2012-12-04 19:47:00
Don't mind me, I'm just sulking and moping. ... With this terrible ache in all the diodes down my left side.
Either way, as the title says: when it rains, it pours. When sh*t goes down, it goes _down_.
Ahh, it's not all bad!
Luckily, our good friend Michel comes to the rescue and he'll come babysit Dana while we visit Cirque. Kaj and Natalie would've come, if they were sure they'd already had chickenpox; but they weren't. Awesome friends! /o/
Dana is fine with the chickenpox, just coughing a lot.
Tomorrow we'll need to get a guy in to finally fix our plumbing. Which in turn should fix our heating.
kilala.nl tags: meh, life, house, health,
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2012-04-14 19:09:00
It might not be the famed, Japanese cherry tree, but it still looks great. Our common, European cherry is in blossom right now showing its pretty, white flowers. I ought to drink a beer under its leaves tonight ( ^_^)
Let's just hope those darn ants (and their lice) leave it alone this year, so it'll stay healthy and actually grow some cherries for us.
kilala.nl tags: life, house, awesome,
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2012-04-09 15:16:00
By now Dana is on her way home, with her grand parents. That means that 2012's spring cleaning has officially come to an end.
We finished just about everything we wanted to, with only two minor chores left to do.
The only two things left are re-applying kit in the kitchen and washing the car.
What a great weekend! But now I'm beat! Up next, fix a pancake dinner for five ( ^_^)
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2012-04-07 21:32:00
Last year we started a new tradition: a big spring cleaning weekend.
Like last year, Dana's gone to her grandparents in Friesland for a long weekend of fun. We dropped her off last night, after dinner. This morning we woke for breakfast at eight, starting our work around half past eight. All in all it was a very productive day!
It's interesting to see that we got rid of a lot less stuff this year. It's not that we decided to keep more, no, it's that we're still reaping the benefits of last year's spring cleaning ( ^_^)
The rest of our three-day weekend will also be a bit more relaxed. Tomorrow we'll do the living room and kitchen, followed by a nice dinner. On Monday we'll mostly be doing DIY stuff: fix up some drapes, install cable gutters in the living room, apply matte foil coating to the kitchen windows.
kilala.nl tags: family, life, house,
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2012-04-01 13:28:00
When we paid to renovate our back yard and front garden there were only two things left from the previous owners' handiwork. Their jungle of a heavily architected yard was culled, leaving just the catalpa and the Japanese maple. Since then our gardens have evolved. Sure, there's been a few troubles, but we're very happy with how it is right now.
This week we started preparing the gardens for summer. Last Friday our good friend Michel visited, to help uproot the catalpa. I've certainly grown tired of it, so wanted it to go. It wasn't really pretty, it was blocking the maple and it also took up too much space on the grass lawn. With the catalpa gone, there's more space for playing and for practicing kendo kata. With Michel's expert help the tree was quickly dug out. Sawing the head and roots from the trunk too more time...
Today I spent some time filling potholes in the lawn and in spreading some fertilizer. I also planted some white and red berries to replace the dead raspberries. Hopefully we'll get a new cherry tree to replace the one we tore out on the left (died over a year ago) and maybe some other stuff :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2012-03-27 21:55:00
It's been years and years since we bought our Sony CRT TV. A twentysix incher, weighing in at more than twenty kilos! But after roughly eight to nine years it'd started showing its age. It started with flickering, then a few weeks ago it started color-shifting. Marli was watching "Say yes to the dress" and all of a sudden everything'd be yellow: underwear, brides dresses and the brides themselves. So the time had come to finally replace it.
Back in 2009 I'd made a planning for our house's IT infrastructure. The first few phases were implemented, but then it stalled at the living room. We just had too many other expenses lined up. There's finally progress again, now that we've bought a Samsung UE32D5700. Like many of the things we go for it's a modest, but good quality piece. It's one of the smaller sets around, but it has good features and tech. It has multiple HDMI hookups, as well as component, composite and an RGB SCART port. It has USB ports for playback and with a CI+ card it can also work as DTV STB+PVR.
The image quality is fine (I'm happy!) and combined with our Pioneer DVD player the upscaling of 576p to 1080 gives good quality playback. I also noticed that the LED back lighting helps in producing better blacks. While watching the first few episodes of Cowboy Bebop, when the camera pans from space, to Mars and to space again I actually notice the LEDs dimming, brightening, then dimming again.
We bought the TV from BCC.nl's online shop. No troubles there, except that the front edge had a crack in the plastic. Exchanging it through mail would be a hassle, so Marli saved us a lot of trouble! She got in the car, drove to our local BCC down the road and exchanged it there, half an hour before closing time. Champ!
Now... From the original plan I'm scratching the Mac Mini, which will be replaced with an AppleTV3. A jailbroken one, mind you, that can thus play all movies from our NAS. Why an ATV3 instead of something more flexible? Because I also want to use our iTunes Match account to play all of our music. Finally, we'll probably be getting a modest Onkyo system, to patch everything together. For now, our old Creative Labs speakers fit nicely!
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2012-02-03 12:27:00
Wouldn't you know it?! Typical!
Of course, on the first day of real winter in the Netherlands our central heating dies. Yesterday, around 1700, our furnace gave out. A blocking service code of A04 was ominously blinking on the LED display, telling me that it wouldn't budge until a tech had come out to repair it. So we all went to bed early, after I tried to get a tech in around 1930. No dice.
Phoned again this morning, but was given the runaround. First our service company refered to their local partner, then the local partner said they were on their way, then the local partner defered back to the original company and they said that we'd have to wait until late this afternoon. Fudge!
After a -8 night the living room had cooled down to 14.5C, so thank $DEITY for decent insulation. Using our kerosene heater I got the temperature back up to 19C, a few candles extra pushed it to 20C. But wouldn't you know it?! I'm down to the last two liters of kerosene, which is roughly enough for six hours of burn time. Not enough to make it through the day. So, off to the DIY Marli and I go! With our sledge in tow (5cm of snow) we set out to get ten or twenty liters of kerosene.
Bad luck! Gamma had no less than ten kerosene heaters in stock, but zero cans of kerosene! Praxis hadn't sold it for over a year and Ranzijn never sold it to begin with! WTF? The middle of winter and none of the DIY stores stock fuel?! o_O
*sigh* So we got an electric space heater from Gamma, which is only 2000W and which seems to give off a lot less heat than the kerosene heater. Fudge! So now the living room's stuck at 17.5 and I'm holding the other heater in reserve with the last of the fuel.
That'll teach me! I always have a big mouth about having backup plans, but then it's just plain stupid if my backup plan will only last a few hours.
Oh, the technician? Yeah, I'm told that he's on a job in Amsterdam and will then need to come down to Almere, through all that traffic and snow. I'm sure it'll be waaaaaay late before he's here >(
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2011-11-01 20:42:00
This evening I was greeted with a great surprise! Absolutely wonderful to be challenged in such a way on short notice! Can you tell I'm being sarcastic?
Next to the washing machine I found two sodden pieces of clothes. "Odd", I thought to myself "Marli must've dropped them when putting stuff in the dryer." Which is when I noticed the puddle. And the crooked flooring. And the moist concrete below our central heater. And more water behind the washer and dryer. Joy. =_=
Checking a few things I quickly determined that this did not involve hardware failure of either piece of hardware. Nor were any of the tubes leaky. So where the heck does the water come from? Turns out it was the drainage pipe into which the washer's pipe feeds. Waste water was flowing back up the pipe and thus down onto the floor again. Judging by the state of the floor (wood) this crap has been going on for at least a week, while Marli was doing catch-up laundry after our holiday. I just wish we'd caught it sooner.
One might recall I've griped about our house's previous owner before. And it's that time again! I expected to find a clog in the drain's trap, so wanted to open it up. Lo and behold! The screw cap had been painted over, with the same gritty paint that's been applied to all the walls. =_= After chipping at it with a screwdriver for a few minutes I got the cap to open.
There we go! A ball of lint was stuck in there, but what's worse: so was a piece of rubber piping! WTF? o_O
I've no clue where the tube came from. Either it was already in there when we bought it, or it fell off our washer's hose somehow. Took all that stuff out and now everything seems to be okay again. Keeping an eagle's eye on it though.... >_>
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2011-06-12 21:03:00
Having lived in Almere for two years now, our garden is behaving quite nicely. We have hit a few very minor snags, but in general things are going very nicely.
After being plagued by both mold and mushrooms, this year the field of grass is very well-behaved. It's lush, it's green, with only a few brown spots thanks to our neighbors' cats. Sure, there's some weeds growing in the grass, but we're not running a golf course here ;)
With regards to the fruits, it's similar to last year: one big win and the rest is just plain "meh!". Where last year the raspberries provided a few nice berries, this year I had to tear them out. I'd no idea that the big green bush that was growing consisted completely of fruitless outliers, which were sucking up all the juices from the actual fruit-bearing branches. The cherry trees are again plagued by lice, hampering their growth and thus preventing them from growing any berries. Hopefully I'll find a way to get rid of the lice next year.
The big success comes in the shape of our strawberries plants. Last year I thought they'd all but died, but this year they provide a wealth of berries! This week alone I've picked close to fifty berries, most relatively small. One plant'd borne -huge- strawberries, but I discovered those a day or two too late, so they'd started rotting :(
Another surprise is that the cloves of garlic I pushed into the ground last year, in hopes of fending off lice, actually have grown into bulbs of garlic! Come fall we'll have some lovely, fresh garlic! :D
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2011-05-15 11:56:00
Two years after buying our house in Almere we did our second big investment. The first being the roughly 11k in landscaping, the second being 5.6k in painting. As you can see in the picture above we've finally gotten rid of the awful KLM/Lufthansa blue and the house is now a lovely "carriage" green as the color is called.
All the plastic paneling has been cleaned, all the woodwork has been restored and all the frames have been painted. Also, the paneling on the storage room (on the left of the front door) has been completed replaced. Out went all the rotten wood and in came the Keralit. Keralit is made of recycled plastics and is available in many different "wood" grains and colors. It comes with a ten year warranty and is of course easy to clean.
All of the work was done quickly and perfectly by Sosef Schilderwerken.
Our next two investments planned for the future are an extension on the back of the house (within ten years) and a replacement of window frames with plastic framing (within five years).
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2010-08-22 07:51:00
I'll need to get Dana out of bed in a few minutes, but I thought I'd first write this little post because the blog's gone so quiet. So, with Dana singing over the baby monitor I groggily sit here in our otherwise very quiet home.
