That place that is home

I grew up in a small town in western New Hampshire, with just a blinking stop light, one store, and not even a school within its borders. Growing up, all I really knew was the small circle of towns that surrounded where I lived. It was a simple life, no excitement, and no chance of progress. Everyone I knew wanted to leave this town.

Then I laid my eyes on the Internet when my father went back to college in the early 90s. Combined with my mother bringing a Mac LC II home thanks to being one of the early PC Connection employees. It completely opened a new world and brought me on a long journey that resulted in me working for one of the most critical Internet infrastructure companies in the world. This has made me who I am today.

My family eventually moved away from the town I grew up in, just down the road to the town I went to high school in. A town that has deep family roots for over a hundred years. A town that just seems perfect and fitting of small town New England, with a perfect lake, a mountain that watches over you, and history around every corner. A town where my family and friends are always there for me.

Whenever I visit my hometown of Sunapee, life slows down and I am reminded that someday, I will live here again.

The started a simplified home tech life

An new iPad (3) in hand, I am beginning an experiment to simplify my home computing life: go without using my home computer for two weeks and still do all of my needed computing tasks.

The reason is straight forward: as the iPad gets more and more amazing software, there is less and less computing tasks that requires a home computer. I have a smaller amount of time to do my home computer tasks than I used to, thus I need to do them in ways that are easy and efficient.

I am also simplifying my entertainment needs. I am selling my PlayStation 3 as it collects dust and as I realize that I get just as much if not more entertainment playing $0.99 iPad games compared to $60 PS3 games.

What else can I do to simplify my home tech life? That is something I hope to explore in the next few weeks, with a series of blog posts written on my iPad or iPhone (just like this blog post).

Buying a house

Never imagined how busy I would be when buying a house. Especially when the closing date of my condo and of the house we are buying are both on September 30th.

There are lots of details to keep up on. All of the real estate and mortgage related paperwork. Inspections, appraisals, the waiting game for answers to questions. Making a list of utilities, accounts, etc. that will need address changes or signups for. Thinking of what stuff we want to bring over to the house or get rid of. Praying that nothing like a hurricane or earthquake suddenly throws a curve ball.

It is very odd creating wishlists on various sites for various things I haven’t used in years that suddenly become a necessity when owning a house. Like a lawn mower and a snow blower.

On top of this, the fast pace life of working for an awesome company of course always keeps me on my toes. Wouldn’t have it any other way though, this is what I am born to do. Work hard, play hard.

Condo owners

As of yesterday, my wife and I own our first home: the condo we have lived in for the past four years. My father-in-law sold it to us and the transaction was finally completed yesterday.

We are very happy and can’t wait to start making some improvements to this place. Assuming it is affordable, we are going to replace the bedroom windows and maybe our sliding door that goes out to the patio. The bedroom windows are in really bad shape and the sliding door isn’t much better. Given that the scary “w” word is approaching, it makes sense to get this taken care of. Not to mention, it helps keep our condo fee lower if we have energy efficient windows.

After that, we have a number of projects to work on over the fall and winter. Probably would be a good opportunity to paint some of the rooms here. I want to keep watch and see if I can score a great deal for a thru-the-wall air conditioner with the season almost being over. The model we have is at least 20-years-old (the condo was built in 1983) and might even be the original one.

Anyways, it is exciting news and I hope we can make this a good investment.