NealGrosskopf.com - Blog

My House Was Violated

Neal Grosskopf — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:49:20 CST

Tonight my house was shown to some people. I decided to get some groceries to waste some time while they looked at my house. I got to my house around 5:56 and noticed there were still cars in my driveway "perhaps these people are interested" I said to myself noticing that they were to only be there for 30 minutes. I then pounded another lap around the sub-division. On lap 2 I noticed they were still there, 10 minutes later. "Gez, they really must be interested" I thought. On lap three 6:13, no cars, so I pulled into my driveway.

It dawned on me that snow+tracks = websites+analytics. I looked down at the ground and could see that yes, there were two cars in my driveway (which I already knew) but I also could see that one car only had 1 set of tracks going to its driver's side door while the other car had 3 tracks, one set very small, and two others going to the front of the car. Being the analytical god that I am at work, I deduced that yes, it was a couple, perhaps like Emily and I but, with a small child. The perfect match for my house. This instantly made me think of what I do at work from day to day. I know that people are leaving tracks on our websites (via log files) but I don't know them personally and I can't identify them, only certain things about them.

It was quite depressing to drive by my house a couple of times, seeing all the lights on, with cars that aren't mine in the driveway, knowing people I don't know are walking around in it. Sort of smacked me in the face that, hey...this isn't always going to be my home, and that was a depressing thought. Call me materialistic, but being a homeowner makes me feel really good. I feel like I've worked hard to get this house (put up with high school, put up with tech, put up with lakeland, got married) and soon much of that won't matter, unless I can find Emily 2.0 or some other poor sap like myself in a similar situation.

It almost felt like my house was being burglarized or something, I don't know, I should probably just seek counseling on my infatuation with my house, who knows? And no, I don't care about your opinion or suggestion on how I can keep it. I've heard dozens of people act like they know, and they're all wrong. Plain and simple I need another $300+ more a month, at a minimum to keep it and that isn't going to happen. Heck, I was just told at work that our raises are being delayed so I might as well forget about that being an option.

Who knows, perhaps we won't have a job anymore in the next 3 months, then my house will definitely not be mine, it will be Associated Bank's house then. So far our company has laid of 64 office employees out of an original 400 or so and we've lost one in my immediate team of 4 people now down to 3. I really, really, really hope I don't loose my job as well.

Fin.

Deer Hunting '08

Neal Grosskopf — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:51:26 CST

Well, I got back from deer hunting for the first time in my life. I probably should have started hunting much earlier, I mean my own sister has been since she was like 12 and my Dad always has. Anyway's I sat out in the woods Saturday and Sunday and had a good time with my Dad.

It was really cold Saturday morning, and it probably didn't help that we woke up at 4:30 am. I didn't see any deer in the morning. Then in the afternoon I saw a 4-6 point buck and I took a shot at him. I hit him in the upper shoulder (because I was trying to pass the bullet through his shoulder and into the heart and lungs area). The bullet apparently ricocheted off the deer's shoulder and he took off running. My Dad and I tracked him for probably an hour or hour and a half through the woods but got stuck and couldn't track him anymore.

It was really exciting to see a deer walking around without knowing I was watching. I had probably 30 seconds of time before I shot and it was really nerve racking. Then on Sunday I saw two does at two separate times but didn't have a good shot on them. So I didn't bring a deer home but I had a good time.

In other random news, I've been listening to Bob Marley non-stop lately. It all started one night because I was sort of feeling like I was Will Smith from the movie I Am Legend (you know where he's more or less the last man on earth...alone) and I got that Bob Marley song from that movie stuck in my head - Three Little Birds. Then I was about to download that song when I realized I had the greatest hit CD all along (who'd a thunk?). Since then it's been the only music I've been listening to.

I was always under the impression that reggae music was the inspiration for the ska music genre (which I am a huge fan of) but after a little research I discovered that ska came first and reggae actually was an off shoot of ska. Then later in the 80's ska and punk become joined at the hip which is a strange marriage if you ask me.