Last Thursday (or was it wednesday?) I'd decided that I'd let our gardens go by themselves too long. Despite the cocoa pods all manner of creepers and weeds have started to popup and the front yard looks a real mess. Enough was enough :) I put Dana in the car and drove to our favourite gardening center for extra cocoa pods. Taking our time, Dana really loves riding on top of the shopping trolleys at the gardening center (which are three-tiered affairs unlike what you see in the supermarkets).
Then, last Friday, we spent 1.5 hours in the backyard enjoying the sun and gardening. Mowing the lawn, weeding&raking the borders, trimming the brambles and adding new cocoa shells. Dana happily puttered about and got more and more daring in her attempts to "help" daddy out. I -really- needed to get used to the idea that my daughter can and will get dirty playing in our yard and that it's alright. My first instinctive reaction was to pull her up, brush off all the sand and then move her away. Luckily Marli corrected me in this and after that I just let her play in the sand.
She got filthy! So we took a bath together ^_^
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2010-05-15 22:04:00
It's hard to believe that a year ago we got the keys to our house. Time flies and so much has changed! Almost not a day goes by without me noticing something new about Dana :)
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2010-04-10 08:03:00
Last weekend I spent only two hours working on the gardens, but I got so much done! It seemed like I'd spent half a day! Here's a status update...
Most of the heath in front was DOA. I waited too long with putting it in, so I'll probably tear it out again. The azalea and magnolia in front appear to be doing just fine, as is the buxus.
The lawn, haunted by the fall and winter's fungal infection, looks a little bit better. I've started mowing it every week, fed it some manure last week and I aerated it as well. I'm hopeful that this will provide us with a nice lawn over summer. Unfortunately the gardeners who were -supposed- to do maintenance never called back, so I took matters into my own hands.
I've also planted the fruit trees in back: two cherry trees, three brambles and three raspberries. I got a bit of a scare with one of the cherries because the mound with its roots etc fell apart complete during planting: I was left with a root-less stick! I stuck everything in the ground as well as I could and provided it with plenty of water to stimulate root growth. So far it seems that it's actually survived the ordeal!
Today: more gardening! Mowing the lawn, watering the beds, removing the dead heath and brushing sand into the cracks of the terrace.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2010-03-17 10:28:00
Yesterday evening I spent an hour at a nearby garden center, getting the first batch of supplies and plants for our gardens. This batch consists of:
* 120 l peat soil, because the front yard requires acidity.
* 70 l cocoa pods, to keep cats from using our yard as a litter box.
* 15 pieces of heath, plus 4 "andromeda" heath
* 2 azaleas to complement the heath garden
* 1 magnolia tree, to put in front
All of this will allow me to decorate the front yard today/tomorrow. The back will follow next week. I really look forward to puttering about in our garden ^_^
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2010-03-14 19:04:00
Half a year ago we completed the renovations of our front and back yards. They cost us a pretty penny, but we went from an unmanageable jungle, to a tidy and easy to maintain situation. However, there was still plenty of yard left to fill in and now it's time to take care of that.
Last week the guys from Muller came back to plant a buxus hedge at the front. On the one hand it'll clearly demarcate our land, putting up a mental barrier for those idiots who kept cutting through. On the other hand they immediately changed the look and feel of the front garden; it "feels" a bit larger.
Marli and I have also been thinking about what we'd like to put in, plants-wise. Early on we had decided that we wanted fruits in there, because they're yummy, fun for Dana and cheaper than in the shops. But you can only plant so much fruits in the borders. So, the above image is what we came up with.
In the front we'll plant mostly heath. In the back, on the left, we'll add strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, a currant bush and a cherry tree. On the right we'll add another cherry tree and then fill the rest with flowering hedges, like rhododendron. On the patio we'll add two big potted hydrangea (dutch "hortensia"), just because we love them so much. ^_^
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2010-03-09 19:07:00
So, apparently a pizza delivery guy got robbed in our street last Saturday night. Around nineish so by no means "late at night". Two hooded guys made off with his money, phone and scooter.
So much for my squeeky clean image of our neighborhood.
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2010-03-02 21:37:00
A few weeks ago I wrote about the then-current state of my home office. Since then I've managed to make some long desired changes.
Yesterday we paid a visit to the Amersfoort Ikea with Kaijuu, who works in the vicinity. We had dinner and took a quick trip downstairs to grab a Lack table for myself and to gawk at some plates and dinnerware. It was then that I remembered something I'd read at Japanator recently: Ikea has cloth with manga and Japanese designs, which are still a very new product. Luck would have it that the dutch Ikea also has access to these fabrics!
So! My desk's been cleaned up a lot, with a slightly modified Lack (5 euros woo! /o/) used to heighten my Macbook and speakers. All cables are tucked away neatly, as are the switch and USB/FW hub and my iPhone dock. On the wall is one complete section of the Ikea Charlotta Teckning fabric. Lovely!
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2010-02-01 21:11:00
Here's a shot of my home office in the attic. On the desk you'll see my Macbook propped up on an ugly plastic box and the usual stuff that's connected to it. I really should get a LackRack to raise the laptop to eye height. I just love having the Lego on my desk as well, because the buildings look really nice and the crane is a wonderful toy.
In the back you'll notice my kerosene heater (the attic is not hooked up to the central heating) and the white board. Out of sight are the big hobby/gaming table, our foldable sofa and our 500+ books
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-12-10 20:35:00
We've been in this house for half a year now and today I've finally installed drapes in the living room. It's been this long in coming because we wanted to "do it right", meaning that we wanted something that fit well with the rest of the house and that wasn't as cheap as the ones we had in Utrecht.
We shopped around a few times, but were deterred by the high prices in "real" window decoration shops. It wasn't uncommon to get quoted in excess of five hundred euros for just the large window in back. Nuts! So instead we went to Hema to get a cheaper set, custom made. In this case five hundred euros bought us drapes for the large window and the back door as well as roll-up drapes for the windows in front. Not bad.
Sorry for the crappy picture; the Lumix TZ series sucks at indoor lighting ;) The drapes are liver coloured and match the sofas near-perfect.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-11-29 10:39:00
The title being in deference to the classic VG Cats comic.
Got woken up tonight at 0230. *BEEPBEEP**BEEPBEEP* For some reason the baby monitor indicated it'd lost connection with Dana's base station. Odd. A quick glance around the room showed that our alarm clock was dead as well. Hmmm. Power failure? Glancing outside I saw many houses with their lights up (at 0230 ORLY?!) so it was just us.
A quick check around the house showed no fires or other obvious troubles. Checking the breaker box I gathered that all three main living quarters'd tripped, along with the combo-breaker (Hur hur) for those sections. Oddly enough I could pop back all four without any protest and the house came to life again. There was no indication that anything was -really- wrong. To be on the safe side I pulled all the plugs around the house anyway.
Not half an hour later, just after falling asleep, I got waken by the telltale *BEEPBEEP* again. And again the aforementioned four breakers had tripped. Weird! I didn't see anything weird outside the house either, so it wasn't someone messing about with the outlets in our back yard. I tried to stay awake for half an hour to see if things would pop again. Nope.
Until an hour later and I'd fallen asleep again. WTF?! So, I popped back three out of four again, leaving the biggest turned off. After that I was allowed to sleep until eight. Double-plus oddity: this morning I reset the last group and it's been perfect for three hours now.
I've no clue what's going on. I know which section of the house the problem would be in, but none of the rooms in that section had anything left plugged in. I'd hate to imagine that the problem's with wiring or the installed lights. Or worse: the garden shed and outlets.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-10-31 15:42:00
Great. It looks like we've got snow fungus in our backyard. So far I haven't been able to figure out how harmful it is supposed to be and since I'm not exactly the gardening expert I've called in the guys who designed and made our yard. I'd really hate to see the lawn go down the crapper already.
I gather that my mowing the lawn so late in the year might have opened up the possibility of the fungus in there. Supposedly this fungus usually comes out in fall or winter. Meh...
EDIT:
This is consoling. According to this article snow fungus is somewhat common in a newly laid lawn and supposedly it usually appears in the first year after laying. I've so much new stuff to learn, I LOVE IT! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-10-17 17:40:00
I finally went out and bought a hand mower for our lawn and spent three hours in the back yard. The lawn's gotten its first and final trim before winter and I've "knotted" the catalpa tree. I'd say this yard is ready for the winter!
Next wednesday our electrician will return to hook up power in the garden shed and to install two motion sensitive lights. On the one hand that'll improve the security of our back yard and on the other it means I will no longer be stumbling about in the dark when I get my bike for the ride to work.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-09-17 21:18:00
Our gardens are done! Both front and back have been completely redone from scratch, with the exception of tree nice (and expensive) trees. Four days over schedule and about 2000 euros over budget we are now the proud owners of a very pretty and presentable garden. In all honesty, 1500 of those euros account for the front yard which was not part of our original planning.
Props to De Groendecorateurs and Muller Garden BV for their work! The prior, led by Jeroen Binnekade provided proper project management, while the latter shone in their execution of the garden.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-09-16 08:59:00
We've been pondering about a dining table to put in our living room for a while now. We don't have that much space left with all of our furniture in there, so the table needs to be small, yet roomy enough for four people to eat at. As if by magic the new Ikea catalog landed on our doorstep yesterday and Marli found the perfect table: Norden. It's compact, features two fold-away tabletops and it even has extra drawers for cutlery, table cloths and such!
At 170 euros the price's alright, but even better: Ikea had a bunch of those tables with "undesired" visual aspects (read: "the wood has knobs") that they were selling at 100 euros off! 70 dining table FTW /o/ So off we went!
Stupidly we always fall for Ikea's beguiling ways...
Aside from the dining table we also left with a fold-away bed/sofa, a play rug for Dana and some bedding. Of course we wouldn't have done any of this if we couldn't afford it, so there's no real problem... It's just that it's sometimes frustrating/weird how easy Ikea can lure you in to buy stuff :)
The same goes for Makro, the food and non-food wholesaler, which we also avoid like the plague ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: family, house,
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2009-09-04 13:44:00
Coming Monday the landscapers will start work on our back yard. In order to speed up the work on the -front- garden, which I was planning to do myself, I thought I'd get rid of the rickety old deck at the frond door. Which is when I encountered new-house-WTF?! number 4 (or is it 5 by now?): it's a floating deck, with a 50cm hole under it.
