Some Basic Sleuthing.

I’m looking into various methods of borrowing some money to have our kitchen updated. From some of the stuff I’ve looked at online, it appears that Maryland is one of only a handful of states that require a free credit report to be issued upon request by law, which is pretty nice. (The national law thing they just passed doesn’t take effect for my side of the country until September.) Step one of the process is going to be cleaning up the credit reports. Step two will be paying somebody $7 for a credit score, so I can then estimate out what a monthly payment will be.

I’m still on the fence as to what approach makes more sense—a home equity loan or a line of credit. The loan is a fixed-rate, immediate payment deal, while the line of credit is a long-term, variable rate bag of money that can be spent willy-nilly, and then after 10 or 15 years comes due. Trouble is, I don’t want to suffer through a hike of 15% interest rates on $20K down the line- personally, I’d rather pay for something fixed that I can bank on.

Next is a call to the accountant to make sure that we can actually use this as a deduction (I’m not sure, but the convoluted way we file taxes makes me think that we deduct.)

Then, I have to shop around for some lending institutions to see who’s got the best rate and who will play ball with us fairly. BoA is basically out—they have enough of my money as it is. I have to dig out the info on our initial lender tonight and see if I can go through them again.

After signing away our firstborn children, we can then sit down with the kitchen people and actually rehab something. This would be HUGE for the Lockardugans, because our current kitchen flooring consists of flattened Dell computer boxes. And that’s an improvement.

All of this makes me very nervous-I hate bankers about as much as I hate going to the doctors’, because of the legal complexities involved. Too many stories of “hidden fees” and “legal fineprint” worry the shit out of me. I don’t want to sign away something we’ve worked too hard and too for, and I especially don’t like signing over a chunk of our house. I’ve spent some time looking for tips about the process online so that I don’t steer us into a bad corner, but my fears of screwing it up sometimes paralyze me into inaction. So this exercise is more about staring down the big bad monster than it is about running and hiding (or merely doing nothing at all.)

On deck for the next Big Adult Move is life insurance, and concurrently, a will of some kind. If I get hit by a bus, I want my wife to get the house, not the State of Maryland. Again, the specter of Large Legal Documents makes me shiver in dread, but I’ve been putting it off for too long now (I was thinking about this as Jen and I flew over the dark Atlantic on our way back from Ireland, and quickly turned my attention back to the showing of In Good Company. A brief sidenote: American Airlines shows the same films BOTH WAYS across the Atlantic. Thanks for that, shitheads) and it needs to be done.

Bad Baby Names

Bad baby Names
This is a hoot.

Catching Up

Due to a fierce electrical storm yesterday, there will be no Ireland trip update today. We got home from work to a house with no power, and as my bride has already mentioned, it was not restored until the wee hours of the morning. (I have a vague recollection of the transformer blowing, and another foggy memory of the lamp next to my head snapping on. I had no idea the BGE guy was outside clomping through the backyard, however.)

Todd and Heather stopped by work yesterday with the kids, so Nate and I sat and played house for an hour or so while the triplets were fed and changed. Heather looks great (sorry I didn’t mention it to you, girl) and the kids have grown dramatically since the last time I saw them. I even got to meet Emmett for the first time (he hadn’t been sprung from the Big House the last time we visited.) I also got to huff the top of Calia’s fuzzy head for about two solid minutes—there’s nothing better than fresh baby smell to put a smile on your face. To quote Dooce: MMMM, BABY HEAD.

Today I picked up that G3 from Craigslist and brought it to work for some formatting: a 350mhz/firewire unit with low mileage. It should be good for the time being until I can get something better on the desk—we spent more dinero in Ireland than we thought, so July is going to be pretty tight. Tonight I have to Frankenstein it together with the G4 to get a working unit up and running.

Now I’m Worried.

There’s all this crap on the news about shark attacks this week. Does anybody remember four years ago, when there were all kinds of hysterical reports about shark attacks? Something else happened, and we forgot all about it.

Minor Updates.

Good news from the wilderness: There’s a G3 tower in baltimore for sale for $100, which should be an acceptable stopgap measure for the expensive dying G4 until I can afford a Mini or something better.

