July 6, 2006 – CFUnited() Update

Originally posted on LiveJournal.

Cf United was a lot of fun! Marilyn gave me a ride over the airport last tuesday (and picked me up saturday night), on what a good “business” trip. It consisted of 3 days of 8-5 lectures (with an hour and half for lunch each day). Nice buffet for lunch, along with fortune cookies with programming fortunes (which i saved, but didn’t get a picture of yet). The topics were very interesting for the most part, although the new, usable stuff I learned was only a fraction of the whole. I took a handful of pictures of the conference, but much more of our nights out at Dave and Busters and walking around Washington DC. Due to the flooding up there, the Archives building was closed (Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc), but we were still able to see the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History. We only had a few hours to tour the city, so just the basics. After our 8 hours walking around DC last year though, it was a lot of fun.

For the forth, we went out to Lake Eola to watch the fireworks (dont mind the awful awful attempts at pictures). We grabbed a nice spot attop a parking lot with an amazing view of the fireworks. Some of the closest I’d been to them! Have to make it a yearly tradition, and maybe grab some earplugs too.

Everything is going great with the house! Financing at a good price, a little more than I expected to pay for insurance, and the yearly taxes are really damn annoying, but should all be well within 50-60% of my monthly income for the mortgage, homeowners asso, taxes, insurance, power and water. Did have to drop my 401k contribution down recently though (was at $15k/yr) so I could afford it. Can’t wait to move in! I’m going to try to move from st. pete the day after i close on it so the house there will be vacant for showing. Going to start boxing things up here in the next 3 weeks.