Another Barrier

We got a big "NO" from the architectural committee on our proposed garage orientation. I can't help but wonder whether they really understood the intention or could visualize it properly. It really does seem like it would work well (reversed from the drawing) against the layout and topography of the lot relative to the rest of the street. We are going to pursue it with them further to see about that.

Perhaps we should have submitted a more finished looking drawing or an elevation or something.

But these things cost money to have done you know.

How Important is the Internet?

Have you thought about this recently? For most of the people I know it is an integral part of their lives. And our dependence on it is increasing every day.

So what would you do without it? What would you read or watch? How would you communicate? Can you imagine actually paying for a long distance call?

We've hit a SNAFU. I sort of saw this one coming, but held out hope that by the time it was properly investigated there'd be a solution. The property we're looking at is so far out in the boonies there is no broadband Internet available. The choices are basically dial up or something from a company called HughesNet. The good news is that HughesNet does qualify as broadband, so it can be done. The bad news is they are the only game in town if you want a fast connection, and they know it, so it is priced accordingly. To get speeds near what I've been used to it will cost us almost $200 per month, and they still have lots of limitations...like a 500 MB per day maximum. Yikes, can't even download a whole movie with that. And they have a pretty horrible reputation for outages and downtime...probably exacerbated by how much people are paying them. It's satellite based so a hard rain (gee, we never get those in Indiana, eh?) is going to cause problems, etc.

There are cheaper options, but the speeds get down well below what we've had for the last 10 years or so. We're still investigating whether there might be some other options, but it doesn't look good. Can we really take this step backwards in our connectivity? And can we really rationalize that kind of money to stay reasonably connected?

Sigh...

You'd think this day and age we'd be a little further along with this stuff.

Drove out to the boonies and looked at a few houses today. I found one listing and Liane found a couple that held a glimmer of promise, two of which had an open house. They didn't suck, but as usual they each had something about them that was a show stopper. One open house was on a lake. Generally I'm not a huge fan of houses on lakes because even though there are quite a few lakes around here the houses on them are priced at a premium. Today's wasn't so bad, but it would have required a lot of work to get it where we'd be comfortable. Ultimately being right on a lake is not a benefit to me. It can be nice for an afternoon here and there, but eventually the drone of the motors on the watercraft would get annoying. It sure is aesthetically pleasing looking out over a body of water like that though.

Ultimately it's hard to assess exactly where the value is. I know we will pay a premium for a custom house, but it will be how we want it (more or less), whereas with an existing house we will end up spending a substantial amount on upgrades and modifications to bring it close to where we want it. And then you still have a used house, with who knows what about to give out in the next year or three.

These trips through houses can be useful for ideas though. The other open house had a couple of simple features we liked. The first was a set of double doors leading to the main storage area in the basement. I like this. Small enough to be low impact for one person to get through, but big enough to get larger items out without a hassle.

The other was this idea of having lockers and shoe shelves in the garage. I don't think I would have gone with white here, or done as many, but the basic idea is worth pursuing.