The last few months I have been posting about selling the house.  Today, July 30, 2010 we closed on the sale of our house.  This photo was taken at 9:00 AM this morning, just two hours before turning the keys over to the new owner.  This was our first real home and a bit sad to move but also allows for a greater opportunity of a better home.  This was the house that we moved into when we came back from the Air Force in 1999.  We now live in an apartment in Midwest City for the next year while our house is being built.  For those of you that know us personally, our phone numbers are the same and this web site will remain.  Our kids spent most of their childhood years in this house.  We have been so busy trying to get the house in sellable order.  Also we have been just as busy at work preparing for some very important meetings.  With all this going on, I have not had a lot of time to post on this blog. 

I can say that my wife and I have been over our heads in work with a new project every day.  If anyone has ever needed a vacation, it is us.  If you are considering selling a house, be prepared for a lot of work and patience.  Looking back, it went relatively smooth though a lot of stress.  Now that the sale is complete, we can finally catch our breath. 

I will continue to post on this page in the future despite my lack of activity in the last few months.  Now we have a lot of things to put away.  What a mess!  I hope to be back into a normal pattern again soon.  Thanks for continuing to check the page even though I have not been online much.

Lately they seem to be trying their best.  I have been trying my best not to yell at them when the do forget something.  The house must be ready for someone to come and view at a moment’s notice.  It is difficult for me to deal with a single piece of paper on the floor but I recognize the efforts of the family for doing their part.  If it were up to me, the house would always shine and the beds would be made as soon as people stepped out of them.  Selling a house is an adjustment for everyone and in my opinion, it is for the best.  With the moist weather we have been having, I have been mowing the lawn about every three to five days.  It helps the lawn to look good but also makes tracking grass into the house a big challenge.  This results in vacuuming the floor multiple times a day.  Again, this helps in shaping new habits because it just does not feel right to miss a vacuum.

As strange of a post as this is, I know we are not the only ones that deal with this.  When you are forced to clean up after yourself for an extended period of time, it creates a habit…a good habit.

Yesterday was a big day and a big milestone for my 19 year old son Kevin.  He graduated High School in front of his family and his class.  I know I speak for the whole family in how proud we are of him for reaching this goal in life.  We wish him the best and will be there for him as he starts his life as an adult.  This has been a tough year for him and the whole family as we have been preparing our house for a move.  Kevin has persevered and completed this milestone with all sorts of distractions being in his way.  We just want to say congratulations Kevin for a job well done.

Below is another picture of this removal process.  As you can see in this image, there is still some varnish left on the floor.

In the picture below you can see the floor is fully stripped down to the wood.  This was a nasty job with dust flying everywhere and all exposed surfaces covered with sanding dust.

In the photo below you can see the stain and varnish have been applied.  The base boards are still not installed at this stage.  Applying the stain and varnish was also a nasty job because the fumes were overwhelming.  That first night trying to sleep was challenging with the powerful fumes.

We also had three bedrooms carpeted and you can see the den below.  The den was already carpeted but since we repainted the entire house then we wanted to put down some newer carpet that actually matched the paint color.  We put everything as neutral colors so that our house would appeal to the broadest buyers.  We watched on HGTV and they told that this is the way to sell a house and get the most for it.

Below you can see the living room after the furniture has been installed.  This was a huge challenge bringing things back in without scratching the new floor.

This is the same room from the opposite direction…

There was much more work done to this house than what you can see here.  We painted the whole house on the inside and out. The kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms were redone.  The house is just about ready to put up for sale.  We have been working on the house off and on for nearly a year.  We have even planted shrubs in front of the house.

I have had several people tell me that we will not want to move after putting all this work into the house.  Well we are finally able to enjoy life with a better income and after all we want to get a bigger house to live in. Although we love the way the house has turned out, it is still a smaller house.  This house is bigger than most of the houses in this neighborhood but still not big enough for us now.  I have been offline for the week except for my phone for the last week.  It is hard to find time to get online when the furniture is moved.  It was an amazing week and my wife and I both feel like we have been beat up in a fight.  I just wanted to share a few pictures so I posted 39 of them on Flickr.  Feel free to comment on them if you have time. 

You may be asking yourself why we are doing this.  The reason is the hosting cost.  Currently I host both domains through my provider at an expensive rate.  I pay extra because I like having the ability to run scripts, have xml databases, allow more traffic among other things.  Both of these domains are about to expire within a month of each other and I am unwilling to pay the extra costs for both pages.  I can move the Del City ARC page to a more budget plan with less functions and save some money.  Since my personal blog gets more traffic and I use it more, I am more willing to pay the extra rate for it.  As I said before, it will be virtually undetectable to the average user but it will save us more than 50% of the cost. If you have any questions, please post them via email to our members@delcityarc.org address.

