As I went through today’s snail I found that my CenturyLink invoice had risen by a not-insignificant 28%. CenturyLink bundles a bunch of stuff. There’s the POTS (and its requisite long distance), DirecTV, and High Speed [cough, cough] Internet. When I mentioned Internet, my kid – ever the quick wit – quipped…
“You mean we *pay* them for that???”
I nearly dropped a nut.
He’s right, though. This is rural Florida and the Internet service well and truly sucks. They SHOULD pay us, rather than the other way around. At the far end of a 12,000-foot copper haul to the DSLAM, you just KNOW I’m not makin’ it up.
But that’s not why the bill went up. It was DirecTV. DirecTV’s portion alone rose by fifty-four damned percent. And I know why. A couple of promos, granted when we signed up last year, expired. As if that pap that passes for content was worth the promo rate in the first place. A thousand channels of crap. Thank the almighty Lord in heaven none of us give a flyin’ shit for sports!
The lot of ’em – what a rip. I mean, study after study, survey after survey, who’s at the bottom along with lawyers and used car salesmen? Cable companies and phone companies, that’s who.
When you sell a home, you’re going to get to know two people pretty well: your agent and your attorney. Your team should enjoy comfortable working relationships with one another.
I’d had a business relationship with our attorney for some years. He had handled some deals with me in the past. Pam and I met with him March 27, 2013. We had no plans for staying in New Jersey with the sale underway. It had been a cold month or so preparing our home for market, and we were anxious to return to Florida to warm up a little. We left the meeting feeling comfortable with the representation.
I chose our real estate agent partly because I owed her a favor. She’d helped us to buy the place back in 2000. Over the years we stayed in touch and she’d done some market research for me along the way. At some point I said that if/when we sold the place I’d call. I do what I say I’ll do – it’s one of my guiding principles – so that’s who I called.
No, I’m not mentioning any names. The smallish agency she now worked had been in town for a long time, it was a name I knew. We signed our agreement March 29, 2013, planning to hit the market April 2. I sold our log splitter to my agent’s boss, a co-owner at the agency, as he left after a visit..
With that stroke of the pen we became part of the Real Estate Sales Process. We hit the road for Florida the very next day.
The Process Nobody talks directly in a real estate deal. All conversation with the buyer goes through agents and attorneys. It’s kind of like driving your car from the backseat, where the driver describes what they see and you respond with detailed instructions. “It looks like the road ahead may curve to the left a little and we could be approaching the right shoulder.” “Try reducing speed by 12% and rotate the steering wheel counterclockwise 11 degrees for… 3.5 seconds. How’s that?” It’s a hugely inefficient and frustrating process. When you’re a thousand miles away the process is accomplished with email, phone, fax, and the occasional overnight courier. I suppose it serves to keep the buyer and seller from getting nasty with one another. But still. The process, in (very) broad strokes, goes something like this:
Take an offer and negotiate a contract price.
Make a contract, which effectively takes the home off the market.
Have the attorneys review the contract, make adjustments, and create an actual contract.
Research the title.
Have a home inspection, wait for the results.
Maybe make repairs/adjustments, maybe negotiate the price some more, maybe revise the contract as needed. Maybe repeat.
Satisfy outstanding issues. Utilities, taxes, fees, town requirements, etc.
Close the deal.
This thing I’ve called a contract? In real estate, a contract doesn’t carry any more weight than the scribbling on the back of a napkin. The first thing attorneys do in their review is agree to remove any teeth they find in the boilerplate. It’s a roadmap filled with uncertainty. Buyer will put this amount of money on the table by some date, some more by another date, there’s this much time to get an inspection done, the deal may close by that date, and so on. But if anyone misses a milestone it doesn’t really matter. The paper may or, often, may not be rewritten to accommodate.
The contract doesn’t actually become concrete until the money and property change hands at the closing table. At that point it becomes nearly impossible to reverse.
If there’s a mortgage involved there’s more. The bank steps into the process early with their own brand of complexity. The appraisal is an important step, where they look into market data as well as look the home over before deciding how much the home’s worth. And, of course, the credit checks. When a buyer steps into the pipeline they might not have an existing relationship with a bank, essentially still shopping for funding. A buyer could be pre-qualified, which means the bank is open to considering loaning some funds. Or, the buyer could be pre-approved, which means that the bank has agreed to loan up to some amount – provided that the appraisal process doesn’t stop the deal along the way. These designations are archaic and mostly mean nothing today.
