Possibly one of the most stressful weeks of my life

This is the first time in weeks I've had time in front of the computer to do something that's not work or house related. The title above refers to the confluence of the final stages of the house purchase, trying to organise Christmas, and a particularly difficult few days at work. Thankfully through a combination of sheer bloody mindedness, Dana's organisational prowess and some good teamwork around the office, it looks like things will come together for settlement tomorrow afternoon, or Friday morning at the latest and that we will meet a significant milestone at work.

In my previous posts about the arcane and entirely opaqe process involved in settlement, I indicated that I found it all quite confusing. Unfortunately, it seems to have proved quite confusing for the veteran players involved whose job it is supposed to be to make these things happen on a regular basis. As a first time homebuyer, it's been a truely signifcant challenge trying to get all these things together when we don't even know what they are and what has to be done, but if there's one thing to learn from it all, it's that you can't really rely on anyone else to make any of it happen. I hate being one of those people who has to push all the time for things to happen and harass people - after all, for the most part they're just doing their job - but that is what you must be in this process.

It's also one of the few times in my life where I've found it to be a real challenge to work through things calmly, where my emotional response has been so strong that I've had to really work to keep it under control and remain rational. Some aspects of it all still make me seethe a little bit just thinking about it, but as long as settlement occurs properly tomorrow or the day after, I think I'll be able to let go of it all. Plus I'll be off work for a couple of weeks, removing another annoyance, and it will be Christmas and I'm going to get to be around some of the people I love most in the world. This can only be a good thing.

I actually feel quite serene and positive about the whole thing at the moment. Things have quietened down at work, there is a beautiful view out of my window (see the picture below) the weather is finally better and I'm really enjoying Tame Impala's "Innerspeaker" album. The album really reminds me of the Beatles for some reason, and is excellent.

There's also been some really excellent things happening recently, in addition to all the annoying house stuff. We went to Melbourne for Dana's work Christmas party, which was super excellent, and also managed to catch some old friends while we were there and get all of our Christmas shopping done. I had a collection of excellent work Christmas parties as well (Team, Group and Department), one of which had some really excellent food.

Life is good. As soon as this house stuff is sorted, it will be super freaking excellent.

PS: OK, so this is going to sound super corny, but on re-reading this I feel I should add that one of the reasons that life is good is the Dana. This week would have been impossible without her, and I would probably not be getting keys to a house any time soon without her. Dana - you make things awesome.

Stop motion light play

I've been meaning to re-post these for the last couple of weeks - they're a pair of cool stop motion light animations I saw on Gizmodo (which they of course posted on from somewhere else). Click on through to the Vimeo pages for the full artist's information.

Nowhere Near Here from Pahnl on Vimeo.

Subcarpati - Am crescut pe la Romana from z00x on Vimeo.

If you haven't got anything good to say...

...then at least try not to get too ranty.

As people around me who ask me about this sort of things, I'm getting a little bit tense about the house situation, which is why there haven't been any updates about it for weeks now. This afternoon, I've got a bit of time to burn before netball, and I think I'm just about comfortable enough to write about it.

Since my last progress update in early November, pretty much nothing has happened. The house is still ready to move into. No more of the driveway needed to be replaced. It took another couple of weeks after that for all the requisite paper work to be re-submitted to the ACTPLA, the ACT planning authority, and we were advised about two and a half weeks ago that it should take ACTPLA two weeks to re-approve, and then it goes to the titles offices for registration. That's where things fell over last time.

If all goes well with the titles office, it should take approximately a week to be registered. Which brings us up to the end of this week, although I'm estimating that it will more likely be next week. The registration of the title, as I think I may have mentioned earlier in my eternal harpings about the build, is basically when everything is done, and it signals that there are 14 days until the end of the contract, in which there is a flurry of activity from all sorts of lawyers and banks and things and they get a big cheque and week get some keys. I don't pretend to understand the things that happen in that process - I thought the whole 14 day process was settlement, but apparently it's actually a point in time, before which a series of papers are signed and exchanged and important meetings happen with gathering intensity, culminating in the ecstatic moment where the house is actually ours. That's how I understand it at the moment, although I admit there may be some artistic licence in the whole thing.

Licences, that reminds me. Our lawyer/conveyancer (I'm pretty sure the lady who is doing it is not a lawyer, even though we signed up for one at a law firm - fat lot of good it did us) finally got around to getting the terms of the licence agreement (to re-hash, that's the rental type agreement between us and the developer that would enable us to move in before settlement) and while it looked good in terms of the 'rent' they would charge, there were some pretty suspect penalty clauses in it. Specifically, we'd be liable for a massive jump in rent, to the tune over about $800, if there was any delay in settlement after the 14 day period when the title is registered. Normally this would actually not be too much of a worry - we're pretty sure we'll get all our ducks lined up in that time, but it's getting awfully close to Christmas, where the requisite lawyers and bankers will not be around to participate in the orgy of papers, declarations, deeds, insurance waivers and bank cheques. It would also apply in addition to the penalty clauses already in the contract of sale, which are not insubstantial in their own right.

In short, it's a bit of a risk that we're not keen to take, despite the possibility of moving in early.

With the timetable as it is, if we're lucky, the best case scenario is that we move into the place the weekend before Christmas. The next best is that we take some time mid week, and move in the days before Christmas. The next best is that we settle on like 23/24 dec and move in after Christmas, when we get back from Perth. The worst option is that settlement falls after everyone buggers off and we pay penalty fees until every one's lawyers et al get back from their Christmas break, although the agent has promised they will argue that the penalty fees should be waived for that period if this occurs. Much as I appreciate that sentiment, I don't know how much success they would have in that scenario - the developer hasn't often listened to them so far. The last option, and while it's not hugely attractive, it's better than the worst, is that there is some delay with registration of the title, and settlement doesn't occur until after Christmas some time.

