wasted weekend

Our lives changed this week yet again, except this time it was not by our choice. Our son was removed from his house, but it was not a polite goodbye. The owners had enough of late payments or not payment at all. Of course it did not help that the previous month they did without water as they did not pay their bill. This month they did without electricity as they "forgot" to pay that bill as well. Then they did not pay their monthly rent and that was the end of the house for them all. My wife found out this last Tuesday that they all had to be out of the house immediately. We rented a truck from Home Depot in the evening and drove over to pick up all of his stuff from the house. The woman who oversees the rent told me when I dropped off the keys to the house that she would file a civil lawsuit against everyone who signed the leave to pay for the damages done to the house. I offered to do the repairs myself to save everyone from loosing even more money. Maybe I should have put more thought into it before saying such a thing. So for nine hours yesterday and seven hours today I worked on the house while my wife cleaned everything in the house. Yesterday I moved the lawn, picked up leaves and cleaned the gutters. By the end of the day I had around 30 trash bags and many pieces of old worthless furniture to be thrown away. I then proceeded into the house to start patching the five huge holes that one of my son's roommates had caused by his endless rage. Of course I had two broken windows and three messed up doors to fix also. Plus paint two rooms that had been poorly decorated with random painting techniques. After a full day of work I was so tired it was hard to fall asleep last night. Today we returned to finish off the unfinished tasks and to carry all of the trash away. One of my other sons helped with as he borrowed a friends truck. We had one load of nothing but trash bags. The other load was fun for him as he got to break up tons of furniture. I think he really enjoyed that a lot. So much for a weekend of rest around the house. I hope it was worth it somehow; even though I did talk to the owner of the house today and she told me they were going to redo the whole house. I feel liked a lost a weekend that I can never get back.

Let's walk

This week while attending a conference in our nation's capitol city, I took very long walks in the morning by myself and in the evening with fellow conference attendees. The hotel I stayed in was 5 blocks north of the White House.

The first morning I walked to the White House and returned, which took me around 30 minutes total. Nothing too eventful took place, but the weather certainly was perfect. That evening we walked around looking for a place to eat and eventually landed in Zed's, which was a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant.

The second morning I walked to the Lincoln monument, which took around 45 minutes one way. When I arrived at the feet of Lincoln's statue, an elderly man arrived having run up the many steps and saluted Lincoln. He turned around and told the guard standing watch that this was his favorite day of the week as he ran and saluted Lincoln every week on this day. That was interesting and odd at the same time. The last time I saw the Lincoln monument was several years ago with the whole family. We got a cab to take us there from the Space Museum as the final part of our educational trip for the kids. That was a fond memory as the kids were very young. The only bad thing was that I could not find the car as a parking space was very hard to find so I parked on a side street very far from the Washington Mall, or huge green grass lawn.


In the evening we walked to a Chinese restaurant and then proceeded to the Mall at the end where the Lincoln monument is located. We went by the Vietnam monument, which I had seen in the morning, except this time there were thousands of teenagers on field trips present. It reminded me of my boss in Saudi who was an American in Vietnam. He told me he never smoke nor drank before going to Vietnam. He was very pleasant at work, but had serious alcohol issues. Every night he got staggering drunk, which was quite a chore for Saudi where alcohol is banned. I felt sorry for him, but avoided talking to him in the evening as he was so well intoxicated that nothing made sense that he said. He was not the only one that caught this disease in Vietnam. We continued to the Korean monument, which for me was the highlight of my time in D.C. We then proceeded to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt monument down the road, which was second favorite thing. It was getting dark, and the teenagers were still roaming around, but the waterfalls were lite and it was so pleasant as the monument is right on the lake on the opposite side from the Jefferson monument. As we headed back to the hotel we stopped by the Washington monument. Even though it was way past my bedtime we stopped by the Old Ebbitt Grill for dessert. I saw on the sign out front that it was founded in 1865 and it was located right across the road from the White House. I am sure for the day that I walked way over 7 miles.