That’s the barest minimum description of the process that I can muster. It takes an average 60-90 days to get through the process. And while the process is underway you’re essentially off the market. A home could be shown while it’s under contract, but in practice it never is.
If you’re thinking the process is fragile, with many things that can derail the deal along the way, well, that’s right. We went through the process, to various stages, several times before we reached the closing table.
It seems like a long time since we – my family and I – took the decision to move out of New Jersey, but it’s finally done. The endpoint, for us, was the sale of our home up there. It was all of nine months on the market. It’s a funny thing, but all I hear is how the market’s recovering and home sales are up and positive news and trends from all over. But apparently that – like so much else – doesn’t just doesn’t apply in New Jersey.
I’ve been involved in several real estate ventures over the years and, looking back, none have gone particularly well. Whatever the reason, I seem to come out of it feeling like I should have done better. This time was no different.
But now it’s behind me. The the checks have cleared and I’m free to write about the adventure. And what an adventure it’s been! From my attorney to my agent to the potential buyers that made it to various stages in the sales pipeline to the haunting… yes, you read right… haunting… there are definitely some stories to tell.
Recapping, Florida moved up the list to ‘serious candidate’ status August 10, 2010. (Do I really keep track of that kind of trivia? Yup.) Things were already underway when I wrote Leaving New Jersey Behind In July 2012, announcing our intent to leave New Jersey. Our old home sale closed on December 12th. So… about a year and a half to consider and arrange for (what I hope will be) our last relocation. Seven months to build. A solid month of transition – long story there. Another year to divest the old property.
I’ve written before about troubles with the Aeron that cradles my ass. Between then and now the back failed and once more it was fully covered by Herman-Miller‘s incredible twelve-year warranty. Just like the seat pan incident, a guy was sent out to service the chair and cart away the residue, no charge.
The carpet casters were no match for the tile floor of the office. It took about a year for the grout edges to pound them into submission.
Seat pans and backs are expensive. The most recent failure was not. This time it was the casters.
When I bought this wonderful chair way back in May of 2005 my floor was carpet and so I specified carpet casters. I knew well the damage that an office chair does to carpet – don’t ask. By mid-year 2007 the carpet was gone, replaced with maple plank. The carpet casters were fine for that but to reduce floor wear I added a non-spiked vinyl chair mat. Then, in December 2012, the chair got a new home on a ceramic tile floor. I didn’t give it any thought at the time but in retrospect not caring for the wheels was a grave error. By summer the casters had begun shedding their rolling surfaces! Being me, I started collecting the pieces.
I considered pursuing the warranty thing again. Then I discovered that bona-fide Herman-Miller parts were only around $50. I guessed it would be kinda hard to find service here in rural Florida so I pulled the trigger. ChairPartsOnline.com had brandy-new Herman-Miller hard floor casters in my hands lickety-split. Installation took seconds. They don’t seem to have seat pans or backs or pneumatics but WTF, I needed casters and they delivered.
The warranty on this bad boy’s still good for nearly another three and a half years. Service options research is on my to-do list.
A long time ago I was talking with some folks on the Facebook about the Route 1/130 traffic circle. The site of countless crashes over the decades – from fender-benders to fatalities – the infamous circle was finally replaced by a modern flyover-style intersection.
Eventually I moved the photos over to Google+ to reach a wider audience.
Here I’m testing the Google+ API that allows embedding of posts. I’m pleased to say it works well.
On the way to the local Johnny Rockets we hit some heavy rain. Some of the puddles on the right side of the road were rather deep and I found myself quite glad for the new tires we put on some months back. They cut right through but sent water flying everywhere. The truck didn’t miss a beat. We lucked out and parked right in front of the eatery, and went inside to consume heart attack inducing burgers washed down with some of the best milkshakes on Earth.
Satiated, we left the restaurant and climbed into the truck. I knew something was wrong the instant the key moved through the positions, the usual sounds and bongs were… well, they were different.
The mini message center displayed a cryptic message: Check Gauges in that odd font that LCDs use when making text from a limited set of segments. No starter crank at all. Instead, only an audible click coming from the fuse box under the passenger side kick-panel.
