A Scattered Brain

Greetings all,

I received this interesting math trick via e-mail and wanted to pass it along. It is quite ingenious. Grab a calculator or if you really want to, or go ahead and do this in your head. This does not follow the order of operations so do each operation in full before going to the next step:

1. Take the first three digits of your phone number (NOT including area code)
2. Multiply by 80
3. Add 1
4. Multiply by 250
5. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number
6. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number again
7. Subtract 250
8. Divide by 2

Recognize the answer?? Again, I thought this was very cool and something different from my house hunting stories. Take care!

UPDATE: So on second look, this really isn’t all that clever.  It’s just a roundabout way of multiplying your first 3 digits by the necessary 10,000 and then adding your last four digits.

It has been nearly two weeks since we sent our signed forms back to the bank with their addendums.  We are still waiting for them to sign to be able to start our inspections and get moving toward closing.  It seems strange that a bank wanting to get rid of a property is waiting so long to sign the paperwork and keep the process moving.  We’re told that the house is still ours and they are not entertaining any other offers.  This could be just lip service, but without any indication otherwise has to be taken at face value.  We have gone forward and ordered the appraisal which should have taken (or will be) place today.  I’m not concerned about this appraisal coming in at where we need it to but still want to see the report regardless.

At this point, there is nearly no way to close in April, which may or may not be advantageous to us in the long run as there are other setbacks we will have to work through.  Mainly, there are still many questions about the current house and the refinance of the property.  We will have to look at all of our options and make some decisions.  I am intentionally vague at this point since we have a lot to work through at this point.  I know everything will work out, it is just a matter of how.

I will continue to periodically post updates with everything and once we know a plan for the current house, moving, etc. I will let you all know.  Take care and have a great week!

On to chapter two of the house hunting process – the bids. Two things we wanted to avoid this time around were having to bid on multiple houses and bidding wars. We are 0 for 2. After nearly a month of looking, we found a house we really liked. It was one of the 3 mentioned in the previous point. I will leave exact amounts out for obvious reasons, but here was the exchange between us and the bank summed up:

• House listed at $$$
• We offer a bid of $$$ – 20 asking the seller to also pay closing costs
• They come back with $$$ + 5. Yes, they countered with a price of 5 more than their list price.
• We laughed and walked away

That house was at the cusp of our spending desire anyway so if the bank had come back with something close it could have been a hard decision. At least this way it was very easy to walk away.

We went our looking again this past Tuesday but only at three houses. The first one was awesome and we thought we would like to make a play at it. We found out that there were already multiple offers so if we were to throw ourselves into the mix, we would have to come in above list price. The list price was pretty low considering the house so we kept it in mind. The next two houses (one with the same floor plan) both left us wanting; the one with the same floor plan was trashed and more expensive, the other was too close to a major highway and you could hear the traffic. That was a shame, too, because outside of that the area was quite nice.

We decided we would make a play for that first house. We started by offering list + a little more.  The bank came back with a blanket counter to all offers: withdraw, keep the same, or try to sweeten a little.  We didn’t want this going on forever, but we decided to offer a touch more to show we were serious about the property.

It worked!  The house is ours.  Now starts the long list of things to do to get that house to close, move, and get this house ready and rented.  It will be an exciting couple of months!

Greetings and salutations to all of my loyal fans (I think I may have 3 or 4 out there),

The last month has been quite interesting as we take on a new adventure; finding a new house. Nearly 4 years ago, we went through this exercise in an extreme seller’s market and bought a small house at a high price. We’ve have spent some time and money and have turned it into a home that we truly enjoy now.

But the market has changed qute a bit now. With all of the sub-prime mortgage woes, the market here has drastically shifted from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market and there are good deals all around. We are in a position to at least look into these deals to see if any work for us. Overall, so far we’ve scoped out about 25 or 30 houses over about a month. We were starting to get a little discouraged since we couldn’t find a good match between floor plan and location yet.