* * *

Jen and I finally pulled the trigger last night and drove to the local Select Comfort store, and bought (well, charged) one of those “sleep number” beds. Hopefully, it’ll be here in four or five days, and we’ll report back to you on our “sleep number”, like you really give a shit what that is.

* * *

Finally, in the interest of turning our credit cards into slags of smoking plastic, I’m going to be picking up an air conditioner this week (probably tonight) to cool the office down so that we might actually be able to work in there. Coming back to Baltimore from a week of good Irish weather has been rough.

Trip Log: Part Four.

From Cobh, we drive back north and through Cork again to get out into the Western countryside. Stopping off in the town of Kinsale, we explored the back streets and the restaurant district to see what the town offered. Based on looks alone, its reputation as the gourmet center of Ireland is well-deserved. There are foo-foo gourmand cafes, Indian, Chinese, and sushi restaurants, one-named vanity restaurants, and of course, a handful of pubs throughout. It’s got lots of little sidestreets with tiny shops and cafes tucked into back alleys, and it felt a little bit like Rome, which is a good thing. There is no first hand recommendation, though, because we weren’t hungry and didn’t eat anything. Sorry.

There are a bunch of historical sites to look at west of the city, starting with the Timoleague Friary on the coastline. Windy, twisty roads lead to a small inlet town with a huge ruin at the center. Jen and I explored the site for a good hour or two, after visiting what are arguably the wettest public restrooms in Ireland. (Taking a leak while watching water run freely beneath the soles of my sneakers wet. Yummy.) Timoleague is HUGE. Lots of rooms within rooms, filled with headstones. The possible creep factor was diminished by the sound of the grade school kids next door playing soccer at recess.

We had a light snack after exiting, and continued down the road to check into a hotel for the evening. YES, we wimped out on our third day. At this point, though, sleep was a rare and precious commodity, and we figured sleeping in a quiet hotel room was better than being in somebody’s spare bedroom.

After dealing with our bags, we jumped back in the car with a locally-supplied map and started hunting down things to see. First on the list was the Dromberg Stone Circle. Jen and I joked about Stonehenge, and how we were both expecting Druids to be burning fires and chanting, or bolts of lightning to shoot from the sky, or (my personal favorite) a circa 1974 Robert Plant singing The Immigrant Song while smoke blew through his leonine hair. (Then I joked that Jen would get struck by lightning in a Rock Star Pose and be surrounded by chanting Druids while singing The Immigrant Song. I would be filming all this like a music video.) In reality, it was a foggy circle of rocks in a swampy field; not much to look at. I suppose we should have known better when we saw the “Visitor’s Center”: and abandoned trailer surrounded by broken glass and weeds. “STONE CIRCLE” was painted roughly on a fencepost with an arrow pointing down the pathway. Robert Plant was nowhere in sight, and I didn’t see a single fucking Druid, just a German family who found it funny to climb on the rocks and take pictures. Still, it was cool, and meditative, at least.

Ahhh, Ahhh AAAAAAAAAAhhhh….. AAHH! Ahhh, Ahhh AAAAAAAAAAhhhh….. AAHH!

Next, we started hunting down castles in the area, beginning with Salem Castle. The maps all gave approximate directions with no instructions, so it was up to us to use the power of deduction to find them all. Along a narrrow, twisty road, we happened upon a sign, and followed the driveway up to a stable. A small Jack Russel/mutt mix came out to greet us, and we scratched his belly while we scoped the place out. It looked like somebody had built a house onto the side of the castle and then stopped before finishing everything, so it was kind of creepy. From what we could see, the owners were gone (A sign out front spoke of a B&B and guided tours) so we nosed around the driveway, said goodbye to Rover, and left quietly.

Next was Coppinger’s Court, another castle that appeared vaguely on the map. After a trip down a very bumpy farmer’s driveway and close encounter with a large black dog, we backtracked in the mud and found another one-lane road, finally getting close enough to the castle to take pictures. It sits in a farmer’s cow pasture, on marked private property, so we took pictures from the road and marveled at its size. It’s covered in bramble and vines, so it looks like it’s got a Dan Haggerty beard, and that makes it hard to photograph.

Pleased with our success, I turned the Opel around and headed back up the hill slowly. We were startled to see a herd of cows spill into the one-lane road in front of us and mill around, unconcerned by our presence. Soon, a farmer chased the last one onto the road, waved to us, and shooed them all up the road towards the barn. We followed and passed the last of them as they turned up a leafy driveway.