Hoping to avoid a call to Triple-A I dialed some friends to beg a ride (thanks Randy & Rose!), intending to leave the truck where it sat and troubleshoot in the morning. I felt pretty strongly that the problem was moisture-related – that was an awful lot of water! Maybe it would dry out overnight.
Around noon the following day I returned. The truck started as though nothing happened. I listened for a few minutes – nothing odd – turned it off and went home to get Pam to drive the thing home.
The round trip took about an hour. Pam jammed the key in and… yup, no crank! I got behind the wheel and gave the key a few disgusted twists. Wonder of wonder it fired and settled into a welcome idle. Pam drove it home without incident. But in the driveway it wouldn’t start again until the problem was found and solved.
When it comes to auto (and motorcycle) repairs there’s nothing in the world like the actual factory shop manuals. I have ’em for all our vehicles – except this truck. That’s because you can’t simply buy the shop manual for the F150. About the best you can do without springing for an expensive subscription to the online manual – like a dealer has – is to rent access to a section for a day. And that really sucks! So when things go wrong this truck either goes to the dealer or I use the Internet to learn from those before me.
The first likely candidate for failure seemed to be the Fuel Pump Driver Module (FPDM). This aluminum and plastic box, which regulates fuel pressure by modulating the voltage pulses sent to the fuel pump, is mounted directly to a steel crossmember under the bed, above the spare tire. The dissimilar metals tend to corrode the FPDM’s case, eventually allowing water to harm the circuitry inside. Water. I dropped the spare and unbolted the module, disconnected the single plug and brought it to the bench. The metal case was plenty corroded but intact. I didn’t open the plastic cover. Back onto the truck it went, with no change in symptoms. I never learned whether FPDM failure would cause a no-crank condition, or simply a no-start condition.
I entered the truck’s test mode and scrolled through the displays in mini message center. I found DTCs D900 and D950, but searching online for those codes brought no insight. It seemed like there was fuel pressure, consistent with an undamaged FPDM. There was lots of other stuff in the displays but much was undecipherable.
The Actron U-Scan model CP9599 is a dongle for your car’s diagnostic port which talks via Bluetooth to your smart phone.
I figured it was time to add a new tool to my collection: a reader to plug into the truck’s diagnostic port. I grabbed one of the bikes and took a ride down to the local parts store, the nearest was Advance Auto Parts. I intended to just get a simple reader but ended up going a little more spendy for a unit that promised to talk to my Android phone and deliver more comprehensive information. The device I bought is called U-Scan by Actron, model number CP9599.
I had problems with the CP9599. It didn’t seem to want to talk to my truck – but it had no trouble at all talking to my Jeep. This proved to be an important clue. Instead of just some random failure, now the trouble seemed like something was awry with the PCM. Maybe it had taken on some water? Maybe communications, maybe power, hmmm.
I pulled and inspected the condition of all the under-hood accessible plugs I could find, checking for changes after each. No change. In the passenger-side kickpanel box, I pulled and checked every fuse. No issues found. The fuse box also contains several relays of two different types. I began swapping positions of like-type relays to see whether the problem would move. After swapping the relays in positions R202 and R203 (the final pair to try – figures, right?) all the symptoms disappeared!
The truck cranked and started; the CP9599 connected and displayed DTC P1000 (which is normal after a PCM reset). I swapped the relays back to their original positions and the problem returned in all its glory. Relay R203 is documented as PCM power.
The original engineering part number for R203 was F57B-14B192-AA. It’s been superseded by Ford part number F5TZ-14N089-B, which costs about $15 from the dealer. I sprung for a pair of ’em, figuring a spare might be handy.
The truck is running normally now but there’s still a some work to do. I want to mount the FPDM on standoffs, which should halt the dissimilar metal corrosion. This ‘mounting on standoffs’ is part of the repair kit if you buy a replacement FPDM from Ford. Also, when in the fuse box, I found a significant amount of water in the passenger side rocker panel, which leads back from the area under the fuse box. I found the water accidentally. When pulling fuses from the back of the fuse box it seemed as though a dropped fuse could be troublesome to retrieve, so I reached down to see how hard that might be. There are no electrical connections in the rocker panel tunnel, only wire bundles, but I did find some evidence of moisture on a few fuse blades during my check. There’s water getting in there from somewhere! Online, some owners have mentioned trouble with gasket sealing on the brake/bed light housing, and I’ve had that off several times over the years. But I also have a sunroof. More investigation of the water’s source is needed.
