closed on lot today. we're land barons!
We closed on our lot today. Yeah! We now have two mortgages! Three, if you count the HELOC. Oh well. We couldn't pass up the deal we found on the property. It's my understanding that our 3.5 acre lot had to be sold first because there was a concern that it would not sell as easily as the adjacent 7 acre lot. Um, no. I think people would prefer the 3.5 acre lot. Not too big. Not too small. Juuust right (until we have to mow it). We did forget to ask about the crop lease and who to check with about extending it.When Becky gets out of school and gets a job, we'll be in a much better position. In the meantime, it's going to be a little tight. But we just set up a second checking account that will be strictly reserved for paying bills and we are setting up automatic bill payments to ensure that everything is paid on time with no late fees and we'll have to manage on what is left over along with any additional monies we can bring in other ways. I am thinking of getting a pizza route in one of the swankier communities (where you're more likely to get tipped) to augment our income a little and help us more aggressively pay down our debts. Isn't that nuts? Assume a huge liability/asset like our 3.5 acres and then get busy paying off debts? Sounds a little backwards, but you do what you gotta do. We want to be ready to build when Becky starts working. In the meantime, we have three years to plan, plan, plan (and dream a little).I was trying to come up with an idea of how to accommodate Becky's incredibly humongo family for family gatherings. It would be cool to have the entire family sitting at a long table, but the standard dining room would simply not work (and still be re-saleable). I married this idea with another "wish" for an indoor swimming pool and thought I could kill two birds with one stone by having an indoor swimming pool with a hard wood deck cover and use that room for the large family gatherings. We would have to deal with a slight chlorine smell, but I think that would be reasonable. Throw in a waterfall for ambiance and wow, what a setting. The real trick is making it fit in the budget. Budgeting is going to be the real trick overall.I updated the header for blawblawblog. I hope you like it. Unless you are a Ute, in which case I hope you grow to loathe it over the upcoming years as the Cougars kick your sorry piratey behinds all over the field. I think it is rather nice myself. *sigh* I can't wait for football season to start.
a lot going on
I am going to try and keep it short tonight as I don't have too much time (time is a luxury anymore). I struggle to balance my personal ambitions with my MANY responsibilities. Sometimes I think I am insane for taking on so much, but even so, I still refrain from pursuing a large number of other personal ambitions.We are getting the paperwork for the land purchase together and we close a week from tomorrow (finally!). The budget's tight, but it's workable as long as we are diligent about watching our spending (and it's only for three years). I think I may also pick up a Donato's route on a couple of days for a little extra income. That would help and we could use the extra money to help pay down our debts more aggressively. It'll be nice when Becky is out of school and can bring in a second income. We're setting all our bills up for auto-payment so we don't have to worry about them any more.I have been busy lately revising technical specifications for the test/drill application I have been working on. I had a bit of an epiphany the other day as I was thinking about the application and whether I should adopt a desktop model or a Software as a Service model for developing it. My line of thinking merged with the adage, "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit". I realized that part of my target audience was students, many of whom might be lucky to even have a computer, never mind a broadband connection. They would never be able to afford the software that I would make available. Given that, I came up with a hybrid model that incorporates open source software (that takes care of development) with a Software as a Service model for hosting files created using the open source software. The target audience for hosting services would be school systems and businesses that can more easily afford those services and would have the resources to take advantage of them. The authoring software would be given for free and I could charge for hosting the tests and providing additional integration and reporting functionality.I also was able to consolidate what was three applications into one with a fairly small design modification. I am going to pitch the software to the OpenOffice.org consortium as a value added means of distinguishing their office suite from other office suites and doing it in such a fashion that it facilitates rapid adoption in the education industry, which in turn can segue OO.o adoption in other areas outside of education. Since I will be open sourcing the software, I am making the design specifications available here on my blog. You can access them on the sidebar under Flip Specs. I know that it's a Microsoft Word doc and I am fully aware that this does not make for good impressions on the OO.o crowd, but these specifications are many years old (I actually started designing this back in 1993) and were written looooong before I ever heard of OO.o. They seem like a reasonable bunch that can hopefully overlook this single faux pas. I can ensure that related documentation from this point forward is in their preferred format.I will still need to develop a hosting site, but this buys me some time and allows me to network with the talent that can help me establish an online business of that sort. Hopefully, by making design and other contributions, I can establish myself as a valuable person with whom others would like to establish a business.
