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Archive for August, 2008

Training class/house sale/misc

August 28th, 2008 at 04:01 am

A good result of that terrible co-worker incident I blogged about a while ago was that my supervisor's boss got pissed off and told me to find a training class anywhere in the country and get my butt to it. That was 2 weeks ago tomorrow and I started the class in Chicago on Monday! It is a good class. I am learning Java (YEAH) which is awesome. I've never done any object oriented programming before, and I've tried to teach myself from books a few times and I just didn't get it. Now I'm getting it!

So, the company is paying for airfare, hotel, rental car, food, and I think mileage. Here is the mileage policy:
Mileage to and from the airport will not be reimbursed unless it is above the normal mileage an employee travels to work.

I looked on Google maps for the travel distance between our north house and work and our north house and the airport. It is 165 miles to work and 168 miles to the airport. I am going to submit 336 miles (roundtrip) and see if they pay it. I think that is what the policy says...what do you think? 336 miles? Or 6 (the difference between the two roundtrip)?

Good news is, if that is paid for, I just got a free week! I've only been spending money on gas and food recently, so if they pay for those things, this will help get me back on track.

Ok, as for the house. They did the inspection and found a few things that needed fixed...asked me to fix the 220 outlet behind the stove (I have a gas stove in there now) and a few plumbing things. Electrician came over and checked the outlet...and it already works (?). So, he is going to send something about that fact and I get to pay him $60 for it Frown I had a cousin of my dad's come over and look at the plumbing (he is a licensed plumber in the area) and he kinda laughed about the things they were asking for, but said that other things that weren't up to code would have cost more to fix than what they asked for, so we just agreed to do it. He said it would cost $250 to do it (I think he was going to just charge me parts...what a great guy!) But, we had it lined up for him to go over last Saturday and do it, and my RE agent called Friday and said the buyer doesn't want the stuff fixed...they think that they can get their family to do it and save all of us money. Awesome!

Bad part is that the house has termites. I think that all houses in Kansas either has had termites or will get termites. You just have to treat it and go on. So, that is going to be around $500. We budgeted $200 in our estimate of repairs, so we'll be getting a little less than we thought, but still, I am so ready to sell this house!

I have to get serious about packing stuff up and ready to move. I think DH and his mom are coming down the weekend after Labor Day to help, so I need to go through a lot of the stuff to see if I need it and if it will fit in the north house. We are closing Sept 11.

Mom and Dad sold some of my cows last week because they were getting out and a brand new 5' barbed wire fence couldn't hold them. We don't need those kind of cows around. But, the sale barn misspelled my new last name. I am going to have to call them tomorrow and see if they can cut new checks and make it out to DH so he can go pick them up and deposit them...we have a big co-op bill this month (ok, who am I kidding. We have a normal co-op bill this month, but it is a lot of money) and if we don't pay off last month's bill before the end of the month they charge 18% interest! So, like a really really bad credit card. This was unexpected income, so it will go to the co-op bill and if there is any left over, pay off some of the line of credit.

I can't wait for this house to sell. That will free up about $1000 a month!

Offer on house!

August 12th, 2008 at 05:04 am

Yeah! Got an offer on the house and a verbal agreement (signing the contract tomorrow). I bought the house for $87,000 two years ago. The final offer that we have verbally agreed on is $88,400, but I am paying up to $4000 on their closing costs. After everything else, (RE agent fee, document processing crap, etc) I'll get about $12,000 plus some back from the escrow.

When I sold my Texas house, I got $23,700 equity out of it. I paid off some credit cards and loans that I had used to fix up that house and had $17,500 left to put towards the second mortgage on this house. That paid off the second mortgage the month after I got that loan. I've been paying on the first mortgage for two years now.

A little disappointed with only walking away with $12,000. And that is if he doesn't ask for any repairs on the house...well, $200 in repairs is figured in on that amount. But if anything is wrong, I doubt $200 will fix much of anything.

We are supposed to close September 4. We now have to figure out how much of this stuff will fit in the up north house and how much we're going to have to get rid of (or how much stuff up north we will have to get rid of).

$9900 is earmarked for the land payment in December. So, $2000 to help pay some bills right away, plus the escrow back from the mortgage company.

Also, I'll be getting rid of the following budget items per month:
$750 mortgage payment
$100 phone/internet
$150 natural gas
$050 electricity
$075 home owner's insurance
$050 water/sewer/trash
----
$1175 per month

The first few months without this payment will be paying down credit card and line of credit (since the wheat hailed out, I haven't been able to pay off the credit card. That is the first thing to tackle. Then the line of credit - $3000 on it right now.)

I'll be adding $100 per month to my budget for "rent" to a friend of mine at work. She is going to rent me a room for the three nights I am down here for $25 a week.

*********************

Had a tough time with the cows this weekend. It rained a LOT this weekend (my parents 6 miles south of us had 5" on Friday night) and some of the ditches became rivers. It took out some fences, so we were out trying to fix up a fence that would keep them off the road, but because the ground was so soggy, we couldn't put any posts in the ground. Finally got that set of cows so they wouldn't bother that corner, and went to check another set. 18 pairs plus the bull were gone! Finally found them over 2 miles away, so DH chased them on foot while I was in the pickup. The bull wasn't with the cows, but we found him in another guy's pasture just to the south of us. Couldn't get him in on foot or 4-wheeler (he is BIG...like 4000 lbs!) This picture isn't our bull, but ours is big like this:


Fixed the fence so the cows wouldn't get out again, and called Dad and he brought over two horses the next morning to get him in. After a couple of hours of hard riding, we finally coaxed him out the gate and into our pasture. (I have to say, I'm proud of myself...chasing a bull is not an easy thing to do, and even though Dad was coaching me I did pretty good and we did get it done. Those big boys are used to getting their way, so sometimes you have to leave them alone for a while and try another day if they get too obstinate).

