Eh, Never Mind

I’ve gone and looked at a bunch of houses, and some of them are fairly nice. But…

…I just can’t overcome the little voice in the back of my head that tells me I’d be crazy to pay nearly double its current assessment value. I can afford the mortgage payments, but it would make my budget a lot tighter, and what’s the point of gaining more freedom if I can’t afford to do anything with it. And it’s not like I’m moving in from out-of-city and absolutely need a new place to live.

Add on to that uncertainty at work, a feeling that I may not be mature enough to handle it, and that I’m entirely alone in the decision-making processes, with no other voice of reason to back me up or challenge me, and I don’t think I’m ready for this just yet.

Some financial groups speculate that this may be a permanent market increase and not just a bubble, due to meeting some kind of ‘fundamentals’. If so, then maybe my future just doesn’t lie here in Calgary.

Irony Is Dead

I’ve been seeing a bunch of Hummer commercials lately that all follow the same pattern: some man or woman is embarrassed or backs down in a social situation, they immediately march off to a Hummer dealership, point out one, and drive off in smug satisfaction.

I never would have imagined that they’d so blatantly embrace its reputation as a vehicle that people buy to overcompensate for their inadequacies and use it as a selling point in their own ads…

Certainty

Forget history. Forget ‘the market’. I’ve already said to myself that upon finding a suitable home, I would be willing to pay ‘x’ dollars. So, I’ve talked to an agent. We’ve scheduled a day for viewings. For a couple weeks I will go look at houses, and evaluate them.

If they meet my criteria, I will make an offer on them, and possibly successfully purchase one.

If they do not, or my offers are rejected, I will simply continue in my current arrangements.

If there are any regrets, I will just note to myself that they merely displaced the regret of not even trying.

Uncertainty

The current home sale stats for the Calgary area are rather…unhelpful.

You can clearly see a huge upward trend over the last 10 years, not just this last year. Checking against the city’s assessments, houses are often selling for $100,000 or more over their assessed values.

But things do seem to be cooling off. The average sale price dropped last month, for the first time in quite a while. The percentage of sales versus listings also dropped a lot. Some of the specific listings I’ve been looking at have even dropped their prices by $8-15 thousand. Maybe I should hold off and see if things drop even more.

But there’s no guarantee that the drop is an ongoing trend, and people still seem to think that the labour shortage and oil boom are just going to make things worse. If I wait too long, prices could suddenly turn around and skyrocket even higher. But I don’t really want to overpay by even the current inflated amounts, or get stuck with a crummy home in a bad area.

I think I’ll go hide under the bed for a bit…

Another 30 Seconds

Titan Quest: It’s pretty much a direct clone of Diablo 2, but it does it well. The main differences are in the historic settings (Greece, Egypt, and China), and a dual-class skill system that allows a lot of different combinations. All it needs is an expansion pack to provide some more locations (perhaps some random dungeons too) and smooth out some rough spots, and some tweaks to the loot system to allow more upgrades and variety, and it’ll be a worthy successor to D2.

SiN Episodes: Emergence: I played this after HL2 and its latest episode, and SiN is a bit of a disappointment in comparison. The graphics are fine, but there’s not enough variety, there are too few ‘set piece’ battles, and the choice of weapons is weak (the shotgun in particular). I don’t think I’ll be buying the following episodes.

Yoshi’s Island (GBA): This is one of the few Mario games I hadn’t gotten around to playing yet. I think I was putting it off primarily because the focus wasn’t really on Mario, and because of the different, ‘kiddie’ visual style. It’s too bad I waited for so long, since it’s actually quite a good game. There’s lots of variety in the levels, and the boss fights are all uniquely different and challenging, unlike some other Mario games where they’re only slight variants.

Chronicles of Riddick: Games based on movie licenses usually suck, but occasionally there’s an exception, and this is one of them. It combines shooter, stealth, and adventure game aspects smoothly, and is one of the few FPSes with a decent hand-to-hand combat system.

Catchup

I often run across URLs that I can’t check right away, or want to come back to later. Since I’m not necessarily at the same machine I want to check it from later on, I throw them into a file called ‘urls’ on my file server.

I just realized that that file is now over 1200 lines long.

I’ll be surprised if half of them are even still there…

Epiphany

I’m not particularly introspective, but as time goes on it’s harder to avoid thinking of most of the problems in my life, and the things I should do or have done but haven’t. Why not? The pat answer would be that I’d be afraid of failing, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I’ve already failed at them by not even trying for so long.

No, I’m starting to think that the answer may actually be that I’m afraid of success. Succeeding always sounds great, of course, but it always brings additional complications, responsibilities, and other unknown factors into your life, and I think that’s what scares me the most. I’ve gotten comfortable in my little life as it is, and become suspicious of any potential changes to it.

Damned if I know how to fix it, though.

Cutthroat

If you want an idea as to how bad the housing market is in Alberta right now, you just have to ask my mother.

She’s been looking for a new place to live for a couple months now, but without any luck so far. Even if you ignore financing problems, she hasn’t even won a single one of the dozen or more bids she’s placed so far. People are bidding 30-40k over the list price, and there are enough bids on any single house that your options are limited. You can’t even ask for an official inspection; there’s enough competition that the sellers can go with a slightly lower bidder that doesn’t ask for an inspection than take your higher bid and risk having the inspection knock its value down.