We are going to be very picky this time. Since we don’t have a need to move at all, if we’re going to, the house has to be nearly perfect for what we want. Most of the houses available in our price range and area are bank repos; which are very much a crap shoot. People can get angry when they are losing their house and often times ruin carpet, walls, and even smash in doors among other items in the house. Our budget is such that either a house has to be VERY cheap where we can spend some money to fix things up or has to be in great condition that won’t need much work. Until yesterday, there had only been two houses that were remotely possible and neither were perfect.

Yesterday some of that may have changed. We went to see around 7 houses and 3 of them were possibilities. The first is quite cheap and needs all new flooring and paint, but the floor plan is spacious and I could picture us living there. The 2nd was a nice house with an owner still occupying so they probably wouldn’t come down into our price range. The third is nearly perfect! Great house (over 2600 sq ft.) in a very nice neighborhood. The price is a touch out of reach but since it is a repo, we may be able to negotiate. Seeing this 3rd house trumped the 2nd so we are currently looking into putting an offer on one of these 2. We will go back today to get a better look at the non fixer-upper and if it is something we still like, we will write up an offer and see where it goes.

Overall, this is a much better situation since we are much more in control and aren’t in a matter of need like before. I’ll keep you posted if we offer on either of these houses or as more viewings come along. Take care, all!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been pretty quiet about bowling lately and that has been for one primary reason… the last two months have really been bad. Ever since my great night (and best ever) on January 16th, I’ve not had one night over my average. Until last night… and it all just seemed to click again.

I bowled a 603 series and had two games over 200. My release was smooth and consistent and for the most part, my targeting was good too. Even in the middle 162 game, most of my strike shots were decent with a couple of bad breaks with splits.

Here are my scores for the season; you’ll be able to see what I mean about my slump.

I’ve also gotten my average back up over 180… dropping below that was a real shot against my ego for this season. There are only 8 weeks left that count toward average so achieving my goal of 190 for the season is well out of reach. If I can get two more series in the 600’s and none in the 400’s over that time I’ll be pretty happy.

Game of the Week – Balloon Invasion

I know that it has been a while since I’ve had a GOTW entry and for that my apologies.  This latest game is something I found online in the last couple of days and am currently hooked.  This is a cross between a Tower Defense like game and a shoot ’em.  You’re primary goals are to destroy all of the balloon enemies while protecting your primary turret.  Throughout the game you earn prestige and this allows you to upgrade your main weapon as well as purchase the ability to use other weapons and support defenses.

The game isn’t overly complex and is fairly easy to get the hang of the controls and options.  However, the levels can get quite difficult and over time it is not just good enough to beat a level; you have to do so while excelling in order to earn upgrades for the next levels.  You are able to go back to previously conquered levels to attempt to get a higher score and ranking.

Wow! I’ve traveled more in February than I ever have in the past. Three trips in three weeks (the first two already documented below). This last and final trip was to Elekta’s Atlanta headquarters for a Project Manager’s meeting. The meetings went well and were worth the time in general. Whether we needed to have them during the middle of 4th quarter (by far our busiest team) but now I am back in the office for the foreseeable future and ready to hit the ground running.

One very good thing is during my time in Atlanta, I was able to have some Chick-Fil-A! It was as good as always and I would have really been upset to go to Atlanta and not have some Chick-Fil-A.

I’m finding that travel really takes all of your energy in general. All of the trips have been short (1, 2, and 3 days) which makes for a lot of flying time in a short period and I’m worn out. Getting sick in the middle didn’t help either and I felt hopeless while away and having the rest of the family sick as well. We’re all getting better so it looks like we’ve turned the corner.

On a different front, I will soon be announcing the launch of the Stanton family web site. I’ve found a good content management system to use and have started to build some pages. I hope to officially debut it during the first week of March.

Take care everyone and have a great weekend!

A semi-live blogging event.