So that's where we're at. For the most part at the moment, we're trying to manage our expectations and make sure everything is lined up so that we can move quickly if we have to. The waiting game is frustrating, but we're getting pretty good at it these days - I'm thinking of developing some sort of zen philosophy based on it all.

I also realise this blog is becoming mighty boring without any nice pictures about the progress of the house or what we're doing, and also because I haven't even had time to post other odds and ends on here because of work. I'll try and rectify that at some stage in the future, but probably not right now. Instead, I will just let you know that the netball season is in full swing again, and we've had some real crackers in the past couple of weeks. One of the finest moments a few weeks ago involved the opposition goal shooter having a bit of a tanty and storming off to cry in the gents after pretty much every pass to him was blocked by myself in goal keeper, or our goal defence. His salty tears tasted of victory that night....

Silly Jokes

Delays, delays, delays

The closer we get to the end of this whole house process, the more emotionally involved in it I get. When we were six months away from completion, a three month delay was easy to be philosophical about, but when there’s supposed to be only a week or two to go, a three week delay feels like a major blow.

Similarly, each small bit of progress or good news at this end of things elates me, which in turn makes it really hard not to get my hopes up. It’s a bit circular really.

As you might have guessed from this preamble, we’ve had news of another delay with the unit. Last time I wrote about it, we were expecting to hear back any day that title had been registered, flagging the beginning of the 14 day settlement period. Instead, we heard that the ACT Govt assessor didn’t think the driveway was wide enough (despite it being the width approved in the development application) due to a recent legislative change. Unfortunately, the assessor couldn’t tell them how wide it needed to be. In addition, because the driveway is concrete, it can’t easily be widened like bitumen, and has to be ripped up and replaced.

We didn’t get too much more information than that. For example, we don’t know the scope of the changes needed to the driveway. Is it just the part that joins the road, or does the whole length of the internal access road need replacing? We’ve forwarded a series of similar questions on to the agent, but I’m not totally hopeful that we’ll get a comprehensive response. I don’t necessarily blame her for this, I don’t think she gets much information from the developer and I don’t imagine the information that she does get is always that accurate or useful. Plus there’s a third party in this that has proven useless in the past – the ACT Govt.

I like to think I’m usually quite even minded about bureaucracies, what with working in one, but this one really is a waste of space. The combination of excessive and often silly, counterproductive regulation and an inflated self importance has stung us a couple of times already in this build and I fully expect to experience more of it once we are fully fledged home owners.

For example, the washing line that went mysteriously missing. Apparently it had to be taken down or screened because it was visible from the road, which was unsightly. The reason you could see it from the road? Because we’re not allowed to put a full fence along that edge of the property (chain link or hedge only), as they ‘separate homes from the rest of the community’. Never mind that the hedges will grow to obscure it, or that we’ll be growing plants through the chain link that will also shield it!

There is also regulation that mandates that all new houses must have either a washing line or a dryer. Since the line had to be taken down, the developer has installed a dryer in the unit. This rule means that our house becomes massively less energy efficient, which is directly contrary to the ACT Govt’s environmental policy goals. It seems to be a fairly regular occurrence that the tension between competing policy priorities has been ignored completely, with little, or sometimes just misplaced effort to fix them. As someone who works in a policy area, this sort of heavy ineffective regulation makes me cringe!

My self-diagnosis for a lot of these problems comes from the very nature of the ACT Govt, which sits as a hybrid of an oversize local council and an under resourced state government.

I acknowledge that all of this may be unfair to the ACT Govt, and as a first time home builder, I should accept there will always be some issues, and this is the same with authorities everywhere. However, I can only speak to my experiences, and they really do seem to be a cut below the rest.

It’s a good thing that there are some decent perks to living in Canberra that are unaffected by the planning authorities.

Despite the tirade above and my general level of grumpiness about the whole thing, there is also some positive news. We had a nice gent from a landscaping place to measure up our courtyard for a deck this morning, and they’ve already replaced part of the driveway. I don’t know if they need to replace any more – it didn’t look like there had been any work done to rip up any other parts of it at least. If not, then we might actually be able to move to settlement fairly soon (fingers crossed). This small piece of progress was actually enough to cheer me up quite a bit! I’m hoping that we get some more positive news in the next week. Fingers crossed.

Edit: I just realised how whingey that all is. To bring the mood up a bit, here's a video of a guy moonwalking with a shopping trolley:

House update - pics of the garden and fencing

As noted earlier in the week, we're in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment, waiting for the registration of the title. Since we've pretty much planned the interior of the house to death (and we can't really get in there to get started), Dana and I have been turning our attention to the garden and courtyard. This has led me to get out the grid paper again, and start plotting things out. This hasn't really got us too far - as it stands, we've only really agreed on two or three things. It also doesn't help that we don't know the first thing about gardening.

The first is that we want to put a deck in the courtyard. Pictured below, the courtyard is approximately a 6m x 6m square, if you count the space all the way out to the fence line. The recess into the building itself is about 6m on the longest side and 3.5m and 4m on the short sides. This means the deck we're thinking of wold be about 6m x 3m, with a step or two down to the garden (depending on how deep it will be. 

It looks a bit scrappy in there at the moment, with the builders droppings and Canberra's clay-tastic soil, but it will look great once there's a deck in there. The deck will be flush with the top of the bricks at the sliding door - this is the floor height inside the house. Now we just have to get someone to build it for us. If anyone knows someone who can do that sort of thing, don't keep it a secret! I'm getting the feeling that it will be a real challenge to get someone to do this, and will take us ages. 

The next thing that we've agreed on, is that we'll put in a crushed gravel (or is it called deconstructed granite??) pathway in from the gate at the side of the house, through the courtyard and into the little backyard. I think I'll probably end up doing this myself, as it doesn't look super complicated, from what I've seen online. I'm finding the idea of improving the soil to the right level and trying to choose plants a far more daunting task.

