And guess what? It's in Perl.

What's bizarre about the whole thing is that he didn't seem to understand why we'd want our own inspection. It just seems foolish to me to commit so much money (in this case, around $130K) without that basic assurance. So, adios.

Fortunately for us Pittsburgh isn't someplace bubbly like the DC or SF areas -- not only are there a lot of houses to choose from right now in our price range ("a lot" meaning "substantially more than 50") but they don't get five offers on them the first weekend they're listed. I'd imagine this is a much less stressful environment to operate in.

Barb and I are in pretty close agreement about the type of place we're looking for -- neither of us wants to live too far out (me more than her) and both of us are willing to sacrifice traditional wants (space, yard) for the ephemeral "character" (her more than me). No generic boxes or ranches, which actually isn't that hard because we're looking in areas where the houses are generally 60-90 years old. On other parts of the house we have different wants (I cook more, so the kitchen has more weight with me), but they generally balance out so with an exception here and there we've agreed pretty much all the way. This also makes life much, much easier.

Unfortunately there is still a ton of stuff to learn and do. Buying a home is one of those exercises that takes up pretty much whatever spare time you had, plus 10% or so. Particularly for first-time people like us where it's all new -- prices in the area, neigborhood dynamics, all this financial lingo and context, what to look for in a house, finding the right balance of emotion and rationality, trying not to think about how much money you're talking about, all that plus a million other things I don't even know enough to think about yet.

We did get pre-approved for more than we're looking to spend, which is nice. There are two "pre" features out there -- "pre-qualified" is a fairly informal judgement by a lender to give you an idea of how much other people think you can borrow, "pre-approved" means that a lender is saying that they actually would lend you this money (barring any crazy surprises). Being pre-approved is apprently one of those features that lets sellers feel a little more warm and fuzzy about you so I'd recommend it. A number of online lenders (like e-trade) will do this for you, although they'll need the same documentation (pay stubs and the like), and I guess it carries the same weight any other.

We've been looking seriously for about four weeks. ("Looking seriously" means to me visiting a bricks-and-mortar house to determine if you could actually live there as opposed to browsing online.) And we've been planning to move around late-June/mid-July so we're a little early looking now. (This is a good thing.) But as you might expect we found a place we both loved enough to balance out the lost future opportunities and this weekend put an offer on the place. It was a pretty solid offer, as was our counter offer, and we're still going back and forth with the seller about it (kind of odd circumstances); hopefully we'll know more tonight. But it's still early enough in our process that we're not desparate, so if this doesn't work out we won't be in deep trouble. That's a good position to work from if you can get it.

I was fairly surprised at how quickly the initial offer process went. I was thinking it would take a week or something once we finished with the paperwork, but instead we heard back from them later that evening. The paperwork basically outlines your terms ("I can back out of the deal if I don't like what the home inspection says", lots of stuff like that), and with that you typically write a check for what they call "hand money." It's a deposit and the amount depends on the desirability of the house (some people say 5%, we put down less than half of that) -- if the seller accepts the offer and you have to back out in an unspecified manner (not in the terms) then they keep the cash. So more money up front gives them more warm fuzzies that you're not going to screw them. If everything goes okay that money gets applied to the Big Upfront Chunk of Cash, which for us is the scariest part of this whole thing. (We haven't been saving very long for a house, instead concentrating in the last year on getting our Bad Debt down to manageable levels, which we did but didn't quite finish off.)

Anyway, more later on all this...

But when I asked him if he'd ever thought about firing Coach Fitz, he had to think hard about it. ''The parents want so much for their kids to have success as they define it,'' he said. ''They want them to get into the best schools and go on to the best jobs. And so if they see their kid fail -- if he's only on the J.V., or the coach is yelling at him -- somehow the school is responsible for that.'' And while he didn't see how he could ever ''fire a legend,'' he did see how he could change him. Several times in his tenure he had done something his predecessors had never done: summon Fitz to his office and insist that he ''modify'' his behavior. ''And to his credit,'' the headmaster said, ''he did that.''