In the picture you'll see a top view schematic of our front garden (house = grey, brown = deck, red = footpath). Next to that are two side view sketches: one of what I expected to find and one of what's actually there. That's right, the garden stops about a meter from our front door, using a wooden terrace to cover the huge hole.
The plus side of this is that I may build a new deck, including a trap door and a pit of spikes / scorpions / sharks for any passing salesmen. The down side of this (which is far more realistic) is that we're going to have to clear out about three cubic meters of vines and then fill up the hole with new sand.
I'm sorely tempted to throw another few hundred in the landscapers' direction, just to get this fixed in a day or two as well.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-08-08 21:54:00
For my birthday our friends Peter and Wendy got me a bonsai tree kit for a Japanese maple. The Acer Palmatum Atropurpureum to be exact, which is a tree that has red leaves. Now that my desk is here and I've set it up completely I've finally unpacked the kit.
Following the instructions enclosed I spent an hour searching the garden for tiny pebbles and then meticulously cleaning them. Well, the instructions didn't say that I should spend an hour yadda-yadda-yadaa, but they did mention that "it is advisable to provide a top layer of gravel to prevent early loss of moisture". So that's what I did... Supposedly it'll take the seeds four to ten weeks to sprout, after which I'm supposed to leave them alone for at least a year. Sounds boring? Maybe, but I like having a small rock garden on my desk which will hopefully be home to one or two tiny maples some day. I just hope they'll fare better than the fully grown bonsai tree I bought a few years ago.
EDIT:
Now that I think of it, I believe we have a smallish Japanese red maple in our backyard. I may pot it and put it inside before we have the landscapers take out the whole garden.
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2009-08-08 17:10:00
Our backyard in its current form is highly architected and would be a thing of true beauty if we spent four to five hours each week performing upkeep. However, seeing how we -don't- the garden feels cramped, looks messy and I don't like venturing out further than a few meters because of weeds and dozens of spiders.
A few weeks ago we decided to get rid of everything in the garden, except for maybe one or two tress. Everything else will go. The three dozen conifers, the rock garden, the pond, the borders filled with beautiful plants. Everything. Instead we want an easy garden, with low maintenance needs and with a very child-friendly design.
In order to get things rolling we requested quotes from a few different landscapers. One never replied, one dropped off the face of the earth after his first email, one we just plain didn't like and one seemed way out of our league. Ironically we're opting for the last one, because under the high class veneer and the impressive portfolio he's just a regular guy like us.
Jeroen from De groen decorateurs really impressed us with the way he handled our request. He responded to our first email within 48 hours, came to look at the garden that same week and then asked us some in-depth questions. Then today we had an appointment to go over his offer, which included a nicely drafted design and atmosphere sheet (see above). Of course I'm aware that such things have little effect on the actual gardening itself, but it does indicate a certain level of professionalism.
Anywho... As expected the quote was pretty steep and originally added up to more than double our original budget. However, with some bargaining and opting for a few cheaper solutions Jeroen managed to bring the quote down to a reasonable amount of money. They're set to begin on the seventh of September and things should not take more than a week. I'm impressed, because I thought it'd definitely take at least two.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-08-08 09:59:00
Yesterday I finally took delivery of the furniture for my home office in the attic. After fighting the Madeko logistics department for two days the truck finally showed up at 1700, Friday afternoon =_=
Putting my annoyance with the logistics team aside, I'm quite happy with Madeko. They have a huge range of products and their drivers/techies/salespeople are very friendly. A few weeks ago I spent an hour on a Saturday morning going through their warehouse in Maarsbergen and it was a blast. Arjan was a great fellow and really helped me out in my choice of a desk.
He finally steered me towards the desk shown above, a Gispen Work desk which is height adjustable (with a crank) and which comes with a custom made desktop. The top is not made out of MDF like most desks are these days, but instead it consists of eighteen layers of plywood (multiplex in dutch). This makes the top bloody heavy (over forty kilos), but it's also sturdy and I can always sand it down and re-lacquer it if I feel like it.
The frame itself is rather oddly shaped, but is pretty nifty. It's actually not the legs that extend when you crank the desk, but the desktop itself is lifted on a jack-like mechanism. Very nifty and with no wobble at all.
The chair's a Comforto System 70, which is the same kind of chair we use at $CLIENT. It's been reupholstered and restored and, while a little bit wobbly, it's a good chair in the ergo department.
Both pieces of furniture are secondhand, the desk setting me back 150 euros and the chair 250. With delivery and taxes I ended up a bit over five hundred euros. That's a sight better than the near seven hundred euros I originally paid for the GDB Vegas desk.
Now, things left to do:
* Get rubber wheels for the chair so I don't damage the floor.
* Cannibalize a small coffee table to make a shelf for my Macbook.
* Get a Samsung 24" screen with a Flextronic LX swivel arm.
Putting it all together I actually stayed almost four hundred euros under budget!
kilala.nl tags: house, sysadmin,
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2009-07-11 14:46:00
*looks around* *frowns* *ponders*
Heeeeeeeeey! o_O
The office in the attic doesn't have a radiator! How did I manage to miss this, despite living here for three weeks already?!
I wonder what the place is going to be like in winter without any central heating. I mean, sure, the first floor is heated and the furnace is up in the attic, but is that going to be enough? If it gets really cold I'll just forget about the nice expensive desk and build a kotatsu instead. That'll keep me warm...
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-07-10 12:53:00
Apparently you'll need to do it twice; at least in this new house...
* The movers damaged a few things, so they'll have to come back for restoration.
* The new dish washer was busted, so they had to bring a new one.
* There new toilet bowl for the bathroom was the wrong model and was replaced.
* One had ordered too little tiles of one colour for the new bathroom -> back order.
And today I found out that the lovely desk I bought is actually NOT height-adjustable by crank. The website said it is, but that was an error. So that thing's going to go back and I'll have to search for a completely new one. Meh.
kilala.nl tags: life, house, meh, annoying,
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2009-07-06 07:14:00
Yesterday we celebrated our house warming and my birthday with our friends and family. We received some outstanding pressies, all of which we are very grateful for. All the potted plants and the new cushions add a really nice touch to the living room... Some extra colour, that's it :)
The house held up well, both to our visitors' scrutiny and the rigors of playing host to a small party. Obviously everyone loved the huge photograph of Dana making a silly face that adorns our upstairs hallway and the living room layout felt familiar and probably a bit like coming home to some (it's near identical to our old house). All in all things went swimmingly. Unremarkable, but swimmingly.
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2009-06-27 09:13:00
This week it was "back to work" for me. I really needed to get back into it the first two days; couldn't really get the hang of it. I wasted most of my Monday, which is why I didn't bill any real hours that day. By wednesday I was back to normal though, so that's good. As people have been reminding me, moving is one of the most stressful occasions in these modern times and I've lived to prove that yet again ;)
Anywho... Stuff!
All of the rooms are unpacked, with the exception of the attic. Some thirty-odd boxes of books are waiting to be unpacked, sorted and stored. Ouch! I really hope those shelves are going to hold up. Aside from that there's another thirty boxes left with "miscellaneous" objects. You know the kind: things that you need or want to keep, but don't use in daily life and have no clue as to where to put them. Well, we've got three more weeks to unpack each and every box if we don't want to get billed for them.
In the mean time Dana is doing fine in the new house. She's seems to like her bedroom and learnt a few new things while staying over at her grandparents' place. She loves sitting on the couch with us, in her little "fortress" (ie: behind our legs, while we're sitting sideways) and she's taken to eating a sandwich for lunch.
What else? Oh yes! Thanks to this new site I'm reading (The daily WTF?!) I've also learnt a new word: appellatio. According to one member of tDWTF it is derived from "appellation" and "fellatio", and means "the art of calling someone a c*cks*cker, especially in a non-obvious way". Shiny :D Anywho, love the website for all of the programming and IT "WTF" situations it describes.
Now! Back to work! Boxes to unpack, household to be kept and all that.
kilala.nl tags: life, house, internet, geeky,
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2009-06-22 22:16:00
Gawd, I'd love to sleep for more than ten hours! This long weekend was killer =_=
Thursday = moving everything from Utrecht -> Almere
Friday = unpacking and cleaning in Almere
Saturday = unpacking in Almere, cleaning in Utrecht
Sunday = unpacking and my father's birthday
Monday = unpacking, lots of paperwork and one ungodly task
The aforementioned "ungodly task" was the extraction of the previous owner's broken dish washer from our kitchen. Supposedly the thing was declared a total loss over two years ago, but they never replaced it. Fair enough. We decided to cough up the 600 euros for a good, new dish washer that would last us another ten years.
Part of the delivery deal with BCC is that you remove the old machine by yourself, or they charge you 90 bucks an hour for the job. They'll hook it up for you for free, but getting rid of the old one would cost you. So I set to the task which sounded so simple when my colleague Wim explained it to me... Ya...
I found out that, like many other things in this house, the kitchen had been built around the existing stuff. In this case the cabinet for the sink had its bottom plate adjusted in such a way that it neatly fit around the hoses of the washer. It however did NOT allow the auto shut-off on that same hose to pass through >[ In the end I had to tear a 10x3 cm hole in the side of said cabinet to get the shut-off out.
Oh well... At least it's out now.
Tomorrow we'll get the new dish washer, which will get installed so I won't have to go through that crap anymore. Brugman will also be delivering all the materials for our bathroom, installation of which should proceed next week. Unfortunately the delivery men will carry everything -except- the boxes of tiles into the house. This means that Marli will have to schlepp a lot of heavy boxes with her bad back. I worry about that a little bit.
I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining a lot. It's because I am and that's because I'm tired, we're both tired and we're both... tired. :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-06-18 20:50:00
The movers came at 0800 and were done at 1515. Not bad, not bad, especially given that we spent at least 45 minutes getting their truck parked at the flat. All manner of cars were parked in such a way that they couldn't get in, including one van that the movers decided to move themselves. Apparently the owner'd left the keys in the ignition ^_^
The move went fine, with two minor spots of damage to our more expensive pieces of furniture. Everything went fine and to our (happy) surprise the living room is actually a bit larget than we'd expected. Everything fits! /o/
Now, I'm off to put up the shelves in the store room and after that I'll probably go to bed. Tomorrow will see The Great Unboxing(tm) and on Saturday I'll need to spend a few hours cleaning the Utrecht apartment. Sunday's my dad's birthday and monday we'll sign over the old flat. Then it's back to work for me.