In house news, I had an open house this weekend and I guess some people were also shown my house as well. I'm sure all the noisy neighbors went through my house to try to figure out what's going on. It seems like the worst possible time to have to sell a house, but there's not a great deal I do about that. Hopefully I can keep my head above water long enough to sell it for a reasonable price. Things definitely aren't like they used to be where Emily and I spent money like no tomorrow. Now I have to carefully evaluate every purchase I make.

Tonight I sacrificed a bunch of food I needed to buy so I could buy a snow shovel. It's funny how little snow shovels are appreciated until you need them. This morning all I had was a small 3 foot handle, skinny shovel to shovel out my driveway. It took me a good 20 minutes to do a really bad job but I got my car out. I can only imagine what this morning would have been like had blondie still lived here. Chaos!

Fin

Jack Handey Visited My Website!

Neal Grosskopf — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:46:43 CST

The other day I got an email sent from my contact form on my website. It was from a comedian known as Jack Handey who has been featured on Saturday Night Live dozens of times, and who has written several books. Now it wasn't a good email but interesting nonetheless:

You have to take my Deep Thoughts off your site right away.

It's copyrighted material. You giving away my property for free hurts my book sales. Is that concept difficult for you to understand?

If you'd like, I'll have my attorney contact you. But then that'll cost me money, and he'll have to get that money from you.

Again, please remove the Deep Thoughts immediately.

Sincerely,
Jack Handey

While I hoped I would hear from Jack Handey in another fashion it's still cool that some famous person visited my website. I of course removed all of the quotes I had of his, on my website. Being the Google Analytics freak that I am I wondered, what sort of computer setup does Mr. Handey have. Using GA's sweet new segmentation feature I can find this out pretty easily.

Mr. Handey did a Google search for the phrase "message president jack handey outside" which really doesn't make any sense as is, but he ended up on my site where he proceeded to view 9 of my pages. That's sort of the fun thing about web analytics is I can make assumptions, and find out what people are doing on websites that I have analytics on (at work or at home). People generally assume that what they do online is private but it really isn't and crazy people like me can figure those things out assuming we have the data to do so. I always laugh when some idiot gets caught using a proxy to do something illegal online (like hacking Sarah Palin's Yahoo! account).

Anyway's here's Mr. Handey's computer setup:

ISP: Comcast
City & State: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Browser: Safari 523.12
Operating System: Macintosh
Screen Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Flash Version: 9.0 r19
Java Installed: Yes
Screen Colors: 24 bit
Visited My Website: 2 PM, November 9th for about 8 minutes and 48 seconds

I'd like to apologize to Mr. Handey who I admire and find very funny. I essentially just copied a bunch of his quotes from some other website that probably did the same thing. It seems that too often people search Google for one of his quotes and ended up on my website (which they can't do via his books because books are not searchable). Either way I didn't profit from this other than answering some random person's question.

And now deep thoughts...by Jack Handey...

Life In Reverse

Neal Grosskopf — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:30 CST

It feels like lately my life is going in reverse. Usually the general course of a life after high school is, go to college, get girlfriend, graduate, get married, buy house etc. Now I feel like I'm sort of back at "graduate college" again which occurred about a year and a half ago for me. I personally feel like getting "back on the horse" and see if I can't get life moving forward again but that will probably be a problem that I can't control 100%.

Last night I met with a realitor to put my house up for sale (I should have a link I can post on my website in a couple of days). The house will officially be up for sale starting next Tuesday. I believe Emily came over today and removed some of her remaining things as well. After that I need to clean my house up, mostly due to damage the dog and cats did to it (or myself in one case). My Mom and Dad are coming over this weekend for a morning to help clean things up. If all goes to plan I'll probably have an open house next weekend while I'm gone deer hunting (or just sitting up in the stand with my Dad). I hope the house doesn't need to be for sale too long, mainly so I can get it behind me and start focusing on other things. It would also be nice to not have to stress my self out everyday about how much money I do or don't have.

For most of this week I've been troubling myself with what I'm going to do this weekend. It just seems like if I'm sitting at home along, nothing positive comes out of it. Usually I'm obssesively checking my email, phone or facebook with no results. I seem to be the happiest when other people are around but I don't have a great deal of friends in the Oshkosh area. As it stands it doesn't look like I'm doing anything this weekend, which sucks. I guess after having such a top notch time last weekend I don't know what I'll do with myself this weekend. So far it seems that just about everybody is busy with one thing or another or would rather not hang out with me.

