Greg emailed me about current stuff, what he was doing after Zero. Here's the exchange.
I've been creatively unemployed and doing projects for the past few years, primarily in audio/video installations and security video. Recently, I was involved in a really neat project to stream secure surveillance video from cameras located around the Port of Long Beach (California) to police cars in the surrounding area. Last week, I designed a system to link the Cairo Museum in Egypt with museums in the US so that Americans can take control of the cameras (pan, tilt, and zoom) and look around the Cairo Museum.
From your Wiki post, it looks like you are in Virginia Beach? How did you end up there? I may be coming down that way in the fall since I am in charge of the college ice hockey referees in the state, so I'll visit and do some games. Maybe we can grab a cup of coffee.
Driving a U-haul. We moved simply because we could, and A-burg was sort of boring and bicycle unfriendly. Being a telecommuni...commuter, I can live where I like. And coast is definitely less humid.
I hear that Pete is now living in Argentina with his girlfriend and that Ford is still doing work with the Ben Franklin Rehab Center.
The wiki he mentions is maintained by George. And from what I heard of Ford last time in Houston, he's there partly as network admin, partly as a patient.
Nina has arrived home, stayed at Danilo's in Belgrade (or rather, somewhere between Novi and Zemun). Asks about the house, and I wrote „Today the appraiser came and couldn't enter because nobody passed the keys to him. I called a few of the involved yesterday, trying to make the keys appear (counting on exactly this possibility) and they convinced me that they know what they're doing. The guy will come again when he gets the keys. Changrissa is away this week, and isn't responsive on debile* either“.
She asked to send her a scan of her green, but not larger than 200k, it downloads very slowly. She started going to the dentist (... 9 words...). Then on 2nd she reported having nighted at Zana's; dad is in the vineyard and mom has company - aunt Milica is there.
On UA, some discussion with Edgar Zeedorp, on international addresses and how did the word „foreign“ acqure the need to be politically rectified. Even the few truly international houses - the few bars on slovenian-croatian, dutch-belgian and few other borders, have two addresses, one for each side of the house, not one international address. There's no international address, so „we're shipping to international addresses“ is a plain lie.
About the house. Just got the contract from the CU, and it's horror. When we cooled our nerves a bit, I took a better look and noticed that it was calculated at 5% down payment, which then includes the extra insurance of the loan itself until we pay off the first 20%, which will take about six years. Then we called the lady in the CU and she said „ah, that got shipped before we talked - I'll make a new one at 20% down and will send you that“.
Tomorrow their appraiser comes to estimate the market value of the house. Theoretically there may be a problem if he estimates it below what we're paying - then the CU gives us a loan to that amount, and the rest we pay cash. But then if the insurance estimated it at 102K$, this guy can't veer far off that mark.
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* mobile, debile, potahto, potayto...