Archive for the 'Life' Category

The best dishwasher for around $1000

The Bosch SHE55M02UC available at Trail Applicances was our choice to replace our builder-grade dishwasher.  A dishwasher is a very simple machine; it fills with water, a pump sprays water through nozzles, drain, and repeat.  Of course, dishwasher manufacturers will try very hard to distinguish their dishwashers from the rest of the competition.  The German-engineered [...]

Our first major snowfall

Today was our first major snowfall of the season.  The commute to work took longer than usual.
Coming home was a bit more interesting.  Our house is on a hill.  Getting down a snowy hill is no problem.  Going back up was a different story.  Even though our Mazda5 has excellent all-weather tires, it was no [...]

Recovering wasted heat

I noticed recently one of our heater registers was barely blowing any hot air.  I went to the crawlspace and traced the path from the furnace, through the plenum and to the ducts.  This is what I saw:

Anna’s nice rack

It’s made by Seville Classics Inc. and available at Costco.  This thing is rock solid and weighs in at around 110 lbs.  This is the real deal folks as in the kind of shelving restaurants use in their kitchens.

Music to my ears

Now that we’re settled in our new home and mostly (99%) unpacked, we took a bit of a break to enjoy the fact that we have no neighbours on the other side of our walls.  Living in a townhouse these past several years, we’ve always had to maintain courtesy and not make excessive noise.  Also, [...]

The best place to trick-or-treat in Burnaby

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=s62d454rknx6&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=29248694&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
Anna and I took Claire trick-or-treating in the same place we took her last year.  The area is very dense and we can cover many homes in such a short distance.  This is a major townhouse development built around 2002 and all doors are accessible from outdoors unlike an apartment building.  It’s perfect for small [...]

We bought a new house!

Well, everything’s still verbal at this point.  We offered, they counter-offered, we countered their counter and they’ve accepted.  Our agent is still waiting for the paperwork from the selling agent.
The bidding went like this:
We offer at 92.6% of list price.  They counter-offered back at 97.7%.  We counter-countered at 94.7% and they’ve accepted.  We’re just waiting [...]

Sold!

Perhaps I blogged too soon about receiving an offer on our place.  But I can now say that the buyers have removed their subjects.  The deal is now firm and the place is now sold!

We got an offer!

After 5 months on the market and a really slow summer, we have our first offer.Â
Offer comes in for 97.7% of our asking price, we countered up to 98.4%, they counter-countered back down to 97.9%.  We accepted their offer.  We really don’t want to let this one go.
It looks like the buyers are in a [...]

Looking for Vancouver 2010 Olympics tickets?

The list of Olympic Experience Packages(PDF) has now been published.  We’re particularly interested in the “Local” packages that are all in Vancouver (e.g. Hockey, Figure Skating, etc). Â
I just noticed the Legend in the document referring to both Women and Ladies.  Seriously, WTF?

So if you’re female and you’re in Curling, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, or Ice Hockey, [...]