The day before yesterday I bought a flaring tool. A ruptured brake line in the Jeep needed repair and I couldn’t find mine, tools still in ~70% disarray since the move…
Not my pool, but you get the general idea. That sucker’s FULL.
So yesterday it rained. All day. Relentlessly. It rained and rained and rained. Then it rained some more. And I didn’t work on the Jeep. Come nightfall it rained. Thursday turned into Friday and it kept raining.
In Florida it doesn’t matter how much it rains. Remember the genie in the 1996 movie Aladdin and the King of Thieves? “Sand… It’s everywhere, get used to it.” The sand just soaks up rain like… well, like sand.
It works great except, duh, where there’s no freakin’ sand! The driveway doesn’t soak up the rain, but it drains into – you guessed it – sand. No problem there. Then there’s the pool. Uh oh, the pool’s full of water, the same stuff that rain’s made of. And pools don’t automatically drain, no siree, they contain. So this morning I found the pool full – TOO full – of water. Close to overflowing, it was, so much water that the skimmer couldn’t skim. Up until then I had no idea that it was possible for a pool to have too much water. Live and learn.
It took about two hours to lower the water to the correct level.
Later in the day I formed a piece of brake line and installed it. I was about to begin bleeding the system when… uh huh… it started to rain.
Or should I just call it SimShitty, as some have taken to calling the recent launch?
The other day Pam plunked down her sixty bucks, minus five with a coupon, plus another fifteen for a strategy book… lemme check the math, that’s seventy smackers, plus some Florida tax… damn, my head’s swimmin’. And for what? Not a lot.
She’s gone through the tutorial and that’s about it. The Origin servers are all down and there’s nothing else to be done. No serv-o, no play-o. The stuff she learned in the tutorial’s largely forgotten. After all, what you don’t put to use in 24 hours of learning is gone the next day, the brain folks love to tell us at training seminars. Use it or lose it.
Okay, everything’s social now. I get it. But SimCity’s largely a game where a single player tries their hand at lording over an infrastructure that happens to include, well, a simulated population. It’s not like your city’s populated with Aunt Jane or the dork you went to school with or… damn… your boss. No, the social part of this title is nothing more than a bag on the side.
So tell me… why’s it necessary to connect to Origin’s server to play?
Oh, yeah, DRM. Those evil thieves… er customers… are trying to steal your stuff.
You’ve got this customer, her name’s Pam. She’s known about you since you were one of many. Back when I used to game. Think Archon on the Apple ][. Yeah, that long ago. She got into The Sims. I bought her a box to play it on. She bought every expansion pack. Then Sims 2. I built her a (then) kick-ass box to play that on and she bought all of those expansion packs, too. Sims 3? Yup. I think she has all of those packs. Books and guides for the lot of ’em, too. I know, I just packed and moved ’em all – a pretty big box – from Jersey down here to Paradise. So Pam knew Sim City from when I played it on the Amiga, and Sim City 2000, too. The ads and previews for the newest SimCity were pretty damned enticing. And not one review – as far as I know – had mentioned this insane reliance on a server connection. So here’s this customer, a good customer, a spendy customer, that threw Electronic Arts a pile of greenbacks for a promise.
And EA failed her.
Over the past few days she’s checked in to try to play, all hours of the day and night. All servers are down.
You failed her bad. There’s no reason to require a remote server connection for single player play. None.
If Pam listens to me, or to our son, or to countless others with similar experiences, she won’t be back.
Takin’ a break to ham it up a little for the camera. It’s January. The temperatures are in the mid-80s. There’s no shortage of motorcycles. What’s not to like?
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a cheap post.
Let me point you to a set of images that chronicle the construction project that produced our new home. The series begins with Pam & me standing in front of an empty lot, the camera in roughly the same place as the image to the left.
We made the trip down in mid-December 2012. It was a bumpy transition, mostly because the project was late. In this next set I show some of that bumpiness, which continues through today as bits and pieces struggle for completion.