Here's two views of where the crushed gravel pathway will be, the first from the gate where it will originate, looking through the courtyard, along the side of the house and out to the backyard, and the other looking up to the gate and the courtyard from the backyard. To give some context, the deck will be to the right in the first pictures, and there will probably be a garden bed of some sort along the fence line at the left. My preference is that the pathway will meander from side to side a bit, swerving away form the wall to avoid the tap, and then coming back in with a small paved area under the clothes line. Speaking of the line, I've just noticed from looking at these pictures that it's gone walkabout. That's a bit concerning, it was there last time we visited the site. I wonder if it's been flogged, or has been removed for some reason. Must look into that.

Anyway, in the last portion of the garden, the backyard (or rather the 3.6m x 8m ish rectangle between the house and the road) is still a bit undecided. Dana wants to put some raised garden beds in there for veggies, and I guess the path will terminate somewhere in it. The picture below shows the backyard, and you can see the baby hedge that was planted a couple of weeks back. This area will have pretty much full sunlight (I think), so I don't know how well the veggies will actually do here. 

What you can also see in the above picture, which was new just today, are the early stages of the chain link fence that is going in behind the hedge. I was actually pretty happy to see this, because I had thought it wasn't going to be put in - we had originally only seen it as part of the landscaping plan, and it wasn't on the final approved landscape plan. It also means that the garden isn't quite so exposed to the the pathway and the road, which you can see next to it. 

Here you can see one of the holes dug for a fence post (Dad, I dug a hole), and the fence next door, which is a little further along. According to the latest update from the real estate agent, the fence isn't actually supposed to go in until after the registration of the title, as it's not actually an approved structure. It doesn't actually need an approval from my understanding, but if it was in already, then it could delay the registration of the title. The sharper readers may have spotted a slight anomaly here - if we don't have registration of the title, and the fences isn't supposed to be in until after the registration of the title, then why is the fence going in? I do not have an answer for this, although Occam's Razor, as advocated by many sci fi movies (e.g. Contact, which I finished watching about an hour ago), dictates that the most obvious answer is probably correct. I'd say the most obvious solution is that there is a breakdown in communication some where between the ACT Govt, the developer/builder, the real estate agent, and us. This is not uncommon. 

Anyway, this has got far more lengthy and wordy than I had intended, so I'll leave you with a picture of the tree at the front door of our house, which is part of the communal landscaped area.

Music that has been stuck in my head - A tale of two tunes.

This morning's tune is from Detroit Grand Pubahs, and is dedicated to my workmate Pauline. Unfortunately, Sony won't let me embed the full clip, so here's a bodgy one that someone else uploaded:


The full clip can be found here, and is very much worth the watch, if only for the midget cowboy and his fake beard.

The second tune is from a couple of weekends ago - I blame Rage in the morning...

This one also suffers from Sony not liking to share all its music on youtube - I can't even see the original video on youtube because it's blocked in AU. I shake my fist at you Sony.

If you can seek out the original, I like it for the Kightrider-esque bike. Plus the chicks on bikes are hawt - makes me want to go for a ride.

House update

It’s probably time for an update on how the house is going. Things are moving quickly these days (although still not quickly enough) and many small milestones seem to be rushing past on the way to settlement. The house is 100 per cent finished! All of the appliances are in, the communal landscaping and fencing is complete, and all the issues we noted in the pre-settlement inspection should now be addressed.

Note that I say addressed, and not fixed. Things being what they are, the builder is entitled to argue that some things don’t need to be fixed. Apparently the best thing for it is just to note every single tiny little thing that could possibly considered wrong with the place at the pre-settlement inspection, because they you will at least get most of the big issues fixed. Having said that, I’m fairly confident that there weren’t any really big issues that wouldn’t be fixed by an extra lick of paint around the place or a clean. Work was already being done to address these things when we measured the place for curtains on 8 October.

Speaking of curtains, we got two quotes in the end and they were interestingly divergent. We have a total of six windows in the place, for which both places quoted us for tracks and the same fabric. We had originally intended to have them quote for exactly the same installations, but one of the companies provided us with more options that will help us save space and make the curtains look better. Their representative was also 100 per cent nicer, had better taste, and was a much better sales man. So much so, that despite the quote being more expensive, and for more fancy things, we’re going to go with them.

This is the fabric that we went with in the end. This picture doesn't really do the colours justice, and the bits that look like light grey are actually silver. Following a trend established early in our housing adventures, it’s going to take a little longer to get hold of than some of the other options – about an extra two or three weeks on what a more standard option might take. Fortunately, it’s a lot cheaper than some other the other options that we had looked at.

The three aspects that really made our choice more expensive was the type of curtain rail, the way the curtains are pleated and additional privacy screens on the three bedroom windows. The privacy screens are actually pretty cool – basically you can see out of them, but people can’t see in. We found them to be a pretty attractive option, given the proximity of our bedroom windows to the edge of the property. In addition, Canberra’s weird property rules mean that you can’t put a decent fence on the part of the property that fronts onto a road. This means until the hedge grows up, our bedrooms are a bit exposed. The screens sit inside the window on a roller blind, beneath the curtains.

The end cost is going to be about $1.2k a window, which burns a bit, but they’re going to look great. I guess some of the burn is reduced by the perceived added value to the house (or at least, that’s what I tell myself).

We’ve also been going through the confusing, annoying, and occasionally erroneous pile of paperwork that goes along with the finances. We’ve got unconditional approval, and it’s all in train. I’m not going to say any more on it, because it’s already eaten up too much of my time and willpower. Suffice to say that it’s not pleasant to commit to such large amounts to debt.