Next up was another landmark we couldn’t find (I can’t remember the name), and finally Castlefreke, a huge ruin east of town that showed up on all the local literature. Finding it proved easy enough, but huge signs erected around the grounds made it impossible to explore, as were the ruins of the local abbey. This was annoying, as all the pictures sort of led us to believe we could get in there and poke around. We contented ourselves with shooting some pictures of the gatehouse to the local manor home, now part of a cow pasture (and home to a very horny heifer), and headed back to the hotel for some dinner.

At the hotel bar, we met a barkeep named Stephen, who kept us entertained and answered all our initial questions about Ireland. (Housing/land is as expensive there as it is here. Budweiser and Coors are considered microbrews and are VERY popular in Ireland. Harp is sort of dying out and hard to find in the East. Beef is extremely expensive in Ireland, as are fresh vegetables.) He treated us to a new (to us) shooter, the Baby Guinness, which consists of Tia Maria topped with Bailey’s, and agreed that the fellow on keyboard serenading the lounge was “fookin’ awful”. We also met a fellow from here in Baltimore, who was attending a family reunion, and talked with him for an hour or so about the sights we hadn’t seen yet. One of the things we learned was that our plan to bypass the Ring of Kerry to see more historical sites was in error: several people told us The Ring was one of the highlights of any trip to Ireland. However, we were seeing some of the best of the non-touristy places in West Cork, which made us feel a little better.

Leaving our friend a worthy tip, we stumbled back upstairs and collapsed into bed, pleasantly squiffed.

Next: Rosscarbery to Lismore, or: Finally, some craic.

Back to the Grind.

It’s 7:53. Jen and I were both awake a full hour early, laying in bed together and trying to wish away Monday morning. Having three days to basically fuck off before returning to work was good; it would have been better if Baltimore wasn’t a hot sweaty armpit and we hadn’t just returned from the land of sunny 60° weather. (Waaaah waaaah waaaah.)

I love my wife for many reasons, one of which is that she made coffee this morning, another of which is that we both took a groggy minute to write about the impending sense of doom we’re both feeling. (Imagine two adults in an empty room, sipping coffee and typing on laptops. It looks like a spread from a high-concept design magazine, except for the piles of unopened mail, dust bunnies, and socks laying around us.)

The lawn is finally mowed, the garden has been partly weeded, and we moved the dining room table back where it belongs. Jen’s raised bed is out of control. We have a tomato plant that’s 6′ high. Other than that, we’ve been deliciously lazy: a vacation from our vacation. Last night, my bride treated me to a dozen crabs and a couple of Coronas, and that made Sunday night a lot brighter.

More trip updates are forthcoming; I took yesterday off.

Trip Log: Part Three.

Kilrush to Cobh.

After a reasonably successful experience booking our own lodging, we decided to try having the Irish Tourism Office do the work for us. In Kilrush, we found the local representative in a tiny one-room storefront with a nervous representative at his desk. Explaning our situation, he swung into action and got on the phone to book us a room. Unfortunately, the first set of numbers he dialled were all busy, which threw him off. He began a humorous cycle of dialling, getting the busy signal, hanging up, getting up out of his chair, apologizing, sitting down nervously, and dialling again. We quietly browsed the shelves of thcochkes watching the proceedings, trying to be as unmenacing as possible. Eventually, he made it through and we got a room booked in Cobh for the evening.

After a stop at the gorcery store for bread, Nutella, apples, water, and cheese, and a stopoff at the B&B to return the key I had left in my pocket, we got on the road and headed south on the N20.

On our way through the countryside, Jen spied a ruin in the middle of town that we stopped to take a look at. It turned out to be the Buttevant Friary, unmarked on our maps and invisible unless spied from the road. Outside, it was surrounded by a cemetery and backed by a dairy pasture. Inside, it was a quiet, peaceful shrine to the damp gravestones it contained. We stood and marveled at the scenery and shot pictures for a long while, then kept going. Late in the afternoon, we reached Blarney.

