What is On Jeffs' Mind

I haven’t mentioned this a lot over the past few months, but Tao tao and I decided we wanted to try moving again. After last years disappointment, where we had found a house, put an offer on it, and then could never sell our own, I did not want to get my hopes up this time around. A few months ago we re-listed our townhouse, and after about 60 days it sold. I must admit it felt like a long 60 days, with many people viewing the house, but no real interest of offers. I was planning on pulling it at the end of June if it had not sold, since Tao tao’s mom is coming for a visit. But a few weeks ago, at the end of May, we got an offer, and were able to sell the town house. Now the big thing was to find another house. I was feeling pretty good about things, and created a list of places I would like to look at. My realtor came back and said about half of them had sold or were pending, so I was getting nervous that I might not be able to find something, and would have to live like a nomad.

We went out the day after our Townhouse had sold, and started to look. I must admit I was very depressed, as all the houses we looked at, none I cared for. And that was it for my list, and new listing had seemed to slow down. My realtor then sent me a few more to consider that did not make the list. I went and we checked them out, and to my surprise I found a house I really liked. So we put in a offer, and after a bit of negotiation, it was accepted. I must say I felt very good about it. The past week and a bit have been busy with getting things finalized with the sale of our Townhouse, and getting things in order for our new house. But this week, pretty much everything is done, as the dates get closer, I will go to the lawyers and sign the papers, and then get ready for moving. Our Financing is in place and both the sale and our purchase have met the conditions.

I am really excited to move into a house. The first place I bought was a house, and after living there for a few years, I moved to a townhouse, as at the time I was single. But I found, a few years in townhouse living was enough for me. I think it is one of those things you need to experience to really understand, but at least I will not have my neighbors cigarette smoke wafting through the fresh air vents anymore. There were some things I wanted to upgrade in my townhouse, but truthfully, I always had this belief I would be moving, so anything that cost a lot, I was never really interested in doing. This was mainly developing the basement. I kept my collectibles down there, but never able to display them the way I wanted to. Part of me things I might have sold a lot of them, just due to my dissatisfaction of how I was keeping them.

I have to thank my parents, earlier in the week, they did the house inspection, and since I had meetings, I could not be there, but they were there on my behalf, and they said everything checked out good, with a few minor issues to look at. I was also a little nervous, as I did not know what they would think of my house, as they were away when I made the purchase. They really liked it, and feel it will be a good house for Tao tao and I. I was also happy to hear, that the bank appraised the house around what I paid for it, and they are usually conservative with their appraisals.

The house is a big house, and it reminds me a lot of my parents house, the house I grew up in for some nay years. It has a family room, with a big fireplace (People who know me, know that I am not a big fan of Fireplaces that take up entire rooms), but what I like about this family room, is that there is still place to put a TV and furniture. That was important to me, and probably one of my main considerations well looking for a house. The house also has a nice kitchen, with a door that leads out to the backyard. Lots of windows and well lit, and should be able to fit out kitchen table nicely, and give us room to cook. Also it has a nice basement that I will use to put my collectibles in, and also set up a bit of a games room. I am really excited about that, as I have some pictures I have had for over a year that I am looking forward to hanging up. I think I will also buy a few movie poster of some of my favorite movies, and put them in frames, and hang them up as well. I might hunt out a Iron Maiden Poster as well, and get that framed, I have some from when I was a kid, but a lot of those are in rough shape, so I might check online posters shops, and see if I can find one I like when looking for the movie posters.

I am really excited about moving. I will move mid July, so it is going to be an exciting month, and really busy. Tao tao Mom is coming as well for a visit, so I suspect we are going to be on the go for quite some time. Hopefully in August things will settle down, and I will get everything organized in the house. Probably in the fall, when we have everything setup, I will take pictures or make a video. I will leave setting the toy room up for last, as that is the one I am looking forward to the most. I want to thank my Parents, for their support, My brother Paul for his support and motivation, my friends Dave, Jason and Jason for their support, and my friend Rick for his encouragement from afar. I was pretty quiet about this, as I did not want to set my self up for the disappointment I had from last year.

Here is a link to the listing

Tags: collectibles, Dave, Iron Maiden, Jason, Jason L, Mom and Dad, movies, New House, Paul, Rick Moyer, Tao tao

The past week has been interesting for me, and a bit of a break from my regular routine

This week I went on training for work. I was enrolled in a Sun LDAP course, and was on training Tuesday to Friday. It was something that was quite different from what I usually do, so it was interesting to learn. First off we learned on Unix systems, and that is something I don’t know a lot about. I did some work on Unix about 6 or 7 years ago when I did Oracle support. I was never very good at it as it involved a lot of typing, and strange commands that I did not understand. This time, over the coarse I got more comfortable with the Unix, but probably more so as we used a lot of the Sun Directory Services GUI, which helped out. I am a bad typer, and it took me time on command line stuff, so hoping I don’t have to do a lot of it in the future. Not sure where I go with this training, but I guess over time I will find out.