The final 14 day settlement period should be starting any day now – we’ve actually been waiting for the last week or so to hear that it has started, so hopefully we won’t be waiting too much longer. As I keep telling those around me, we kind of have an asymptotic (this is not quite the right concept, but mathematics was never my forte) situation about moving into the house – we get closer and closer to moving in, but we never actually get there.

We’ve also been turning our mind to the garden. We really want to get a deck in there, and we were thinking about trying to get it done before Christmas – but given that’s only two months away, I can’t see it happening. We’ll know more once we start getting quotes.

The funniest thing I have seen today

I have a cold and feel horrible. Yet I am still at work - this does not compute.

projectors and pretty lights

A video of a light show at the Vimeo Festival and Awards afterparty last week. The light show is pretty cool, although the music is a bit crappy quality and doesn't quite sync up.

Amazing Building Mapping - Vimeo Festival from Dan Ilic on Vimeo.

Now get back to work, you slackers!

Guitar Hero Metallica

So I clocked GH: Metallica in hard over the weekend - I was a little disappointed by how easy the final track (The thing that should not be) was, but the excellent pain of completing One on hard more than made up for it.

What it really did though, was remind me how much I love Metallica! I've had a real craving to listen to them the last two days as a result, but I don't have any of their albums (I had a bit of a boycott against them after they made Napster cancel my account years ago in the whole Napster v Metallica thingy). I think this is something I might have to rectify at some stage.

The one track that has really been spinning round and round in my head, due to a combination of the weekend's gaming and the frenetic pace of work at the moment is Battery - what an awesome song!

I look like an idiot listening to this stuff at work, because I can't quite stop my head from bouncing a little to it. Speaking of work, it's been getting pretty challenging recently, but I've actually been really enjoying the uptick in pace - makes me feel like I'm squeezing everything out of the day

I would also like to share this excellent video that came to me via Glennboi and the H dog.

More awesome than a double rainbow...

More house stuffs

Progress on the house continues - the valuation from the bank came back last Friday, with the excellent figure of $445,000, which represents a capital growth of like 8.5% since we signed the contract last year! It also means that our loan valuation ratio will be 75%, meaning no mortgage insurance and we should qualify easily for the rather excellent home loan package that we applied for.

We've also made some movement on curtains, after an initial set back. The set back was that the fabric that Dana and I had chosen and obtained a swatch of is no longer available! We've had to go back to the drawing board, which I think Dana has found quite frustrating. I've got a slightly more philosophical attitude about it...

Anyway, we have chosen some likely swatches from the shops and we have arranged for the real estate agent to let us into the house to get a couple of quotes on Friday. I'm really excited about this, because it means that we should be able to get the curtains done fairly quickly after settlement, so we won't have to live with sheets on the windows for too long.

Here's one of the fabrics that Dana is quite keen on at the moment:

I might add some more after I've been home and seen what Dana has brought home from the curtain shops today.

House update

The last couple of weeks have actually been kind of a big deal for the house, but I've been too busy to blog about them. In roughly chronological order, we've visited a different mortgage broker on a colleague's recommendation, chosen and applied for a home loan with him, done the pre-settlement inspection of the unit and got the certificate of occupancy!

The last one happened late yesterday, and it means that the registration of the units plan should now be underway. That process should (fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc) take about 2-3 weeks, at which time the 14 day settlement period should begin. Which means that we should be taking possession of the house in 4-5 weeks, like forreal.

The house itself is pretty much complete, sans appliances and hot water system, which go in pretty much the day before settlement (otherwise they get nicked). This is a little unfortunate, as we were hoping that they would be in when the bank did their valuation (also this week), but we didn't really think we should hold off any longer.

More on the valuation and the loan and what it all means at a later day. Right now, I've got a date with a glass of beer.

As a wise woman once wrote: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a public servant in possession of a pay cheque, must be in want of the pub".

I am Iron Man

Good news and bad news (both unrelated to the house).

The bad first - my headphones went walkabout from work during a moving day last Friday. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth - they were a fairly nice pair, bought for around $80 from the Akihabara shop while in transit in Tokyo. They were getting on a bit, but still had good sound and I had some sentimental attachment to them.

Now the good news, I got to go out and buy some new Sennheiser canalphones (CX300 - II)! They sound great and have excellent sound isolation, which is a mandatory requirement for open plan office living. Some more good news - we got newer (second hand) computers as a result of the moving day, with new shiny (for me at least) Windows 7. And I netted a window seat again, with an excellent view of the plaza outside the front of my work.

I'm using the new headphones to listen to Black Sabbath. Here's a video of Metallica covering Black Sabbath's Iron Man, I think at Black Sabbath's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or something. Anyway, it's a good cover. Yeah.


There are other things to blog about, but I need some more time to think about them before I put them up. Which makes them sound more ominous than they are, it's more just that I don't have time at the moment!

Friday video art

Another lunch time browsing find, this is a result of the "lets colour" project. And it's awesome.

Via Gizmodo.

Hopefully that's some colour to get you through your day. Quite frankly, I cannot wait for mine to be over, thank feck it's Friday.

PS: Pulled the trigger on a home loan application yesterday morning. I was pretty sure we weren't going to bother with a broker and just go to the bank, but we took a last attempt at a broker a colleague of Dana's recommended. Long story short, he was excellent, and I think we got a really good deal on the loan. I cant wait until the pre-settlement inspection on Monday!

Eat them up, yum yum.

Found this video in a hazy, post luncheon haze today. Stop motion pacman on a large scale.

In other news, it turns out Sri Lankan food is really excellent. I'm so full, I just want to take a nap.

cs_747

Watching Wesley Snipes muddle his way through 'Passenger 57' reminds me so much of playing counter strike, specifically the map cs_747, which was based around a hostage situation on a 747. Good times, I feel like a nervous teenager just watching videos of it on toutube. It reminds me of a golden age of gaming where my reflexes were massively fast, and I could focus ridiculously well on games for hours on end....