The first view of the castle from the grounds is magnificent; a long pathway over a wide stream leads up to the base of the castle, and continues up around the hill to the entrance. 7€ gets you on the long twisty line through the castle, up windy spiral staircases and to the roof, where a spectacular view of the surroundng fields and trees surrounds the building. On the way up to the front of the line, the queue is essentially standing over the machicolations (essentially, holes in the floor that extend out and overlook the outside wall, so you can throw rocks on the heads of the guys trying to bust into your house) and realizing that it’s a long way down. The Blarney Stone is inside one of these machicolations, so one has to sit down and lean out backwards over the abyss to reach it.

At first, as Jen and I climbed all four zillion steps, we were a little concerned that we’d be hanging our asses over the edge to kiss a damp rock by ourselves. (Based on our experience at the Cliffs of Moher, it was evident the Irish have a completely different viewpoint on public lands and liability issues: if this were America, there would be fifteen-foot high chainlink fencing around the entire site. That kind of hands-off laissez-faire is refreshing.) Thankfully, there’s a nice old Irish man there to make sure one doesn’t fall all ten stories onto the rocks below.

After fuflfilling the obligation of our heritage, we explored the rest of the tiny rooms of the castle and climbed back down.

Cork is one of the larger cities in Ireland, and as such, is more congested than the average town. Given that a major highway in Ireland proved to be a two-lane country road, driving through Cork was more like navigating a suburb of Baltimore. Crowded and confusing, but nowhere near the congestion of, say, D.C., or the insane speed of, say, the Taconic Parkway, or the utter confusion of Columbia, Maryland. For the most part, the Irish believe in helpful signage and reasonable traffic planning.

Cobh is a smaller seaside town, famous as the resting place for many of the casualties of the Lusitania disaster, and as the final port of call for the Titanic. It’s also got some of the smallest streets I’ve ever driven on: because it dates back to the beginning of time, there’s one lane for two cars. The houses are carved into the side of the cliffs, so finding a particular address is a challenge.

We stayed in an older B&B, a rowhouse under the giant cathedral in the center of town. Our room turned out to be a tidy, tiny third-floor attic room with a TV, shower, and two of the creakiest beds I’ve ever tried out. At least the view was spectacular. We got some dinner at a tiny cafe and fell asleep to an Irish crime drama starring a man with the best porn moustache I’ve seen since the Edge.

Tomorrow: Back through Cork…again!

Lego Journal

Lego Journal
I would have killed for this as a 10-year-old kid.

Private Warriors

Private Warriors
Inside the outsourcing of Iraq.

Second batch of pictures

I posted a second batch of pictures on Flickr. Search the photostream by the keyword Ireland and they all should come up.

Trip Log, Part Two.

Wednesday morning we got up late and had our first experience with the typical Irish shower: There is a knob on the wall, again with indecipherable markings, and you are left to turn, pull, push, and squeeze until you get a constant flow of warm water. Jen figured this out and we washed the plane off, packed our stuff, and checked out. Back across the parking lot, we picked up our rental car: an Opel Astra, which was larger than I’d expected and a lot nicer than I was hoping for.

A Short Primer On European (UK) Motorcars From The Viewpoint Of An American:

1. First, everything’s backwards. Sure, the wheel and controls are on the right, and getting used to that takes a little time, but I found myself still looking up and to the right to see who was behind me, and finding only the A-pillar of the windshield. Old habits die hard.

2. Shifting is interesting. Here in America, in our Chevys and Fords with automatic transmissions, there’s a choice: P, N, and D. Put it in D and go. In (Ireland), there’s a shift-like knob, no P and something called E. Then, there’s a second area with a – and a +, which presumably is a Tiptronic-type manual-shift deal (I was hesitant to test this theory, for fear of leaving the transmission of our rental car in a smoking heap on some remote Irish country lane). So, putting the car in E means it’s Easy or Elementary or something like that. Swell. The problem is when you go to pass some tractor on the M7 (Because they are everywhere, just like dairy cows are present in the middle of towns) and you get on the gas. The car sits and thinks for a few minutes: “Right. You want to pass this tractor, here, mate? OK. I’ll just set this pint down here, and put my boots back on, and we’ll have a go at it, eh?” Then, after about five seconds, it downshifts from fifth to fourth, which is about as helpful as a kick in the head. Then, it drops into third, and putting the pedal to the floor finally produces some speed. In an American-made car, say, my Jeep, for example, when you kick it in the guts, there’s no thinking. It drops from third to first IMMEDIATELY, and you smoke the tires across the Wal-Mart parking lot or whatever. These cars all have a five-minute waiting period before they get going. Getting up to speed is the same way—there’s a VERY noticeable lag in between gears, as if the guy programming the transmission decided to get all Grand Prix on us and make it seem like it’s actually a standard transmission, instead of the wimpy automatic us poncey Americans request. This made my wife very motion-sick, which was not a good thing. (She got used to it.)