Yeah, this is quite the self loathing blog isn't it? Well hit me up tonight, Saturday, or Sunday if any of you 5 people out there that read my blog are free.

Armageddon is Nigh

Neal Grosskopf — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:08:09 CST

Doesn't it seem like every time you check the news, another company is going out of business or laying off half their employees? Heck, last week my own company laid off 30 corporate employees, 2 which were in my own department! It's really terrible, and I really feel for the people that got let go. It sucks!

I am almost to the point of advocating, people withdraw all of their money from their savings and invest in the 4 G's: Guns, Gold, Groceries & Generators. Yes, no matter how bad of a depression the country gets into, the 4 G's will always be of value even when the US dollar is only worth the paper it is printed on.

Another reason 'Armageddon is Nigh' is that I am getting a divorce. Yes, unfortunately Emily and I can not work out our differences and we're in the process of splitting up all of our possessions. She is no longer living at our house and today she is coming over and removing a lot of her possessions.

If anybody cares, I'm doing alright regarding the whole situation. When I'm alone I sometimes feel bad, other times I'm ok, but I've been trying to stay active with friends and family and other interests as much as possible. I've been playing a lot of guitar lately and that has helped me relieve some stress.

I've pretty much convinced myself already that I'll have to sell the house. I really don't want to but it just seems like it needs to be done. It also makes for one less issue to debate about in these post-marriage times. Things will be rough for both Emily and I, financially and emotionally but hopefully we can get through the process quickly and as painlessly as possible.

Also, something many people probably didn't know, but I had applied for a job in Green Bay. Had I got the job I would have fared a lot better and probably been able to keep my house but I was told today that I won't be getting it. I already told my current employer that I had interviewed so this isn't some double-secret information coming out. I always try to looking on the bright side of whatever lousy situation I'm in, and I guess all I can say about this is that now it's made my future choices a lot easier to make, like whether to keep the house or not, or what city I should live in.

Well probably not the most upbeat blog post I've ever written but I feel like I might as well just get lay it all out there.

Props go out to the Holyland.

Fin.

Halloween Roundup 2008

Neal Grosskopf — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:40:29 CST

Well it's Halloween time once again. I've always enjoyed this time of the year because of all the great movies that are on TV, half which I already own, but like most people I watch them on TV for some reason.

Last weekend was our annual Terror on the Fox get together. Tyler and some of his friends came along. Overall it was a fun time although it seems to get more and more expensive each year. This year they had a ticket for $32 that allowed you to skip the whole line and go to the haunted house right away. The funny thing is the haunted house only takes about 15 minutes to get through. We opted for the $14 wait in line ticket which consists of standing in line for about an hour or hour and a half. I figure if you calculate the amount of time you get to spend with your friends the waiting in line ticket is a better value.

The night before Terror on the Fox, Tyler and I went to see Saw V in the theaters. For the past 5 years there has been a new Saw movie release each Halloween. At this point in the series the plot is inheritably getting harder to make sense of because of all the events that have unfolded in the prior 4 movies. Regardless I'll still go and see any future releases of the series. Look to my reviews section for a review of the movie soon.

Also, an update on my site statistics. Since October 9th, I've seen almost 10,000 visits on my site! I've also fell in love with web analytics again since I'm in the beta group for Google Analytics. The new version allows me to segment all my statistics whether it's by browser version, keyword searched, referring site etc. It's really awesome and brings a new level to "stalking my website visitors".

Well that's about all for now.

I'm Famous - Take III

Neal Grosskopf — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:55:46 CST

Completely ignoring the fact that I went on vacation and I am home, I going to blog about something completely different because it seems worth of talking about than going all the way to Florida for the first time.