I might be pretty rusty these days, but around 5 years ago, I would totally have hit you with a BOOOM, HEADSHOT!

Ah, the memories...

PS: HA, FPS Doug - the epitome of BOOM HEADSHOT!

I have more in common with that dude than I like to admit.

I've noticed you around

Word to your mom's, I came to drop bombs, and all of that sort of business. Today's announcement comes to you care of me sitting up late waiting for iTunes downloads to finish. The bastards are dragging on and on, but at least they're going faster tonight - last night I was trying them on after work, and it seems the peak period between 7 and 11pm is the worst time for vodafone 3d - ironic, as this is probably the time most people need to use it.

However, this is the world of 3g broadband - unreliable, unstable and often unusable. Take this as a public service announcement to anyone weighing up the most cost effective options for internet access as I once did - 3g may be cheaper than a wired interweb connection, but the quality is simply not comparable.

The title of this post foreshadowed the inclusion of this clip - it's weird, because it's not even that great a song, but man does it get stuck in your head. I blame the schools.

Anyway. I'm currently watching/ignoring passenger 57. It's one of those movies that I totally enjoyed watching 10 years ago when it first came out, but on this viewing, really makes me wish there was not a TV in the bedroom. This is something I'm planning to rectify in the new house, but for the moment, late night movies are the thing.

Of course, youtube has the trailer for your edification (is there anything youtube can't do!??), and it turns out I'm eight years off - it came out in '92, which means I must have seen it at least 15 years ago. Sometimes I forget that a bunch of years have passed, and I'm not 19 anymore. In fact, I think there's a certain amount of willful ignorance on my behalf - I like to think that I don't think or act any different to when I was 19, but my salary and the responsibilities I have seem to indicate otherwise. Damn you, reality!

Wesley Snipes just whooped some dude's ass with his bare hands and feet - the dude has some faux martial arts skills! And he's just also delivered one of the key lines of the movie "always bet on black"

Anyway, enough of that crap (and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't crap), what I really wanted to post about was some new dates for the house! The most solid of which is the pre settlement inspection date! We're booked in to check out the residence and make sure it is what we signed on for on the afternoon of 20 September. I'm pretty excited by this, because it actually means that settlement is not far behind!

That's actually a pretty big thing - previously we had been told that there would be a massive lag between the unit being habitable and being able to settle on it, because the ACT govt was taking a long time to register the final plans. I'm talking up to three months between the units being finished, and final registration of the units plan, which had us in a bit of a flap. Thankfully, there's been a legislative change, and now it should be done in like two weeks. I can't tell you how much I want to be in there (and more than that, actually take ownership of the place), but I guess you'll have to just take my work that I'm pretty keen to get in there.

The upshot of the new time frame is that it might not be worth moving in under licence any more - under the revised schedule, we'd only be in an extra 2-4 weeks before settlement is completed - so we might just save our money until we actually own the place (OMFG, how exciting is owning the place!?!?!?11?!1?11!eleven). Having said that, if being in early means we are paying less rent, it might not be too bad, even if it is a shorter amount of time that initially intended - it all comes down to the proposed licence agreement, which we still haven't seen yet.

Anyway, despite the possible delay to moving in, I'm taking these arrangements as a positive - the settlement date has actually got closer, and a concrete date on the pre-settlement inspection is a very good thing.

Oh yeah, the other great thing about today, is that it's my birthday. It's been pretty sweet so far, I've taken delivery of an ipad, some rather excellent single malt whiskey, red dead redemption, the girl with the dragon tattoo on blu-ray  and a bunch of cupcakes. I'd also had a degustation dinner with wines.Life is friggin excellent - good times.

I'm going to check this out on the ipad:

Everybody stay cool.

PS: Holy poop, there's a streetfighter game - it's not ipad specific, but it's still on.

PPS: we're up to the point in the movie where Wesley Snipes has a gun, and is totally shooting dudes. This movie really makes me think Blade was the peak of his career. Mind you, last I heard Mr Snipes was in some sort of massive tax issues like Paul Hogan - hopefully he handled it with more aplomb.

Bleep'n'skweep music

I've been listening to Ratat's LP3 and LP4 today while trying to get my head around a particularly convoluted piece of work, and it has helped me no end. The mixture of weird ambient sounds, bleeps and skweeps has been just the ticket. It helps that there are no lyrics to distract either. Here are two of their latest album, LP4:

Check out cartoon anti-drug video some joker posted with the second track - made me chuckle a little.

The music reminds me of one of my favourite scenes from Spaceballs

They don't make comedy as good as that any more...

Managed to get on site last night - things are getting really close to completion, or at least it feels like it. since we were last on site, they've got all the internal driveways in, the garage roller door is on (and seems to be on most places), the clothes line is up, and all of the power and phone points are in! They've even put the controller for the central heating in, which is quite exciting. The inside of the place has been cleaned up and the mirrors installed in the bathrooms as well, things are getting closer.

In fact, it's probably easier just to look at what hasn't been done yet - I can pretty much count them on one hand! The most obvious is probably the carpets, although I'd expect them to be last. Then there's the appliances (oven and dishwasher), the fencing and the landscaping in communal areas. The final elements missing at the holes in the roof under the skylights in the en suite and laundry. 

Quite exciting! Still no word on when we can move in, which is a bit of a piss off, but it's still great to see progress.

I didn't manage to get any more photo's, and in fact, we were pretty lucky to get in the house at all, as most of the lockable doors were locked. I do, however, have a picture of the buffet unit we bought with the couch, and the curtain fabric samples against the carpet sample.

