moved up.
• Paper trail everything. If you don’t need the money to make closing, don’t put it in your source account. If you do need the money, show a paper trail.
• Have your loan officer make a schedule for you. Our loan officer was horrible since we had no idea what needed to be done when. So we would frantically get things together for her, and realize it was all for naught. Once you have a desired closing date, tell them to give you deadlines for having things.

While I wish I had this advice when I bought our place, we did manage to get all our ducks in a row and close without delay.

Unfortunately it’s hard to figure this out and the instructions are buried in the manual. It’s like this:

1. Play a DVD
2. Stop the DVD
3. Enter select to get to the custom menu.
4. Enter X on the briefcase icon.
5. Select the “lock” by moving right.
6. Go down to the parental settings and set the level to ‘OFF’

It’s more complicated than any game cheat I’ve had to do.

Delicious has been one of my favorite web “properties” for a number of years and has influenced my work long before I started here. I’ve really respected my fellow engineers, managers and product team despite all the transitions we’ve had to bear. I am really amazed by how much everyone in our current team has changed over the year and a half.

Delicious has had it’s ups and downs, both as a team, as part of Yahoo! and even for me personally. Lucky for me, I stayed motivated the whole way through and I am glad to be leaving the party while its still fun.

Adobe was phenomenally quick, but on our way to the vet and in the operating room we knew we didn’t want to prolong our cats not so pleasant life and we had him euthanized.

It turns out that there were multiple tumors near his spleen. He had probably been suffering mildly for a few months. At least it wasn’t as prolonged as his brother’s (Panther’s) death.

I still remember being thrilled earlier that week that I was able to hold him without him putting up a fuss (as he normally does) and I’m glad for the six years I’ve known him. He will be missed.

When Panther died, I felt that Buster started adopting his traits… likewise, Dante (our other cat) has seemed to pick up some of Buster’s traits… like sleeping on Katie’s face

This always alarmed me because it increased the danger factor of attaching and detaching your bicycle. The straps were always precariously worn down. This Wednesday the 18th, however, the straps were just fine. I ride the shuttle a few miles from downtown Mountain View to the Mission College Yahoo! Campus. Unfortunately this Wednesday my bike was not there when we arrived.

The driver had missed an exit and we must have clover-leafed quite a bit. I kept looking out the window and not recognizing the familiar things that dot Highway 101. Amidst this maneuvering and correcting turns, the securely fastened straps must have loosened.

The bike racks are similar to ones that you would install on a trailer hitch. Normally they are fine, and you can strap them down, and of course you are keeping an eye on them. On a corporate shuttle there is no way to see the bike unless you use a video camera – whose screen was not turned on.

When we arrived to Mission College, I no longer had a bike. I did the math, about $1100 went into that bike, and that’s not a high end bike by any means – it’s just my ride to work.

The driver graciously offered to look for the bike, and an hour later he brought it to me, after it had been run over. It suffered very little damage that I could tell, but upon further inspection by a local bike shop, the frame was as the shop owner said, “totalled.”

I hate spending money as it is – and I hate it when my trust gets violated. I’ve told Bauer and Yahoo! that our shuttle racks are unsafe and should be replaced with front-racks as you would find on busses. I always received “no” as an answer.

I put together a list of all the non salvageable items and will see if I can get Bauer to cover my costs (even the brand new 8-speed hub I added, was not worth salvaging ). Then there’s the bike-attachment issues. I really like my bike – the way people really like their cars. I’ve had this for two and a half years, and I’ve liked it since.

In the mean time, I’m looking for a new bike. Looking at Dahon’s folding bikes. They seem to match my commuting needs. I think I can get a Vitesse D7HG for a fraction of what I put into my Breezer. The cost still hurts – bankrupt economy or not.

Update: Bauer gave me a check on April 28th, after I made a request a month back and following up with the workplace team at Yahoo! I used this money to help purchase a Bike Friday Season Tikit.

Ever since my wedding two and a half year ago where I was at a significant low in terms of weight (160 lb.), I’ve been gaining, slowly and painfully. I’m at 186.2 lb.

Numbers say that this is close to being obese. Whereas just under 160 is “Normal Weight”.

That’s fine and dandy, and should be a good enough indicator… but the real indicator is this. If you have “normal weight” imagine wrapping your midsection several times around with rubber, 25-30 lb. should do it. This is known as the spare tire.

Not only are you walking around with this excess weight, you’re also trying to sit comfortably with it, get up from sitting down with it. It turns doing anything into a chore. Not to mention I have high cholesterol, and I know this is one of those things I need to lower or “Very Bad Things” ™ will happen.

I keep trying, and retrying ways to keep my weight under control, so this is just another concerted effort. It’s not “new” for New Years, but maybe writing about it will help. I hope by the years end to be below 170lbs. This is an easier goal, and I’ll probably adjust this number once I meet up with my doctor.

I keep good track of my weight, and I can see the trends it makes. For every day my trend weight falls below my target weight, I’ll try to reassess and see what I can do to better my health. These usually are some combination of eating different and working out more.

