Ok so I got my contract in the mail today. I needed to get it to NFCU and they said to fax it. Well I wasn't able to fax it at work so I went to Fedex Kinko's. Not thinking clearly since I am still a little sick I just started faxing it. Then I realized it is $1.00 per page, WOW! Needless to say I could have done 8 AM next day shipping for less. Live and learn I suppose.
April 2005 Archives
One of the calls yesterday was to MetLife which is where my Roth IRA was. I wanted to withdraw some of my contributions as it would account for more than 50% of my downpayment and closing costs. Follow along with this conversation and see if you can guess where my heart stopped.
Hoyt - I would like to withdraw X from account.
Drone - Ok. No wait you can't withdraw X since you wouldn't have the minimum account level.
Hoyt - Then just withdraw amount that leaves minimum.
Drone - Ok. No wait you just made a deposit didn't you?
Hoyt - Yes.
Drone - Oh, then you can't make any withdrawls for 30 days.
Hoyt - Uh, what?
Drone - I'm sorry sir that is policy.
Hoyt - I can't have my own money?
Drone - No.
Hoyt - Can you check on that?
Drone - Ok.
Ten minutes of hold time later.
Drone - I was wrong, you just can't withdraw over phone.
Hoyt - Ok, then how.
Drone - Fax in.
Hoyt - Ok.
Drone - Oh and there will be a fee / penalty for withdrawl.
Hoyt - Great how much.
Drone - Over a third of the minimum.
Hoyt - Does the form for withdrawl allow for account closure.
Drone - Yes?
Hoyt - Good, send it to me.
Needless to say in short order I will no longer have a Roth IRA with MetLife. There web site was buggy and didn't offer useful info like the address to send deposits too. Which when asked about they said, dunno. I guess I will setup a new Roth IRA this fall with TIAA-CREF who has my 403(b).
This spring has been bad for me health wise. I am again sick. I think this time it is just a cold, but still stinks. I am at work since well I have to be. My boss is gone and I need to be here tonight for setup. I may just be a little slow today.
Well the bid was accepted late Sunday and I found out yesterday. There were no changes to my bid contract as far as I know which is good. Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day on the phone getting money, loans, insurance, etc. all lined up. I have my home inspection scheduled for Thursday and my dad is coming to do that with me. More to come.
I have put in a bid/contract on a home. More updates as this story develops. Here are some pictures of the house.
Well I got my loan pre-approval packet from my bank today. Good news is they think I am good enough to get a huge loan, well huge for me at least. I was surprised by the sheer quantity of paper I have to read, sign and return and this is just a pre-approval. Quite nuts. As Roger said though when I mentioned it to him, "This is only the beginning."
Also an interesting tidbit, in Baltimore County, MD the potential Transfer Stamp fee is $5500. WOW! That is to pay the City/County/State to deal with the property changing hands. WOW!
Let the massive cash outflow begin. Assuming of course I can find a house to buy. If not just wasted application fee.
Well I added a piece of code that asks a simple question to hopefully slow if not stop the spammers. At least to make it more trouble than it is worth. The only problem is the code makes the posting screen error out sometimes. Not sure why. Jerry oh cgi wizard? The comment is actually posted, just gives an error too.
Well I upgraded from 3.14 to 3.16 and things seemed to go well. Nothing seems to have broken. Now to try and do something about this darn comment spam. It seemed to have slowed for awhile, but has come raging back again.
Apparently the stuff I spoke of in recent posts is on left, so sue me. Um I was tired. Sure.
Ok so I added one more piece of junk over on the right. It is a new thing called feedmap. It basically maps all the blogs (that have been submitted) geographically. Kind of cool to see if there are people near you with similar interests and such.
Well tonight prompted by the new Halo 2 patch I went back to it for the first time in 5 months online. Lots of fun, I like the tweaks. While I was playing that Roger and Travis were playing Golden Tee on the Arcade. The games are back, for at least one night.
I went to look at houses today. I was supposed to see three more. However in the course of looking at the first two the third sold. It appears the market I am moving to is just as bad as the one I leaving. Loads of fun.
Well on Thursday afternoon I actually went looking at houses in the general area near the school I work at. They weren't great but started to give me an idea. After that I put in an application for mortgage. Waiting to hear back on that. With the application the massive outlay of cash has begun. Yipee.
I have begun using newsgator online to keep track of the blogs I read. It is quite handy if you read lots of blogs. I don't read that many, but enough to not want to have to go the sites daily to see if they are updated. One of the features of the site is the ability to publish your own blogroll. If you scroll down a bit you will see them on the right hand side. It seems my side is getting longer than the main portion. Have to post more to keep up.
There are often things I want to put up on here, however I forget them by the time I get around to writing them. ARGH!
Last weekend I watched a pair of movies on DVD. First up was Pixar's latest The Incredibles. It was beautiful as all Pixar movies are. Also as usualy it was really fun and well done. Highly recommended, especially if you are a pixar fan. Don't miss the short Jack Jack Attack on disc two. It was so funny it made me cry.
The second movie was After the Sunset. It was a fairly generic caper movie. One of the main stars was Salma Hayek's body, which was quite nice. It isn't as good as Thomas Crown Affair, but it isn't horrible either. Similar in quality to The Big Bounce, if that means anything to anybody.
I stayed late at work and got some stuff done so I didn't have to go in today to work. Then I watched current play being put on by the upper schoolers. It was very good. I also got to hang out with Heather for a couple of hours and catch up.
On my way home last night I got to within about 1 mile of the Wilson Bridge. Some may not know but it is a draw bridge. Well it had an opening last night. When this happens it stops traffic for about 15-20 minutes. Problem last night was that it wouldn't close. I ended up taking almost an hour long nap in car waiting for them to fix it.
Today my school hosted another tablet training day. We had another 30 or so people there and it went quite well. Lots of information given out by our team and our teachers. Many great questions. Hopefully the people in attendance will take the info and share it with others.
While I thought I was getting better (I was wrong) I went to see Sin City with Roger and Travis. It was really good. It is probably the best representation of a comic book I have ever seen. Movies like Spiderman and X-Men are good at portraying the characters and storyline but in a fairly normal human landscape. This movie doesn't do this, it really looks like a comic book come to life. It is a normally filmed movie that has been totally digitally retouched. It is hard to describe. It is quite violent and bloody (although the blood is bright white not red). I highly recommend it, if for nothing other than its visual style. It has a neat way of having separate yet intertwined stories, very pulp fiction like.
Ok so Monday I was beginning to feel not so good. Then Tuesday I was totally drained and just had no energy. I decided to stay home to get better for a presentation on Thursday. Then I woke up Wednesday and didn't feel much better so I stayed home again. Today I woke up knowing I had to go to work. My body in thanking me for resting took away most of my voice. Luckily I was so bad I couldn't talk at all. As the day went on I was less tired. On the other hand I started having a stuffed up nose and sneezing. This sucks. Here is to hoping I am better tomorrow. Ugh. Talk about a bad luck swing.
Well the Illini's luck ran out last night as well. They were down by 13 at the half. They managed to come back and tie it with about two and a half minutes left. They just couldn't finish it off. Maybe next year.
Well the Illini's luck held tonight and they won. However mine ran out so I don't think I will be any help to them on Monday. Hopefully they can do it on their own for the finals.