Unfortunately it's not that great a picture - I actually got kicked out of the store for taking it. Apparently they're worried about people getting knock offs made from the picture or something, which I think it a little silly. Plus, it's not really a nice way to treat someone who's recently spent almost $8k at your store! Rude buggers. Anyway, it's all solid timber, and the doors in the front slide to the sides in front of the drawers. It's actually going to be the TV unit, so we're going to have to get a drill and make some holes in the back for the cabling. It's bigger than it looks in the picture as well. Anyway, I'll get a better shot when we actually get it delivered. 

In the meantime, here's a the carpet sample with the curtain samples from Duckcloth against it.

As you can see, my favourite one looks the best, and I think we're going to go with it. 

Anyway, I'd better get to bed. Until next time friends!

With Lasers, wormhole generators, and sonic thrusters

I've read a couple of places on the intertubes recently that at the 2012 Olympics in London, the Modern Pentathlon will be switching to laser pistols for the shooting events. 

It makes me happy that all my teenage years spent plying Virtua Cop 2 in the Arcade was not wasted....

I'm sure that somewhere along the way, someone, somewhere is going to up upset that a laser pistol might require less skill, no compensating for the wind or whatever.

To those people, I say: welcome to the future. Robots will be along shortly with mind bending future drinks to take your mind off it.

We've seen a drop in all three measures of workforce engagement

Hello! Fancy seeing you here - it's been a while, and I bet you thought I'd forgotten all about you.

This is simply not the case - I've just been swamped at work and have been going through a massive reading phase recently. I've been averaging around 3 books a week since about mid-August. I blame this on the staycation and also Dana ordering a lot of books off the internets. I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of books at home though, will need seek out other pursuits. Or buy more books...

The work side of it is a little bit interesting. By rights, working in a policy area that both sides of Parliament are swearing blue that they won't be active in, it should be really quiet and cruisey in the caretaker period. But unfortunately, this has not been the case, due to a couple of things. The first is that the time frames for the issue that I'm working on are really tight, and there's not that much room to stop and do nothing. In addition, the time frame is being set by Fair Work Australia, the federal industrial tribunal, which doesn't take that much notice of elections.

The second is that we had a re-structure, and my direct supervisor took a voluntary redundancy. As she wasn't replaced, I've had to take a few extra duties.

None of this is really that exciting to you, I'm sure. Suffice to say, I had a whole heap of work to do and now, I'm in post election limbo, with much less to do. It's actually pretty demoralising not knowing who I'm going to be working for, and not being able to get working on it. Don't get me wrong, we've done a lot of prep for either way, but there's not much more that I can do without actually having a Government.

The funny thing is, everyone else where I work reached this point weeks ago. A friend summarised it with a lol public servants:

Hopefully it will all be over soon, but to be honest, for the sake of the next three years, I think I'd rather just have them go back to the polls and someone get a full majority. You think this whole independents horse holding the power thing is bad now, wait until there's some essential bill that Parliament can't pass because Bob Katter's a nut bar in a cowboy hat. It'll be double dissolution before you can say "how's ya father" and we'll be right back where we are now.

Another six weeks of annoyance vs. three years (and probably less) of stagnation in the Parliament? Shit choices either way really. Although I guess if you go in for politics generally and it means the other side (which ever that is to you) doesn't get their way for another three years, there might be some consolation there.

Bleugh.

In other news, I'm going to Foreshore in November with Dana and kindred spirits Karla and Esa. It costs a mint, but I'm looking forward to a few bevvies in the sun in a nice location and some tuuuuunes. I'm also looking forward to laughing at Tiesto.

"OHAI2U RAVERS, I ARE NUMBER 1 DJ LOL!!!1!1"

To balance out the Tiesto, here's some Noisia and Phace. I've been listening to Phace and Misanthrop's 'From Deep Space' this afternoon, and it's keeping me positive.

The sample 20 seconds in to this till about a minute always makes me smile. Also making me smile in that particular clip are all the ravers caught making made nightclub faces. Somebody make some noise (or some such) for the DJ!

To round it all out, here's an absolutely awesome clip that was on Giz a little while back of some stop motion animation. I also dig the soundtrack. Hey Daver, this one's for you (no play dough though).

I love lamp

I've been pretty busy recently with both work and play recently, which has led me to neglect this blog. Thankfully I've got some time off at the moment, which gives me a chance to get a post out! There's been plenty of house related goings on (although we haven't actually visited the house in a while). The most exciting of which is that we have some more detail on the licence agreement and an estimated move in date! I'm choosing to ignore the fact that all dates provided by the builder so far have been hopelessly inaccurate, and have instead opted to hope this one will be better.

Anyway, the most recent time frame puts us actually moving in (!!) in 4-6 weeks. There are two things that give me a bit of hope that this will be adhered to - first that the properties are starting to look more finished and I can actually see it happening. The second is that we're starting to get some detail about the licence agreement! The most salient information we have so far is an estimated fee in place of rent - $350 / week. It's a good $125/week less than the rent where we are at the moment, so it's pretty good odds that we'll take the licence agreement when it is finally properly offered. 

The only fly in the ointment at the moment is that the timing is less than ideal for me at work - I'll be very busy around that point in time! I had hoped to take a week or two off to move in and get the place sorted out properly, but that's probably not going to happen now. It's a minor annoyance though - I'll just be so damn happy to get the keys to the place!

More news on that as it arises.

We've also managed to get our hands on a carpet sample for the new place, which is actually a bit darker than I remembered. The swatches of curtain fabric that Dana ordered from duckcloth.com.au arrived as well, and the lighter one goes quite well with the carpet. I love it when a plan comes together.


We've also had a good friend pick up the lamp we ordered a while back, which is now assembled and in our living room - I'm sitting under it right now! Here's a picture of Dana sitting under it:

Wheeeee! 


Until next time ladies and gents, keep your laces loose.

