A Good Thing: California lifts gay marriage ban

I really have never understood the arguments against same gender marriages so today's ruling from the California State Supreme Court seems both logical and right.

All arguments against this change come down to religious, emotional or straw man fallacies:

1. The Bible says its wrong. Not being Christian or particularly religious in any mainstream sense I'm probably not qualified to say if it does or doesn't, though the evidence of which I'm aware seems weak. Either way, the First Amendment precludes this argument from having any legal standing.
2. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are sick and need help, not support. You are entitled to your opinions but until you can produce substantive evidence, that's all this is.
   
3. Tradition says marriage is one man and one woman. Yeah well, until 140 years ago tradition said one could own slaves in this country, until 90 years ago only men were qualified to vote and until 40 years ago interracial marriage was illegal.

Did I miss any of the major arguments supporting this outdated position?

The Court acted to overturn a ballot initiative passed in 2000 making the one man/one woman standard state law.

By the way, six of the seven Justices are Republicans and Gov. Schwarzenegger has already said he would not support reversing this ruling by amendment

Even so, I have very little doubt that before close of business today there will be nutjobs groups filing papers with the State for an amendment to the Constitution overturning the ruling.

One can only hope that a majority of voters in this state will recognize that their calendars say 2008, not 1508.

Family Visit

We're in New Jersey for the weekend, celebrating Mother's Day, our nephew Jake's 3rd birthday and our 5th wedding anniversary with my parents and my sister and her family.

Another year comes off the shelf

So we were out with the Big Guy, Pam and Henry, Colleen, Jim and Tanya last night for dinner and Iron Man. Fun movie and Robert Downey as Tony Stark? Good casting idea even if you didn't expect it.

The Big Guy took a few pics, here are some cute ones...



Got to watch the Reds overwhelm Man City this morning in the season's last home game; don't let the 1-0 score fool you, at one point Liverpool was outshooting the Citizens 19-1.

House shopping: Dollars and sense

After a few days to recover from last week's stress we're back seeing available properties which may meet our needs and budgets. Our Realtor did send over an interesting house, this time one which needs no serious work, and we'll see how that goes.

What I've been thinking about this week, in the aftermath of ContractorGate, is how differently people view expensive and inexpensive purchases. Houses and cars compared to, say, food or toiletries. People have completely different, conflicting mental models about the two types of buying.

One reason some people still get the dead tree version of the local newspaper is the coupons and circulars stuffed in the Sunday edition. TS1 does it for us and if she didn't I would. Saving 50 cents here and two dollars there seems meaningful to us, and we look at other small items, like movie tickets and restaurant meals, the same way. Not that we eat at KFC rather than Fresh Gardens...

Then you look at big ticket deals: houses, cars, fancy vacations. Forget 50 cents or two dollars, for these deals the marginal discussion is over hundreds or thousands of dollars. Even computers almost reach this level.

Let's say you see a home listed for $865,000 and it meets your lot size requirement, quality is good, location suits, plus you expect to spend $60-80k getting the house from 1480 to about 2000 square feet. The back and forth:

• You offer $805,000.
• You originally thought $800k as a starting point but maybe the seller would be insulted
• Seller isn't insulted but comes back at $849,000. (Ooh, that's too much!)
• You counter with your final, best offer at $818k
• Seller says nothing less than $840k and you say, okay, not from us and done.
  

Notice in all this back and forth the numbers move at increments of thousands. Lots of thousands.

How many coupons do you have to use and bottles of vitamins and minerals do you have to buy on sale to make up for that?

Bill's Summer 2008 Movie List

A tip o' the fedora to Rob... though as seven of these are sequels, updates or remakes I wonder about American cinema.

Iron Man	May 2
Speed Racer	May 9
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	May 22
Kung Fu Panda	June 6
You don't mess with the Zohan	June 6
Mongol	June 6 (limited release)
The Love Guru	June 13
Get Smart	June 20
Wall-E	June 27
Wanted	June 27
Hancock	July 2
The Dark Knight	July 18
The X-Files: I Want To Believe	July 25
The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor	August 1
Pineapple Express	August 8
The International	August 15
Babylon A.D.	August 29

House shopping: The cold splash of reality

So straight after I published last Saturday's epistle our Realtor called to see if we were interested in any of a few listings he sent over. There were two of interest, three bedroom/two baths though both on the small side for our taste, but we met him in the afternoon to see them.

