Things I Want To Buy #2

This is a follow-up post to Things I Want To Buy.

I didn't end up buying a restringing machine, and gave up the idea after my uncle said it was definitely more trouble than it was worth. I got a new primary computer, but have had some problems with it. Mainly, it runs hotter than my friend's similarly spec'd one. Rather aggravating.

Anyway, an updated list!

• I still need my deck repainted/stained. I want to get that scheduled by the end of the month, at least.


• I still need a new electric lawn mower. I plan on giving my old one to my brother for his rental house, and I never want to use it again. Thus, I will need this before I can mow my lawn.


• I want a storm door for my front doorway. Storm doors are apparently rather expensive, so I may wait until the end of summer, as a warm draft is not nearly as bothersome as a cold draft.


• At some point, I'll need a new car. My current car keeps getting something else wrong with it. Most recently, I noticed that it no longer beeps at me when my seat belt isn't buckled. This doesn't actually bother me, but it's a sign that the car is aging. I'm hoping to get another year or more out of it, though, especially since I don't drive all that much.

Raid Write Intent Bitmaps

During my last raid crash, I couldn't seem to get the damn thing to resync. I tried multiple times, but it would always lock up. I almost took the drastic step of borrowing a raid array to back things up as much as possible and then rebuild from scratch! However, in my many hours of research into potential solutions, I found that most people prevented the problem using a little thing called write intent bitmaps.

As far as I know, they are not available with hardware raid solutions, such as dedicated cards or those built into motherboards. Linux software raid, however, makes it ridiculously easy. Once I finally did get things resync'd (dumb luck, really. I didn't try anything new - it just started working), I immediately turned on the write intent bitmap feature.

mdadm --grow --bitmap=internal /dev/md0

This may reduce write performance slightly (up to 10%), but given that something is funky with my machine and it crashes during most full resyncs, I'm all for the saved resync time. Since I've turned this on, I haven't had a single problem with the array or the machine. There have been a couple blown fuses due to a space heater on the same circuit, but the machine came up and stayed up just fine, barely requiring a few seconds to resync. I can't tell you how happy I was.

So, switch on over to mdadm, add an internal bitmap, and rejoice in the short resync times.

Refinancing Calculator

I'm actually pretty proud of the utility of this calculator. I hope you find it as helpful as I have in finding the interest rate needed to make refinancing make sense.

Loan Balance: $
Lender Fees: $
Fixed Costs: $
Points:
Total Closing Costs: Your javascript is disabled.

Finance Closing Costs:
Final Loan Balance: Your javascript is disabled.

Current loan information:
Monthly payment: $
Current rate:



Show rates:
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Your javascript is disabled.

First off, I apologize for any style issues. Using blogger has it's drawbacks, especially when putting scripts or styles in a post - the formatting has to be unreadable or the automatic line-breaks-to-br-tags conversion makes them not work at all. I also can't make the table any wider without really screwing things up, apparently. Now, on to the explanation:

Hopefully all the columns are self-explanatory except the last few. The "Monthly Savings" column refers to the difference in total payment amounts. The adjacent "Months to Recoup Costs" column uses this value to figure out how many months it would take before your out-of-pocket costs are back in your pocket. Thus, this column is best used when you are NOT financing your closing costs as part of the new loan.

The "Monthly Interest Savings" column is how much less (or more) interest you pay per month as part of your monthly payment. When you finance the closing costs, then, the last "Months to Recoup Costs" column shows how many months it will take to get the new loan balance back to your current loan's levels.

Any comments or suggestions on how to improve this post? Barring blogger limitations, I will do my best!

Mortgage Refinancing

I submitted my info to LendingTree.com a couple days ago and have been talking with mortgage people all yesterday. At the moment, the best rate I can get is 5.125% with 0 points. My current rate of 5.75% is already a decent rate, but refinancing would lower my minimum monthly payment by about $100, while increasing the amount of principal I pay each month. I would recoup my refinancing costs inside a year, but I'm still not sure if it's worth it.

The worsening economy hints that interest rates may fall further, but every month I wait, I'm effectively adding $100 to my closing costs. I'm not sure if refinancing works the same way as a first mortgage, but with my first one, it was best to close at the very end of the month to reduce the amount of prepaid interest you have to pay. Sometime next week I think I might be going to the Community Home Lending offices and discussing the timing of everything. It may be that I have a few weeks to think about it just waiting for an optimal closing date.

What are other people's thoughts on refinancing? Any questions I should definitely ask?

Chase Freedom Rewards

My Chase Freedom credit card gives me an extra $50 bonus if I save up my rewards until I get $200. I'm quite close, and after this month, I may just hit the $200 mark. I've been putting tons of stuff on my credit card, including buying gifts online on behalf of my parents as a method of paying them back the money I borrowed earlier. I also purchased a new TV for the living room; a Sharp Aquos 42" LCD 1080p.