A successful day

A quick note to say that we had a successful day shopping yesterday - we bought the couch and a buffet (which we're going to re-purpose as a TV unit). Contrary to the advice we'd had previously, the store said it will be ready in three weeks, but they're going to store it for us until we're ready to move in. Exciting! I was going to take a picture of the buffet, but I completely forgot when we were at the shop - I'll try and remember to take one again some time.

In addition, we checked out a few curtain places, and had some productive discussions around curtains. We found a couple of places that would be happy to make curtains with the fabric Dana found on duckcloth.com.au (blogged about previously), which was promising. We actually found a few swatches of cloth in the shops that were quite good as well, and would probably be a fair bit cheaper.

Dana's been looking for alternatives to side tables, because we won't really be able to fit any in around the couch. She's come up with the idea to use small stools that can be moved around, or used for additional seating as needed instead. A leading choice at the moment is the replica Xavier Pauchard Tolix stool pictured in several colours below.

These have the advantage of being stackable and well sealed against the weather, so they could be used outside without too much worry. However, they are quite expensive.

I'm feeling really upbeat about the whole thing at the moment, good times. Now time to finish watching season one of Mad Men and argue with Dana about what sort of home theater setup to go with - she prefers the more streamlined home theater in a box type setups, where as I prefer a more chunky (and slightly higher end) dedicated receiver and speakers. I have a suspicion that her point of view will probably win out in the end - it usually seems to. 

 

Edit: I should clarify the reference to the home theater setup above - Dana would prefer that they were invisible, or in fact, were not purchased at all, where as I would prefer some sort of ridiculously expensive and ugly home theater room instead. The discussion at the moment is about where we compromise between them all, based on budget at the available options. And also that we don't have a home theater room.

Shark vs. Elephants

Last night, Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers free-shot their way to victory past the cocky White Elephants, their second victory against the pale pachyderms this season. The teams were evenly matched, and despite an early lead, it looked like the Jumper's poor stamina might loose them the game in the final quarter.

Thankfully, a series of obstruction and contact calls on the Elephants kept the Jumpers in the game.

It all game to a head in the final minutes of the game, where the Elephants took the lead for the first time after trailing by a small number of points all game. The Jumpers equalized, but it looked like it was too late for a victory....

...until their goal keeper decided to muscle in on Jumper goal attack, Matthew Patterson, just as the buzzer was called! This resulted in a free shot in extra time, which Matthew converted to the winning goal!

Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers have jumped another shark.

Curtains and "moving in under licence"

We had an email from our real estate agent yesterday about completion dates, and options for moving in. The builder has said that they should have the certificate of occupancy by the end of August, which means the units will be habitable, and finished for all intents and purposes. The date of settlement (which, as I understand it, is when both parties get what they are promised in the contract - ownership of the unit for us, money for the builder) will then depend on the registration of the units plan with the ACT Govt.

This is where things fall down a bit - the ACT Govt could take anywhere between three weeks and three months to register the units plan. It probably should take a lot less, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a rule somewhere that it must take less, but this is not something that the ACT Govt seems particularly worried about. After the units plan is fully registered, there is a 14 day settlement period. So the best case scenario adds five weeks (three weeks units plan registration, 2 weeks settlement) to the time that the unit is ready for occupation physically, and when we could take full ownership of it.

Which is a bit shit to be honest.

The builder/developer have suggested an alternative option, which is that the owners to be "move in under licence". My understanding of this is that we enter into a sort of special landlord/tenant relationship with the developer, with a fee payable at settlement in lieu of rent. We don't know how much this will be yet, or any of the other details of the potential agreement. This will come from developers lawyer to our lawyer at some stage in the future.

Much as it frustrates me to give more money to the developer despite the whole thing being at least 7 months overdue, I'm actually rather keen to take this option. You have no idea how ridiculously keen I am to get into our new house and start sorting it out properly. Of course, for that to work, there would have to be scope in the agreement between the developer and ourselves for use to do things to the house. For example, we would need to be able to have TV aerials, phone lines, curtains etc installed. Otherwise it wouldn't really be worth it.

Speaking of curtains, Dana has been making moves on that front. She's recently requested swatches from online fabric company duckcloth, which should hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. They're variations on the same theme, and they are Henry Approved, pending a gander at the swatches.

This is my favourite of the two. The other, seen below, has a different background colour that just doesn't appeal as much. Having said that, I'd probably be happy with either, and it's hard to imagine what the curtains would actually look like from a picture on the internets.

The plan at this stage is to try and buy the fabric online and then have someone else make it into curtains for us, and install the necessary curtain rods (or whatever they're called). This is not something I can do myself - I am no handy man. We're going to get on to that this weekend, in addition to couch purchasing!

Very exciting times all round, I can't wait until the end of next month!

I'm going to head home and prepare for tonight's netball game. We're without our star centre due to injury, so I hope we can still hold our own without her. If I recall correctly, we beat the team we're facing tonight last time around. However, we also managed to almost poke one of their eyes out in the process. It was an accident, but I wouldn't have been too happy if I were them.

Taking care in caretaker

Now that the election has been called and Parliament has been dissolved, Canberra enters a special time called "caretaker" in which the public services continues day to day functions, but can no longer have ministerial or cabinet approval on more substantial issues. This means that policy directions, stakeholder consultation and major projects are all basically put on pause while the country works out who the Government is going to be for the next couple of years.

For a policy area like the one I work in, this means that things get very, very quiet for a while. This has already started, and the feeling on the floor is rather frivolous and festive.

The problem for me, is that because I'm on a temporary task force at the moment dealing with a very specific issue, and I've also just lost the only other member of my team to the restructure, I still have a metric butt load of work to do. I'm finding it really challenging not to get caught up in the relaxed mood of everyone around me when I still have a lot to do!

To this end, sound isolating canal phones and the music on YouTube are my best friends.

Here's what I'm listening to right now:

A little warning on that, the visuals are a bit whack. Plus, you know, it's dubstep so it won't appeal to all tastes.