Here was how yesterday was supposed to go:

• 4:00 AM PST – Get up and head to the airport.
• 6:40 AM PST – Fly to Houston and arrive around 11:35 AM CST.
• 1:00 PM CST – Attend Kick Off Meeting with a client.
• 3:00 PM CST – Conclude meeting and head back to George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport (that has to be the longest name for an airport around) .
• 6:30 PM CST – Fly back home to Vegas.
• 7:30 PM PST- Arrive in Vegas and go home.

This would have made for a quite long day with about 10 hours of travel for a 2 hour meeting. If only it could have happened that way.

Now for the real story:

• Throughout the night – Wife and baby were sick with colds and fever. We all had rough nights sleeping.
• 4:20 AM PST – Got up and went to the airport.
• 6:40 AM PST – Fly to Houston… so far so good.
• 11:00 AM CST – Announcement overhead stating that there are storms in Houston and we have been requested to hold over San Antonio for about 30 minutes. No big deal at this point. I’ll still have time to meet my colleague and get to the meeting.
• 12:00 PM CST – Announcement overhead stating that we have been requested to hold for an additional 30 minutes. This makes things really tight but ok. Ah, but the message wasn’t over. After a brief pause, the pilot announced that we don’t have the fuel to stay up for another delay and we are going to land in Austin. Day ruined.
• 12:30 PM CST – Land in Austin. Call work colleague and tell him I won’t make the meeting. He had already seen the re-route and was ready to go by himself. While we are waiting on the tarmac to get refueled, I was able to call home and found out my wife was going to take our son to the doctor for his cold. I really hoped all was well and couldn’t stop thinking about them. If I had known that this would have happened, I could have stayed home and taken care of them rather than fly half way across the country and back (dressed up nicely at that).
• 2:00 PM CST – Get in line to take off to Houston. Decided to start writing this out on paper to pass the time. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink today, not even water.
• 2:10 PM CST – Announcement that we will be able to take off at 2:40. Not holding my breath.
• 2:53 PM CST- We have liftoff! Should be 31 minutes to Houston.
• 3:35 PM CST – Touchdown! At this point, at least I’ve had one small glass of ice water. My plan was to eat at the airport and then try to find my way back home.
• 4:00 PM CST – I look on the flight board and see a 4:10 flight back to Vegas. I don’t think I can make it in time but I also don’t see any other Vegas flights on the board (including my scheduled flight) so I skip food and try to make this flight. SUCCESS! I’m on my way back home, even if without food.
• 4:35 PM CST – I’m in the air and heading home. I am so hungry I could eat a horse. Not sure exactly when I’ll get home but I’m glad this long ordeal is almost over. I watch Gladiator to pass the time.

I made it home around 6:00 PM with Burger King in hand. Such a long day with no real purpose. I’m glad it’s over.

NOTE: My apologies for the inconsistency regarding time (sometimes using present tense sometimes past tense). I knew I was switching back and forth but don’t want to worry about fixing it. 🙂

For the first time in a long time, and at least since I’ve been there, Purdue is in sole possesion of first place in the Big Ten for men’s basketball.  This has been a long time coming and is great to see.  The team is made up of primarily young players (four freshman regularly start for the team) so I didn’t expect much from this season except hopefully building to the next two years.

All expectations have been well exceeded by this group of kids.  They play hard, and most importantly play together.  No one person is the star or tries to take the glory.  Each night a different two or three players tend to step up to give Purdue the win.  They are having a nice 9 game winning streak and just came off a terrific win at Wisconsin, a place they hadn’t won at since 1996.

Hopefully Purdue can keep this up going into the conference tournament and NCAA tournament as well.  This just makes me more excited for March coming up!

Today’s installment of my trip to North Iowa will be much shorter as today wasn’t nearly as exciting. We got to watch two of our colleagues start to put together the machine. We all felt as if we were in the way most of the time as the vault is quite small. I don’t even have anything interesting to show a picture of.

To top it off, I seem to be coming down with a bit of a cold. Great to get when I’m about to fly home. 🙁 It’s not a bad cold, but flying when feeling less than 100% is a horrible experience. As soon as I get home, Zicam to the rescue!