*ponders* It might be wise if I found some time tomorrow to register us as inhabitants of Almere, at city hall.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-06-17 22:54:00
See? See? I knew it! It's almost midnight and I'm still preparing for tomorrow's move to Almere. I knew it! I spent half the evening gathering all kinds of kruft into boxes (packed at least a dozen more boxes!), and the other half on tearing down lamps and fixtures. *sigh* Now all I need to do is disconnect the washer and dryer once they're done with their last runs. I also need to figure out how to completely drain the washer, in order to reduce weight.
Speaking of water, I've also spent half the evening (a third half?!) mopping around the freezer, since that was turned off around 1900 as well. Stupid us, we'd never defrosted it before, in all the three years we've had it. So there was a lot of ice to get rid of.
Now... Marli and Dana have gone to spend the night at Mar's mother's place. She and her husband will be taking care of Dana for two days, while we move into the new house and make the house habitable. That leaves me alone for the night, in a house that looks awful, with a few crappy jobs left to finish. ^_^;
Oh well... Where do you guys reckon I could get some ice cream at this hour?
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-06-15 17:59:00
Now that we're actually -this- close to moving into our new house I've taken to planning ahead on its IT infrastructure. We've been fantasizing about what we'd like for a few months now and now I've drawn up a little "planning". Things actually look feasible, assuming that my bonus stays unchanged for Q3/4-2009 and Q1/2-2010. Of course, the costs in the table below are only estimates.
So... Here we go!
Starting point:
* Airport Express
* Our two Macbooks
Asap:
* Airport Extreme (replaces Express)
* Samsung LCP-610nd printer
* CAT5 cabling + switch
-> E 600
Q3/4 2009:
* GDB Design Vegas Evolution desk
* Two office chairs, probably Ikea
* Dell 20" monitor
* Belkin Firewire + USB hub
* LCD monitor swivel arm (desk mount)
-> E1400
Q2/3 2010:
* Samsung LCD television
* Home cinema set
* Mac Mini (living room media center)
* Logitech DiNovo Edge
-> E 2000
The plan is to quickly move in there and to get the basic infrastructure in place. 802.11n networking on the ground and first floor, with UTP snaking its way into the attic. There we'll install the switch to hook up my desk, the printer and the hobby table. Once that's done and we're actually settled in, we'll set up my home office.
Next year we'll focus on modernising the living room. The clunky TV will move upstairs, along with the DVD player (putting the VHS into storage). A new Mac Mini along with a nice receiver+speakers will take care of all of our music needs, DVD playing, slideshows and such. Following one of Digitist's suggestions we'll get a wireless keyboard+trackpad from Logitech for the controls.
Later on, possibly in 2011, I'd like to look into -real- backups for our systems. Now everything's done using my LaCie external hard drive, but that's both cumbersome and not reliable enough for my liking. Instead, I'd like to set up a second Mini in the office, with an LTO4 library attached. The bi-weekly backup tapes can then be stored offsite, as opposed to inside the house. But that's just way, way, way into the future (and would set us back an estimated 2500 euros).
kilala.nl tags: house, geeky, apple,
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2009-06-14 15:41:00
*tosses THHGTTG out the window* Panic!
Only 88 hours to go before the movers get here. 30 of those will be spent working and travel, 30 more will be spent on sleep and food. That leaves 24 hours to make sure everything's ready for the move to Almere. Luckily Marli's done tremendous work on the packing, leaving only a number of last-minute things. I reckon I'll spend a good part of Wednesday night on removing fixtures, paintings, electronics and so on.
The new house's been cleaned and is ready for our arrival. Unfortunately I never did get around to installing all the plinths, which means I'll have to fight our furniture in the near future. That sucks a bit, but whatchagonnado?
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-06-09 20:32:00
In the new house we'll be making the attic into a home office slash study slash guest room. Because I'll be spending a lot of time over there Marli told me to get myself a good desk. A by "good" I mean "good", not "better than average Ikea". I mean, nothing against Ikea, but I'd like something a bit more :)
So... I'm looking for a nicely designed desk that's easily adjustable in height. I don't want to fiddle with screws or bolts and have to take stuff off the desk to change it. Instead, I'd like something with a winch or an electric motor.
For now I'm eyeing the GDBI Vegas Evolution, which fits the bill. The price for a 180x80 desk actually isn't that awful, at 480 before tax. I'm not counting the taxes, since I can probably buy the desk through my employer.
If anyone has suggestions for another desk, I'd love to hear about it :)
kilala.nl tags: house, sysadmin,
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2009-06-06 00:30:00
Yesterday I had my electrician, Peter Philipsen, come in to upgrade our house's electronics and to get rid of all the dangerous crap left by the previous owner. All I can say is: Peter gets the job done! He's a pleasure to work with, his work's good, he knows what he's doing and he bills fairly. If you're in the Almere area and ever need an electrician, I can heartily recommend him.
Today (and tomorrow) the guys from Kern Parket took care of our birch floor in the living room. Stripping off the 10 year old lacquer revealed a -beautiful- floor. It really is damn awesome! <3
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-06-01 16:51:00
The second day of Whitsun is a national holiday in the Netherlands. This means that, unlike last week, I'm no longer one of the few that's busy around the house instead of working :) I had to drop by at Gamma (local DIY store) and there were about fifty people queueing outside at 1000. Holy carp!
Anywho... The progress I'm making makes me hopeful that we can actually make it in time, finishing the house before we move in on the 18th. That's less than three weeks from now! Zoinks! o_O
Progress report:
* All ceilings on the ground and first floors have been whitewashed. They look good.
* All walls on the ground floor have gotten their off-white-reddish-purplish coat of paint. They look good as well.
* This means that downstairs is ready for the floor man to come in and do his thing. Also, after the electrician's done I -may- have to do a few touchups.
* Tuesday and Wednesday I'll paint the upstairs rooms and hallways.
* Thursday the electrician will come and do His Thing (tm). I'll first need to prep the attic and then I'll probably move on with painting over there.
* Friday and Saturday the floor guy'll be in so we'll have no access to the kitchen and we'll be stuck working upstairs. If at all. Yikes. I hadn't realized that, especially since I've also asked Menno to come and help me out. Meh... I guess we'll focus on the garden instead.
* Sunday my brother-in-law Davy will come'round to help me out. We'll probably be applying plinths in all the upstairs rooms.
That leaves me with the plinthing that needs to be done downstairs. I guess I'll have to come in one or two week nights, after work, to get that done.
EDIT:
Initially the paint I'm using on the walls gave me flashbacks to Operation Petticoat, but in retrospect it looks pretty good. Our living room's now the colour of cherry ice cream :9
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-05-27 16:52:00
*le sigh* I guess that the previous owner was in a hurry to finish a few things.
In all the hallways I've found that his last whitewash job was done without removing any of the fixtures and lamps. So every ceiling has a 20cm circle in a darker colour, with a rim of thicker paint around it. That's gonna leave a mark.
It gets worse in the attic though. There he used the same strategy, but not with whitewash. No. No, this time it was with spray-on plasterwork =_=
So what does that leave us? A huge wall with none-too-pretty plastering that's got a big "hole" of bare wood. I guess we can always glue on some fine grit to simulate the original plaster, but it's suboptimal.
Anywho... Today was a good, but exhausting day. The house is now fully stripped and I've made good progress with the ceilings. All ceilings on the ground and first floors have been "bordered" and I've managed to fill in about 15m2. By my estimates I'll need another full day to finish the ceilings. Then I'll need two days for all the walls, possibly three. It's going to be tight, but I'll make it.
kilala.nl tags: house, meh, annoying,
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2009-05-26 22:11:00
So... This morning I decided to take the long way to the new house, driving part of the route I'll be taking to work in the future. As I'd expected, the A6 / A1 connection (where all of the province of Flevoland tries to get to Amsterdam) is pretty much jammed around 06:30. This means that I'll have to leave pretty early if I want to take the car to the office. Assuming that I'll still work in Amsterdam, of course; going the other way will be a cinch.
Traveling by train's always treated me well, so even getting to Amsterdam won't be a problem. I'll just hop on at Almere Buiten, which is no more than five minutes cycling from our house. Either way, things will work out :)
The house is coming along pretty well. We've had the keys for two weeks now, but we've only started actual work last Sunday. Yesterday and today I've:
* Stripped 90% of the house for painting. Every fixture, shelf, ornament and light has come off so I can give everything a fresh coat of paint.
* Stripped 100% of the previous owner's crappy electronics.
* Spent an hour with the contractor that'll put in our new bathroom.
* Spent two hours with the electrician, discussing what we want from him. It'll be an interesting job that's well worth the money. Now all I need to get is that quote *anxious*
* Tidied up the front yard.
Tomorrow I'll strip the remaining 10%, dust the whole place and commence the painting. Thursday I'll stay in Utrecht to clean and watch Dana while Marli goes to the hair dresser's. Saturday and Sunday will both be family days, so no work will get done either. :/ I hope I'll make it!
Ah! I've also made use of the bathtub ^_^ I'd forgotten how great it feels to sit in an actual tub, as opposed to standing under a shower. Even after eight years, my bathing reflexes kicked in immediately and it was like I'd never gone. *sigh* I -love- having a tub. I think I'll reinstate my old Sunday-morning-soak-for-an-hour ritual ^_^
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2009-05-24 18:50:00
Today we had a few relatives over in our new house to make some preparations before the actual painting starts. One of the tasks to be performed was the removal of the cable ducts that the previous owner had installed. Overall these looked pretty good and they gave us wall sockets all around the room. Thinking we'd make short work of the removal I turned off power to the living room and we got to work.
The previous owner was a pretty meticulous person. He'd kept most of the paperwork to the appliances they left behind, he'd also kept a lot of original paperwork for the house itself and he'd performed regular upkeep on the house. All of this led me to not question his documentation of the power breakers in the hallway. Unfortunately I should have and I really should've tested everything before setting off.
We'd already gotten to the last piece of ducting when my step-brother-in-law Hans suddenly piped up.
Hans: *jerk*
Hans: Say, are you sure the power's of this ...
Hans: *bonk*
Us: O_O
Us: Holy shit!
Yep... All of the power running through the ducts was actually NOT branched from the breaker labeled "living room", but from the one marked "microwave". It seems that, when the new kitchen was put in in 2001, the owner'd spliced his new setup into the newly created power group for the appliances.
So Hans took a hit, a rather nasty one. He jerked back, spoke a sentence and then collapsed. I think he was out for less than five seconds, because he regained consciousness while I was putting him in the recovery position. He was breathing, responsive and alert but we called 112 anyway. After answering their questions they assessed that an ambulance was not required and Hans concurred. A minute or two after getting zapped he was already completely lucid and confirming that he felt OK.