The third morning, I walked to the US Capitol building. It was just as far a walk as to the Lincoln monument the morning before. On the way back I walked by the Old Post Office, which I mistook for the National Cathedral as it looked just like an old church. In the evening I went with one of the conference attendees by Metro to the airport. I really enjoy having a subway, but we will never see on in this area of NC where we live.

Now that I have covered all of the high points of my trip, I have to regress and cover how we got to D.C. I left the house around 1pm as I needed to pick up the car tags from the dealer for our SUV on the way to the airport. I was at the gate at 1:30pm for my 3pm flight. Our flight was late but was sat on the tarmac, I could see other planes next to our waiting. They made an announcement that the weather had caused all outbound flights to be canceled, so we went back to the gate. Total chaos set in as people were everywhere trying to get information on their flights. The rain started coming down heavily after the black clouds rolled in, so I was glad we did not take off in our very small plane. One of the people I was with got on the phone to call our airline and for the next hour was able to reschedule all 7 of us on a different airline. We finally took off around 9:30pm and was at the Metro waiting for a subway train at 10pm. We had to wait for a train as an announcement was made that the Washington Nationals baseball game had just ended and trains were overly crowded. When we got to the main hub downtown, the whole underground was full of people as far as you could see. Somehow we kept pushing until we got to the transfer train and we finally arrived at the hotel at 11:30pm. Not bad, 10 hours of elapsed time to travel by plane for 30 minutes, when we could have driven in 4 hours. At least the whole time was not like the start of our trip!

change

I see the world changing before my very eyes. I am sure in the past 100 years other dramatic changes were more obvious, like moving from a local agrarian society to the country wide industrial age or from traveling by horse to bouncing along in a car. My wife's parents tell stories of going to South Korea by boat, which normally took a month and then flying for the first time by plane. In order to cover the cost, they chauffeured Korean orphans to the USA for an agency that matched them to their adopting parents. That is a pretty dramatic change, going from a month long voyage to 24 hour. Maybe it is the communication age we have entered in my lifetime. This week the whole world knew about the flooding in Myanmar and the earthquake in China within hours. When a new Indian movie comes out half way around the world, I don't have to wait three months for the release date, I just drive to the local Indian shop and rent it for $2. When I want to listen to just released music, I just go to iTunes and I can listen or buy it today. It seems like the whole world has gone from patiently waiting to expecting immediate results within my lifetime. I did not even mention computers either. Another example from my wife's parents illustrates this perfectly. When my wife and I first got married, I saw her write a hand written postal gram letter every week to her parents. We would receive the same from them. It took two weeks to receive the latest news each way. On a really fast arrival we would get it in ten days. Then came email in the past twenty years only. Now that takes too long so we have instant messaging. Last but not least we have games. I remember when my best friend's father worked on computers when I was a kid. We were all amazed at his secret lifestyle. I also recall living in Saudi Arabia and hearing of the wives of the employees playing computer games to pass the time - which always amazed me still to this day. I remember our kids going from Super-Nintendo, to Playstation, to N64, to XBox, to XBox 360. We first started out huddling around a desk playing Mortal Kombat. Now my youngest son plays with people all over the world from his room on his XBox 360. Some of them are his friends, but most of them he has never met nor can they even speak English. Simply amazing.

The most dramatic change I am thinking about today is in attitudes of young people. My oldest son was given an option in court yesterday. Pay $200 and do 24 hours of community service OR spend 24 hours in jail. He did not even think twice. He wanted to spend time in jail. One of his friends, who he has known since elementary, is in jail for 60 days for possession of drugs. I guess he will join him.

adrenaline rush

Only twice in recent memory has my heart raced so fast I thought it was unhealthy. This past week was one such occasion. At around 3am one night my wife sits up with her back absolutely straight and says "What's that?" loudly. That obviously woke me up and I start to think what she could have possibly heard. Was there a fire she smelled? Was one of the kids coming home in the middle of the night hurt? Was it her woman's intuition kicking in or just a bad dream? It turned out to be a mild anxiety attack, but my heart had already picked up the pace as if I was running for my life as the adrenaline rushed through my heart. That is such a crazy feeling.

