Perfect for when your password is QWERTY

Two weeks ago I finally finished my sentence with the Samsung Sway.  While it looked great, had a very slim size, and cost little, the call quality was pretty terrible.  Call quality is not easy to test at kiosks, and I just assumed all cell phones nowadays had great audio quality.  Oops.  Anyway, I opted this time to get a phone with a nice display, good call quality, and a QWERTY keyboard.

I had planned to get a Samsung Rogue, but just 8 months after release the Rogue was discontinued.  WTF?!  I heard it had freezing problems and that the AMOLED screens were hard to come by, but this was still surprising.  Although I could get a Rogue at a store, I decided instead to get the replacement Reality.

Red-headed stepchild

The Reality is smaller, but other than that, it seems to be inferior to the Rogue in many ways.  The screen is good, but nowhere near as good as the Rogue’s, and the data transfer is slower.  I still think it’s a pretty good phone, though.  I chose the dark City Red color for that business outside, party inside look.

Wetsuit material, I think

I also outfitted my Reality with a plastic cover and a Body Glove.  With Kiwi around, the phone needs all the armor it can get.  I am very picky about electronic coverings, and I always put the screen protectors on before I use the device (yeah, I am that guy).  I even fogged up the bathroom with steam from the shower first to ensure a tight seal.  Unfortunately, the Screenguardz I bought were just terrible.  The hard cover seemed like a good idea, but it would not seal properly around the edges.  I ended up scrapping the Screenguardz and just buying some cheap protectors from Verizon, and these protectors went on perfectly.  You’d think with a name like Screenguardz the protector would be just good but this was not the case at all.

Our realtor showed us the listings for several houses, and insisted we take a look at one of the houses that didn’t look that great in the photographs.  It turned out to be in an amazing neighborhood, and the photos did not do the place justice at all.  It was a whole higher tier of house, as it was newer and larger than any of the other houses we looked at (even though they were all about the same price).  The seller wanted to move out for personal reasons, and so the price was excellent.

So, in spite of our desire to take it easy on our housing search… we put in an offer.  It’s getting ridiculous at this point, and Bunky and I are both pros at the process now.  The seller negotiated a little, and we got a small discount off the listing price, but really the house was much cheaper than it would have been under normal circumstances.  Now we just gotta make it through the inspection…

Unfortunately, this morning I got the inspection report and saw that he’d gotten suspicious about something and gone to check the foundation.  There he found significant bowing and a crack, which may indicate serious problems.  Apparently this is a huge problem that can cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix and make the house very undesirable to future potential buyers.  We’ve got a civil engineer scheduled to look at the place tomorrow to give us a definitive answer, but based on our current bad luck, it’s looking more and more likely that we will have to walk away from this deal (after we paid for all the inspections, too…).

Guess we gotta look at some more houses and places to rent now…

Ninjas need directions to find Velius

With the move rapidly approaching, I decided to upgrade from my Nuvi 350 to a Nuvi 765t.  I also got a friction mount.  The 350 was a little small and sometimes took a long time to acquire a satellite signal when it first started.  Plus, I didn’t want to buy lifetime map updates for a 2-year old device.  I had put some ghetto Dual Lock fasteners on the back of the 350 and the dashboard of the Scion xA, but I wanted something a little nicer for the Santa Fe.  The friction mount is excellent, and does not slide at all.  I also like to stow away, so that thieves aren’t tempted to smash my window to steal my GPS.

Getting back to the 765t, it has a number of new features, although many of them are somewhat useless.  I have no need of Bluetooth (my car has it), or MP3 playing, etc.  However, the large screen is very nice, and the maps look better.  The lane assist is very nice, especially since I live in a fair-sized city, although sometimes the assist is not completely accurate.  The GPS also has ad-driven FM traffic alerts, although I have found them to be inaccurate.  The ads are very small and easy to ignore, so I don’t plan to follow the traffic alerts unless it shows a massive delay.

The 3D maps in cities are useful, although the direction algorithm in cities leaves much to be desired.  The directions are near useless downtown, although I’ve heard that this is a common problem with many GPS units.  The satellite reception is also spotty in “city canyons” but this is to be expected with the line-of-sight nature of the signal.  Still, the maps are pretty helpful, so that you can see what streets are coming up and have an idea of where you are.

I bought a bundle that included the GPS and lifetime (of the unit) map updates, so hopefully this GPS will last longer than the last one.  Since the new house is farther out into the suburbs, I’m optimistic that this GPS will keep me from being horribly lost in my new hood.  In my recon missions thus far, the 765t has been outstanding in the suburbs.

We went to a few open houses this weekend, and while a few were terrible, one house really stood out to us.  It had been nicely kept up, had more space than we needed (4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms) so that we probably would not have to move again, a finished basement that the owner ran her computer business out of (wired man cave YESSSSS), an ok yard, and a two car garage.  Although a few things were dated, everything was well-maintained.  Even better, the owner only needed 3 weeks to move out.  This meant we might not have to sublet a place temporarily and pay for movers to truck our stuff around twice.

We decided to put in an offer the next day.  We knew the house had been through two open houses, and might be due for a price reduction, so we came in very low (~$27k under listing price).  In spite of this, the seller still countered very quickly, probably because she had no other offers.  A few more quibbling rounds of back and forth took place, but we had a good feeling throughout the whole process.  The seller was very quick to respond at all times, and she realized she would have a tough time getting as much as we were offering from anyone else.  In the end, she accepted our offer for about $14k under the listing price.  We were willing to go up another $5k, but fortunately she did not know that.  Essentially we met in the middle between her listing price and our lowball offer.

Needless to say, Bunky and I are excited and relieved.  The previous sellers were so uncooperative, that the process was tortuous.  This one went through super-smooth, and I guess our third time making an offer was the charm.  In other good news, no pipes burst in our place; it turns out the washer hose sprung a leak.  Apparently this happens all the time with cheap rubber hoses.  Now it’s just a matter of making sure both the sale of our condo and the purchase of this house go through and we’ll be living it up in a place with more than twice the space!

On an immature note, after learning that people call Mt. Lebanon “Lebo”, I have started referring to our new town as “Lesbo” and “Mt. Lesbian” to Bunky’s great dismay.