I was nonchalantly checking my Google Analytics reports today to see how I faired while I was out Wednesday through Saturday. At first I thought there was something wrong, See below:

It almost seemed like GA lost all my prior analytics history up until a few days ago. Upon closer investigation I found out that I was linked to from one of the premier CSS Gallery websites: CSS Beauty. So there sits my CSS Browser Hacks article on the home page of CSS Beauty, how exciting! Judging by other articles on there, my link should sit there for a couple of weeks which means I should receive a fair deal of exposure over the next couple weeks.

In two full days my website has seen 2,703 visits and 3,815 page views which is close to what I have been getting in a full month. I was also featured on the home page of delicious for a brief period of time it appears because I've experienced a great deal of inbound links from the home page of delicious.com. I've since been demoted to the CSS category page and a couple other category pages.

Because I was featured on such a great site, I've also seen inbound links from all other sources. Currently subtracting traffic from search, I have 222 distinct inbound links to my CSS browser hacks page in the last 2 days. Probably the only unfortunate thing about this is my link was posted on a Friday which is usually the least trafficked day of the week for websites, so I'm curious if I will get more traffic on Monday, which is one of the more popular days of the week or if it will start to go down again.

On a side note, I'm extremely surprised my website was even able to stay up during these events since it runs off of a puny Microsoft Access database, so if Monday's traffic trends up higher my site might just go down completely.

Well that's all for now. I will post another blog Monday or Tuesday night regarding my trip to Florida. Peace.

Not Much New

Neal Grosskopf — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:22:28 CST

Well not a great deal of news to report lately. I bought a new video game called SPORE. It is from the creators of The Sims and Sim City. The game is actually quite a bit of fun despite all the bad reviews it is getting from computer nerds due to the software piracy features the game has. If people could look past that they would see that it's a lot of fun.

I haven't made many updates on my website lately because I've been busy developing two other sites. My site has been getting a lot of traffic still despite the lack of updates I have been making to it. For September which isn't over yet, I've already received more than 2,000 visits to my site which averages over 80 visits per day. Not too shabby eh?

For all those wondering how our dog Blondie is doing; she is doing just fine now. We took her to the vet the other day to get some more vaccinations so hopefully she should be better from now on.

Also my trip to Fort Lauderdale is coming up soon. I would be more excited but it probably won't be that exciting. Our stupid laptop died the other day. When I press the power button all I get is a flashing red light on the console and it doesn't turn on. I've tried hooking it up to the outlet with and without the battery and it still doesn't turn on. I would be easier to troubleshoot it but I don't have any extra batteries or power cables laying around. I wouldn't care that the laptop is dead so much, but I wanted to bring that with me when I traveled so I would have something to do other than sitting in my hotel room, alone, watching cable TV.

Fin

Our Dog Is Sick

Neal Grosskopf — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:59:13 CST

Last night our dog started barking like crazy around 2 a.m. I did the usual and took her out to the bathroom. After putting her back in her cage she continued to bark. I tried calming her down and finally couldn't take it and moved her to the main floor. After awhile of her barking a lot there, I resorted to putting her in the garage in her kennel. At that point I couldn't here her barking anymore (it had been over an hour of this at 2-3 a.m. in the morning).

About an hour later I came back down to check on her, only to find she had puked and pooped in her small kennel. I took her out of her cage and let her roam the garage and in a few minutes she pooped in the garage as well. By now she had been acting really strange, and all disorientated. I went back to bed with an hour to go before waking up for work.

During our usual morning routine she ended up pooping blood on the bathroom floor. Emily ended up taking her to the vet and the vet suspected it was the Parvo Virus, which is a virus that kills roughly 90% of puppies that become infected and are not treated and about 80% of puppies infected at all. The symptoms continued for most of the day and she has been acting more normal again but still hasn't been acting the same. To top all of that off, she swallowed half of a small bone tonight as I had her out going to the bathroom.

The vet did call back today telling us that the test results for Parvo were negative, meaning according to the test, she isn't infected but there is the possibility of the test being wrong since she could be in the early stages still.

Parvo sounds like a really nasty virus, almost the AIDS of animals if you will, with such a high mortality rate, so our dog could potentially die this month. Dogs that are infected with it can be hospitalized for 2-4 days hooked up to an I.V. and all sorts of other equipment but at the same time, that could cost $1000+ (probably much more).

