furiousBlog

One of the houses we've been keeping an eye on dropped its price dramatically last week. So, we decided to do one more last-ditch, hail-mary push to sell our house this year.

We hadn't been in this house yet, so Cyndi went over on Friday and checked it out. Due to what appeared to be a big hill, we had thought its backyard was a deal breaker. But when you're actually in the backyard, it's pretty nice. To get to the house, you drive up a little hill and that made the hill in front of you look even bigger. As it is, the hill's not too bad, and the backyard is actually pretty nice. There's a flat portion at the top of the hill and one at the bottom by the house. The yard is huge. The house is in good shape, too. There is some work that needs to be done, but nothing earth-shattering or urgent. Mostly, the paint is not great and the downstairs carpet is not in great shape. On the plus side, it's a good size, there's hardwood floors (under the carpet) upstairs, it's got four bedrooms, the deck's awesome, and the family room is huge. We like it. Oh yeah, the street's great, too. The house is on a T, so it's on a cul-de-sac and at the other end is another cul-de-sac: great for the kids to ride bikes on.

So, we decided to drop our price once again. Other than two houses that are in pretty bad shape, we are now the least expensive house in our neighborhood. It kind of stinks to do that, but if it sells and we get the other house, we'll still be ahead compared to staying at the old price and buying one of the more expensive houses.

It may be futile, but we went ahead and made a offer that's contingent on us selling our house. Our realtor talked to their realtor who said the sellers are open to contingent offers. So now, we wait. We'll hopefully hear back from them in the next day or two on whether they're accepting our offer. Hopefully, our new price will bring in some buyers.

If this doesn't pan out, we'll probably go ahead and take our house off the market and try again next spring.

Cyndi and I went to see The Illusionist last weekend. It's the story of a poor boy and a girl from a rich family set in Vienna in the (I'd guess) late 1800s or early 1900s. It stars Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and the wonderful Paul Giamatti. The boy in the movie has a way with magic and becomes friends with the girl. Circumstances tear them apart and the boy leaves to travel the world. He returns as a man (played by Norton), having acheived fame and fortune as an illusionist. He wants to find the girl, now a woman (played by Biel), but circumstances haven't changed; she's now betrothed (sort of) to the Crown Prince.

As you can probably tell, I'm trying to be somewhat vague in my description. This movie becomes a mystery and I don't want to give away any of the clues. So, I'll just heap praise upon it instead.

It's a great movie. The music is good and the cinematography is awesome. They make use of some really old-school effects and (I think) the edges of the film were burned in a bit throughout. All of the actors are great, but of course, my favorite performance was Paul Giamatti as the chief inspector, charged with solving the mystery. This may be the least Giamatti-esque role he's played. He hardly even sounded like himself. The character is also the best in the film; it's the most conflicted and the one that experiences the biggest change.

So, go see it. It's great; I loved it.

Yesterday, I drove my first slug, the engineer guy, home. He was my first repeat customer; we have history.

I had seen him waiting in line the day before; we exchanged furtive glances. He was too far back, though; society dictates that I can't pick my slugs. With a glance, he understood. My heart sank as I drove away; somehow I'd let him down.

Yesterday, though, yesterday was different. Every day is a whole new day, a chance to make it right. I pulled up to the line. He was first in line; relief flooded through me. We said hello; we wanted to say so much more. We wanted to tell each other every detail of every moment that had passed since that first day of slugging a week and a half ago; we wanted to say that we had missed each other. The excitement was palpable.

But, there were two other people in the car. They didn't know our history; they didn't understand; they didn't care. The cold, gray world of slugging allows little conversation.

So, we said hello and drove in silence. It was fourty-five minutes but to me, to us, it was an eternity. He, as the character he is forced to play would do, turned on his iPod and read a magazine. I drove, my eyes barely daring to even look in the rearview for fear that he would look at me and see my pain.

We pulled into the commuter lot and stopped. He hesitated as he reached for the handle. Then he said goodbye and was gone. Gone to his other life; gone to a wife and kids, perhaps. Do they know him? Do they understand the pain of slugging? Do they even care?

Gone to his other life, me to mine.

Rob saved a couple links in my del.icio.us inbox that I just recently discovered (the earliest one was back in February). One of them is this site:

Wash Tribute

It's a little discussion about Joss Whedon and his propsensity to kill off main characters. I read the article first and totally missed the sentence and animated earth at the top of the page. Here they are:



It's so beautiful; I almost cried.

I wonder if SimCity could be used as a basic simulator for testing proposed road improvements. What I'm imagining is that someone setup a virtual version of the Washington DC area and get it functioning basically how the area does now: traffic rates, etc. Then, build a new bridge over the Potomac or something and see how it impacts traffic. Obviously, there are real studies like this done all the time. But, I could see it as a sort of analysis/testing whiteboard where you could test the basic theories behind new ideas.

There's also an open-source side to this; everyone who wanted to could download a snapshot of DC and mess around. Having a lot of people looking the problem, all with different ideas, biases, and viewpoints, could produce some new and interesting possible solutions, that could then be proposed and have 'real' studies done.

The main question is whether or not the algorithm used in SimCity is realistic enough to make it useful. I imagine that it is probably based on an average of many factors, such as how zoning affects population growth, how population affects traffic, etc. But, if those things vary greatly by area/city, an average could be way off for any particular area. This could seriously negate the usefulness of this as an actual tool.

The ideal would be for the SimCity people (or possibly a third party) to create downloadable areas that already have regional conditions programmed in. I think in addition to this helping with the idea presented here, it'd also make it a lot of fun for people who just like playing the game. Everyone has complaints about how their area is being managed and developed. With this, they could implement their ideas and see how they affect the area. There could even be an online component that would track players whose version of the city was doing well. This could allow others to view and study what was done, and potentially affect real world implementations.

This all came about because I was listening to a radio program discussing the traffic problems in DC which caused me to start thinking about this idea. One of the people being interviewed discussed traffic studies, how they're performed, and the computer simulations that are used. The way he talked about it really reminded me of playing the original SimCity years ago.

What do you think? Could it work? What other concerns would have to be addressed for this to be feasible?