Without further ado, here they are. These both happened years ago, so I’m likely paraphrasing, but here’s they retain the spirit in which they were given.
“If I am going to be spending time reading anyway, I may as well read something that will help my career.” –Timothy Flory
“If it took you ten hours to write a program, and you make $20.00 / hour at your day job. You’d be better off spending that ten hours earning $200.00 and spending $85.00 for an app that does it.” –Craig Lubitz
Well, pretty good advice, that’s for sure. Nothing bad ever happened to anyone for doing either or both of those. More likely, and I can attest first hand to some degree, that both of these has helped me out over the years.
<rant type=”tongue-in-cheek”>
Every damn time I am in a bookstore, or browsing Amazon.com and I come across a tasty fantasy (I’m looking at you Elric of Melniboné) or some sci-fi gem (take a bow Mr. Asimov (mmmm, old school baby)) I am inevitably plagued by Tim’s voice and it honestly makes me feel a bit guilty.
Likewise, every time I feel a little urge to write some not for work code, I think of Craig and feel a bit inefficient.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is completely my own idiosynchrocies, and I have no problem doing things just because I want or need to. They both need to be applied, like anything, with moderation and it’s all good. I guess I’m just surprised that it still happens.
</rant>
Thanks fellas 
On moving, home buying, and me
Well, it’s been much longer than I had planned between writing here. But I have a reason excuse?
I just purchased my first home. It’s pretty exhausting and umm just really a general pain in the ass. However it is also pretty damn exciting. I’m relatively late to the game at 38 for a first home. I’ve been making enough money to get the job done for quite some time now but due to a marriage, child, divorce. I ended up doing some moving around and really grew to enjoy the freedom of being able to be where ever I really needed to be, if I really needed to be there.
My general first time home buying view is not as great as it could have been. But it certainly was an interesting learning experience. The home that I purchased was the second home I brought into the underwriting stage. Which, for the uninitiated I’ll just say is pretty far into the “buy it” portion of the game. All the inspections, appraisals, repair work, documenting repair work, re-repair work due to lack of work permit originally had already been completed it was simply the act of jumping through the lender’s financial hoops for final thumbs up.
The annoying part is that the financial guy should have caught the problem the second he had all the financial numbers. In a nutshell, since the whole housing market collapse debacle, the mortgage industry does a lot more due diligence (as then damn well should have been doing all along!) which basically results in many small rules changing every week. Well, absolutely your financial guy should be on top of every nuance of it. That’s his job. However in this case, since I earned my income though contracting, I had to prove a years worth of uninterrupted employment instead of a standard six months, for you average permanent employee.
Make no mistake, I am happy to abide by any laws / rules that guide this process, but this was something that could have saved a whole lot of people a whole lot of time. In the end, the sellers did not want to risk not selling their house on the hopes of my employment not being terminated (which was never an issue, but how do you really prove that anyway.) I can’t blame them, though sadly, their house is still for sale and I live in a larger house around the corner for the same price. Sometimes gambles don’t pay off, or maybe they just didn’t care.
It was tough getting that far invested into a house and then have it unravel. It all worked out for the best and my financial guy did in fact come through come close time, which I really appreciated and totally helped out at the exact second I needed it to!
The second house, the one in I did in fact buy, really felt like home the second I walked into it, and the seller was great and easy to work with. I like to think I was a good buyer as well. After negotiating the price that is 
It’s just almost a surreal feeling to sit in my basement in front of my computer and bang out a post in my own home. I honestly thought I would never buy one. It’s amazing how much life changes, and how good it can turn out being despite hard-times, penny-pinching, and life’s not-so-little obstacles.
Overall, the whole experience is a must have. +1
Damn gimicks, aka "The Hat Trick"
So I'm minding my own business, restarting my Steam client to check for any game updates and what do I see but this (click the image for the full sized version):
So if you're at all interested in Team Fortress 2, you'll know that a few months ago they introduced the concept of unlockable customization content for the characters in the game, in the form of Hats. They are typically not achievement based but some magical percentage determines if you are eligible to unlock one every hour or so and if you're lucky maybe you get one. Well, I guess it's ok but really who cares, they simply are aesthetic, but I have found exactly ONE hat after many many (far too many) hours of playing… It's annoying when others have a whole bunch of 'em. But fine, you wait long enough, you get 'em…
Now this, Pre-Order a different game of ours and get a free hat for TF2? I mean, yeah, it's not a bad marketing ploy, but we are all still waiting for an inventory trading system… Which in itself is kinda lame in a FPS… If I wanted a MMORPG, I'd go play one… I'm already grinding on getting lame achievements to get weapons which I will actually use… but hats? Really? That's what you're spending your time on?