Jenn and I have been working to get ourselves together so we can get a house. (I’ve probably mentioned that before…) We’ve been getting our list of wants/don’t-wants written down, figuring out the budget, etc.

I think we got ourselves to a point yesterday where it’s time to call the mortgage broker to figure out how much money we can get to start shopping with. That’s a scary proposition for me - first time home purchase and all, it’s a little intimidating. I’m a cheap bastard. I don’t like to spend money in large quantities (yet somehow I’m okay with buying several smaller items… hmmm….), so thinking about this stresses me out like nothing else.

It’s a positive move, though, since we’re both really tired of the whole apartment lifestyle. Sure, there are benefits - no maintenance being the primary one - but there are far more drawbacks. I’m tired of being “attached” to neighbors and hearing them banging around or flushing the toilet or whatever. I’m tired of being double-parked into my spot by the people downstairs. I’m tired of smelling what everyone else is cooking. I’m tired of not actually building any equity with the money I’m spending and I’m tired of not getting any tax breaks. This move is long overdue, so we’re ready.

In other news, my eBay auctions are sort of iffy. I’ve gotten bids on three of my shirts - minimum bids - and one of them was bought with the “Buy It Now” feature… but there are still six shirts that need to go. Bah. I’m wondering if I may end up making a Goodwill run. I’m tired of this hope-on-eBay thing.

I rented a movie called So Close yesterday - a Hong Kong action movie. It was pretty good. It actually seemed to have a budget, unlike a lot of the other HK movies I’ve seen, and the plot was pretty decent with some great action. Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’m blogging on the laptop using my wireless network, which I’m still very pleased with, and watching India Vision on the International Channel. I’m not sure why I’m so intrigued by it, but I am. While it’s not an accurate representation of Indian culture by any means (any more than watching Entertainment Tonight is a representation of US culture), I’ve noticed certain things watching. First, there are some fine Indian women out there. Like, better than most of the US models I’ve seen. Second, they sing about everything. Crazy style. I can’t even understand any of it and I still think it’s nuts. Third, everything is styled like Grease. The sing to each other, they change costumes and locations at random intervals… Nuts.

I think maybe it’s the randomness of it all that intrigues me. It makes so little sense, I can’t not watch. It’s like a deer in headlights. Damn.

I generally loathe having to contact any customer support organization for any reason because I know I’m going to have to get into it with whoever I get ahold of to try and get something to happen that will alleviate whatever problem it is that I’m having.

I’ve gotta say, though, that I’ve been in touch with both Sony and Namco on customer support issues recently and both of them had outstanding customer service.

In Sony’s case, I made my primary contact over the phone, and the operators I spoke to were very helpful - they didn’t make me go through all of these ridiculous procedures, they talked to me to ascertain my level of knowledge with the product and when they determined that I didn’t need to do the “beginner” stuff, I was pushed through to the proper level of support. That’s awesome - do you know how long it takes to get to a real tech at Microsoft?

In Namco’s case, they have live online support so rather than waiting for an operator on hold, you’re instantly connected to a support person in an online chat scenario. It took me all of two minutes to get an RMA # for an item I needed to exchange, and I just now went in and used that service to check the status of the RMA. With a real, live person. No 24-hour-turnaround-time, no automated response.

I think if I’m ever in charge of a support organization, I’m going to use those as examples of the right way to do things. That doesn’t imply that the customer is always right, by any means, but the responsive nature of the service and easy manner in which the correct service was retrieved is invaluable.

I forgot to mention earlier that I was able to successfully spend several hours on the wireless network at home last night without any connection issues. I think the hard reset on the router fixed my problems.

I enabled Remote Desktop on the machine in the computer room and was able to connect to it from my laptop in the living room and work on my iTunes music library while watching TV. I can’t begin to tell you how cool that is. (I know, all you other wireless people are laughing and saying things like “Welcome to the 21st century!” but, in my defense, I use this stuff all the time at work, I just never got into it at home. Now that I’ve got it, I’m liking it. Next stop, tablet PC?)

I’m usually not too excited about programming stuff, but Visual C# Whidbey is just plain cool.

I have one of those apple slicing/coring devices at work. I hate eating apples whole, but love apple slices (odd? maybe).

I just went and sliced an apple and utterly destroyed this thing. The blades all bent and started coming apart…

Maybe I should purchase a higher quality of kitchen gadget. In the meantime, what am I going to do with all these apples?