Trying to find a rental unit hasn’t been any easier, either. She wants to keep her dogs, but very few places have any vacancies right now, and even fewer would allow her to keep two large dogs. Even townhouses are tending to prohibit pets nowadays, for some reason.

I really should be getting back to my own search now that I’ve recovered, but her stories aren’t filling me with confidence…

Huh

Last night I dreamed that I had somehow ruined the outcome of the World Cup because of the way I was sleeping in bed, and the proof was the second set of legs in the bed. Just legs.

I think I need to go back to the hospital, but to the mental ward this time…

Spamathon

Subject: Urgent: ISP detected!

Oh no! I bet I’m broadcasting an IP address, too!

Subject: Extra power. Don't think. Just act.

Sorry, I think you meant to send this to Tom Cruise.

Subject: Elvis asked me to send you this.

Well you certainly took your sweet time getting it to me, didn’t you?

Subject: Don't expose your intimate life!

Whew, thanks, I didn’t realize those blinds were wide open…

Subject: Break the work habit

Unfortunately that would just send me into the begging-for-change habit…

Subject: Please disregard this message

Okay.

Ninety Days

It’s always nice to be offered money. And not from the widow of a dead Nigerian prince, for a change.

No, I just met with a mortgage specialist and nailed down some of the details for a pre-approved mortgage from my bank. Despite the current housing crisis, I should at least give the search a shot, so now things are finally in motion. The mortgage was the easy part, though — actually finding a decent house is going to be the painful part.

It’s not like the market is completely dry; there are still houses to be had, but I have to be careful. My somewhat limited mobility prevents me from rapidly running around from place to place. I need something with relatively good public transit connections. I don’t really know what a lot of neighbourhoods are like. I don’t want something that’s on the verge of falling apart, too small, too shoddily built, too heat-inefficient, too crime-infested, etc. But I can’t be too picky either, since my budget does put a limit on what I can look for.

Hopefully I won’t let desperation pressure me into making a bad choice now that I’m under a time limit. The pre-approval isn’t a commitment, but a current special discount rate will have expired by the time the pre-approval period ends, and house prices will have gone up even more (right now the average price is going up by something like $1,000 per day), so if I don’t get one within the next ninety days I may as well just wait until the cycle busts again. Considering the current furor over oil though, that could be a while…

I think I really need to do this, though. I’ve wasted too much of my life putting off plans and purchases for some future ‘settling down’ time that never seemed to come, so now’s the time.

Home, Stupid Home

Ugh, I just did a search on homes in Calgary within my price range and only got seven hits, whereas I’ve seen dozens before.

I really should have bought something a year or two ago, but kept putting it off as I didn’t feel ready for such a huge committment. Now I’ll either just have to put up with staying in an apartment for the near future and hope for a bust, or spend extra on a good realtor who might do a better job of looking.

Son Of 30 Second Reviews

Tourist Trophy (PS2) – It’s basically Gran Turismo 4, just with motorcycles instead of cars. Same tracks, same basic goals, and even pretty much the same user interface. It’s a bit less meaty though, with fewer vehicles, slightly fewer tracks, and fewer total race events. It’s still fun though, and handling a motorcycle is different enough from the cars in GT4 to be interesting.

Brain Age (DS) – Some simple puzzles and challenges that are supposed to help ‘exercise’ your brain. The actual benefit of doing so is dubious, but it’s still kinda fun in small doses, so it makes a good diversion in the morning before heading to work. Its handwriting recognition is a bit lacking though.

New Super Mario Bros. (DS) – It’s a throwback to the original 2D Super Mario games, blending elements of them together, adding a few new ones, and giving it modern graphics. As a fan of those originals, that’s just fine with me, and it’s been great fun so far. Looks like it might be short though, and it hasn’t been very tough yet.

ToCA Race Driver 3 (PC) – It’s great for the sheer wide variety of different types of racing it has, with everything from dirt track sprinters to F1 to stock cars to shifter karts. It doesn’t feel nearly as realistic as other games though, and you don’t really get to keep and upgrade cars as you go along, which is half the fun of these “carpgs”.

State Of The Virtual Nation

Taking a quick look at what we know of the “next-gen” consoles now:

XBox 360: The hardware seems fine, but there’s still not enough titles out for it that appeal to me to get my interest high enough yet. MS is now just being boring instead of evil…

PlayStation 3: A number of important things were just revealed at the E3 conference: 1) They’ve ditched the ‘boomerang’ and the controller’s back to the old PS2 form, but the rumble has been replaced with gyroscopes, 2) it’ll be split into two separate versions like the 360, with the cheaper one being rather pointless and non-upgradeable (no HDMI video, wireless, or memory cards) and 3) the price is obscene, with the upper end model probably ending up around $650-700 CDN. It’s all somewhat underwhelming, so far.

Revolution: Well, it’s not the Revolution anymore. Now Nintendo is calling it the Wii, and I don’t think I’ve stopped snickering since the announcement. A stupid name won’t affect its capabilities or how fun the games are, but it’s still slightly embarrassing. The hardware is still much weaker compared to the others, but speculation is that it’ll probably at least be far cheaper. It’s also unclear if it’ll have enough interesting titles, since my DS already satisfies my Daily Recommended Allowance of Mario, but it’s supposed to be backwards compatible with the Gamecube and emulate even older systems, for a bigger library at least.