The last two times I’ve relocated I’ve taken the time, when packing, to develop a pretty comprehensive inventory of my stuff. Yeah, in fact it is a pain in the ass to do that. Takes time, too. So what’s the point?
This is also the second move that’s been somewhat less than ideal. There were wildly different reasons for that, but the result has been the same: lots of boxes stacked chaotically for a an extended period.
The movers delivered us, offloading into the garage, literally an hour after the garage doors had been hung and tested. That’s tight timing. Stuff went in as it came off the truck, nothing like the way it might be needed. We had about 500 pieces.
About ten days later I dug into the pile. The goal was simple. Stack like-sized containers into rows with their identifiers arranged so that they could be read. When the parade of subcontractors had subsided just a little, being able to find stuff by searching a list saved us a ton of time.
Yesterday Pam & me spent some time recycling empty cartons and rearranging the rows, the first time since the first triage. The bikes fit comfortably now and the idea of allocating some workshop space doesn’t seem so far off.
I need to spend a moment talking about the tools I used, mostly because it was a little different from the way I did it about a dozen years back. Back then it was a simple text file on a computer, which meant that I needed either the computer or a printed sheet to use the inventory. This time I used a document on Google shared using Google Drive. This meant that the inventory was always available no matter what device was handy. That was a big win. There were two downsides, though. The first is my own – I’m just not very effective with data entry on a phone. I don’t know how these kids do it. Voice input isn’t there yet. The second is that search blows, which is kind of funny since it’s Google. Search wasn’t terribly important until we hit the ground, so it was easy to turn the document into a portable and searchable PDF.
I’m here today to report that the old saw “no project ever ran perfectly and yours won’t be the first” is just as true as ever.
I guess I set the tone eight days before the moving van showed up when I took a crowbar to the master bath in the Jersey home for a ‘quick’ renovation. Needless to say, that went incomplete at showtime and I’ll need to go back to complete it before I hit the market. So what; I am a full-time Florida resident now.
This is the view from my office window. It’s a very pleasant change from NJ. Looks a little overcast and it’s a little chilly at some 50 degrees, but it’ll be in the mid 70s in a couple of hours.
I was pretty ambitions when I initially wrote about my plans back in July. I never actually documented the ups and downs of minding a construction project from so far away as I intended. I guess I’ll have to pick that up again.
For now, though, despite the inevitable screwups, it’s kinda nice. Got what passes for Internet service in rural Florida running a couple of days ago. The spa’s running and I had a good soak night before last under a pretty much full moon. The county signed off on all the trades yesterday, making us legal (we’ve been squatting in our own home for some 17 days). Yeah, kinda nice indeed.
This is from today’s (27-October-2012) newspaper. You might be able to find the article on myCentralJersey.com, a Gannett Company that takes pains to keep people like me from pointing people like you to interesting disturbing articles like this one.
Just one more reason that I’m getting the fuck out of New Jersey, pronto.
Update: South Brunswick animal sacrifice found to be in compliance with state permits
SOUTH BRUNSWICK All permits were found to be in compliance for the sacrificing of goats by a religious group on Friday at a Dey Road site.
Detective Sgt. James Ryan said officials from the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals visited and determined the activities were consistent with state permits.
At about 11:30 a.m., township police received reports that members of a religious group were conducting animal sacrifices on Dey Road. Police checked with state officials and local animal control officials to see if a religious group has permission to sacrifice animals.
Ryan said group members told police they had a permit from the state Department of Agriculture to sacrifice a group of goats penned up near a white house on Dey Road, about 50 yards off of a two-lane country road near the Cranbury border.
South Brunswick animal control officers also responded to the scene. Ryan said the property had a large pen containing the goats.
The airport was crowded, busy, and the girl in front of me was ordering this coffee-drink. You know, the kind of coffee-drink with the fancy-ass name that takes two breaths to say, and dammit it had better be exactly right or else… You’ve heard the expression high maintenance? The epitome, right there in front of me, at the front of the line, standing at the service counter. So she made her order and I rolled my eyes.
The kid behind the counter glanced at me, I met his eye and said simply, “Coffee. Black.” The kid turned to his work… and turned back almost immediately with my black. The girl sputtered, started getting arrogant. I smiled and slid a fin, a crazy over-payment for the black, across the counter, turned and walked away. I didn’t look back.