The rest of the day he was fine and I dropped him off at the station in Almere. On the way home his headache got worse though, so his landlord took him to the E.R. about an hour ago. The doc gave him a once-over and they're now waiting for the results. Youch... :( I'm worried...
Obviously we're NOT keeping the ducting because the wiring inside was also quite shoddy. For some reason the guy hadn't used proper solid core wire, but had used braided copper wiring. In places it was more like speaker wire than electrical wiring. After this afternoon's mishap we all went through the house, top to bottom, identifying any and all crappy wiring. The bottom line: each and every room will need cleaning up :(
* The living room has only one -real- wall socket. I'm getting in an electrician to put in one or two more in a -safe- way.
* Our bedroom's ducting will stay in place (because it looks good), but I'll take out all of the wiring.
* Dana's bedroom has plenty of real sockets, so we'll dike out all the ducting.
* The attic was a fscking mess. All ducts were run from the two real sockets, with 70% of the ducting being branched off from the socket that also runs the washer/dryer. I'll get the electrician to fix the power in the attic as well.
* This last item was also a piece of work! They guy'd made two new, shiny sockets for the washer and dryer. Unfortunately behind the wall we found that both were spliced into a single plug which was plugged into a socket.
It's a miracle the guy's handywork hadn't sent up the place in a fire years ago.
EDIT:
Got an update from Hans: he's fine. He went to l'hopital because he woke up less coherent than he usually is. He wasn't slurring his speech or anything, just not thinking as quickly and clearly as usual. Like we zapped the clever right out of him :) Anywho... The docs confirm that he's fine and that there's no damage.
kilala.nl tags: house, body, health,
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2009-05-15 13:37:00
Little under two hours ago we had the deed to our new house in Almere notarized. Champagne for everybody! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-04-29 15:42:00
*digs through old cassette tapes*
*puts in Iron Maiden*
*presses play*
TWO! MINUTES! TO MID-NIIIGHT!
*sighs with relief*
At the proverbial "two minutes to midnight" the buyer of our apartment got his paperwork straightened out. All of his requests have been approved and he has now finally bought our house. That's one less worry for us :)
kilala.nl tags: house, finance,
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2009-04-21 05:20:00
Meh... Yesterday we got a phone call that the buyer of our apartment is having trouble getting his finances settled. We gave him an extension of a week, but if he doesn't manage to get things done by then, the sale of our flat will fall through. Naturally our purchase of the house in Almere will also be cancelled then. ;_;
*crosses fingers*
Aside from that me and Marli aren't that great, health-wise, either. I'm still in pain from my recent tooth extraction and Marli has a severe head cold. We're unable to sleep more than two hours in a row, without either waking ourselves or each other up. Darn... I hope both discomforts will pass soon.
EDIT (@13:01):
In the mean time I've gotten a "reassuring" phone call from my advisor telling me that the purchase of the Almere house will continue any-which-way. So even if the sale of our flat falls through, we'll still have the house in Almere. On the one hand "Whoopee!" (we'll have our coveted house) and on the other hand "Whoo-pee =_=" (we'll be paying two mortgages).
kilala.nl tags: meh, house, health,
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2009-04-11 15:31:00
There's so much to arrange for our move to Almere! *panic*
One of the first things I took care of was our Internet connection. I've made sure that Ziggo disconnects everything by 30/6 so we're not needlessly dragging our subscription along. Unfortunately there's only three companies to choose from in Almere, two of which I have no liking for: KPN and Tele2. So it seems that we're stuck with UPC.
The good thing about this is that we're getting a few upgrades:
* We're going from 1MBps to 10MBps.
* We're getting a DTV STB with DVR (acronym time! /o/).
* We're getting a bunch of extra channels, including SciFi.
Unfortunately this does come at a price. We'll be going from 55 euros a month to about 70. Darn. :/
So! There's so much to do! We'd better make a good checklist, else we'll forget all kinds of important things. My body's sitting still, but my mind is racing! =_=
kilala.nl tags: house, other tech,
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2009-04-09 05:23:00
There's no going back now... Well, there is, but we wouldn't want to, but at least the people selling the house can't back out anymore.
Yesterday, around 1430, we signed the contract to buy the aforementioned new house in Almere. It was a pleasant occasion and it was good to meet face-to-face with the previous owners. The gentleman in question has lived there ever since it was built in '85, so it's fairly safe to say that he knows the house.
We'd ordered an inspection of the building before signing and luckily they couldn't find anything wrong with the house, beside a few minor things we already knew. Total estimated cost of fixing them: 1500 euros. I reckon the actual price if we do a lot of those things ourselves will be lower.
Good, good! The last hurdle's the mortgage and I'm going to take care of that this afternoon. Now there's just a huge list of other stuff to take care of!
EDIT:
I just typed "farely" instead of "fairly". I guess I'm still sleepy :/
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-04-05 18:17:00
So yeah, we've already spent a bundle on the new house. Seeing how we're only six weeks away from getting the key we need to get our asses in gear and make all kinds of arrangements. The first thing we got out of the way is the remodeling of the bathroom.
Thanks to a special offer that ran at Brugman up until today we managed to save 1300 euros on the materials. This puts the total (materials, demolition and all the installation) at the 7k mark. I decided to let the builders take out the current bathroom as well, since that would only add 400 to their ~3500 bill.
The photograph above shows an impression of what'll go into the bathroom. The two biggest differences are the actual size (our room is much smaller) and the fact that we're getting a bathtub. I'm looking forward to our bathroom very much! :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-04-02 16:56:00
I just got off the phone with our realtor and our bid on the house we want has been accepted. Next week we'll be signing the contract and then we'll (almost) be the proud owners of a new house!
Our house lies in the middle of the Almere-Buiten Molenwijk district, which is a very quiet neighborhood. There's loads of playgrounds for the kids and there's at least three schools in the close vicinity. Unfortunately there's little to no "nature" close by, so I'll have to ride my bike for twenty minutes to get to the Markermeer. Good enough for me.
After negotiations we all settled on 171k, which is a very decent price! That amount of money only buys you a small apartment in Utrecht :) After adding all of our costs, 10k in projected remodeling and the loss we took in selling our flat (about 7k) it all comes down to a mortgage of 207k. That's a 40k raise from its current level, all of which should be well within our limits. I never imagined I'd be able to afford a family house on my paycheck alone, so this is great news :D
So, what's there to say?
* The house spans three floors, and comes in at 120m2, 350m3.
* It has a 85m2 garden.
* The kitchen's in a very good state, though it's bit cramped.
* The kitchen comes with a full range of appliances, including:
** Induction cooker (which we'll replace with gas)
** Oven
** Microwave (which we'll replace with a new model)
** Fridge and freezer
** 3/4 size dishwasher (cool!)
* The bathroom needs remodeling, because it's from the eighties.
* The house itself needs little work: painting and a floor in the living.
* Due to remodeling, the master bedroom has a large walk-in wardrobe.
* The attic is large enough to divide into two rooms at a later point.
* There's oodles of storage space, which we definitely need.
If everything goes right we'll get the key on the 15th of May, giving us six weeks to complete all redecorating and actually moving in there.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-03-29 12:51:00
Wow, that didn't turn out the way we expected at all!
* House 1: not as pretty as in the pictures and was already sold.
* House 2: Marli ran away screaming, though I like the architecture.
* House 3: getting there sucked and it wasn't as good as expected.
* House 4: not so hot either and needed a LOT of work.
* House 5: I loved it, Marli hated it. I'd've bought it if I was single ^_^
So... We've decided to go with the house we visited last Wednesday, which is in Almere. It's from the eighties, comes at a decent price and is perfect for a young family :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-03-24 14:13:00
Awesome-cakes! /o/
Since yesterday things moved reaaaal quick! The flat's been sold at 155k, which is 4.5k under our original asking price. Not too shabby! We're especially glad since we haven't gone over the projected loss on the sale, which we were willing to take.
After deliberations it's been decided that we are to exchange keys on the 30th of June, leaving us little over three months to find a house, buy it, redecorate it and to actually move in. Exciting! Luckily next Saturday is the annual day for NVM realtors to hold "open house". We'll quickly make a shortlist of houses we would like to see.
Unfortunately our dream of moving to the country appears to have been a pipe dream. We really, really wanted to go, but unfortunately Unixerius can't get me jobs that far east. Sure there's IT work over there, it's just that it's outside the reach of our network. And while we might be willing to buy a house during this recession, we're not ready for me to leave Unixerius. It's too great a company anyway!
So instead we've turned our sights onto the province of Flevoland again. We'll be checking out places in Almere and Lelystad. On the one hand it kinda sucks because we won't be moving closer to "Nature" (tm), but on the other hand it's close to work and those cities do actually offer affordable housing.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-03-23 09:17:00
Marli just called me to tell that we have a potential buyer for our flat! It seems that the fellow who visited us twice is interested in actually buying the place! Glee!
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2009-03-20 19:10:00
On the up side of things our insurance company came through on the claim for my TZ3 that I dropped a few months ago. After deduction of my own risk they transferred about 180 euros. The camera was originally around 300 euros, but it's successor the TZ4 is actually close to 190! <worms>Success!</worms>
On the down side, this morning I happened to stumble upon a house that would have been absolutely perfect for us! However, when I called the realtor about it I found out he'd just sold it an hour ago. Damn :(
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2009-01-08 20:52:00
Someone I once knew through the SCA had decorated her house in such a way that there were some cool trinkets for her cats. Among these things was their private exit around the back, which could be reached by a ramshackle walkway along the ceiling. It was a cool idea, but the execution was lacking in esthetics.
Which is where Japanese company Asahi-Keisei comes in with their cat friendly housing design! With the walkways, climbing shelves and nooks and crannies they build into your house your cat will never be bored again! ^_^
Marli and I've been thinking about doing something similar once we move into our new house. These pictures sure provide a lot of inspiration :)
Via Lethia-chan, who also does a few nice photo walk-arounds of Tokyo.
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2008-12-28 10:25:00
Brrr *shiver* Man, it sure is pretty chilly in here... Outside it's a sunny yet humid -3C and for some reason our heater just doesn't seem to be able to do much about it. I've turned on most of the radiators (which will surely lower the efficiency of heating our house) and the furnace is up to 5 (max=7), but it still isn't toasty in here. I still need a blanky to get comfortable and even Dana's moaning and griping under her blankets. :/
kilala.nl tags: winter, house,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2008-12-22 21:32:00
Oh dear. Exasperated by the electrical wiring I'd been trying to fix for half an hour and by the tools that I didn't fully understand I muttered under my breath: My soul for a house where these things just fscking work!. Immediately things snapped into place and I got the wiring done.
