Appreciations of the day

[Brian]

I have an iPad.  Once I get a keyboard for it, it will be replacing my laptop.

SO AWESOME.

[Jon]

Neat. I recommend either the Apple Bluetooth keyboard or the Zaggmate. I also recommend Elements a bare-bones text editor that automatically syncs to Dropbox. (In case you've not heard of Dropbox, it's a free 5GB cloud storage that automatically syncs to a folder on your computer and includes versioning support. Basically perfect for your writing needs.)

[Iron Dragoon]

Rocket impacted about 35 feet from my bed last night. Put two holes in the B-Hut (plywood building) I live in.

I am happy to be able to type this.

[Dracos]

Iddy, don't get killed. :(

[Iron Dragoon]

Iddy, don't get killed. :(

I'll try my best, but it's not really under my control. Well, I guess I could stop being a contractor.. But.. Eh.

Also, that rocket put three holes into the building I live in. Shrapnel... And depressingly enough, I can honestly say that's not the closest I've been to a rocket/mortar explosion. I've been less than 10 feet from one.. After six days of no sleep, so I slept through it. The crater was next to my cot, and my sleeping bag had a mess of melted shrapnel covering it.

[Brian]

That is too much cleansing power of fire, Iddy.

I seem to remember hearing that something like this has happened to you before, as well...?

[Iron Dragoon]

Yeah. I've been inside the direct kill radius of indirect fire (rockets/mortars) about a half dozen times now, that I can remember clearly, though I want to say there have been more. For reference, a hand grenade has a blast radius of about 14 meters, and a casualty radius of fragmentation for 15 meters past that.

A mortar has a blast radius of 35-40 meters. I can remember being inside of 35 feet of a mortar/rocket attack.. more times than I like. And that's just IDF I've been involved in. I've had pistols, rifles, recoiless rifles, machine guns, snipers, RPGs, and even armored vehicles and tanks once, fired at me.

I can honestly say I've almost died more often than most people almost live. As much as I enjoy combat, and I do, I'm beginning to worry about the odds.

[KLSymph]

Last week, my Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phone started having problems, so I upgraded to a HTC Inspire 4G.



Boy, phones sure do improve in two or three years.  The Inspire is wider, but it is thin enough such that I can comfortably slip it into the same pocket as my wallet, as opposed to the Walkman, which--as you can see--has spent a long time with my keys.

Also, today is my birthday.

So there's that.

[Dracos]

Barring disaster, I will have a house before the month is out.  FINALLY!

[Anastasia]

Yay. What sorta house?

[Dracos]

Loan Get.  4.2 on 15 year.  Yay for ridiculously low rates.

And a small house.  Works for me as I don't want a giant house to take care of.  It's pretty much a fancy condo inside + land around it.

http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/8/bigphoto/842/81116842_0.jpg  *swipes picture up*

[Anastasia]

Nice. How much does a house that size in California run you, anyway?

[Dracos]

The bay is somewhat specially high priced.  It ran me 420.  It has the reasonably good neighborhood going for it too, as yeah, I could've easily gotten something for half in the "Well, I no longer carry a knife around this neighborhood anymore" areas.

[Dracos]

Spending 4 hours negociating = TEHSucks.

Dropping the price to 410 (15k down from list), making the time spent over the last two days effectively 2000~ per hour in gains = Awesome.

Watching taxes drop = Awesome.

Effectively being able to afford transforming an old house into a brand new house = very awesome.

Mmm, hitting enter to submit might be good :P

Anyhow, annual raise time shortly =D  Things falling into place=good!

[Anastasia]

Congratulations!