3. They have nice cars. This Opel was put together very well, felt solid, ran hard, and was designed (mostly) intelligently. (Clicking on the turn signal once gives you three ticks, and it shuts itself off. Clicking down hard gives unlimited ticks. However, shutting it off requres a light tap in the other direction, otherwise it’s signalling the other way and confusing the people behind the car, who have spotted the Eurocar rental sticker on the rear window and who are hoping you’re not making a right turn at that roundabout.) The buttons and dials all looked and worked well. One other gripe, though: Every time the car is turned on, the radio turns on too. Even when it’s been specifically turned off. In this way, we got to hear the same Kylie Minogue tune every time we got back in the car. In Ireland, they like their Kylie Minogue. This is all in contrast to the Pontiac we rented to get back from Reagan, which had buttons like Fisher-Price toys for retards, locked the car every time it shifted into Drive, and felt like a cheap 70′s disco couch.

Once I got onto the highway, and past the first three roundabouts, I was feeling better about driving. We headed north to the Cliffs of Moher. Apparently, we were graced with fabulous weather the entire time we were in country, because the Cliffs are usually socked in with fog and at about 200m of visibility, which is useless for something that big. We had cloudy skies and a slight drizzle but excellent visibility, so we hiked up the hill and took in the view.

By this point, it was late in the day (our perception of distance and speed was off) so we picked a B&B from the guide, made reservations, and headed south to Kilrush. Now, there’s something odd that’s happened in Ireland in the last couple of years since the Celtic Tiger thing happened: They’ve started building houses all over the place. Not nice houses, like the ones in pictures of Kerry, with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs, but McMansions made of cinderblock and wood, painted purple and orange and fucking aqua and surrounded by stone fences and gravel. In what is possibly the most verdant country in the world, people have gravel lawns, like cottages on the Jersey shore, and paint their houses to look like model homes in Miami. And what’s with the palm trees, people?

Anyhow, it was my mission to avoid all such places, so we picked a house that looked old. Unfortunately, it looked old in the picture, but was actually new—which wasn’t all that bad. The proprietor was a nice enough fellow, the room was big and featured a view of the harbor over a lush cow pasture (we woke the next morning to the most vocal dairy herd I’ve ever heard, and I’ve seen lots of cows), and we were a mile from town.

I was led to believe Irish folks like their drink (or at least, their pubs), and I was prepared to represent. Unfortunately, the pub we were recommended only held us, two other couples, and two bored barmaids. Dejected, we ate chips, drank a pint, and left, hoping the party would get started in the Southeast.

Next: Kilrush to Cobh, or: How many times do we have to drive through Cork?

Trip Log, Part One.

Jen and I had one shared thought when we got to the door of our hotel room in Shannon. After being in transit for the better part of twelve hours, we were both intending to crank up the A/C to a level of arctic chill, get under some covers, and crash out to equalize our jetlag like we did in Rome. Unfortunately, we had some things to learn about the hospitality industry in Ireland. The room we were given was heated to about 95°F for some odd reason. I asked one of the housekeeping ladies across the way how to turn it down, and she obliged, but for the rest of our stay in the hotel it was ridiculously hot. (Note: There is a small knob on radiators in Ireland with indecipherable markings. Turn it counterclockwise. The other way will heat the room to the approximate surface temperature of the sun.) I opened the window and futzed with the radiator until I was reasonably sure it was off.

This was about 9AM local time, 3AM by my watch. We’d waited an hour to have a room available, and cought a nap on the couches in the “Reading Room”, which was across from the hotel pub and really should have been called “Overflow Area”: the couch I laid on smelled like the floor of a fraternity room.