Should you suddenly find me gone in a puff of smoke and sulphur, you'll at least know what happened =_=;
kilala.nl tags: not good, house, weird,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2008-12-13 16:59:00
To aid us in selling our apartment we took part in our realtor's "open house". We were asked to make the house presentable to potential buyers and to be available between the hours of one and three. Unfortunately only one guy showed up, who was moderately interested.
Oh well... At least our house is tidier than it's been for weeks ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2008-12-10 20:14:00
Remember this one? Or this one? Or how about this one? We've been thinking about moving away from the big cities for a while now and we've finally made our decision:
We're moving to the province of Drenthe.
As you can see from the map on the left, the province of Utrecht is one of the most densely populated areas in the Netherlands (after Zuid Holland and Noord Holland). We've lived in Utrecht all of our lives and we've had it pretty damn good. Our houses in Nieuwegein and Utrecht (the city) were both comfortable and they suited our needs. And living in the city we always had the benefit of all kinds of shops and facilities nearby.
Now that I'm nearing my thirties and Dana's joined our family things look different though. We want to have a nice, big house that'll last us at least ten years (and possibly a second child). Since we'll be living off of my wages alone said house needs to be affordable, leaving us enough money for food, upkeep and savings. And since housing prices in the deep red provinces on the map suck we've decided to try our luck elsewhere.
Flevoland (the island in the middle) doesn't offer us much interesting because I particularly dislike the cities over there. Housing is a bit more affordable than elsewhere, but it doesn't help much that Almere is atrociously ugly :/ And since we've always like the countryside of Friesland and Drenthe, we've decided to move to the latter!
We've been browsing Funda for a few days now and even when limiting our search to the southwest of Drenthe there's more than two hundred houses to pick from! Houses within our budget that is... Right now we're eyeballing a house that's close to my in-laws, close to an Intercity railway station and close to both schools and a forest. It's about 130m2, has five rooms and two bathrooms. The kitchen looks alright, as do the two yards and the terrace. All of that rings in at around 190k, which is only 40k more than what we paid for our 80m2, first floor apartment.
Unfortunately there are a few downsides to living in Drenthe, the largest being the distance I need to travel for my daily commute. By moving further east I'm limiting the area that I can work in quite a bit. Quite severely actually, since most of the really big IT jobs are in the outmost west of the Netherlands. One could say that Amsterdam and Utrecht are about as far west as I could go to find jobs, while the west coast is my current limit. Oh well...
The other downside is that we'd be moving further away from all of our friends (except you Kaijuu, you'd be right around the corner!) and our family. But then again, the house'll be big enough to have a guest room, so hey! ^_^
It's a pretty big decision to make, but I do believe it's a good one.
kilala.nl tags: house, family, netherlands,
View or add comments (curr. 13)
2008-12-01 19:18:00
For the past two years I've been staring at the holes in our ceiling and the electrical wiring hanging out of them. We had to hang the lamps and the ceiling fan off-center and thus the original connection points were left unused. Now that we're trying to sell our apartment we need to finally fix these things as they don't really look nice on the realtor's photograps ^_^;
Isn't it ironic how work left undone for two years can be done in two hours and only set me back about thirty euros? *le sigh* It actually even looks pretty okay.
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2008-11-17 18:48:00
While I'm waiting for tech support, I might as well cover the upside of things as well. As mentioned we spoke to our financial advisor last week about getting a new mortgage.
We're currently in the process of searching for a real house (as opposed to an apartment), which ought to be a lot nicer with Dana. We'd been looking in the 200k euro area which has some nice housing in Almere. We were very happy to hear from our advisor that the dutch .gov usually advices a limit of 230k on mortgages for people with my salary, so we were looking well within our budget. That's always good to hear.
We also spoke to a realtor about selling our apartment and his guestimates were also well within the budgetary window we'd been considering. So good on that as well!
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2008-11-02 19:21:00
Our apartment building was originally buit in the sixties as part of a mass renewal of this part of Utrecht. At the time whole neighborhoods were hacked together in the span of years in order to accomodate the changing times. I'm not sure what the target demographic was at the time, but these days our building provides some of the more affordable housing in Utrecht.
Originally the 85m^2 apartment was meant to house a family of five or six, with a big master bedroom in the back and two additional bedrooms. In our case the dividing wall for the master bedroom was torn down to create a living room double its original size.
The heating in this place is still in its original setup. While some of the radiators and the gas furnace were replaced fifteen years ago, the setup is still geared towards the house's original design. It also has one big draw back, with the furnace being in the middle of a serial chain of radiators.
We only want two rooms out of five to actually be heated and one of them is at the end of the series: Dana's room. The living room should also be nice and cozy, but it'd be ok if the rest of the house was chilly. The way things are right now I wish I could just cut off the "right half" of the heating, thus removing the kitchen, study and bathroom from the chain. Unfortunately I can't do that because the refill point for the system is located in the bathroom.
For now I think it would be a good idea to bring the living room back to it's original size; that way we'd only be heating 20m^2 instead of 40. Of course I'm not going to build a new wall, because the archway is actually pretty cool. Instead I reckon we'll install a nice set of heavy drapes in the arch, thus providing some insulation between the two parts of the living room.
Some of our neighbors have replaced the aging gas furnaces with new, high efficiency systems that also provide hot running water to the bathroom and kitchen. Unfortunately the only good place to install such a system is in the storage cabinet on the balcony. Our neighbors have done so, but at the cost of damage to the exterior walls of our building; something that the VVE isn't happy about. Such a renovation would also set us back a pretty penny, so I think we'd rather wait until buying a whole new house.
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2008-07-14 15:09:00
Mondays used to be the days that I had off for school. Now that I've finished my first year in college they're blissfully quiet. The great thing about this is that I now have loads of free time to spend around the house. So now I not only have enough time for all kinds of household chores, but also to prepare for the baby.
I woke up around 0730 this morning and I've been awfully productive since then. I'm loving this rhythm. ^_^
kilala.nl tags: school, house,
View or add comments (curr. 5)
2008-07-06 15:43:00
*sigh* Why Ikea, why? Why would you choose a weird construction made out of cheap plastic to keep a shelf on its place in our bookcase? Why forego the tried and tested wooden or metal plugs? Why force me to screw and tinker for three minutes, just to install a shelf?
Or more importantly: why choose a material that will fail catastrophically in a few years time?
I just entered our basement storage room to take out the garbage and the floor was covered in all my DIY materials. Tools, nails, parts: all strewn across the floor :( As I said: the plastic keeping up the shelves in said bookcase had failed and thus all four toolboxes got deposited on the floor. Le sigh I'd better go and get some real plugs RSN(tm).
kilala.nl tags: meh, snafu, house,
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2008-07-06 15:13:00
*phew!* It took me a few days, but the baby's bedroom is finally ready for decoration and the furniture.
As I said, it took a few days, mostly because I had to make a few runs to the city dump. There was all kinds of crap that we needed to get rid of, before we could even think about cleaning the room up. The storage room in the basement needed to be cleared out as well, in order to make room for the things that we were going to keep.
Some furniture went to welfare, a lot of stuff (among them old belongings of their father) went to Marli's brother and two car loads of "stuff" went to the dump and welfare.
Now that we're done, all we need to do is wait for the furniture to arrive. Well, that and order loads more furniture and other things for the kid, since we're not even half done yet. *panic* Ah well, one step at a time :)
In the meantime I spent most of the day cleaning the house and doing all kinds of household chores. I think a well-deserved shower is in order ^_^
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2008-06-22 17:26:00
Meh, this is what I don't like about living in an old appartment! >[
The electric wiring is decrepit because it's never been renewed since the nineteen-sixties. Most of the outlets are without earthing, the housing for the outlets in the walls are coming apart and most of the wiring is old and has gone crooked through all of its use. Some of the switching material is also ancient and is probably from the eighties.
Case in point: the switchbox that connects our washer and dryer to the mains power. It's one of those old dealies, where you pull on a wire to flip the switch. I don't know what happened, but while I was away to pick up Marlijne it seems the thing burnt through D: EEK! I'm glad we didn't come home to a burning appartment!
I reckon I'll replace it on Monday with a simple connection box. We have no need for a switch there and I assume that it's better to have as little moving/open parts in a bathroom as possible.
*sigh* The thing is, I'd love to give the whole house an overhaul, but there's three things keeping me from it.
1. I don't have the required skills to do it myself.
2. Hiring someone to do it costs money that we don't have.
3. The overhaul will require hacking up the walls, which means we'd have to redeco the house as well. More costs that we cannot afford.
I guess we'll have to try and do a few touch-ups here and there in the next few years.
kilala.nl tags: house, problem, other tech,
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2008-06-08 22:20:00
In general I'm rather indifferent when it comes to football, aka soccer. I really don't care about it and find it a rather boring sport. The fact that all the vedettas are grossly overpaid doesn't help either.
However, from this year on I believe I'm sincerely going to -hate- football. Hate it to my very core. >[
Two floors up from us (with an empty appartment in between for added echo and amplification) lives a family of soccer fans. A family who bring over their eight friends for each match. A family who make use of noise makers, loud stamping and mucho shouting to make sure their Legion (aka the Oranje football team) know that they're supporting them. I think it's great that people enjoy their hobby and that they're really enthused by something... But this? No... Not so happy about it.
I'm praying that none of these football matches in the Euro Cup (or is it World Cup? I really can't be arsed to know!) last until after 2230/2300. If they do, I'm not going to get any fscking sleep ;_;
I'd better go and see how long all this will last. What is it? Two weeks? Three? Five? o_O Fsck!..
EDIT:
In the famous words of Captain Slow: "Oh cock!"
Yes, it's the Euro Cup and the final day coincides with my birthday, the 29th. Great. So these lunatics upstairs will keep it up with their noise makers for three fscking weeks. And it's not that they just make loads of noise when the dutchies made a goal... No, it's during the whole friggin' match and for at least an hour afterwards.
*groan*
kilala.nl tags: annoying, house,
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2008-01-28 09:59:00
I'll tell more later, but for now let it be known that I'm very happy with my new desk! I've always wanted a rolltop secretaire and now I have one. Glee!
Film at eleven...
EDIT:
Okay, so it's 13:05 and not 23:00, but who cares...