The upshot of this for blog readers? The frequency of posts will probably bump up a little bit in the near future. We're also getting closer and closer to completion on the house, so there will probably be lots of things around that to blog about.

For example, the real estate agent has advised that she will be sending out an email about the estimated completion date today or tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. Hopefully this will inform the timing of any more furniture purchases!

Now, time to eat some lunch, and then make annoying phone calls that I don't want to make.

Couchgate 2010: The Winner.

So. After further deliberation, and a telling seating test with some close friends, we have a winner in the couch choice saga. And it a circle of life, triumph of decision making by committee moment, it's the same bloody couch we were looking at months ago.

That's right, the winner is the Club Grand 2 by 3 seater from Bay Leather Republic, pretty much exactly as pictured above.

We've mapped it out in the lounge room of the new place. We've sat on them both in the same day. We've argued about colour options. This is it. We're going to order it this weekend. I'm feeling very comfortable with the purchase, and now only a little bit frustrated that it will take a further 10 weeks approx before it is made.

Now we can turn our wearied decision making powers to other issues. Dana is choosing to focus on curtains, and has lots of ideas about it. I'm actually fairly happy for her to do whatever the hell she wants on that front, but I will retain a power of veto, just in case.

Instead, I've been inspired to look at other furniture for the house, like "occasional" tables (which I think means little tables to put your drinks on pretty much), lamps, coffee tables, and other cool odds and ends. I blame a recent coffee table acquisition some friends of ours made that I saw for the first time on the weekend.

This is a replica Isamu Noguchi coffee table, (available from all sorts of places online, like Matt Blatt, ClickOn Furniture and Milan Direct), which looks even more gorgeous in real life than it does here. If my friends hadn't just bought one, I would seriously consider buying one for our lounge room - not in the least because they're cheaper online than a lot of the horrible generic crap that you see in furniture shops and they look soooo much better!

I'd never even looked into the world of replica designer furniture before, but I think I'm in love now. There's so much stuff that I like on those three sites linked above, but one of my quick favourites has been the work of Sean Dix (a selection of which can be seen here). So much more to discover and enjoy!

I'm not sure if it's some sort of huge artistic faux pas to buy replicas, but I'm pretty sure that originals would be far out of reach anyway.

I'm going to keep looking at the beautiful design to distract myself from the horrendous restructure that's currently going down in my workplace.

Speaking of distractions, its time for pub trivia - the mighty Dugongs ride again tonight!

Marketing works

I'm so very looking forward to the Tron Legacy movie, their slick advertising and flashy special effects have me salivating already!

I'm waiting until December with baited breath! In the mean time, I think I'm going to try and find a copy of Tron - I wonder if it's available on blu ray...

Colouring in the lines

I realised it's been a little while since I last posted on here. There's a few reasons for that, but the leading contenders are work (busy!) and also no successful site visits. We did do a drive by the other day, and it doesn't look like there's been too much progress on our house, but there's been some serious digging going on in preparation for the rest of the internal roads.

We also ordered a lamp for the living room (mentioned previously) from Aero Designs. I'd hoped to have it by now, but they tell me they're having issues with their suppliers.

Anywho, what I can say, is that we've been thinking a lot about couches. There are currently pictures of them spread all over the living room floor, and their pros and cons come up at least once a night. Will the one we're keen on be too big? Does it look too big in the new place? Would it fit in our current apartment? What about the colour? Will we have enough seating? Could we actually fit any other seating in anyway? Leather of fabric? Which colour?

Sometimes we think we've resolved a lot of these questions, or at least have answers for them, and they come round again to haunt us. I guess the biggest one that was a problem for us early on and continues to be is whether the couches we're interested in will fit. Actually, I was just reading an earlier blog post, and it really looks like we've been going round in circles for a while now.

The funny thing is, since I first wrote about it, I think we've almost come full circle. We decided that the couch that we were keen on at the time was too big for the space, at 3.1m by 2.5m in an L shape. This led us to look at all sorts of other options, but the one we've just about settled on now is 3.3m by 2.475 - really not that much different at all, and in fact, bigger in one dimension!

However, I've convinced myself that this will actually work, for a couple reasons. First, I've bought some grid paper, and have spent a good half hour of my lunch break sketching out the the proportions of the room and the couch, and I think it will be all good. I may have copped a bit of flak from my work mates for my diligent ruler and pencil work, but I still think it's worthwhile.

Second, we've revised how much room we need for the dining area - we're going to have quite a lot less crap in there in the end. Third, the couch we're thinking about now is quite low, and the ends of it can double as side tables. The short end of the L, facing towards the TV also will not have an arm rest, but a low cushion instead, thus not cutting the end of the couch off.

Finally, the couch we're looking at is modular, and can be converted into a different configuration if we have a large dinner party and need more room in the dining area. It can also be converted into a decent size bed for overnight visitors.

For those that have talked to me recently, you may well be aware that I'm talking about the Kato from King Furniture.

The version pictured here is not exactly what we're thinking of getting - we're more keen on the 'deluxe' line that has slightly deeper seats. There are a lot of different packages that you can get, but the one that we're leaning towards at the moment is pictured below.

There's still scope for us to change our mind a bunch more times, but we're actually considering ordering it in the next couple of weeks. King Furniture have a sale on at the moment, and manufacturing time is about 2 months. If we order now, it should be ready around when we get the keys.

Until we do get the keys, I'm going to keep playing around with the grid paper - it's good to see what we can actually do with the space. It's so big and empty at the moment in there, imagining anything in there is quite difficult.

And now on to netball. Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers have actually had a fairly good run since we dropped down a league (we were previously far above our skill level and were consistently thrashed). We're still not regular winners, but we're actually contesting more games now. May even get round to writing up a game at some stage...