I guess as I disliked taking care of the dog when it wasn't sick and all the stuff it destroyed, but I still feel bad now that it is sick and I don't want it to die.

I'll post a reply to this blog tomorrow if she has improved at all. We're going to take her back to the vet tomorrow if she hasn't improved. Hopefully poor Bondie gets bette : (

I'm Going To Florida

Neal Grosskopf — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 21:27:20 CST

I just booked plane tickets to Fort Lauderdale, Florida today and I'm being sent there for a conference for work on October 8th - 10th. This will be my first time navigating airports on my own and flying on a plane on my own. The only other time I've done the whole "airline thing" was when my parents and I went to Mexico when I was younger. It will definitely be an adventure much like going to Chicago was earlier this year.

One of the cool things about going to Florida is the location. The hotel I'm staying at is right on the beach, and I could have swore I've drove by my hotel in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or at least something very similar to it. I've posted a few links below for all to see my exact location. The street view one gives a really interesting picture of the place:

Despite the scenery there are a few drawbacks to this trip:

I'm going alone, without Emily and I've learned from my Chicago trip that traveling alone is boring and lonely. It would be fun to go with Emily.
I'm going to a location that has an active hurricane season during October and I'm 100 yards from the ocean.
According to Wikipedia Fort Lauderdale has the second highest AIDS rate in America.
According to Wikipedia Fort Lauderdale was voted "America's top gay resort area"...lol.

Okay, call me closed minded, or whatever you want, but at the end of the day, I'm still a gun toting redneck hillbilly from Wisconsin so I'm allowed to find 3 & 4 somewhat amusing. Personally #2 worries me the most since there seems to be an endless stream of hurricanes in the past few years and I'm yards away from the ocean. On the other hand I should be able to snap a few nice photos of the sun rising over the ocean (blasted west coast and their ability to take sunset photos rather than sunrise). Despite some of the negative things I'm still excited to go!

In other news my website was rocking and rolling yesterday. I reached a new high for visits in one day with 184 visits mainly because I was linked to from a German web designer on an article I wrote called CSS Hacks. I haven't even bothered writing any new tech articles lately because the CSS Hacks article has really been bringing in the traffic.

In site news I've updated my wallpapers page because it was taking forever to load. I was at a family friends house this weekend and took some really awesome photos so make sure you click through that section of my website.

In house/puppy/etc. news unpacking is pretty close to finished. I still don't completely feel like I live here though. Our puppy Blondie is also doing a wonderful job at destroying things in our house. Since we got her I've felt a bit more stressed out than normal partially because of all her accidents and having to wake up numerous times to take her out and it has caused some tension between Emily and I.

Also Emily and I bought a cheap desk to use for a computer in our upstairs living room only to find out once we had it assembled and everything that my stupid secondary computer is dead. The darn thing won't even power on! I've tried different power supplies on it and I've checked all the cables to make sure they're in all the way. My conclusion is that the motherboard is dead which sucks because it's probably not worth replacing a motherboard on a 2 year old $200 eMachine. I currently have my junker 7 year old Gateway standing in for the eMachine but it won't be the same. So much for the computer desk...

Fin.

We Bought A Dog

Neal Grosskopf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:15 CST

Well if buying a house wasn't stressful enough we went out and bought a dog. We originally were going to get a dog from some people we found online in southern Wisconsin but they we taking long and were pricey. Then Emily found a breeder, ironically from New London for much less so we ended up going there and getting a Golden Retriever puppy from them. Check out my photo gallery for pictures of her.

She is 7 weeks old and we ended up naming her Blondie, mainly because she came to us when we called her by that name.

It hasn't been smooth sailing owning a dog so far. The first night I ended up waking up every 2 hours to take her outside. She has gone to the bathroom on our floor numerous times as well. She also feels the need to chew on things ranging from Emily's pants, the carpet, and wooden objects. We have taken measures to stop her from going to the bathroom on the floor and chewing on things but you can only do so much. It's sort of like being a full time baby sitter. Eventually she will get older and we won't have many problems anymore so it's not a big deal.