Fatal in Difference, Bush's catastrophic allergy to Clinton

It's funny, in retrospect, that Bush ran for president as a uniter. To unite a country, you have to acknowledge and reconcile differences. Bush doesn't work toward unity; he assumes it. He doesn't reconcile differences; he denies them. It's his tax cut or nothing. It's his homeland security bill or nothing. It's his terrorism policy or nothing. If you're playing politics, this is smart strategy. But if you're trying to help the country, it's foolish. The odds are that 50 percent of the other party's ideas are right. By ruling them out, you start your presidency 50 percent wrong.

var aCallback = null;
function registerCallback( cb ) {
    aCallback = cb;
}
function doSomeLibraryStuff( foo, bar ) {
    // do some stuff
    if ( aCallback != null ) {
        aCallback( foo, bar );
    }
}

So in your library you can just register your custom functionality and it gets executed whenever the doSomeLibraryStuff function is run:

registerCallback( function( foo, bar ) {
    if ( foo < bar ) {
        alert( "All your base" );
    }
});

You can also use a Function object for this, but the constructor uses a list of Strings that get joined with a ';' and eval'd into existence. Ugly. And these support closures as well.

The documentation on the GOP Web site about Kerry's supposed 350 votes to increase taxes lists only 67 votes "for higher taxes." Most of these are votes against a tax cut, not in favor of a tax increase. The 67 include nine votes listed twice, three listed three times, and two listed four times. The logic seems to be that if a bill contains more than one item (as almost all bills do), it counts as separate votes for or against each item. The Bush list also includes several series of sequentially numbered votes, which are procedural twists on the same bill. And there are votes on the identical issue in different years. The only tax increase on Bush's list (counted twice, but hey . . . ) is Kerry's support for Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction plan. That's the one that raised rates in the top bracket and led to a decade of such fabulous prosperity that even its most affluent victims ended up better off.

Early on I was into primarily Marvel stuff: Fantastic Four (huge!), X-Men, Spider-Man, some of the team stuff, Power Man and Iron Fist, even (shudder) ROM. (What was I thinking...) Later I started to get a little more discriminating and discovered some new stuff. And that's where I found the interesting stuff is a little murkier.

Frank Miller's Daredevil started out just like everything else because he was only doing art. But once he took over writing duties it really picked up. The whole Elektra/Vanessa/Bullseye storyline was very non-Marvel for the time (early 80s), when everyone was mutant crazy. Who's a good guy? Who's a bad guy? Why does the Kingpin care enough about his wife to wipe out carefully laid political ambitions? Good stuff. He came back for a short (four or five-issue) stint a few years later for writing and it was clear which was more important. I'd probably group Elektra's later adventures in here as well.

Baron and Rude's Nexus was also heavy stuff, and just plain gorgeous. (I still think Steve Rude draws the best lips in the business...) Most of the time comic books deal with redemption just long enough for the hero to avenge someone. This was a series-long arc with all kinds of bumps and dives along the way.

There is no denying the appeal of the X-Men, especially to teenagers outside the main group. I think Michael Chabon's description of this appeal hits it on the head. I also agree with Diego on Wolverine, although I think some of the others could have done with the same expanded writing attention that his popularity brought on.

Matt Wagner wrote and drew Mage, which featured a wonderful hero in Kevin Matchstick. Normal guy who finds out he's King Arthur, who was really the embodiment of The Hero. I hope he's able to finish the story -- it's probably one of the few comics I'd spend the money on today, and even then I might wait for the graphic novel. His Grendel could also be fantastic.

Mike Grell's Jon Sable got old after five years or so, but the mercenary with a sometimes heart of gold story worked pretty well. Plus it was occasionally really funny.

For some reason I always thought Moon Knight was pretty cool. Not real deep, just cool. More are bouncing around in my head, but it's getting late...

Ventura, a one-term governor elected on the Reform Party ticket, added: "Love is bigger than government. Think about that."

How's that for cutting through the bullshit? Think of what Frank Capra would do with this guy!