Another new experience; The Irish believe in the duvet to the excusion of all other bedding materials. They give you a sheet and a blanket/cover that weighs as much as a lead apron, and expect that you will be content to sleep in a pool of your own sweat. We pulled it off, crawled into bed, and passed out uneasily for about 10 hours. I found that I was alternately hot and cold, so I put a corner of the duvet on my ass and left the rest of my body outside, and at least my vital organs stayed at a constant temperature.

At about 6PM local time, we got up and staggered to the restaurant, where we were one of three couples. The food was decent, the beer was tasty, and our waitress gave us some good advice for our trip. We had another beer in the pub and returned back to the room for more sleep.

Our Lady of Knock

Here’s a first very small batch of photos from Ireland. We’re at Shannon, having some breakfast, and prepapring to go through Customs amid a whole flock of U.S. Army personnel in desert camo. Talk to you all soon-

Greetings from Shannon.

Among other incredible acts of generosity, our neighbor S. offered to give us a lift to the airport. This was after a week of hosting jen and I while our floors were being refinished.

As per our normal departure schedule, Jen and I were at least three hours behind, but we managed to stuff all our crap into three suitcases (two for clothes, one for loot), fed the alarm, set the cats, and jumped into his truck. This truck is not any normal vehicle. It is the Starship Enterprise. For his work, he has outfitted the truck with wireless internet service and GPS, so he has a laptop and cellphone mounted to the dash like a police cruiser. He had us on the road and halfway to Dulles before we knew it, and dropped us at the American terminal in record time. We walked to the supiciously small International desk at the American counter and I asked the lady if we could check in for our flight to Boston. She told me that the Boston and International flights departed from Reagan National, not from Dulles. It was about this point that I felt physically ill.

You know the feeling you get when you realize you forgot your wedding rings an hour before the ceremony (I did) or overslept your SAT’s (I did) or understand that you’re about to get your ass beat (I have)? It kind of felt like that.

Holding my printout of the itinerary like a clueless retard, I turned back to look at my wife. I could see the thoughts crossing her face.

I think that she was probably first marveling at how she could have married such a moron. Then, I think she was considering how we could salvage the trip. The next look was probably a flash of anger, and I wouldn’t blame her for that in the least. Finally, I saw the humor come out in her dimples, and she gave me the you-have-to-be-shitting-me look that my wife is famous for. At that point in time, I did the only thing I could think of.

S. answered the call on the second ring. “What’s wrong?”

Before I had even explained the full extent of my stupidity, he said, “I’m turning around right now. I’ll be right there.”

He was gracious about the whole thing, God bless him, and he even had the route from Dulles to Reagan mapped out on his laptop when he pulled up. He had us to the terminal in a half an hour, which has to be some kind of record, and he was kind-he only gave me a handful of good-natured shit as opposed to the truckload I deserved.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful. Checkin, lunch and security. News that Michael Jackson was aquitted on the terminal CNN channel. A jump jet to Boston, which was mercifully smooth. A three hour layover in Boston (Logan is a boring terminal) and then a 757 to Shannon. This flight was shorter than NY to Paris but the service on American pales compared to Delta’s.

Shannon is a little airport compared to other European desinations, but it’s cozy, and situated in the middle of an expanse of pasture and farmland. I made reservations at the nearest hotel, so we walked out into the brisk, damp air and across the street to the Great Southern Shannon Hotel. At 8am, it was a little early to have a room ready for us, but they let us sleep on the couches in the lounge for an hour until they had an opening. As with Rome, we laid down and crashed for nine hours, and rose to catch some dinner at the hotel restaurant.

This morning, we’re eating a meal at the airport restaurant, making plans for our first night in a B&B, and preparing for our first Irish traffic circle (“Look to the left, merge to the right”, said our waitress last night.) Cross your fingers for us.

Hello, Goodbye.

We’re back from Tennessee//North Carolina and on our way to Ireland. By the hair of our teeth, thanks to Arlene. Stay tuned for pictures and travelogue. Stay well, everybody-

Salary Survey

Salary Survey
Find out what your peeps make.

10 Bad Project Warning Signs

10 Bad Project Warning Signs
Another good design link. And how true…

Logo Trends 2005

Logo Trends 2005
Some decent readin’.

Floor Stained

This is the day after it was applied, when we could walk on it. It’s really coming together, and the fellow doing the work is doing a fantastic job.