In house news we got the carpet in our basement replaced. That means that I can FINALLY set up the basement the way I want it, and it means I can FINALLY get my computer set up. It's been a couple of weeks of not using my computer at all so it feels good to get back on the "horse".

Mean while back at the carpet...I took our old carpet and laid it out flat in our extra rooms in the basement essentially converting them into 1/4 finished rooms. No more cold dirty cement floors for me when I'm doing laundry or storing junk in our basement anymore. It also means that our entire house has some sort of flooring on it! Go and vote on my new poll for our next house project.

Well it's getting late so I should be heading upstairs. Aidios!

We've Finally Moved Into Our House

Neal Grosskopf — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:00:02 CST

Well, after months of waiting I am finally blogging from my new house. We moved all our stuff into our garage last Saturday, and I've finally got my computer setup. Unfortunatly I'll have to undo the basement one more time for next week when we get carpet installed in our basement.

The move went well, although my body was quite sore at the end of the day of running all over the place. It's taking a bit longer to unpack because I have to bring everything in from the garage this time where before all our stuff would just be thrown into our apartment's living room.

It's great to finally be living in a house of my own. There is more responsibility with it but everything is all yours (or the banks until it's paid off).

To check out a video tour of our new house check out my open videos section of my website and also check out my photo gallery for some pictures I've posted.

I'd love to write more but I need to get ready for work.

The Finish Line Is Near And I Want A Gold

Neal Grosskopf — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:50:03 CST

We'll we're finally down to the wire. This is our last week before becoming home owners! It has been a long 6 months waiting for this. Other than maybe not having enough money after we make our down payment we are ready to move in.

Heck we even have our cable installation happening on Saturday! Unfortunately we're stuck in crappy Charter Cable/Internet territory now. After having Charter my whole life and then recently moving to Oshkosh (City Of) and having Time Warner, I can officially say that Charter sucks! Our monthly payment for Time Warner is $54. This is without any sort of special deal going on and includes the 99 channels of cable and regular ol' internet. With Charter they wanted to charge us $70 for the same thing! After I complained (although Emily would say "not enough") they lowered it to $60. The thing that makes me mad is why do I have to go through the hoops? With Time Warner the flat rate was always $54. There were no stupid deals I had with that and the price was less. With Charter I have the threaten to leave every 6 months, only to have to pay more.

The moral of the story here is don't move too far out of town that you end up in Charter-land. We're moving just on the border of Oshkosh, but we're technically not in Oshkosh (City Of). Perhaps Oshkosh will annex us in the future and we'll have the benefits of being with Time Warner again.

In other news we're pretty much packed up regarding our apartments. You can see by my photo gallery picture the chaos that ensues in our apartment right now. There is still quite a bit of "stuff" that we use from day to day that needs to be packed but we'll get to that Thursday night.

Speaking of thursday night, we're doing our walk-through of our house and also dropping off our new Speed Queen washer and dryer from my work.

Then Friday is the big day when we "officially" home owners (I'll post a video on my website giving everyone a guided tour).

Saturday is the big moving day and also the day we get our cable installed. It's so exciting to finally be doing this!

Anybody watching the Olympics? I feel like Emily and I are the only people on earth watching it. At work nobody is talking about it. This weekend we had the TV set on the Olympics the entire day. We probably watched 12 hours over the weekend. So far there have been some pretty exciting races going on so check those out!

Well that's all for now, wish me luck on the move.

Six Decade Old Cake

Neal Grosskopf — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:35:02 CST

I woke up this morning with my head spinning and my stomach turning. To quote Seinfeld I must have ate "A slice of cake from the wedding of King Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson, circa 1937, price--$29,000."

Well in all actuality, I don't know what I ate or if what I ate even matters. Nonetheless there was some throwing up going on this morning.So feel free to sing "get well, get well soon, we want you to get well" if you want...

I thought today was note worthy enough for a blog of it's own, even though I had recently wrote one this week. After waking up around 11 a.m. still feeling dizzy, I checked my email and noticed numerous emails from Emily. Apparently while I was recovering there was some madness occurring over our home loan. The evil private mortgage company decided we were not be trusted and decided to tack on another 2% to our down payment. How lovely of them to do, another $3,000 something we need to pull out of our butts in two weeks time.

