Twitter Updates for 2008-04-30

Posted by Jim on Apr 30th, 2008
2008
Apr 30
  • I’ve been researching savings bonds and snowballing debt all morning; now time to do some real work #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-04-29

Posted by Jim on Apr 29th, 2008
2008
Apr 29
  • Twitterrific continues to give me numerous network errors, but only ever while I’m at work. More proof that our network is sub-par. #
  • Star Wars Dance Party @ Bubba’s on 5/17? I need an Ackbar costume! http://tinyurl.com/5tjtbj #
  • @strawpoll No I don’t buy any newspapers, but read some free weeklies #

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New favorite distraction

Posted by Jim on Apr 29th, 2008
2008
Apr 29

Have you checked out twistori yet?  It’s an anonymous tweet aggregator based around six keywords: love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish.  Every tweet posted to twitter‘s public stream that contains one of these words is collected and displayed, with the poster’s account information stripped away.  The scrolling presentation is really great; it’s what that news feed at the bottom of the cable news networks should be: extremely addictive.

So far, in the five minutes I’ve been watching the feed, I’ve seen a “love” entry about GTAIV and a “hate” one—although the hate one was hating friends who make you wait for them to arrive before you can open your copy of the game.

One last comment: I’m really impressed how twistori has spread across the internet.  The site went live yesterday with virtually no fanfare, just two tweets stating it’s existence.  Today, it’s the big thing on lots of tech blogs.  Check out one of the creator’s thoughts here.

Twitter Updates for 2008-04-28

Posted by Jim on Apr 28th, 2008
2008
Apr 28
  • This place is so much more tolerable when there are no students. I hope I wasn’t that immature when I was their age. #

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Pubcrawling 2.0

Posted by Jim on Apr 25th, 2008
2008
Apr 25

The title of the webpage says it all: beermenus.com.  It only works for approximately 170 bars in the greater New York City area, but the idea is brilliant—a search engine exclusively designed to find out where your favorite obscure brew is available.  Just type in a beer or brewery and it will tell you where you can find it.  Plus, it includes a Google map so you can see where the bars you want to go to are.  I also like that it allows for user submissions.  I’d feel bad for the few beer nerds who can’t go out and drink because they are stuck inside uploading beer menus into a database.  Now all we need is to get a Beer Menus website for the greater Portland Area and we’ll be all set.

Thanks to the C|net blog The Social for turning me on to this site.

Our Own Money Pit

Posted by Jim on Apr 18th, 2008
2008
Apr 18

Two days ago, Nissa and I put in an offer on a house we really liked.  Yesterday, after a few stressful hours, our offer was accepted.  Come May 16, the house at 301 Lincoln Street, South Portland will be in our name!  It was a close call on our bid though.  We weren’t the only bidder, or even the highest bidder.  We made an offer for the asking price and placed no conditions on the offer that weren’t first suggested by the seller (a seller’s contribution to closing costs and the seller handling the dismantling and removal of an old pool in the back yard), plus a quick closing time of five and one half weeks.  The next morning, we find out through our Realtor that another party placed an offer on the house with an earlier closing date and with a price tag above the asking price.  As Nissa put it, we were sniped!  Luckily, the seller gave us one chance to revise our offer.  The listing agent could not disclose how much the other party was willing to pay, but she did admit that it was an amount greater than our pre-approval loan would let us bid.  Basically, she had all but written us off.  After a stressful discussion of how much we liked the house and how much we were willing to pay, we figured we could still afford a price that was $10,000 over our current pre-approval.  I made a quick call to our helpful representative with Navy Federal and got the increase to our loan in under five minutes.  I guess the snipers and the listing agents didn’t count on the ability of two people with impeccable credit who are determined to buy a particular house.  Our generous offer certainly surprised the listing agent (at least according to our Realtor’s account of his conversation with her), and it definitely pleased the seller.  She accepted it on the spot, without giving the snipers a chance to counter our offer.  I feel a little bad for them, but since this was the third house (out of 20+) we’ve been willing to put an offer on only to have it bought out from under us, we were due for some good luck.  Perhaps we’re paying a lot for the house, but others in this condition usually go for what we’re paying, so I’m not too concerned.  Plus, since the offer got us the house we wanted, I can’t call this amount anything but money well spent.  Now comes the inspections and title research and the like.  It’s going to be a busy month, but come June 1, when everything is signed and paid and Nissa and I are on our back deck, grilling some hamburgers, listening to the Sox, with our dirty dishes in our dishwasher and our clothes in our dryer, I know we’ll both think it was worth it.

LOL Analytics

Posted by Jim on Apr 16th, 2008
2008
Apr 16

I was checking out my web stats to see what kinds of search terms bring people to my site.  Surprisingly, one was jim flanagan cats.  Even more surprising is that my site is the second result for this search term.  I’m also glad that someone stumbled upon my site by looking for an autograph of the Singing Nun.

In other news, Nissa and I are still looking for a house to buy.  We found one we liked that we put a low-ball offer on.  The people selling the house also received another offer the same which must have been higher than ours, for they decided to negotiate with the other prospective buyers.  We’ll be looking a three houses in South Portland later today, one of which looks very promising.  I hope we can find something soon.  I’d really like to get out of our apartment when the lease ends on May 31.