The desk in the picture used to belong to Marli's grandmother and was then passed on to her father. It's by no means an antique, possibly hailing from the seventies or eighties, but it's still quite pretty. When Marli's father passed away, the desk went to her brother, mostly because we had no room for it in our old house. However, now that both them and us have moved to bigger houses, we got the desk.
I'm very happy with it, because I've been fascinated by these desks every since I was young. All the slots and drawers and of course the roll-down front make me all gooey ^_^
Unfortunately there are a few little nags I have with the desk, some of which I may be "fixing" in the near future.
* My Powermac doesn't fit in the cabinet on the left. It's too high and too deep. Modding the cabinet to fit would require quite some restructuring though, so I probably won't be doing it.
* My monitor needs to stand on top of the desk, making it hellish ergonomics-wise. I have to tilt my head backwards, which makes it ache awfully. Then again, maybe this is finally some good training to sit up straight, because that puts my face a bit higher.
* The roll-down front doesn't fully slide into the desk when it's moved upwards. Three slats, plus the handles and lock still protrude, thus obscuring about 12 centimeters of the desk from my view. I'm thinking of removing three slats and sewing the band behind it shut, thus giving me a more unobstructed view of the desk.
* At night the desk's interior becomes very dark, making it very hard to read my schoolbooks. I've already bought three cheapo LED spots that I will install under the shelf, hopefully providing ample lighting.
Anywho... This desk looks a hell of a lot better than the previous white plastic + steel desk from Ikea. ^_^
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-12-16 11:46:00
For the past few months we've been thinking about what we're going to do once I land that teacher's certificate. That's still three years away, but a little planning never hurt anyone.
One of the things we'd been pondering is to move away from the urbanised west of the Netherlands. Don't get me wrong, I really -love- living in Utrecht, but housing doesn't come cheap over there. Let alone in the bigger cities, like Rotterdam and Amsterdam. And at one point in time we will want to move to a bigger place. Again: I love our apartment, but wouldn't mind have a two, or three storey house.
Which is why Marli's been drooling over the Funda housing website since last night. She's been going over houses in Friesland (one of the Netherlands' rural area) and she's been falling in love :) For same amount of money that we paid for our 85m^2 apartment, we'll be able to afford a nice house with a garden! If that doesn't sound good, I don't know what does!
Thing is: in Friesland there's next-to-no call for ICT specialists at all. So we'll have to put off moving there for at least three years. And when you're already browsing through all these neat looking houses, that's not what you want to hear :)
kilala.nl tags: career, life, house,
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2007-12-08 17:37:00
Oh my... Wifi usage in our neighbourhood sure has exploded!
When we moved into this house a little over a year ago, there were two Wifi base stations within reach. One, an open one that I "borrowed" for a few weeks, was just barely in reach. Now when I run iStumbler I see at least twenty-seven thirty-one APs! o_O
I'm just glad it's not borking up our reception too much.
kilala.nl tags: other tech, house,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2007-10-11 13:05:00
At precisely 13:00 this afternoon the builders started removing the windows at the back of our apartment.
We are currently in the process of replacing all wooden window sils in our building with plastic and steel ones. The wooden ones are almost completely spent and the plastic ones will last us at least a few decades.
In about four hours the workmen should have everything replaced and built. By sundown the back of our apartment should be weatherproof again.
Update @14:12:
In a litte over an hour the guys have completely removed the old windows and their sils. They're now cleaning up and sizing up the various parts for the new windows.
Update @16:30:
They're done! Wow, they're fast. The new windows look great and feel much more solid than the ones at the front side of the building. Good stuff :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-10-09 22:44:00
Thursday's recycling day, so a lot of people have already put out their papers for the pickup tomorrow. Unfortunately there's always some punk-ass kid who enjoys wreaking havoc in the neighbourhood. About fifty meters from our house someone set fire to a big pile of paper.
Since I feel co-responsible for our community I dashed out of the house with our fire extinguisher. Luckily, someone else was already dialing 112. Unfortunately the fire extinguisher didn't help much. The foam had settled for too long, there was too much paper crammed into a small area and the capacity of the bottle was too small. I'm trying to recall how big the bottle was... I guess something like two liters.
Now that the extinguisher's spent I'm going out for a new one tomorrow. And you can bet good money that I'm getting a bigger one. Probably a six liter one and maybe a smaller, second one. Just to be safe...
Schmucks... As long as they leave the building materials for our apartment building alone.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-03-09 11:52:00
I've had three days off from work, to recover a bit from the irregular schedule I've had for the past few weeks. These three days have been spent quite well, both being -utterly- lazy (I've watched four seasons of Two pints of lager...) and being rather productive around the house.
We've had a bit of a mouse problem in the downstairs storage, so I cleaned it all out and bought a huge, plastic container to put our bin bags in. We used to leave the bags in an open basket, waiting for trash day on Friday, but apparently that got the meeces in. Anywho, this barrel easily holds four bags and has a lid so I'm sure I'll get rid of the mice rather quickly.
After the cleaning I've reorganised some of the shelf space, gotten rid of loads of crap that was still lying around after remodeling the place and I've -finally- done the final phase of moving into our apartment: I've finally moved the last of the tools and moving boxes into storage! ^_^ Was about time as well, after thirteen months...
I'll spend the rest of the day cleaning up and I may go for a bike ride as well. You may notice how I've inconspicuously left "exercise" and "bike rides" out of the previous paragraphs, even though I'd said I would ;_; Ah well... At least I'm relaxed again :)
kilala.nl tags: holiday, work, house, relaxing,
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2007-03-07 10:44:00
Great :) We've finally gotten off to a start with the big maintenance around our apartment building!
Today BAM will be replacing and repairing parts of the driveway in our common garden. The work's been estimated at 150 square meters and they'll be at it all day. I've seen some of the parts they've finished and it looks pretty good. I'm just awfully glad that our drive way will be restored to a decent state again! PropertyValue++. Comfort++. That sort of thing.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-01-30 22:36:00
In September I wrote a little about the work I do for our home owners' association (VVE for the dutchies). Back then we were about to propose major maintenance to our apartment building, which would ensure that our domicile would be able to last through the next ten years. The downside to our Ten Year Plan is the fact that we need an additional eighteen-hundred euros from all of our members in 2007. After that we should be fine.
The general meeting was held and only two home owners showed up to cast their vote in the matter. Before that we'd sent out a detailed explanation of our plans, including the expected costs, so this shows how much interest most people take in our homes. A second meeting was called because quorum could not be reached during the first meeting. Our statutes dictate that, if our proposal is -not- rejected during this second meeting, the proposal is automatically -accepted-.
This rule was created on two assumptions:
1) The HOA council always means best for all of our homes.
2) Things have to get done, one way or another.
So we have given people two chances for rejecting our proposal after informing them three times of our plans. And naturally -nobody- shows up at the second meeting either. *sigh* Good thing though, because now the upkeep has been automatically approved.
By now we've set things in motion to get all the work done: getting quotes, assigning projects and of course sending out the eighteen-hundred euro invoices. And what do you know? -Finally- people wake up! The very same day that the invoices were delivered through the mail does one of our neighbours start a petition to get the upkeep vetoed! x_x And of course their excuses are completely worthless:
* "I didn't read the letters!" -> Whose fault is that?
* "I'm sure not enough people came to the meetings to approve your plans." -> Again, whose fault is that? And you damn well know the rules about automatic approval.
* "We can get your decision vetoed!" -> No you cannot. You have a legally binding contract with the HOA and all the proceedings are completely legal.
* "But the people in the other building paid much less!" -> Ah, comparing apples to oranges are we now? There are many reasons why your comparison doesn't fly.
* "But last year we were told this work would be done around 2010, not in 2007." -> Aside from the fact that this is not true, this also does not negate the fact that maintenance is needed -now-.
* "Well, we still don't agree!" -> Too bad. You have a contract.
The thing is: people never want to pay. They hope to put off maintenance long enough so that it needs to be done when they have moved away to a new house. Well, I for one seriously care about the place I live in, so I'm going to my damnedest best to make this thing fly!
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2006-09-26 06:01:00
Gawd.... The past few weeks waking up has been damn hard! It's like my whole body's fighting me to stay asleep :/ Maybe I -do- need more sleep... But not today, 'cause now I really need to clean a few things up, what with a few people coming over tonight.
Also, yesterday I took part in my first VVE meeting. VVE being the Vereniging Van Eigenaren of my apartment building, which freely translates as "Home owner's association". Our building's VVE hasn't been very active for the past few years, which has led to some problems for the long-term. All in all, if we were to steady our course as it is right now (and if the calculations made by our backing organisation are correct), then we'd have a deficit of around 300k by 2015. Not a very pleasant thought!
So we'll be turning things around, tweaking the plans here and there, hopefully getting the approval of the rest of the neighbours. You see, one of the biggest problems these buildings have is that the people living there are just not committed to the building. They see no reason to offer up their time and/or money to make the buildings look nice and be well maintained. Most of them reason that they'll only be living here for a few years, so they can move on before things turn crappy.
Now, of course that all well and true if you look at it. But it doesn't make it a proper way of doing business!
What's worse is that usually most of our neighbours don't care about the VVE, the meetings, the maintenance and whatever. But three years back, when there was the matter of a large expenditure to improve our building's in a -very- nice way, they all turned up to shoot the plan down. They just didn't want to spend the additional money, for the reason mentioned above.
Seriously. How do you convince people who think they are looking out for their best interest? On the one hand there's their money that they don't want to spend. On the other hand, there's their apartment and the building it's in that needs serious maintenance and renewal of certain materials.
Well... I guess we'll have to be very persuasive if people -do- turn up in throngs to protest.
kilala.nl tags: rhythm, house, annoying,
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2005-12-20 15:11:00
Wow! The brunt of all of the heavy work for our new house is finally done! o/
All of the walls and ceilings received a fresh coat of paint, most of the doors and window sills got a new coat of lacquer and a completely new floor is finally in place. Last weekend we dumped one and a half truck loads of garbage at the city dump and we moved almost exactly the same amount of stuff from the old house to the new one :) It's amazing how much crap two people can amass over three years.
Unfortunately most of our new furniture won't be arriving until February, so we'll spend two months living out of boxes :( But I'm very happy that we've now moved in.
I'll still be spending a lot of time fixing the new and old house, so updates to the website will be _very_ sparse for the time being.
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2005-12-06 21:27:00
Sorry for being absent so long, it's just that we've been so fscking busy with our new apartment that I haven't got time for anything else...