The irony of the situation is the PMI company believed that we were risky to give the loan to, so they decided they "needed more money" from us. But what is funny, is now because they "need more money" they are actually making us MORE RISKIER(sic) because we will have virtually $0 dollars left in our savings account upon closing. THANKS! NOT! Apparently, people who have no money in their savings accounts are the right people to give loans to. No wonder our country is in a housing crisis. If they had just stuck with our regular percent down, we would be risk free loan applicants. So if you stop by our house and you noticed that the lights are off, candles are lit, and we're burning our front door to keep the place warm you will know why.

Well to be a bit more realistic, Emily and I will find some way to make it all work. We do have "enough money" for the down payment but that's about it. Over the next few weeks I have some potential places to get some more money i.e. side web jobs that I do, selling drugs, importing illegal's over the Canadian border (well not those last two) and Emily and I can probably budget ourselves a bit better as well. The worst part will be after we have the house.

Another annoying thing is, we were pretty much guaranteed that we would get the loan for our standard percent down, so knowing that we would have plenty of money left over, we started purchasing things for house. We already have purchased carpet and the installation which was a huge pain my butt to do no thanks to Lowe's. Had I known this was going to happen I would have happily postponed the carpet installation but what's done is done.

Well that's enough complaining for now, I am going back to my saltine crackers and stale 7-up.

The Countdown Begins

Neal Grosskopf — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:13:10 CST

Well it's only 17 more days to go and Emily and I are proud home owners. In the meantime there seems like a million things we need to do before we get there. We submitted our loan application last week and should be getting that back within the next few days. We had to order a washer & dryer from my company (since I can get a discount rate for them) and had to arrange a time to pick them up AND drop them off at our house BEFORE we will live there. We also had to arrange for our house to be inspected by Lowe's so that they could put carpet in our house when we finally own it. Also we had to get home owners insurance.

If all of that wasn't enough there's the packing and closing things up at our apartment like cleaning it etc. To make matters worse I have a few side jobs going on at home and my hands are slowly dying from carpal tunnel again. I woke up this weekend and my left wrist hurt a lot so I started using my right hand a bit more to give it a break, but of course now my right hand hurts as well. Perhaps I need a few more hands. Anyways I'm on a daily regiment of Tylenol and those stupid wrist/hand straps while I'm at home. Sooner or later I won't be able to do any real work anymore because I won't be able to type. (I realize that typing up a blog is contradictory to my whining, but yeah).

As far as other news, well there really isn't any, buying a house is pretty much the only headline right now. The countdown begins.

Life Is Getting Busy...Fast!

Neal Grosskopf — Wed, 9 Jul 2008 20:59:15 CST

Emily and I found out today that the people we are buying our house from would like to move the closing date to August 15th, down from August 25th. They now plan to be out of our house on August 6th (which is coming up really fast.) Not wanting to wait any longer than we have to, we accepted their proposal to move the closing date. What this means is that we will be living in our new house in about a month from now! Unfortunately with that comes packing... I have already started packing some things up tonight. I will probably start packing more stuff as the day progress. Currently I don't have a great deal of boxes but I am scouring the cardboard dumpster outside our apartment every so often for more boxes. We have yet to score a mortgage but we have an appointment scheduled for next Monday with a banker to finalize that. We're almost there!

My car (formally Emily's car) is in dire need of attention. The tires are really, really old, the steering wheel shakes when I drive it and the breaks are starting to squeal. I finally got off my procrastinating butt (which only seems to happen with car problems) and made an appointment at Fleet Farm for this weekend. I have so much stuff that needs to be done that they'll need to keep it for the entire day...lol.

In NG Designs news I am close to wrapping up a deal with another client which entails designing a second website for them. The previous website I did for them - Ultimart Convenience Stores - was finished in April. At the time it was one of the more challenging designs I've converted to HTML, but my latest incarnation of NealGrosskopf.com has now surpassed that.

