Paul's Blog
Hot weather ... and a few words on what's going on
Monday, June 16, 2008 at 06:46 pm CDT
Wow, it's 6:30 in the evening, and it's still 95 degrees with a heat index of 102. Just unbelievable.
Things are very busy, but going well. It's been about a month since we've fully moved into the house. The plumbing work is long since done and very good so far. The electrical upgrades (replacing and upgrading the service panels, replacing the main mast, installing new circuits in the office, living room, kitchen, and garage) are fantastic, and I'm really glad we did them. Now, we're gearing up for gutter and tree trimming estimates ... so the fun continues!
I've been enjoying being a homeowner and having little projects to work on. (Seriously, I am.) I installed a dryer vent through the back of the utility room wall (including drilling through the house--yikes!), installed beautiful Hunter ceiling fans in the three bedrooms, dug out an old tree stump in the front yard, and am just generally working on little improvements that add to the quality of life here.
Next up, we can finally get to some "nesting": we've bought the crib, changing table, and toy box, and we just need to get the nursery cleaned out and painted, and then we'll get it all set up. Very exciting! And none too soon, since we're at 33 weeks and 2 days today, and Angie may deliver as early as 38 weeks!
So, that's a little taste of what's going on here at home. At work, things are good, but ... classified. :) More later, I hope! -- Paul
More House Stuff
Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 04:29 pm CDT
House things are going pretty well. After closing (on 4/29), we brought some cleaning supplies out to the house, swept the place out, cleaned up the cupboards, and did some preemptive ant/roach spraying. We also had a locksmith come out and change out all the locks.
Yesterday (4/30), CenterPoint Energy came out and reconnected the gas and lit the pilot lights. I also had a chance to sweep out the garage (cough!) and utility room. The loan funded, and the title company released our repair money from our side agreement with the sellers. (Yay!)
Today, I was out to the house again to meet with the plumbers. They started digging a 15' tunnel in the back yard (pretty impressive), in preparation for completely replacing the plumbing in both bathrooms. Once that's done, all the remaining 1950's cast iron plumbing will have been eliminated. If all goes well, the city inspector should approve the work on Monday, and the tunnel will be filled in after that.
Our security system from FrontPoint Security arrived today. We already got our alarm permit from the City of Houston on Tuesday, so we should be able to get this installed an activated pretty quickly.
So, things are coming along. I'm about to start following up with electricians to get that work started. I know people would like to see pics, so we'll scan and sanitize them soon.
Desktop is down -- Rethinking Home Computing
Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 10:22 pm CDT
Well, on Friday night my main desktop went down after a failed BIOS flash. The Windows flash utility from Gigabyte (the motherboard manufacturer) failed with a cryptic error message. When I rebooted my computer, the fans and drives spun up, but there was no video and no beep codes. All my efforts to force a reflash failed. So, now I'm in the middle of an RMA to get the motherboard replaced.
The surprising thing is that aside from the loss of data, I don't miss the desktop. The ThinkPad is more than sufficient for my writing and minor coding work, and this is really forcing me to rethink home computer resources. I just switched my nice monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and speakers to the docking station for the ThinkPad, and it's nearly business as usual.
When I get the desktop back up, I'm starting to think that I'll reconfigure it as a workstation / file server that's tucked away and accessible by network. In an ideal setup, I'd be able to stream media from it to the living room TV, maybe with some kind of wireless bridge. I really don't have time for gaming anymore, so it really makes sense to use my best monitor, etc. on my laptop when I come home from work. I'll probably install the scanner on it, too.
I'm not entirely decided, as there are some great benefits to using the desktop as a desktop: it's designed to be very quiet, it gives me a non-UT-owned machine to do personal work on (and helps avoid all sorts of IP-type headaches that way), and it has much nicer audio and graphics cards on, which is nice for working at home. So, I guess we'll just have to see! But I'm surprised at myself to even be at such a point, given my PC desktop tinkering roots!
Some interesting reading on fetal growth rates
Monday, April 14, 2008 at 09:02 am CDT
Well, it's hard to believe, but Dakota is at 24 weeks, 2 days today. We had a great ultrasound on Friday, which included a very interesting cross-sectional view of her umbilical cord (confirmed a 2-vessel cord), and an amazing 3D reconstruction of her face. I'll scan those ultrasounds later today or tomorrow.