The weekend turned out to be fuller then I originally expected. On Saturday, I had to cleanup the house as we had a showing late in the afternoon. Tao tao and I went out for a few hours. We went to the mall, and had dinner, then looked around for a bit. We came home and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Sunday turned out to be a busy day, and still wondering how I fit it all in. I started off the morning by working on my Collecting Podcast. I have the second podcast edited, and will now work on enhancing it. The I watched the Monaco F1 Grand Prix. Not a lot of passing in the race, but it was exciting to see the cars race as they looked so fast, and I really like street circuits.

After that Tao tao and I went to see the new Terminator Salvation movie. I must say that I really enjoyed this movie. It was a lot of action and explosions, and not really a dull moment the entire movie. I had been looking forward to this movie, as I had been watching the TV series closely. The story did not really tie in with the TV series, but that was cool. I thought Christian Bale did a great job as John Connor, and brought a different element to the character that we haven’t seen before. He was so intense, I could see where he had the outburst well filming, if he was channeling that intensity to his performance. The guy who played Kyle Reese did a great job, he reminded me a lot of the original Kyle Reese, he was also in the new Trek movie. I am hoping after his role in the Terminator movie, they give him more to do in the next Trek movie.

When I got home, I did an Interview with my friend Rick for the Take him with You podcast. We talked about some of my experiences growing up, and the different schools I had attended and how they relate to God. It was a lot of fun to talk to Rick, and he did a great job with the Interview. Rick also told me some other cool things, and played some cool music for me that he had. I am happy to have met Rick and made a new friend, as He and I share a lot of things in common.

After the Interview was over, I watched the Indy 500 I had taped earlier. The race was alright, though there was some scary accidents, which I did not like to see. For an Oval race, I thought it was alright, and there was some nice racing and intrigue to it. After watching this race, I have come to the conclusion that it is more the length of the race then the track itself that makes it unique. For the most part, it is all about setup, and a max throttle track, but once they get past half distance, then the uniqueness comes in. Most of the Indycar races are a few hours or a couple hundred miles, so after they get past a certain distance, bad luck and problems come to play, and it is interesting to see who has them, and how they deal with it. The track is pretty basic, and not as challenging as some other tracks, it is the length that makes this race different to me.

I finished off the night with this Blog. I would say that was a full day

Tags: Formula 1, IndyCar, LDAP, Rick Moyer, Take Him With You, Terminator 4, UNIX, What's in Jeffs Basement

On Thursday  night Tao tao, Paul, Dave , Tim and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. I had purchased tickets earlier in the week, as I thought it would be very busy. It turned out that the theatre was full, but probably only Two-Thirds full. I suspect that a lot of people did not realize that the movie was opening on Thursday since all the advertising was for Friday. Dave and Tim wore Trek costumes, and a few others did as well, but I felt a little let down as it lacked the excitement that I have seen for other movies. We had got there a bit early, so we took pictures of Dave and Tim for a bit, and then went into the theatre and sat down and waited.

SPOILERS BELOW

The New Design Enterprise.

Cool Picture of the Transporter effect and Spock

SPOILERS BELOW

Over all I enjoyed the movie. I felt for the most part it was well cast, and the story and the effects were very well done.

Things I liked

• I really liked Zachary Quinto as Spock. He really looked good in the role, and I felt he portrayed Spock pretty much as how I would have expected it. This new Spock had a bit more human elements in him, and did not come across as wanting to supress those elements of him, so it made for some fun scenes, especially between Spock and Kirk.
• The Enterprise. I really liked the new design of the Ship. I will always loved the Original design, but I felt that they did a great job of updating the ship for 2009. I really liked the Bridge as well. Some say it looks like an Apple Store, but I really liked that clean but technical look to it. There was a lot to look at as there was always something catching my eye.
• The Uniforms I liked as well.  I thought they did a great job of updating the Original ones to look good for a 2009 movie. The more formal Uniforms they wore I liked as well, as I felt that they were well done, and reminded me of the original movie uniforms, but more functional.
• The scenes with Kirk and the old Spock I really liked. It felt very right for a Star Trek movie, and even though it was a new Kirk, the scenes just felt very good. Especially with Spock coming to Kirk’s aid on the ice planet.
• The cocky and confident Kirk from the Academy. I really liked how Chris Pine portrayed Kirk as very cocky. Him breezing through the Kobayashi Maru was fun to watch. Also keeping in spirit of the original in that Kirk was a ladies man, that was fun to see him still have those qualities. Even before he joined Starfleet, and just a brash young person was fun to watch.