After that, we were putting the 4-wheeler away and DH asked if I wanted to go look at the soybeans with him. Ah, yes, the farm date. Smile Actually, it was nice. Nice to see good beans and nice to be riding around together thinking about our future. I've been seeing the beans by the road and most of them are over knee high, maybe up to mid-thigh high on some of them (I'm 5'6", so mid-thigh high on me, for a reference). The ones he went and took me to see on Saturday were up past my hips! And bean pods all up and down the stalks. AND more flowers indicating that they are going to be getting even taller. Yeah!

Time for a little prayer: Oh, God, please, let us have a good soybean crop this year!

DH says that these beans would probably be ready to cut by the end of September. We have other beans that were planted into the wheat stubble after that disaster of a harvest we had and those won't be ready until the end of October. Hope we keep getting good rain, and then it warms up so the beans and milo can finish maturing!

The rain has been hurting our haying this year. We have lost almost a full month because of the rain. Hard to pay off the equipment when we can't do the work to pay it off. So, cuss the rain for haying, like the rain for crops. Good thing I'm an optimist!

You, sir, are an ***

August 6th, 2008 at 06:08 am

Warning. This post will contain many, many cusswords. If you don't like cusswords, don't continue reading.
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So, I don't know how to code in Java. I'm supposed to be going to a class so I can learn it, but my company hasn't found one for me yet. The application that I am in charge of has an API interface that uses java to initiate it, so we have to have someone in another group write that part for us.

He has written about 10 before now. So, he needed to write another one, and sent me an email saying it was done and in a particular folder. It was in a different folder than the rest of the 10 were in. I wrote him back to ask, "can we move that to the folder everything else is in?" He would have to change the code to use the other folder, but nothing terrible, I don't think. He wrote back "no." that's it. that was his only response.

Think of it like this. You have all your tools in the garage. Except, randomly, the hammer. It goes in the drawer by the kitchen sink. You know this...you might forget, but after searching in the garage for 10 minutes, you will remember again. But if someone else has to use the hammer, they will look and look for it in the garage and not find it. If you are on vacation, the hammer will never be found.

All the code should be in the same place and implemented the same way so if someone has to modify it, they will know where to look. Or, if there is a reason that it needs to be somewhere else, you should document it so someone else will know why.

So, since he is only one cube row away from me, I went to ask him why.
Him: That is how the code is written and I'm not going to change it.
Me: Can you tell me why?
Him: No
Me: Why not?
Him: If you want to change it, you change it. I am done. It has to go in that folder.
Me: Is there a technical Java reason it has to go there
Him: Yes and no
Me: Why?
Him: I'm not telling
(yes, he says that. I'm not telling. What are you, 3?)
Me: I need to know so I can document it.
Him: The code is done. I'm not touching it.
...argue, argue, argue...
Me: You are unbelievable. I can't believe you won't tell me why.
Him: (turns around and ignores me)

I go into my boss's office and say "JW is an ass". She asks what is wrong, and I tell her the little exchange we just had.

She takes me to his boss's office and explains the situation. He laughs. Not at me, but at the situation. He tries to explain that this guy is an ass, that he has always been an ass, and that we won't be able to change his attitude.

I don't give a fuck what his attitude is. He can cuss me the whole time he is fixing it. But there is the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. The way he has it set up is wrong, and the way I want to do things is right. I think so, my boss thinks so and his boss thinks so. Common sense and prior implementation thinks so too.

His boss says he goes on these power trips and gets obstinate and makes a huge fucking deal about this shit when it will take 5 minutes and less typing than this sentence to fix it. Fine. Be an ass. Just fix my code.

Oh, and because I don't think my users should be punished because some guy is measuring his dick, I did try to implement it the way he said to. Here's the kicker...IT DOESN'T WORK. I made sure to let all parties involved know that one. I also tried to fix it so it would work, and I couldn't.

Scary numbers

August 5th, 2008 at 03:29 am

Ok, for the past few weeks I've been gathering all the farm receipts, sorting them, categorizing them, taping them to paper and scanning them in. I am current up to last weekend. The numbers are truly frightening:

Accounting (if we didn't have the farm, we would do our own taxes): $290
Business meetings (ok, suppers out. But we did talk about plans for the farm at every one of them): $272.79
Chemicals (herbicide, fungicide, etc for crops): $367.09
Custom Hire: $660.41
Feed (for cattle, including grain for cull cows/calves, mineral, salt blocks, etc): $3429.37
Fertilizer: $1447.84
Fuel: $5947.79
Insurance: $940.52
Pasture Rent: $1050.42
Repairs: $8950.10
Supplies: $4017.03
Taxes (land): $243.47
Travel Expenses: $230.54
Utilities: $161.88
Vet: $420.08

Total: $28,429.34.

This doesn't include cell phone bills, mileage on my vehicle, some of the insurance that isn't included yet, interest on loans, 3 bulls and a cow, and depreciation on equipment. We bought a $57,000 swather this year that we are going to depreciate over a few years,a $3000 4 wheeler this year, along with the cows, tractor and baler that we have gotten in years past.

I'll be able to write off my house mortgage interest, maybe his house interest, and maybe student loan interest, and probably half the internet because it is required for my job. Other than that, no other personal deductions.

There will be farm income to offset those expenses, but I haven't figured that up yet.

I can't believe Repairs are so much. The next step is to go through all the repairs and see if they are general maintenance type repairs or if they are a sign of equipment that needs to be someone else's headache.

I did expect Fuel to be that high. That is all farm fuel, for pickups, tractors, swathers, 4 wheeler, combine, etc.