Basically things are looking pretty okay when it comes to redecorating the place. All the ceilings and walls received a fresh coat of paint and I'm almost done tearing out the old wooden floor. Come Sunday some relatives will be dropping by to put in the new floor, which hopefully will go without a hitch.
Checking the planning I set out a few weeks back, it seems like the whole project is still on target when it comes to our mile stones and the delivery dates. Yes, I actually am that anal! I decided to tackle our move to the new house like any other project at work :D On my Mac there's this wonderfully huge Gantt chart which outlines all of the tasks which lay ahead and when we should have them done. Unfortunately I cannot get the colours to work in the export, so you'll have to do with the B/W image. This unfortunately also doesn't show you how far we're done with each task :) Just trust me when I say we're on target :3
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2005-11-27 16:14:00
My best friend Menno took a ballsy decision a few weeks ago. He'd been working as a contractor in the field of landscaping and such for a few years, but desk work really wasn't what he enjoyed. So he decided to make a 180 to follow his dream ^_^ He quit his job and moved back home, so he could dedicate all of his time training and exercising for a job with the royal dutch navy. Stupidly enough I've forgotten the real name for it, but he's trying to get into the commando programme.
So we spent yesterday moving all of his stuff back home and into storage. We had fun, we had exercise, we had good coffee and we drove around in a big truck through snow. All in all, it was a very good day :D Also, our allergies combined with copious amounts of dust spawned the now immortal Monster Dance, which is quite similar to this (no I didn't make that graphic myself). Don't ask... It's a long story... I'm just very happy that even after about twenty years we can still flawlessly connect :3
On the home front, things are working out nicely for our own move into new living space. Next wednesday we'll the hand-over will take place and we can get started on cleaning and decorating the place. About 80% of our stuff is already in boxes, ready to be moved over there. Unfortunately we've run into a few minor setbacks/delays (our new furniture will be delivered at the start of Feb and our new cable and Internet connection will be patched up halfway Feb), but I hope that's the last of it.
I do still have the feeling that we're forgetting to take care of a lot of things, but I guess that's inherent of the whole "moving and buying a new house" deal.
kilala.nl tags: friends, career, house,
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2005-11-06 15:19:00
Well darn, this is just such a pain! Ever since we moved our website (again) Google's gone on the fritz when it comes to finding our web space :( I've tried numerous options on getting us at the top for searches pertaining to ourselves and have succeeded in all cases but one. All of our nick names work, as does Marli's full name. My full name however returns a lot of forum posts I once made and the link to this site is stuck on page two *grr!*. I'll try and do some more magic to get that working.
Also, since the date for our move into the new house is coming closer and closer we should start putting some effort into cleaning out any crap that we no longer need. So far I've filled a couple of boxes and bags with trash and we're still not done. It's miraculous how much stuff two people can amass over the course of a few years. We also went out shopping yesterday and splurged on a new living room arrangement! Two sofas and three large closets (a dressoir, a buffet and a showcase) are on their way! ^_^
Oh yeah! And one thing I never expected to say, but: I enjoy playing golf! And would like to do it some more! o_O
Last Friday one of $CLIENT's associates took out our whole department for a golfing clinic and thus we spent a few hours practicing stuff like putting and driving. We finished off the day with two ar 3 holes and, while I sucked royally, I can really see myself doing this stuff on a sunny autumn afternoon :)
kilala.nl tags: website, house, sports,
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2005-10-12 10:45:00
Wow! I'm overjoyed! I just checked out the download numbers for the Nagios plugins I wrote a while ago and two out of six have been downloaded over a hundred times already! ^_^ Even the rarer ones (for instance the ones that check Retrospect or Cisco CNR) have been downloaded a few times. That sure makes me feel good :)
Overall things are going quite well. Marli and I are getting started cleaning up the house for our imminent move to the new place. We already managed to sell some big stuff on the Internet and I'm trying to sell my Warhammer 40k army as well.
Work is.. well.. work :3 $CLIENT remains and will forever be its chaotic self :p I did go out for dinner with a few people from Snow, to keep in touch with the company... That was nice :)
kilala.nl tags: nagios, work, house,
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2005-06-13 20:26:00
Currently speaking to my brother in Finland, through the miracle of MSN
So! It's been way too long. Come on with the updates already!
First and foremost: Marlijne and me bought a house! Starting from November we'll be living in a nice and cozy apartment right in the middle of Utrecht (a major city in the Netherlands). It's a three room apartment, about 85 square metres of living space. The main living room (3x10m) used to be divided by a wall into separate rooms, but at some point in time that wall was taken away... Thus was created a wonderfully large living room! The kitchen is stunning and only two years old, although it's maybe one fifth of the size of our current kitchen. The rest of the rooms are pretty basic, but pretty nicely kept. All in all we're quite enthusiastic about our purchase!
Second off, I started working for Snow on the first of June. While I was doing some paperwork at the office on wednesday morning the Sales guy stormed in, wanting to know if I had some time that afternoon. Naturally I did, so I was immediately sent to my current customer. The way things look now I'll be sticking around there for a month or three (possibly a bit longer), to build a proper management infrastructure for them. We're looking at building everything from scratch: backups, security, management tools and an installation platform. A pretty cool and challenging job, given the time frame.
And finally: this weekend ^_^ Snow treats their employees to a nice outing twice a year, including their wives/partners/SOs and the children that come with it. This weekend they rented a big bunch of bungalows at Port Zelande which is located near the ocean and is quite peaceful! The bungalows were stocked with good food and Snow'd organised two dinner parties for their employees. On Saturday they provided us with various activities to choose from, although joining in was not mandatory (which to me totally rocks!). Anywho, I did end up joining ten others on a sea fishing trip. We were out at sea for eight hours, fishing for mackerel. Seven or eight of us got sea sick, including me (for about an hour and a half) but in the end that only drew more fish to the boat :P
All in all out of that weekend we got a lot of relaxation, good food and conservation and eight mackerel filets :3
kilala.nl tags: house, career, snow,
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2005-05-20 18:00:00
So we finally got ADSL at our place! I can't tell you how nice it feels to finally have some bandwidth to spare and to _not_ have to wait for a song to download from the iTunes music store. These days things go so rapidly! :) Marli really loves our new uplink!
Also, today was my last real "working" day at $CLIENT. I'd packed up all my belongings last week, so I didn't have to carry a lot of stuff with me. All in all it was a pretty relaxed day, just tieing up little loose ends. Monday I'll have a proper good-bye when all of my colleagues are back again.
kilala.nl tags: house, other tech,
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2005-01-31 06:42:00
Currently listening to a Britney Spears remix album
Well, we sure were busy this weekend! While I was away helping Menno move into his new house, Marli has spent about 60% of her weekend ripping all of her CDs into iTunes. Of course she's not nearly done, since she has a lot of albums and she has to label all of the songs manually since we don't have a broadband Internet connection.
Moving Menno's stuff actually was done in a record time :) Luckily all of his belngings were already in the van when I got to their place around07:30, so we could get cracking immediately. Everything was upstairs in his new digs around 09:30, so we really did make nice time! By the by, here's something you don't see every day: Menno's appartment is located in Arnhem's red ligth district :p
What else? Not much I guess! Later!
kilala.nl tags: other tech, house,
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2004-09-05 23:36:00
God, has it been _this_ long?! I had no clue!
From the sorry state of my website I guess it can be easily deduced that I have not found the time or interest to perform any updates during the last two months. On the other hand I must admit that it has been a bit quiet for the both of us, with these notable exceptions:
* Marli is going back to school! This week will see her first couple of days in a new education which will take her in a _completely_ new direction. Her past studies and work involved personal care, social studies and stuff like that. Her new studies are called "Management, economy and law" and are at college level (HBO in the Netherlands). A whole new challenge for my sweetie!
* I was invited onboard as a board member for Stichting J-Pop, the guys who organise the Anime Conventions in the Netherlands. Due to a number of personal reasons I decided to decline, but both me and Marli will most probably volunteer as Senior Gophers again next year.
* My iPod (and this my iTunes library) is steadily filling up. I'm about 40% through our CD collection now and I still have oceans of space available on that little wonder machine :) Not a day goes by without me being thankful to Mar for that birthday present :)
* We've been looking into buying a house. We'll probably take this next big leap in our lives some time next year, but we've already been talking to our financial advisor to check our options. *ponder*Gosh, makes us sound posh and all, doesn't it? "our financial advisor" ^_^*/ponder*
kilala.nl tags: school, anime 200x, anime 2005, house,
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2002-10-20 10:11:00
Boy, it's been a while since I've worked on this website! /me looks down... :eek: It's been more than three months already!
I've finaly found out that nasty CSS bug that was causing my page to look b0rked in Opera and Mozilla.. I'm definately _not_ a CSS wiz, so it took some fiddling with random parameters in the stylesheet I once downloaded and apparently it worked :) From now on you friendly Linux users (I'm one myself, so you can understand my troubles with this page) won't have the problems of the header's contents dropping down into the text ^_^
In local news: About two months ago (as per the 1st of September actualy!) me and Mar _finaly_ moved into our new house! Yay! It took a couple of weeks, but now we're settled in nicely. Everything's great actualy :) The house is really neat, we decorated it nicely, we don't have any money shortages (/me drops down to his knees..."Thank you Gaia!") and even Blackie found her own little spot in the house.
In the work department things appear to be picking up. After a couple of dreary weeks/months at the office I'm finaly getting back into the groove, setting my teeth into some really nice projects. Marlijne's been busy trying to find a job too... She mailed two letters of application a couple of days ago and the employment agency's trying to get her a job as a delivery driver.
Re: the website. Well, as you see I've finaly taken a look at the site again after a very long time. In the near future you can expect some new pictures of my case, a load of info on the new house (pictures are sure to follow) and hopefully I'll get around to writing some stuff on anime and manga too.
Cheers!
kilala.nl tags: work, house, life, website,
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2002-04-18 19:34:00
Oh my god! OH my God! OH MY fsking GOD!
It's really gonna happen! Me and Marlijne found ourselves a home! It'll be a while (we won't be able to move in 'till September), but we've finaly got an appartment! It's a lovely four room appartment above a super market in Nieuwegein. The rent'll be a bit steep, but the house is exquisit! A complete kitchen (ceramic cooker, fridge, dish washer), a complete bathroom (shower, double sinks and a freaking WHIRLPOOL) and a huge terrace!
We're so freakingly excited about this! *bounces around the room*
kilala.nl tags: house,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