It’s a way of understanding war-crimes and even police brutality.

I’m trying to use this to understand my own take on morality. From what I understand, 2/3 of people follow the authority (someone in a labcoat), and about 1/3 stick to their guns and quit.

You can read this and say, that given the right conditions, anybody has the capability to do evil. But that seems like a detrimental way of taking this. Yes, during war, evil horrors are committed, but if we read between the lines there are people who resist this. There are people who despite all pressure will resist any of this.

Moral Bar

This is a moral bar. For many people it’s as simple as “I will never murder, rape, pillage or torture.” I think this bar is important. It’s what makes us gauge things like war as horrifying. I think this is the moral high ground which we individually set for ourselves, and we set it as a challenge to ourselves, that regardless of the situation, regardless of the difficult decisions, or the suffering that we might be put through, that we won’t fall below that moral bar.

I think it’s a tough bar to keep up, but just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to keep up.

I think this is where morality comes into play. Being moral and righteous when we’re not put to the test is easy. Being moral in the context of immorality is a real challenge and I think it’s a challenge we should all accept.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s fair for us to label people as immoral, or hell-bound for faltering. I think there’s a chance that anyone even a saint can falter – but I always think there’s room to repent. It doesn’t mean that immoral acts are excusable, but I don’t think it means that those that commit them, are immoral people.

I think it’s a situation where given a transgression we should learn from it and strive to do better next time, and do better.

Contradiction

I think despite all this, I still expect people to do better… to not be led like lambs into the slaughter. I expect police officers – despite being in a daily war like state – to not be brutal. I even expect people who provide services to be very good at what they do, despite however crappy their job situation is.

I think these expectations are ultimately reasonable. We don’t just set a moral bar for ourselves, we set it for everyone. There’s a reasonable expectation that we won’t all meet it, but at least we can all try.

I remember announcing to my family that Katie and I were moving to the Bay Area as I had accepted a job at Yahoo! working on one of my favorite web sites, Delicious.

The decision to move, the actual move itself, the settling in period, exploring the area, meeting friends new and old… it was all an adventure. The question everyone asks is how’s california… it’s awesome… even after a year.

• We’ve successfully unanchored from our house and life in Minneapolis
• Took the kitties on a plane ride and had them live in 4 different places in 3 days.
• Took up a position working on Delicious and helped launch the new version of the site.
• Had our car shipped across country
• Had movers move all our stuff for us
• Moved on up to a more spacious living arrangement that has rent that costs more than our mortgage.
• We’re a short distance a Costco, Target, restaurants and the middle of a small town
• Reconnected with friends from High School, College, Minneapolis and met new friends…
• 3 of our friends (2 are a couple) live a block away.
• We run into people we know
• We got sucked into Veronica Mars, Buffy and Angel
• Bike to work regularly… otherwise shuttle… rarely drive.
• Learned python
• Saw some pretty trees at Sequoia National Park
• Went to Apple Hill
• Saw Mos Def
• We can’t go home again…

We’ve been to Minnesota three times, and each time it feels less and less like home. The home I grew up in is alien, the house we own isn’t our home. Stores open, stores close. Minneapolis has changed and we’ve changed. It still holds a special place in our heart.

enjoy…

I am happy with my life in general, and external things. In fact, let me preface this post by saying that I’m happy with my wife, my friends and my family. Even my job is pretty good despite the oncoming layoffs which I hopefully won’t be subjected to, but you never know.

I mainly see my intellectual and physical development hasn’t been where I’d like, despite an urge to advance in both areas (i.e. in more simplified terms I’m getting dumber and fatter).

This post isn’t meant to be a downer… my hope is I can improve on each of these aspects one by one. I think it’s completely natural to have peaks and troughs in terms of personal development. I think it’s when I identify a low that I make valiant efforts at trying to improve myself. Let’s see how things go.

I’ll attempt to post more details. One of the things I want to do is keep a better journal of my life, be it a blog or otherwise… it seems to be what all the cool kids are doing … or were doing

• Django Con is on the 6th of September
• Free Agile Training is on the 10-11th
• Yahoo Hack Day is on the 12-13th.

I am looking forward to seeing my friends’ wedding, and taking a look at my house, and settling some financial affairs, but all in all, I’m not looking forward to Minneapolis at all.

Visiting Minneapolis is way different than living in Minneapolis. It involves being away from home, taking care of affairs that are easier done in Minneapolis than in CA (we have professional contacts that we’d like to keep that live in Minneapolis as well as a small piece of rental property).

It involves driving around a lot… which is why I’ve been on a kick to get a folding bike so I can take it with me next time. I don’t drive much at all in the Bay Area, and I never did that much in Minneapolis.

It also involves working out of a coffee shop or possibly the Tea Garden, while I enjoy doing that, I don’t really enjoy doing that all the time.

It’s also the idea that this is taking place of a proper vacation where I can just rest.

It’s also going to be hot… and that’s compared to being in the South Bay. I’ll make the best of it, and I’ll enjoy what I can… but sitting at home, I am not really looking forward to this trip.