Thanks,

Paul

In the picture below you can see this blog directly.  In this picture you can see this very blog directly where the posts are immediate but are moved down the page as new posts are entered.  In this case, the links are also on a menu on top but it makes it difficult to have permanent information on the page.  They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of having a static page is that you can put up links and information that is permanent and immediately visible to the viewer.  The disadvantage is that many people including myself are too lazy to dig into a site to see what is there.  People go to a page and lose interest real fast resulting in shorter visits and less repeat visitors.  The advantage of having the blog directly is that a post is available directly as soon as the visitor arrives.  As new posts are added, it moves the old ones down.  It does not have the permanent links readily available.

I have had a web site since 1996 so I have used both.  My own experience has shown my web site gets more traffic with the blog directly than when there is a static page.  I use both the statistics tool of my hosting provider along with Google Analytics.  They are pretty close in their measurements and are in agreement that a blog that gets regular posts tend to get more traffic than a static page.  The traffic is many times that of a static page.  This is the reason that I pay extra to be able to use a blog as opposed to just having a static page.  I am curious if anyone else has had similar or different results.  On one hand I would like to have a static page linking to the blog but I have found that many times people will not even waste their time clicking on the link to go to the blog.

On the other hand I have found that people according to my web traffic stats, a lot of my traffic is due to search engine results whether it be Google, Yahoo, or Bing.  My stats often show what the visitor was searching for when they clicked on my link.  This being the case, it would not seem to matter which choice I decided to go with because most visitors are not arriving by directly entering the URL directly.  Most visits are not on the front page but rather one of the links deep in the page that were found on a search engine.  My site really does not have a lot of information that would be useful to the general public yet I seem to be getting enough traffic to keep me on a mid level plan.  Having a blog really is a lot of work because a person may not always be inspired to write a big story.  This is why I have Twitter imported on the right side because I can still post small messages with my phone so that it still shows that I am around even when I am too busy to post on the blog.

I have also considered changing the domain to something that is not my full name so that I could have liberty to speak more freely.  Also I have considered using one of those “.me” or dot me domains since this is a personal site.  I am hesitant to make any of these changes simply because the search engines have already crawled the site and have become searchable.  The other side is that when you use your own name to post online, you are visible to all and not at liberty to speak the way you may want on a subject.    Whatever I do, it will be done before July 1, 2010 because that is when my domain expires. If I change it, I will post links on this domain showing where the page has gone.  I am leaning toward not moving it unless someone feels that it would be a better idea. Unfortunately my hosting service has gone up in price to make it $220.00 to renew for three more years.  This includes the domain renewal and hosting.  It has doubled since I joined them a few years ago.  I will not mention them by name because other than the increase in price, I have been very satisfied with their service.  Keep posted and I will let you know what I decide.

Yesterday was an interesting day.  My wife and I were leaving for work at 5:30 AM in the rain when we noticed two suspicious guys trying to steal a motorcycle from the neighborhood Elementary school.  These guys accidently released the clutch too quickly and jumped out in front of us and went through the stop sign with no lights.  I called 911 and we followed them through the neighborhood and surprising the police caught them.  There is a lot of criminal activity that goes on in my neighborhood and I am getting tired of it.  I feel that if someone does not take a stand and report this stuff, they will get even worse.  This  made us over an hour late for work but my boss was understanding.

It seems like all of my online presences are coming due in the next couple of months.  This domain, our Del City ARC domain, and my Flickr account are all about to expire.  I am going to renew them one at a time.  My Flickr account will be renewed this weekend.  My domain has really gone up in price.  It has gone up more than 100% this year.  I think I will renew it for three years this time so if it goes up again, I will be able to lock it in for a while.  It is hard to believe that I have had my own domain for ten years.  I put up my first web site in 1995 when I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska.  My first domain was paulmccord.net, then I had www.k5glh.com, then paulmccord.info, and then back to paulmccord.net.  Our Del City ARC page has been www.delcityarc.com, then www.w5del.com, and then finally its current www.delcityarc.org.  At this point I cannot imagine not having a web presence of some kind.  Don’t worry, despite my lack of postings lately, I am not going anywhere.  For those of you that wish I would go away, I think I will stay around .  Time to get busy this morning so I will get this posted.

I hope everyone had a good Mother’s day yesterday.  It was good over here but busy though.  We did manage to go out together over the weekend but it felt a little rushed.  She seemed to be happy though.  It is times like Mother’s day when I really miss my mom.  She was and is important to me to this day.  If you still have your mom, I think you should appreciate her while you have her.  No one can replace a mom.

UPDATE

Looks like complaining about no rain seems to have worked.  This evening we had some pretty good storms.  There were several tornadoes around the metro this evening.  There was a lot of damage around town from the storm.  We did not have any damage but did have our lights blinking for about 30 minutes due to the tornado in Norman.  It was nice to see some rain.  I wish it would have lasted longer but I will take what I can get.

It is funny and frustrating that we went the extra mile to treat the lawn for weeds and since the vast majority of the lawn was weeds, we are now left with bare dirt.  This will go down as one of the major backfires of all time.  An attempt to make the lawn look better turned out to be a barren desert.  We are slowly getting it back in shape.  With work taking up a greater amount of time that it normally does my house work has slowed. 