The last time my heart saw massive amounts of adrenaline, we lived in San Antonio. At about the same time in the middle of the night, I saw lights in the living room being turned on and off. Our master bedroom was on the first floor and it was right next to the pool on the outside and the living room on the inside. At first I thought it was a bit odd as the kids typically turn them on to get something to eat but don't turn them on and off. I initially woke up as I thought I heard someone walk by our window and brush up against the bushes and make some noise. So when the lights kept being switched on and off, I immediately thought a thief had broke into our house. Off to the races went my heart beating much faster than normal. I kept wondering whether I should get up and check on it or not. One of my middle son's friends was beat up by a local gang down the road from our house, so I also knew there were bad elements around that I did not want to see. If only I had a metal baseball bat under our bed I would feel better about going to see who was testing our lights. By the time my heart calmed down the phone rang. Now that was odd turn of events. I was so happy as I hoped that would scare away the burglar. Sure enough the lights stopped flashing. After waiting a couple more minutes I went out to see what was going on. As I entered the living room I saw police car lights flashing in front of our house. Now I was saved as the cop must have caught the intruder who was wasting my electricity! He came to the front door and rang the doorbell. I look out and I see one of my sons in the back seat of the car with handcuffs on. I was so confused my head was spinning. Such harsh treatment for switching the lights on and off! Turns out the story was just beginning to get complex. I asked the policeman if he saw anyone turning lights on and off in our house. He said he did not. I asked him how long he had been there and he said a few minutes. That was odd. He then said he was writing my son up with a warning for being out after the 11pm curfew, which existed for everyone under 18 in San Antonio. They do this since there is so much gang activity at night that they don't want good kids getting involved I suppose. He goes and gets my son and after unlocking the handcuffs brings him to the front door. As I close the door I learn even more facts.

Sometimes life is much stranger than fiction as I have learned from our two years in San Antonio. I was very angry at my son but glad he was safe. I asked him if he saw the lights being turned on and off and he said the policeman handcuffed him to the car so he did not run away. He then went around the back of the house and somehow entered the back door. For 30 minutes he was going through our house! He told our son that he was checking for a photo of him to prove this was his house. I had read many stories in the San Antonio newspaper of dirty policeman, because of all of the drugs and gangs. I guess I had just met one. He had no right to come into our house, but he had denied being in it to my face. Just one of many extremely odd things that happened to use when we lived there.

Of course the real story as to why my son was out that time of the night was only amusing looking back at it. A mutual "friend" of two of my sons was, as I would find out later a drug dealer and generally a very weird person. He had come by to get my son since he knew he played the guitar. He knew where a bunch of skateboarders hung out at night and wanted to have a rock concert for them. He broke into an abandoned grocery store, let all of the skateboarders in so they could skate around on the floor while being entertained by music. The was all premeditated as for weeks he had smuggled in sound equipment. My son was like the rock star, showing up for the concert with everything ready to go. The problem was they turned the amps up so loud that a policeman getting gas at a nearby gas station heard the noise and investigated. All of the skateboarders fled by running into a nearby field. My son and another one jumped into the car belonging to the bad "friend" and turned on the car and tried to escape. By then a bunch of cops were there and they could not escape the parking lot, so they got caught. This bad "friend" showed up at our house a couple of nights later and I asked him about what happened and banned him from our house in the future. He said he crawled up into the air vents and stayed there until the next morning. The police confiscated his car and all of his sound equipment. I did not feel sorry for him in any way. That was not the last we heard of this bad "friend" as my oldest son attached himself to him for some strange reason, but that story will have to wait for another day.

searching

I must comment on how to find a car. Last weekend we needed to drive different cars and SUVs so we could feel how they drove and to see how much room each had. Looking at a photo on a web site just is not good enough for us. We have to physically touch it and hit the accelerator to feel the power. Having said all that, the two best web site designs for searching for vehicles are Ebay Motors and Carmax. A more traditional approach can be found at Auction Direct.

