Category: Life in General / Uncategorized

The Big Day is Here!

Today is officially day 1 of listing our house! It’s so fresh it’s not on all sites just yet. We’ve been working up to this point for the better part of a year, as I had mentioned in my last blog post, but nothing prepares you 110% for it until it arrives. Even up to the last minute last night we were tidying up this or that nitpick item before bed. Now we’re at center stage ready for a potential buyer to be enamored by this beautiful house that they can call home, too.

While this is not our first rodeo with buying or selling a home, it’s still a new journey nonetheless. We are excited to sell and then find our for real forever home (second time’s a charm, right?), even amidst the current pandemic and humanity crisis. You can tell by the timestamp of this post I’m up wayyyyy too early. I got a few hours of sleep in and then I was wide awake. Oh well.

Here’s a link to the initial MLS listing as we received it. I checked Zillow, Realtor, and a couple others and they show the house as when we bought it, so be sure to check in periodically with your favorite realty website to see when it hits there with the newer listing.

Until next time,

Andrew

Corona Quarantine: Day ~80, and Lots More

I had high hopes to post something every few days during quarantine, but that didn’t pan out. Well, here’s a chocked-full update on day 80 … at least I think it’s been 80 days already. Wow, what day is it?! I don’t think I can post updates every few days for what feels like a year already…

Anywho, a lot has happened in 2020. Sure, a lot happens every year, duh, but humor my point for a moment, this is the first year for majority of humanity that a worldwide pandemic (Corona) has ever occurred, but also the first time in a long time that something so egregiously unacceptable on the scale of “human disgust” (the murder/death of George Floyd) that makes me and most others want to get a refund on 2020 and go back a few years or skip on to 2021. Yes, I acknowledge many other Black men and women have been wrongfully killed (the ones that come to mind are Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Breonna Taylor). I also acknowledge that not only Black men and women are killed; lots of people are killed of all races, colors, shapes, and sizes by not only guns, knifes, and hands, but also not by just police, psychos, and terrorists. What I’m getting at is that we cannot err on an excuse along the lines of “Well, the world is a complex web and people die all the time for different reasons.” Sure, that’s true, but dang don’t diminish nor take the situation out hand or context. Anyone who knows me knows I love and support our military and our law enforcement … but I do not, under any circumstances, support the pieces of trash humans masquerading as law enforcement killing and hurting innocent people for whatever the heck reason is going through their minds. I love my fellow Black man and woman just as I do any other race, ethnicity, religion, or whatever attribute you think of. We are ALL humans and should treat each other with the same love and respect. No….this is not a plug for “all lives matter”, rather just a simple universal fact of humanity. Black lives NEED to be heard so that then truly all lives can matter vs what we have now with “some lives matter but we’ll put up a front that all lives matter”. Man I could go on and on and on with the errancy of humanity but I’ll move on. Just love thine neighbor, truly without reproach and judgement.

My office is still work from home right now and for the foreseeable future (not terribly happy, but it has its perks). I’m both an introvert and extrovert (just depends on situation), so I thrive working alone, but the job I do necessitates that face-to-face interaction with colleagues. That’s what’s getting grueling typing 10 billion messages each workday. AARGH!

Also, dumb humans who can’t wait to get their hair cut, nails done, or go to the latest beach party or rave are the brainless individuals stirring up “round 2” of Corona. Yeah, I know it may not be them, but they are definitely playing a part in it. The wife and I did go out to the hardware store, grocery store, and dinner (finally!) recently, but we stayed away from folks as directed or the best we could … there honestly really is a difference in us vs the idiots. At least I understand there is a set of universal do’s and don’t’s to abide by for your fellow humans, but some people can’t put their narcissistic nature and urges aside for a few weeks (or months) to let the rest of the world solve this crisis and heal. Sometimes you just can’t fix stupid.

Lastly, I’ll end with a happier note. It seems only like yesterday that we were moving from GA to AZ, and now here we go again (just local this time lol). Some of you may know already that we’ve been setting the groundwork to move in 2020. No, there’s nothing wrong with the house we live in nor the neighborhood, it just no longer fits our needs where we’re at in life. We’d like to downsize to a single-story with more land than to have a 2-story with less land. Plus other obligations and such help urge this along. Well, all the non-essential info aside, today marks the first day of an official journey: we had the realtor photographer come to take pictures. We had just finished this week with what I’ll say is about 98% of evvvvvvvvvvverything we’ve been working on for the better part of a year, plus or minus, and it is finally list worthy and ready. We’re excited to see the photos when we get them from our realtor next week and then we’ll begin the next phase to start listing soon. I’m not putting a date in here in case there are any unknown-to-me conflicts that could arise from doing so (maybe there aren’t any, but it doesn’t matter), but just stay tuned. Hopefully this will be our last “forever home” search (again).

Until next time,

Andrew

New YouTube project

Some of you may remember a YouTube project I ran from 2017 until just a couple months ago called Peach Cactus. It was a sort-of play on the name Peach for Georgia and Cactus for Arizona representing the states I’m from and moved to and one of their –if not the — key features. Even further back than that, which is merely a memory for me now, was another project called IT Central. Both of these were focused on the IT (Information Technology) field but ran their due course for different reasons.

One thing I always am an OCD (shouldn’t it be CDO???) person about is meticulous details. Even though those names were great they weren’t perfect nor long-term … at least not in the likeness of some of the other great tech users out there (Linus TT, for example).

Well, now I have finally decided on a name that I think can carry its own weight and is worthy of long-term investiture (one day!). I present to you Coody Connection! Sure, it has a better ring with “The” in the title, and I’ll use that, but officially it’s just “Coody Connection”. I will leave the videos from my prior two projects as-is like a freeze-frame and maybe link back to them somewhere, but everything will be fresh and it’ll have its own site, blog, and other properties as it goes on.