Some things I did not really like

• I liked the new Kirk a lot, but what bothered me the most in this movie was how he was promoted to Captain so fast. I could never get past that in the movie that he went from Cadet to Captain, just did not feel right to me. To be honest, it bothered me a lot, and pulled away from my enjoyment of the movie a bit. I know it is a movie, and some things need to be suspended, but I would have felt better if Kirk had served on a Starship for a bit of time before he was promoted to Captain.
• I did not really care for the Mr. Scott Character either. I felt that there was to much comedy around the character. It felt like every scene he was in was comic relief, and had a difficult time accepting that he was a great engineer. I hope for the next movie, they tone down the comedic elements of the character a bit.
• The Spock – Uhura romance I was caught a bit off guard on as well. Though I liked the more human elements of Spock, I just felt they went a bit far in him showing so much affection to Uhura in public. There was a scene when they were standing on the transporter pad and kissing, and it just felt like a bit much for me.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie, like I said the script was pretty good, and the effects top notch. I guess part of me is a bit sad, as the outcome of the movie, has set Star Trek on a new timeline, where the previous 40 years worth of stories no longer apply. I have been a fan of Star Trek for a long time, so it felt like saying goodbye to an old friend in terms of that timeline and the stories and characters from all the series and other movies. I guess it is bittersweet, in that the movie was great, and there looks to many more exciting stories to come, but they will not take place in the timeline that I have known for so long.

All I can say though, it is great that Star Trek is back, and I hope there is a lot more Star Trek for years to come.

Tags: Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, Star Trek

Not much overly interesting lately to talk about. So this post will be a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

 I am really getting excited for the new Star Trek movie coming out soon. I even took the Friday off so that I can go see it. I would like to go see it at the first showing, but not sure when that is, possibly Thursday evening, so I will see. If not, then I am set for the Friday to go during the day. Lately I have been trying to avoid finding out to much information about the movie, so I have not been looking at any posts or sites that talk to much in detail about the movie. I want my first time watching to be as unspoiled as possible.

I got a few cool things in the mail this week. I got my Treks in Sci-Fi  T-Shirt from Rico. This time it is grey, and has some important Trek dates on the back of the shirt. Looks cool and already wore it once. The next day I got in some LOST Kubricks that I had won in an eBay auction a few weeks earlier. They are pretty cool, in the series: Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Sayid, Charlie and Hurley. I think I like Locke, Sawyer and Charlie the most out of these, but all are very cool.  I do hope that they continue on with these, as I think they have so much more to do with them. I guess I will have to wait and see. Below is a pic of the Sawyer Kubrick.

The weekend was pretty quiet. I had originally planned on going to Calgary for a Comic Show, but decided that there wasn’t much I really wanted so decided to stay home. Tao tao and I did some cleaning around the house, and rearranged our Kitchen. In the evenings I watched some DVD’s, I felt a bit like a kid in that I watched some Battle of the Planet and had some Pop Shoppe Pop . It reminded me of when I was a kid, I really liked that Pop, and it pretty much tastes the same as it did when I was younger, The Battle of the Planets just set the mood .

Tao tao is finished her school now, and she is going to start looking for work. Hopefully she can find something quick, as she would like to save some money to go back to China this summer. This afternoon we went over to the mall, and she picked up some applications from a few places. At least stores had Job Applications out, so that is promising.

Looking forward to a new LOST and Fringe this week on TV, they are getting close to the season end for both series. Heroes season finale is on Monday, and hoping that it is good, last weeks episode was not bad, so hoping this one is as well. I am sort of hoping they leave Heroes with a cliff hanger, so it gives me something to think about over the summer. Presently I am reading Darth Bane: The Rule of Two, is seems pretty decent so far. I am trying to read more, as I am hoping at some point I can read two books a month, as there are so many Star Wars and Star Trek books I want to read.

Tags: Battle of the Planets, Charlie - LOST, Darth Bane, Fringe, Heroes, Hurley, Jack - LOST, Kate - LOST, Locke, LOST, LOST Kubricks, Rico, Sawyer, Sayid, Star Trek, Star Wars, Tao tao, The Pop Shoppe, Treks in Sci-Fi