We also jotted down her tibia length (33.8 mm), thigh length (44.2 mm), and weight (1 pound, 8 ounces). I didn't manage to catch her femur length at the previous ultrasound, but her weight was 15 ounces on March 21st; her weight has increased 60% in just 3 weeks' time. Now that's growth!
Angie and I were curious what her total head-to-toe length might be, and how we could estimate it from her length measurements. According to this American Journal of Perinatology article , femur length is usually 1.1 times the tibia length, so an estimate of Dakota's femur length is 37.2 mm. I suppose her thigh length (which includes more than just the femur) is an overestimate. We measured our own femur lengths, and found those to be around 26% of our height for both of us. Based on that, Dakota is about 143 mm tall, or 5.6 inches.
According to this Nature article, this puts her at about 28% of her birth length and 19% of her birth weight. Interestingly, femur length correlates so well with gestational age (see this figure in Obstetrics and Gynecology ) that it's used to help confirm the due date. If you scroll down on this link, you'll find a nice chart of femur length (FL) vs. gestational age (the time since fertilization, which is roughly the menstrual age minus two weeks). Since Dakota's gestational age was 21 6/7 weeks at the time of the ultrasound, that places her consistently close to the expected 39 mm femur length.
If you're interested in this kind of thing, this gestational age calculator is pretty interesting, although it only accepts integer measurements. This calculator is a little different: enter the gestational age and one more more measurements, and it will give you the percentile for those measurements. (50 = exactly in the middle) Dakota's tibia length and estimated femur lengths were around the 65th to 69th percentile, so that's great. This calculator gives similar results, although it also shows the mean and standard deviation.
Choosing a Houston Neighborhood
Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 04:33 am CDT
After we decided to stop looking in Sugar Land and turned our attention toward Houston, we worked hard to choose a neighborhood with affordable houses, lower crime, good potential for appreciation, and good schools through at least middle school.
We started by looking in and near the southwest quadrant of the inner loop. This area is close to both my work (the University of Texas Health Science Center) and the Galleria and west side of the 610 loop (where several large law firms are located). It's also an area we're fairly familiar with and like. (Click to view a larger version of any of these pictures.)
Next, we checked on the price of 3-bedroom homes throughout the region. Below, we plot a rough contour plot, rannging from sub-$100,000 to over $400,000. As expected, West University and Bellaire are just too expensive. Meyerland (just south) is better but still too pricey. The next neighborhoods south of that are Westbury and Willowbend, and those are in reach.
At the same time, we knew there were certain areas we wanted to avoid. Sharpstown near the US-59 isn't a particularly safe area. Also, most of the area along Fondren is pretty spooky, and there are frequent enough shooting stories there to make it a place to avoid for now. South of Main is still in flux, and as it turns out, the schools stink there anyway (see below). A similar situation holds along the south edge of the 610 loop to the east of Main: there are some great new houses going up in this area, and so it appears to be on the verge of a transition, but the schools haven't caught up yet. Maybe we'll look here in another ten years. Anywhere along and east of the TX-288 is also a little on the spooky side, particularly as you approach the University of Houston area from the west. (That area's in flux, too, but it's still not quite there.) So, we avoid the brown areas below:
From there, we researched the schools on the Houston ISD website. The good news is that many Houston schools are much better than people seem to give them credit for. Naturally, all the schools in Bellaire and West University are very good, but we already knew those neighborhoods are out of our price range. However, we found some areas with good elementary and middle schools (blue areas):
Putting all this information together, we choose an area to focus our search (circled):
This provided a lot of focus to our search. We drove through the area and found it to be nice and quiet, with plenty of people taking walks at night, feeling free to leave landscaping outside, etc. Most of the homes are one-story, traditional ranch-style houses built in the 1950's. As it's the first relatively affordable area south of Meyerland, we believe it's poised for growth. Indeed, most market analyses show a fairly consistent 8% annual growth rate in property values. Using the classic "rule of 72," 72/8 = 9, so this means that the property value should double in roughly 9 years. I believe that this trend will continue, as the modestly-priced area should be increasingly attractive compared to the very expensive inner loop neighborhoods.
So, there you have it: how we selected a Houston neighborhood based on combining all the information we could find on pricing, nice areas, and good schools. :-)
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