Also Emily and I have decided to get a dog (pronounced pupppppppy if you're talking to Emily) It will be a Golden Retriever which we're getting from some people in Watertown, WI. I'm still not really hot on the idea of having a dog simply because they are more work than cats, but I'm Emily will be more than happy to take upon all the responsibilities of being a dog owner.

For the 4th of July I went up to Eagle River with my family. It was a pretty good time despite Emily not being there. I posted some great pictures in my Wallpapers section so go and check those out, and maybe download a few of them.

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Real Work

Neal Grosskopf — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:58:35 CST

Our department at work is moving to a new building. We've known about this for quite some time now but it has finally happened. It hasn't been too big of a deal for me since I've only been there since November and I don't have a lot of stuff to move (I only had 2 boxes compared to some people who have dozens).

Today was finally showtime, our department packed everything up and we (i.e myself and another guy) moved all our junk to the new building. It's been quite some time since I've done any "real work" i.e coming home from work with a sore back. In fact the last time I had a lousy job like that was when I worked at Piggly Wiggly for 5 years.

I think sometimes myself and probably other people under-appreciate our cushy jobs and coming home with a good feeling back rather than a sore one. It's nice to do a little real work every now and then to remind yourself that your job and work environment isn't all that bad.

It was also strange, because as I was wheeling boxes through our office with another guy, a lot of people would give me strange looks like "why is that office guy doing real work?" Almost like I should have more dignity than to lower myself to labor intensive work. I guess I just needed a reminder that I have a good job.

In other news Emily and I did our house inspection this weekend. It went well and there are no major problems with our house. We are both really excited to move in August 25th and can't wait (although I'm not all that excited about packing up our junk.)

I've been busy at home the past week with computer hardware related problems. I got a hardrive from my brother in law so not wanting it to go to waste, I've been trying my best to triple boot Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Kubuntu Linux. After turning our extra bedroom into a computer wasteland, I've finally found the right combination (I hope). In geek speak, I had to slipstream XP and SP2 together since my main PC has PCI express, and XP default won't work on PCI express without SP2 installed with it. I may write up an article on how I accomplished all of this in geek speak.

Fin.

Web Site Redesign Props

Neal Grosskopf — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:11:28 CST

Well it's been almost two weeks now since I redesigned my website. I must say that redesigning it has been a positive experience so far. My site traffic has increased 109% percent since the redesign thanks in part to several CSS design galleries picking up my website and posting it. I submitted my site to numerous gallery sites and almost gave up. Then last Sunday I submitted it to a few more and all of them added me on Monday. I'm so proud. I also smashed a new site visits record Monday hitting 150 visits in a single day! I followed that up yesterday with 107 visits which makes it the first time I've ever hit 100 visits two days in a row.

In house news, we have a home inspection set up for Saturday, June 28th. It sounds like our house wasn't flooded at all and survived the Oshkosh flood fine. Once we get the house inspected we will probably lock in a mortgage in early July. Then it's two more months until we move in officially! (Which is at the end of August). It's so exciting!

In work news I've been super busy. It's a good thing I got my website redesigned when I did because I have no more "mental bandwidth" when I get home (to quote Jason Irish). Most the things I am working on right now aren't going to end anytime soon so this will likely be a reoccurring theme throughout the summer for me.

Oshkosh Is Under Water

Neal Grosskopf — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:10:18 CST

What a day it was. At work we had to go down in our basement from 4:30 - 5:15 due to a tornado warning. There was hail and sideways rain. Then on the way home I could barely see anything.

Once in Oshkosh it got much worse. The entire stretch of South Park and 20th were flooded. Every intersection had at least a half a foot to a foot of water. My small cavalier was struggling to make it through it. See my photo gallery for a few photos of the chaos.

Once I arrived to 24th and Main (near Arty and Ed's) the water became too deep for my car and I had to back up. At this point I felt I might be stranded here because cars my size were literally stopped in the flooded water. After waiting there for 15 minutes I became restless and headed for higher grounds on Oregon Street to take the long route home. This road was ok but once again became flooded about a mile in.

On a good note I had one of my photos shown on WBAY Channel 2. On a bad note, I'm wondering if I'll be able to make it to work tomorrow of if work is even above water right now.