(Ed. Note: I misunderstood the situation regarding that bid last week. The listing agent did respond, with a verbal no, and told our's the seller's bottom line was about $840k.)

The first was a short block in from Central Expressway with a large sound barrier at the rear helping keep the noise level down. About 1350 sq. ft., IIRC, in decent condition with a corner lot large enough to support perhaps a 500 sq. ft. expansion. We'd seen another home from this development the Saturday before which had been expanded a few years earlier, providing a good model of the possibilities. However at an asking price of $878,000 plus probably $80-100k for the work, compared to a list of $935,000 for the one already increased to 1990 sq. ft., made us keep looking.

The second was over near Middlefield Road on a quite little street around the corner from my first apartment in Mountain View 11 years ago. (11 years, that's hard to believe.) This house was smaller, officially 1150 sq. ft., and 57 years old, but the corner lot is 6300 sq. ft. with lovely wall of bushes just inside of the sidewalk on boths side and a next door neighbor which recently added a second floor. The house has a nice big kitchen, high ceilinged, that it shares with the living room.

This house also had a 'bonus' room. That is, many years ago someone essentially enclosed the patio to create a 19' x 9 1/2' room whose outer wall was all windows. The room was done, as best we could tell, without permits! Everything comes down to money, I suppose, but that seems like a foolish decision to me considering the possible complications in case of fire and so on. Anyway, getting the room up to code will cost ~$10,000.

The price was right, TS1 and I thought: $723,000 but we offered $710k and the seller settled for $712k. We were under contract!

And under the gun too, with only seven days to clear the contingencies. The seller had done termite and property inspections recently, turning up no red flags, and the mortgage broker we'd used previously said even in this market we could get approval.

The tricky bit for us was getting a realistic handle on the price of adding 610 sq. ft., refreshing the kitchen and master bath, and bringing that extra room up to code. The first two contractors who came out to look at the property felt they could do the job and certainly the zoning would support even more enclosed space if we liked, but neither wanted to give us an estimate.

In my fantasies we got the work done and dusted for $90-100k. $800,000, more or less, and we'd have 1900+ square feet of up to date living space. The third contractor went by Thursday morning with our Realtor and they called after to give us a verbal estimate of $110-120,000. A little tight for us but doable, and with the clock ticking we decided to give the go ahead for the bank to start the appraisal and approval process.

This is when reality began to intrude on us. First the mortgage broker told us that her bank currently classifies Mountain View as a distressed market(!), so instead of putting 15% down and keeping more cash on hand for the construction we had to go with our original intent of 20%. Even tighter but getting nervy.

Then Friday morning the contractor faxed the written estimate. Ka-boom! as they like to say on KFOG. Instead of somewhere in the $110-120k range as he'd told us, this one was $137,400. His explanation was bringing the extra room up to code was $10k and removing the ugly, massive red brick fireplace and chimney from the wall between the kitchen and living room $6200, neither included in the verbal.

But this estimate explicitly didn't include plans and permits: another $10k. No plumbing to where, down the line, we could add a third full bath in the new master bedroom: another $5k. No refresh of the kitchen or existing baths: $25-30k or more.

So not $137,000 but really $180,000. Whoa! That's a whole 'nother story. And everyone I spoke with about this emphatically told us that whatever the contractor tells you, add 30-50% because invariably there are overruns and unexpecteds.

Enough. We sadly had no choice but to cancel the contract and pull out of the deal. Too much stress for me, I can tell you that, and so we're taking a break from the hunting for a couple of weeks.

Of course if some really attractive house comes on the market...

Silly Internet Meme that I don't quite understand

But hey, all the cool kids are doing it.

Here's mine, from my work MacBook*:

MacEto:~ blazar$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s \n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
23 ls
18 curl
14 cd
11 ssh
10 ps
6 svn
5 open
3 rm
3 ping
3 kill

* Yes, be jealous, I have a MacBook at work. Cool bosses.

Way Cool: Peter Hamilton at Books Inc today

TS1, the Big guy and I turned out to see Peter F. Hamilton, one of my favorite SF authors, at Books Inc. in downtown Mountain View this afternoon. Peter read a few pages from The Dreaming Void, took many questions and then signed copies of his books.