All told, I've got $1300 in purchases racked up over just two orders. Since I get at least 1% back on that (plus 2% of the ~$500 I spent at newegg.com), I'm estimating a healthy reward for doing my part in helping the economy recover. Oh, and I'm thinking of spending another $350 or so to get a second 24" monitor so I can be more productive during my online TV watching. In fact, I may just do that tomorrow...

New Furnace

A couple of weeks ago, I was forced to buy a new furnace. As it turned out, the warm weather in the following week and a half meant I probably could have postponed the purchase by a week or so, at least. But, as that turned out, the check I wrote that Wednesday was not cashed until just this past Friday - over two weeks. Generally speaking, checks are deposited very quickly by companies. They like to earn interest on money, if nothing else. Thus, this delay had me slightly worried about lost checks, claims that I didn't pay, having to cancel payment on said check after writing a new one, fighting collection agencies, cancelling business with what I had thought to be a trustworthy HVAC company, etc. Turns out they just take their time collecting their pay.

Anyway, it would have cost ~$500 to fix the furnace, so I figured that was the equivalent of ~$500 off the purchase price of a new furnace. Since the condenser coil above the old furnace wasn't installed properly (the drain pipe was too narrow and clogged), the old furnace was rusted out, and I think dripping water had fried the electronics in the broken component twice already. I was tired of that furnace. Incidentally, A.B. MAY fixed it the last time and did nothing to even investigate the rust. Plus, they incorrectly installed a new water panel in my humidifier, which caused it to leak water all over the back part of the basement. Needless to say, I was not happy with A.B. MAY.

Still, I had Neal Harris and A.B. MAY out to give me quotes on a new furnace, just for kicks. Neal Harris started their furnaces at $2775 for a standard 80% furnace, and an 80% 2-stage variable speed furnace was $4180. Not what I was hoping to spend. A.B. MAY's prices were $1790 and $3593 for the same type of furnaces. Still a bit pricey, really. My friend, Brian, recommended ISSA Heating, Cooling & Plumbing, and their prices were $1650 and $2550. What they lacked in professionalism (and there was a definite lack, there), they made up in price, confidence, personality, and trust-inspiring behavior.

So, I ended up spending $2550 to fix something A.B. MAY should have fixed last year, but the new furnace will allow me to get a high-efficiency heat pump next year or so. Overall, I haven't had too much stress over spending that money, so I'd call it a good purchase.

My Cell Phone

I've known for a long time that my cell phone is old and out of date. I've taken pride in my ability to talk to people on such an ancient device. I've even learned to text on it! I still don't think a phone needs a built-in digital camera, mp3 player, or whatever else is available on cell phones these days - all I do is talk (and now a bit of text) on it!

However, the other day I was fiddling with it absentmindedly. One of the things I do is to flick the antenna out and back in. Well, my phone has gotten so old that one of the people I was with laughed that my phone even had an antenna. I realize that extending the antenna likely never had any effect, and was their to make previous generations more comfortable with the high-tech devices, but it has served me well as a little doodad to twirl and otherwise play with. It pains me ever so slightly to know that my next phone will almost assuredly not have such a useless game included in its construction.

I have no deeper point to make - I just thought it was a rather amusing situation/observation. Also, my cats are still adorably cute.

President Elect Barack Obama

Holy fuck; he is inspiring.

Edit @11:16PM: I completely forgot about Biden during that speech, and was surprised to see him walking out on stage.

Wal-Mart Lost

Today, I wore one of my Tech-Ed shirts. It has the word "LOST" printed on the front in the style of the TV show, but it's actually talking about "OnPath For SharePoint" being "Never lost." I had wondered a couple points during the day as to what people thought about me based on a first glance at my shirt.

When I went to Wal-Mart tonight for my regular grocery shopping, I found out. As I was exiting the store, the greeter girl commented on the fact that she never understood the show "Lost." I replied that my shirt wasn't actually about the TV show - that it was referring to some technology or other, so I didn't know what Lost was about. She then finished her previous thought, apparently, saying that it was a "Lost show" for her. I concluded the exchange by saying that I didn't really know what the technology was, either, so I was "lost" on both accounts.

Anyway, it was a puntastic conversation, even if it really only used variations on just the one pun. For next time, I suppose we'll have to work on our creativity. Mostly, I was just impressed with the enthusiastic outgoing nature of the new girl.

My failure as a homeowner

So, a couple weeks ago, my failure as a homeowner became official. The neighbor across the street came over and rang the doorbell one Sunday morning while I was asleep. Carrie answered the door, and the neighbor gave her some local church material, then asked if she (Carrie) would mind if she (the neighbor) weeded the front landscaping. Of course Carrie didn't mind, so I woke up to a weeded front garden!

Obviously, this worked out well for me - I got some free yard work. However, I still do feel bad about the whole thing. I asked my dad what the appropriate response was - do I offer computer help in return? Do I pretend nothing ever happened but take better care of things in the future? Do I send a fruit basket? He agreed that not making a big deal out of it was probably the best course of action for now.

And of course, this is just one of my many failures in homeownership. I will skip the documentation of those for now...until they reach ridiculous proportions.