I wouldn’t mind meeting up with her again in the middle of the apocalypse, watching her cope. It’d be cheap entertainment.
Many of my friends and acquaintances already know this so it’ll be old news, but I’m happy to write that I’m finally leaving New Jersey, once and for all.
Shocked? Well, the time has come.
Pam and I plan our lives on rather long timelines. We may not know what next week holds. But we know what we want to be doing along periods measured by several years or even decades. This chunk was to finish raising Damian, get him though High School and off to college. That part’s just about done. (I think we did a fine job of it, too. What parent doesn’t?)
So we’re off to Florida. Why the Sunshine State? Mostly for the endless motorcycle riding season. Central Florida holds some of the best riding on the east coast, and the best of that will be in our backyard. We figure it’ll hold our interest for many years to come.
Another big reason is that New Jersey is literally sucking us dry. Cost-of-living, taxes and more. So many hands in my pocket I can’t find my… well, you know. We stay here, by the time we’re ready to recreate full time there won’t be anything left.
So, we’re packing up. Taking our property, our money, our spending, our business, and all that other good stuff. Away. To where it’ll do US good.
So far we’ve acquired property, custom-designed/modified a plan (AutoCAD rocks!) for a home that’s perfect for us, contracted our builder… We’ll be breaking ground soon. And come 2013, not a dime more goes into New Jersey’s coffers. Yeah, it really feels damned good to write those words!
Over the coming months I’ll tell you more about this all-consuming adventure. You’ll hear about some of the cool people I’m meeting and doing business with.
A few years ago we discovered the Beach Bar. In nearby Asbury Park, NJ on the south side of Convention Hall it was a fun place to just drop in, hang out for munchies and a couple of cold ones. Can’t say how many times it was the destination for a quick, couple-of-hours-to-kill motorcycle ride.
Yesterday we took a ride down, the first time this season. It just might be the last. Huh?
It’s ruined. The atmosphere is, well, gone. Where to begin…
In the past, the first thing you’d see were the potted plants and trees, even a fake palm. Gone. Now just a sign announcing SECURITY and ID requirements. The outside seating, once tall tables and chairs, now replaced by low, slouch-style plastic seating. It’s comfortable enough, I guess, but encourages sleeping, not socialization. What’s worse, the view from the low seats is now dominated by railing, not ocean and beach. We went for their Sangria, once pretty good, but they no longer offered it. We quickly switched to beers. We were hungry for a little lunch but no, there was no menu, no food for love or money. Time and again I saw people sending one of their group out to the boardwalk to bring food back. The experience was a total disappointment – except for our server, who was competent and attentive.
Now, I’m not shy so I asked around. (I won’t give any clues about who I talked to; most were candid and deserve to keep their jobs.) It turns out that management changes had brought a series of changes. Employee protests had fallen on deaf ears. It’s as simple as that, a story we hear all too often. Was it just too early in the season? Nope, this is it. How’s business, overall? Okay, but not like it was – and trending downward. Any hope for change? Any hope for better drinks? Any hope for food? Those I talked to had heard it all before – from customers and fellow employees alike – but it just didn’t matter.
Only 4-5 weeks into the season? Could be trouble. Bummer, that.
I had a look at their Facebook page just now. The contrast between last year’s activity and now is like night and catfood. Yeah, that different.
I’m afraid I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this place anymore.
We left, much quicker that usual, to find nourishment elsewhere in town.
He’s right, though. This is rural Florida and the Internet service well and truly sucks. They SHOULD pay us, rather than the other way around. At the far end of a 12,000-foot copper haul to the DSLAM, you just KNOW I’m not makin’ it up.
This thing I’ve called a contract? In real estate, a contract doesn’t carry any more weight than the scribbling on the back of a napkin. The first thing attorneys do in their review is agree to remove any teeth they find in the boilerplate. It’s a roadmap filled with uncertainty. Buyer will put this amount of money on the table by some date, some more by another date, there’s this much time to get an inspection done, the deal may close by that date, and so on. But if anyone misses a milestone it doesn’t really matter. The paper may or, often, may not be rewritten to accommodate.
The other night the Ford F150 left us stranded.
The airport was crowded, busy, and the girl in front of me was ordering this coffee-drink. You know, the kind of coffee-drink with the fancy-ass name that takes two breaths to say, and dammit it had better be