Looking at the later one, you see many dropdown menus populated with tons of choices. This is nice to see all of the choices but the dropdowns are totally disconnected. The result is information overload, but since we are all well trained internet monkeys, we do not seem to notice. Until we see a usable interface that actually helps us find our way through the huge forest of unlimited choices of vehicles. This is not a new revelation, just tried and true usability design principles applied to real life situations. Of course if we only had a couple of choices then we wouldn't need this creative thinking. A couple of choices, a couple of dropdowns and we are done.

I must say that I really enjoy using the Carmax site. It always tells me how many cars in each category even before I filter down my choices. As I refine what I am looking for, I can easy remove the filters to increase the choices. Very nice and worth seeing and using even if not in the hunt for a used car. I am so happy when I find usable software!

And the winner is...

South Korea. I should have expected that decision all along. Since my wife was born in South Korea and grew up her whole life there, what other choice could there be? My wife's father has a Hyundai, her sister has a Hyundai and now so do we. It is not like we have plenty of other choices! It really came down to what vehicle cost the least and had the most features and drive the best. We found three different used Hyundai Santa Fe vehicles. I want to saw cars but they are not cars. Some people say they are SUVs, but they are not the typical SUV in size. For now it will have to be vehicle. The nicest thing is they don't drive like an SUV, but more like a car so my wife will enjoy that after having driven our huge Ford custom van for almost 10 years now. I am happy we only buy a vehicle every ten years as the whole process wore me out. I dislike shopping in general but car shopping and messing with car dealers is right at the bottom of my fun list. One last thing I have to comment about. It sure is strange how a Korea vehicle would be named after a city in New Mexico and the similar yet smaller model named after the city where my mother lives in Arizona. Pure intelligent marketing I think.

car dealers

On top of everything else last weekend, we sold our Ford custom van. At a wonderful 14 mpg and the quick rise of gas prices, I just could not take it any more. It a momentary lapse of judgement I told me wife we should take the van to the Wal-Mart parking lot and leave it with a For Sale sign in the window. We sold the van within a couple of hours and so we were down to a single vehicle between us. Not a bad thing, unless you consider the fact that I have to drive to work which is 20 miles away in one direction every day of the week. Since it was late Sunday, we had a couple of choices and decided to try Enterprise Rental cars since they are just down the road a couple of miles. All week long my wife searched the internet for the best car for us. We did not consider a brand new car because of the high price and we do not want to have monthly payments for 5-6 years as that is no fun. Yesterday we checked all of the local small-time dealers in the huge metropolis of Fuquay Varina. One sells high end cars, one sells perfect cars for teenagers which you don't mind if they trash or crash them, one struck me as not very honest, one was from the county of Jordan. Quite a mixture for such a small town. We then ventured outside the town limits to a couple of new car dealers right outside town, as they sell what are called "program cars". These are cars that are owned and driven by dealerships and then sold as used cars. We ended up driving just about every reasonably priced SUV on the market for sale: Ford Escape, Jeep Liberty, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Mazda Tribute, Toyota Rav4, Hyundai Tucson, and Suzuki Reno. Like my wife said yesterday, there are just too many vehicles to choose from and that makes it even harder. We ventured to the Cary Auto Park in the evening, where there are just about every vehicle brand for sale in the USA can be found. The final place we visited illustrates what I think of dealerships. We drove around most of the dealers looking for the used cars on display in the lots. As we were leaving the final dealer, we saw a nice Mazda Tribute displayed nicely as it was parked on the sidewalk. We went back, which was our first mistake, and asked to drive it. At the big dealerships,someone rides with you from the dealership while you take a test drive. Since the price was too high as said we were not interested. The salesman went inside and said the owner would do something silly to get rid of it as it had been on the lot longer than any other vehicle. I told him I would buy it for $3000 under the price listed right then. He made me sign a paper saying that and ran off to talk to the owner. He came back and told me that was too low. So much for doing anything to sell it!