Arcoarena

First Rung - Almost

Well my throw-away comment in my last post of ‘oh and I might buy a house’ appears to have come true. I’ve had an offer accepted for a 2-bed terraced house just round the corner. The mortgage is now sorted (a lot easier than one would expect) and the solicitors have been instructed (a lot slower than expected). So all that’s left is to read everything that gets sent to me, sign it and return it to the appropriate place.

The survey is happening tomorrow so barring any major issues the difficult bits should be over (I hope). I hope I’ve got past the awkard bit now, I really don’t like the fact that houses don’t have a fixed price and that the price indicated is generally higher than the final selling price. It’s also a bit rubbish that there’s a good 2 months worth of solicitors messing around with searches and god knows what else before the sale is even legally binding, let alone being able to move in.

I am looking forward to a few things that will hopefully make all this hassle worth it. I quite like the idea of having a second bedroom so that any visitors don’t have to sleep on the floor. Having central heating will be good too. Both our current flat and the previous one had electric heaters, they’re expensive and rubbish. I’m also looking forward to having a garden in which I can sit out in the cool summer evenings, drinking wine and listening to the radio. We also get a separate dining room rather than a lounge/diner and (as if that weren’t enough to make you explode with excitement) we get stairs, something I haven’t had in my living areas for a few years now.
There are some downsides though. This morning Andrea said “If we’ve moved in by mid-may we could use that holiday we’re taking to do some painting”, somewhere the idea of a week camping in France got squished by the ominous picture of endless trips to B&Q.

A Little Quiet

Well, I haven’t said much recently. Partly becuase I haven’t got much to say (though I’m not sure that’s stopped me before).

Work’s quite busy, though much regression testing means I’m doing the same bits of testing again and again. It’s a rubbish bit of the project. Nothing new is going to happen, the feature set is fixed. All that’s left is tidying up the mess made by feature creep and various compatability issues between code, hardware enclosures etc. Many bugs but very few challenges unfortunately. I don’t really feel I can talk much about work as it’s all commercial stuff and I don’t want to get fired or anything. Not that any insider knowledge helps predict what will happen to the share price.

As I was saying, not much has happened. I bought some new tyres for my bike (Continental Grand Prix 4000, no less) and I haven’t had a puncture yet. New brake blocks are next and they’re currently making a disturbing metal-on-metal sound and not doing a whole heap of slowing down.

Oh, and I’m thinking of buying a house/flat/cupboard depending upon what I can afford. I’m hoping to look round a few in Southsea this Saturday so we’ll have to see. I guess I’m lucky to be outside London.