6397 Blimp, bail, accents and the start of getting a mortgage

Things to do in order to get my mortgage worked out with 1005 financing for the coming purchase of a place (rather than renting)... if not, 5% down is pretty standard.

Letters related to phone, power & cable, stating how long my accounts have been open, payment timeliness, and contact numbers for the people concerned and a list of my canceled rent checks for this and my prior place. Most of that'll be dealt with on Monday.

Note to self, look into seller concession, where the seller pays 3% of the price to go to closing the deal. (That's a good $3k-ish, right there!) It looks like a pretty good possibility, depending on the seller.

---

I've looked at too many bits of hacker-text. 2004 looks like the word "soup" to me.

---

Work News - Kahuna will be doing opening and trainings in Nevada next week, Newbie and DL are going to St. Augustine. That means it's just me, CS, the bean counters and Rhodey in the office. I think MM is skipping next week... still waiting for clearance to do codeRED.

I helped with her practice training, and discovered that the big kahuna can't say the words "telephony" or "liaison" properly.

---

( Blimp over Fort Lauderdale today )

---

It's cool to listen to samples from the Speech Accent Archive.

---

Well... here's another life experience. I get to deal with a Bail bondsman - Get brother out of jail. $1000 bond for Burglary (He claims some woman asked him to get a battery out of her car, and a cop saw him and blah blah blah... whatever.) If I wasn't on call, I could post bail myself, but I'm not able to get out of the house to go hit cash machines and then swing by the jail. The Bondsman is working out right now how to get the paperwork out to me, so they can have my signature. [update: - Someone is coming out here in ~2 hours with forms and then will hop over to the jail. I'm glad that I'm only a hop, skip and a jump from the courthouse district.]

I've already decided that if this happens a second time, anytime in the future, he will not get bond again. This is his one grace period. If he asks again, he can stay in jail until his case comes to trial. (I suspect that he called me instead of the mom is because she's out of state at Ted's funeral, anyway.)

( The History of Bail )

6398 - Looking forward to Sunday.

Bail update - Paperwork guy got here at 3, took about 10 min to fill out the paperwork, he took it to the jail, hopefully got the bro out of the pokey. (Supposedly it can take up to 10 hours for him to be slotted out?)He's to come here after he's out, to fill out and get information to send them. I called his Cell phone, and wouldn'tcha know it, Andy answered it... that tells me that they were together when bro was arrested. If I had known that, I'd have thought twice about letting him out. What it boils down to is that the bond cost $100, plus $1000 in collateral (basically I transferred $1100 to them, and when he goes to court, I get $1k back. If he's an idiot, and decides to skip out on his court date, I'm responsible for cost incurred in finding him, and taking him back to jail. He'd be a fool to skip out because it's a major charge vs his current situation. He's another "professional victim". Nothing is ever his fault, just bad luck or mean people. It's never "ok, I admit it, I screwed up, and was wrong" unless he's pinned in a corner by logic, and at that point, he's just paying lip service... not really believing it. This is the same guy that called the landlord a jerk for kicking him out, after not paying rent for 6 months.

[update-10:41pm - Brother showed up at my door about 10pm... I reviewed with him what the situation was... If he's arrested for anything, I lose my money and he's stuck in jail without bond for as long as it takes for his case to come to trial. He seemed frightened and upset from only spending 18 hours in there, so I think that drove the point home. I explained to him about Andy always being a catalyst for his worst times... and he paid lip service. I can tell when he's not taking what I say as anything but a lecture. That's his call, he's an adult, and he knows with full understanding that there's not a thing anyone can do for him if he screws up.]

---

It's been a crappy week, but it's Saturday, and I look forward to a better week starting tomorrow. I'm not on call, and I think that I'll take a little smiley walk up the beach, and enjoy the weather.

---

Some good news (hope I don't jinx myself) On-call wasn't too busy at all. That's a nice blessing to count.

---

Fiddled with Mr. Snail a bit.. made his foot slide. Still not sure what to do with the eye stalks. stationary like that, he looks a little like a Viking ship.

---

Speed, highly addictive card game. (I may put it in the Toybox later.)

---

The Fog of War, I really like this site.

---

Opening ports with the westell modem/router is a real chore. Once I get it right,t I'm writing the procedure up and will post it as a faq on my website... I look forward to seeing how many hits I get on it, and even more forward to hearing form folks that got helped as a result.

---

( Obligatory Newt Picture du jour )