Hamilton was very good natured, I'm sure he's heard all of the questions we asked dozens of times over, but for sure wasn't at all surprised when the first (by me) was has he finished The Temporal Void, book two of this trilogy, yet. Unlike earlier appearances promoting TDV, today he could give this answer: "I emailed it to my publisher Tuesday, just before getting on the plane here." Sweet!

TS1 snapped a couple of pics with her iPhone when I got to the head of the signing line:



I had the British Commonwealth edition of this novel and mentioned being excited to find it while we were Down Under, months before the US publication. Peter asked where in NZ we visited and, after I answered Auckland and Queenstown, told me that he really liked Queenstown and Randstown in this novel is based on that lovely little vacation spot.

Hunting... Houses Again

Three years have passed since TS1 and I sold the townhouse over on Gladys Ave, apparently not a terrible choice as Zillow's estimate of the current value is $25,000 less than what we got. The last few weeks we've been going out with a real estate agent to see what's available.

Our requirements are straightforward:

1. Location: Mountain View, preferably within 1.5 miles of the Castro St./California Ave. intersection so TS1 can walk to work. I've lived in MV for eleven(!) years and she for nearly six and we're happy and comfortable with it.
2. Size: 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 or 3 baths and a minimum of 1700 square feet one or two levels. Bedrooms must not be cramped and the master must comfortably fit a king size bed.
3. Lot size: This is not a big deal for us, we've seen a few nice homes with not too much yard space, though more is of course better.

You'd be surprised how much new construction is laid out on three levels, resulting in terrible, and frequently cramped, floor plans. Also quite a few one or two level, 3 bed/2 bath homes under 1400 square feet, also far too cramped. Pretty never makes up for this.

We looked at several homes in the Whisman Station development. I was impressed with the general quality and we considered bidding on two. Now just over 10 years old the homes seem to be holding up well and the HOA fee is just $105 a month, compared to about $350 we paid three years ago on the townhouse (and I was president there so I know the budget was lean).

Two houses did meet our criteria: 653 McCarty and 711 Sierra Vista. Both are smaller than we'd like but have very large (for Mountain View) lots, meaning we could expand them. McCarty was our first choice and, having been vacant and on the market for over 200 days with no offers, we thought a very low offer would entice the absentee owners. Sierra Vista needs much less work and has a larger lot, but has only been on the market five weeks with the owners still living in (so motivated but not as much).

TS1 and I met with our agent, Devin Ruiz, Monday night to go over the latest information he had from the listing agents and help us crystallize our thinking. We decided to sleep on it, make some calls Tuesday to get expert advice and meet Wednesday morning to fill out the purchase offer paperwork.

Tuesday lunchtime Devin calls with the news that, after 200 days with zero bids, someone else came in with an offer on the McCarty property that the trustee felt was good enough. He didn't reveal the price nor try and get us into a bidding war.

No worries, really, as we were happy to go after the Sierra Vista property. The location wasn't quite as good but the house was in better condition, including a recently redone kitchen, and sits on a bigger lot. TS1 especially liked the spacious fenced in side yard as great to have for the two dogs we plan to get after settling in to the new home.

So we wrote up an offer. Money was a bit on the low end but we felt the right amount given the state of the market, terms were otherwise standard and even a bit generous on the contingencies. The owners countered with a higher dollar amount than I expected, inadequate termite and property condition contingency (considering they hadn't done either inspection, which is unusual here) and a request to rent back for 30 days after closing.

Devin advised us to respond with our final, best offer. On Thursday afternoon we did, agreeing to the rent back, raising our dollar offer $13,000 (still quite bit less than their counter) and restating the standard termite and property condition contingencies. The offer expired last night (or yesterday noon, I'm not quite sure).

I was surprised--shocked, I tell you!--that we got no response at all to our counter-counter. Rejection is one thing but not to get any answer strikes me as strange.

We'll just have to keep hunting.

Where did Web 2.0 go?

Okay, this is perhaps a small complaint and not all about Web 2.0. Still, every major JavaScript UI library includes an auto-complete function so why don't major sites such as IMDB have it on their search boxes? Marketo, of course, has it on every user input widget where it can work. If we can do it, why can't Amazon?