While I am talking about work I must mention a complete 180 degree policy shift with regards to social networking.  At work the computer network has many security rules for obvious reasons.  Among them were the blocking of all social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, and a host of web based mail sites.  This week higher lever orders came down reversing this policy.  In fact this policy said in essence that social networking sites are crucial to mission communications.

I have to admit that I was completely shocked, pleased, perplexed, and worried at this policy reversal.  Shocked because I thought I would never happen, pleased because I use them myself, perplexed because the policy seems to go against everything we have heard over the years.  Finally worried because I know there will be abusers.  Most companies handle abusers with a heavy hand by removing this privilege from everyone.  I am convinced that it will not last even though I want it to.  I have often wondered why authority figures take this approach instead of dealing with abusers directly.  The best guess that I can come up with is that policing great numbers of people at the same time is time consuming and expensive.  By making these blanket policies, it is easier to be lazy and save money at the same time.  For the time being I will enjoy being able to check my Gmail from work for the first time ever.

I have decided to take a different approach to my behavior on these sites.  For one, I have removed myself from anyone that I work with on all social networking sites.  I not only removed them but I blocked them on Facebook.  This is because I often post on Twitter which updates my Facebook status.  Facebook shows comments of friends and their friends.  I do not want my comments to be held against me at work.  I have removed any reference to my employer from these sites so that I am not representing them on the Internet.  You may ask why I do this.   Well I have a weakness that I am sometimes ashamed of.  I sometimes hear a story on the news that really gets under my skin.  Many times I post my opinion online about that story and it sometimes comes across harshly.  I usually regret posting it after I do it but by then it is too late.  I know I work with a diverse group that range from liberal to conservative and many races.  It is easy to get caught up in the story of the day forgetting there are coworkers that disagree.

For this reason I think it is not wise to follow anyone from your place of employment. You may be friends with one or two individuals and forget that they are friends with other people from work.  Maybe even your boss.  You can easily see the potential for problems.  I have decided that it is not worth the risk.  I know a few people on the Internet that post using a pen name.  They do this not to hide their identity but rather to separate their public life from their employers.  There was a time that I thought they were just being paranoid.  This was until I ran a Google search on my own name and was amazed at how many search results came back, some with pictures of me and my family.  Maybe it is not being paranoid but being wise.  This web site is going to expire soon and I thought about changing the domain to something other than my name.  Is this crazy?  I don’t think so.  If I do, I will leave this one up for a month or so with a link to the new address so those that actually do care enough to stop by from time to time will be able to find it.

I do think it is important to have a brand that is yours but having a distinction from your personal life from your work is also important.  People often ask me why I have my own domain since social networking sites are so prevalent today.  This domain is my brand.  It is my address when Facebook disappears…when Twitter disappears.  I think that it is good to have an online address along with the social networking sites.  Your address can point to the other sites.  Over the years there have been many social sites that have come and gone but the domain makes it easy for your friends and family to find you.  Where most people would not post their home address, they can have their online identity.  Anyway…  I just wanted to explain why I have removed you and blocked you if you were blocked from my Facebook.  There is no offense intended whatsoever.  I know this one was long winded but I have been offline for a while.  Thanks for stopping by.

The truth is that I do not want to come across as some mean tyrant that is always mad at the world.  I know is appears that way sometimes because typing on the blog is actually therapy for me when I am in a bad mood or stressed out.  The funny thing is that later when I read some of the posts I usually find myself laughing at how angry I sound.  Although I usually still agree with my original point, I think there are more effective ways to get my point across without sounding off on a rant.

In a slight change of course I would like to say that really things have been going very well for us.  My wife got a new job that is a significant pay increase with better working conditions.  I got a promotion and a great evaluation at work with things working out better than I could ask.  The house repair is going slow but is actually coming together quite well.  Since I am not a carpenter or construction contractor I had very little confidence in myself in the beginning.  The more I do the more I feel like I can do anything.  Outside the house looks almost the same but on the inside it is very different.

On another note, our city is swelling up with civic pride thanks to our NBA team going to the playoffs in only their second year in Oklahoma City.

This banner above was posted on the Oklahoma City Thunder web site the day they made it to the playoffs for sure.  I had to make a screen shot to celebrate the moment.

In this photo you can see the Sandridge Energy building in Oklahoma City with the large sign on all four sides shouting out “LET’S GO THUNDER”.  Most of us are not expecting a Championship but just proud of how our team has gone from a 23 win season last year to a 50 win season this year.  We are proud of how our star Kevin Durant has beaten Michael Jordan’s record for the most free throws in a season.  He has scored more than 30 points scores of games this year earning him the youngest player to ever win the highest scoring player in a season.  We have another star in Russell Westbrook that often misses the well deserved attention because he plays with another star on the same team. Even the coach, Scott Brooks won the Coach of the Year award this year.  If they did not win another game in the playoffs our city can be proud of the way our players have played and represented our city well.

Life is going very well for us despite the world going crazy.  Yes I do have opinions on health care reform, our leaders (cough cough) and other big news stories but again I do not want to rant all the time.  I have chosen not to get caught up in the anger in the world.  Things are going too well to be ungrateful for what I have.  Sometimes it is nice to talk about good things.