Because the name is more generic (in a good way!) I can focus on not only Tech things, but other news, vlog, and tidbits. It’ll take a while to get started, but if you were a fan of Peach Cactus or IT Central, please go ahead now and subscribe to Coody Connection at coody.co.

See you there!

Andrew

Corona Quarantine: Day 5

It’s been a very long, arduous week and weekend. Quarantine has only been in effect since last Tuesday, so it’s only day 5 … but it feels like 50 already. I lightly follow the Corona news but it’s just as bad if not worse than before. I think a greater majority of people are taking it more seriously, especially with city, state, and federal mandates in effect.

After work one night last week, the wife and I played the appropriately named board game Pandemic (info and buy). Not in a means of mockery or anything like that, but just simply as a parallel to the world situation right now. Unfortunately, we lost the game but I hope humanity exerts some heavy critical thinking and common sense skills to combat this virus so we do not lose in real life.

Pandemic board game by Z-Man Games.

My wife works from home, but the only different thing for her was me being here all week. I, however, thought I’d like the “work from home” (WFH) idea, and while there’s definitely perks (less gas/car maintenance, not eating out, etc.) it’s still quite draining to be honest. I have enough discipline to just stay put in my office for the duration of my shift (less lunch and breaks), but I think I’d rather be in the office.

Outside of Costco and Frys early last week (Monday or Tuesday), end of last week we went to Home Depot to get more flooring stuff. Corona may be here but we still have projects to do in gearing up to sell our house. So, we (mainly Danielle because I stink at laying floor) were able to finish my office. My last post showed a picture of my WFH setup, including the awful carpet. Now, it has new, super shiny flooring. Here are a couple of after photos:

New floor! It definitely echos more now. ha-ha.
My WFH stuff on my standing desk I started using again.

Aside from work stuff and laying the flooring Saturday, we spent Sunday working on the fire pit. It was just the rocks surround by some tough weeds, but now it’s all fancy smancy looking and I hope we’ll use it a few times before we sell.

I’m quite sunburned and ready to hit the hay to get ready for the really official week 1 of quarantine — last week was the catch-up every company was doing. I was wrapping up my 5th and final week of the particular class I’m in in college and just literally about 30-45 minutes ago the instructor posted a very well written research article regarding the Coronavirus (not by them). I warn you, it’s not a 5-minute read, but it is depressing, engaging, surreal, and makes tangible what should already be for all of us. Here is a link to the article.

Until next time! Stay safe out there!


Andrew

Coronavirus (Covid-19; “Corona”) Quarantine: Day 1

First off, I know, I know. You’re thinking “Not another Corona article!”. Bear with me it’ll be sort-of short (if we’re both lucky my brain doesn’t go on a rant). I may do a few days here-and-there as well. We’ll play it by ear.

I want to cover a very basic health concern first. Even though Corona has a lot of factual information behind it, it still has an air of uncertainty for further danger. One thing that has been made relatively simple are the “Do the Five” steps by, I think, the WHO. Keep this in mind while we all go through this turbulent period. And if you’re the praying type, pray for those who are in dire positions right now related to the virus (people still working in public, elderly, other health issues, etc.).

So here we are on Day 1 of quarantine.

My company, like thousands of others, is having us work from home for a period of time while the (hopefully) major part of the Coronavirus does its thing here in the US. Aside from my first job in retail, the rest of my professional working life has been technical call/support center focused. Sure they could have done remote before now but there are always various business reasons why they can’t sometimes. It was just weird getting to sleep in about 20 more minutes and having a relatively small commute to work. ha-ha.

Here’s a quick photo of my temporary work setup. Pretty nice.

This virus, even since we’re just in the initial couple of months of it, has change the world forever. It may be subtle to non-existent for some or grand and adverse for others, but to everyone, directly or indirectly, it will affect you. This also goes for inanimate or intangible things, like the Internet. Particularly the Internet. This is a time for the Internet to shine and show proof to the world that the Internet can be a very quintessential part of everyday life going forward. Some people and companies will go back to before while others will adopt in-part or in-whole the telecommute/telepresence aspect that they otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t before now.

At this point in my rambling, let me add a “sad that this is a needed preface” reality check: we should all know that there are some universal do’s and don’ts. “Universal” as in it does not matter if you’re black, white, fat, skinny, American, Afgan, straight, gay, male, female, non-binary, Republican, Democrat, or any other classification you could append here. This virus is no respecter of classification and we should reciprocate as a global humanity when in need.

You may think that last paragraph was vague or out of context, but it’s not. Sure, in the beginning when Corona was just forming nobody was to blame (I guess except for whoever/whatever created it), but what I’m referring to is the the last two or three weeks that are most important and under scrutiny. The moments you are reading about or seeing are often bloated and impartial facts by media, politically charged, or about the knuckleheads buying 18,000 units of hand sanitizer/ two pallets of toilet paper. Not even to the latter two extremes, people are panic buying resources even in small quantities, but if 1,000 people buy all of the, say, bread, then that is not available for the next person in a more dire situation. Yes, the laws of supply and demand are always in effect in life, but they shift exponentially in times like this … usually for the worse.

All of the chaos, and unbalanced behavior could be resolved with just common sense and critical thinking skills (both of which meld into the universal do’s and don’ts). Common sense would tell you it’s not right to do this or that, and critical thinking would tell you to proceed with caution or not buy stuff in surplus; none of this had to be rocket science. Unfortunately, in this day and age, a lot of people are not using and do not have common sense/critical thinking skills, and this, I think, is probably the key driving a factor in this whole “pandemic” that theoretically could have been mitigated otherwise.

I think I rambled on a bit too much. Yep, sorry.

Until the next update!