Today I suffered a pretty big blow as I was let go from my job. I had been working at Secure-24, a Managed Service Provider, for a little over 4 years and I really enjoyed it there. In addition to the excellent salary, benefits, and culture; I had the opportunity to work with some really great people. In fact, some of the smartest people within their respective IT fields work there. I was let go for budgetary reasons, which is tough to wrap my head around but I guess that’s the nature of business. The shock of this happening was slightly lessened because I had received a heads up from someone that it was possible, however, I still was not fully prepared mentally. I don’t think it will take me too long to find a new position, but I am worried about finding a place that will be as good of a fit as it was here. I legitimately enjoyed coming into work everyday, and a huge part of that had to do with the culture, atmosphere and people. My team members were pretty close-knit and we watched out for each other like family. I wish them, and Secure-24 as a whole, all the best. I am determined to stay positive about this change of events, though, and I will not view this as an ending or a failure, but rather as the start of a new journey. Now it’s time to look ahead, move forward, and find that next opportunity. Though I do think some well deserved time off may also be in order….
Category Archives: Ed
My First Trip to the DIA
Today we joined our friends Alex and Nicole at the Detroit Institute of Arts to view their Dia De Los Muertos exhibit. Despite living in the area for over 16 years now, this was my first trip to the DIA. In all truthfulness it’s because I am typically not interested in most art museums, if I am going to go to a museum I would rather go to a Natural History museum. That being said, the DIA might have changed that. I really enjoyed the Dia De Los Muertos exhibit and the rest of the exhibits that were on display. Considering we now live in the county and part of our taxes go towards the museum and afford us free access, I think we will try to work in a visit on a more regular basis, meaning more than once every 16 years! Melissa and Kylie also both really enjoyed the visit and, I think, if we were to have gone on our own we would have stayed longer than we actually did. However, we decided to leave when Alex and Nicole did so we could to their house for some lunch and let the kids hang out and do other activities. I am looking forward to when we next have an opportunity to go back to the DIA.
Homeownership Milestone
Tonight we reached a milestone as homeowners that I always assumed would come later into our ownership; but considering everything else we have already done on this house I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; we closed on our refinanced mortgage. I thought this was typically something people did after 5 or more years, but we are just shy of 2 years into our mortgage. Still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. We ended up with a very similar rate, and a monthly payment that is about $20 more a month than we had previously. So why did we refinance then? A couple of reasons:
- We have put a lot of work into the house namely the new roof, windows, and HVAC
- The market has changed and we were pretty sure our house value had risen
- And this is the big one, we shaved three years off the backend of the mortgage which will save us almost $30,000 over the life of the mortgage.
Previously we were in a fixed rate 30 year mortgage and had been in for almost 2 years, leaving us with 28 years to go, the new mortgage is a 25 year fixed rate thus eliminating 3 years and leading to the savings. The appraised value of our house did go up as well by almost $10,000 giving us more equity in the house which also means that our PMI will fall off sooner, adding additional savings. We also changed lenders, we moved from Wells Fargo to Quicken Loans and are extremely happy with the service, support, and communication they provided throughout the process. We are utterly satisfied with the outcome of this refinance in terms of the process itself and the end results. Additionally, we recommend Quicken Loans to anyone in an instant, they are outstanding to work with!
A Grey Company Picnic
Today was the annual Secure-24 Company Picnic, and this year we had it at Heritage Park in Farmington Hills. It was the first time we have had it at this location and it was a nice change. I feel like this location was more family friendly in terms of the playground for the kids. I know Kylie enjoyed this park over the previous ones. Additionally there was more shade available at this location than at the previous sites. Though we didn’t have much need for shade most of the day due to the light rain in the morning and then the general overcast later in the day. Despite the weather not being the greatest it was still a very nice day and as the weather broke the turnout increased, though it was still less than previous years. I have no doubt that if the weather had been nicer there would have been more people in attendance. I think my favorite moment was watching Kylie participate in the watermelon eating contest! I hope they have the picnic here again next year and that the weather is better. Regardless, I think I will be back in the spring to explore more as there are hiking trails and other activities available.
More Camping Fun
The summer of camping continued this week as we spent the last few days with our great friends Alex, Nicole, and Kira camping at the Metamora-Hadley Recreation Area. This is the same area that we camped at last year for a short weekend and what spurred all of this years, and hopefully many more years’, camping trips. It was a good five days of canoeing, fishing, swimming, and general camp fun! The weather wasn’t as hot as our time in Jellystone last month, but I contribute the vast amount of trees here to helping with keeping the temperatures much more comfortable. We did have a persistent raccoon visitor this year that made the evenings a little more adventurous. This little guy, on more than one occasion, came right up to our table while we were sitting by the fire. It eventually became a fun little game for us to try to enjoy our adult conversations and still watch for his approach so we could shew him away before he got too near. I think we are all already looking forward to next year’s trip!
I’m smarter than the av-er-age bear!
What a great adventure we have just returned from! This past week we took a camping trip out west and stayed in South Haven at Jellystone Park with our friends Alex, Nicole, and Kira. Overall it was a really good. The camp itself is geared towards families with children, so there were a lot of activities for the kids to participate in (along with the parents too). Some of these activities included fire engine truck rides, breakfast events, swimming pool games, and gem mining. Many of the events included Yogi Bear and his friends. In addition to the campground itself we got to go explore the city of South Haven, and swim in Lake Michigan! Kylie really enjoyed swimming in the Great Lake and has set a goal for herself of swimming in all of them, which I think is an awesome idea and have added that to my bucket list as well! The only down side of the campground was that it is relatively new. Now this doesn’t seem like it would be an issue, however, the area where the camp is constructed used to be open fields, so all of the trees were also recently planted, which means they are still relatively young and short so they didn’t supply much shade. As such the already hot July weather was magnified by the lack of places to find shade and we found ourselves spending a good amount of time in the little restaurant or camp store for no other reason than to enjoy some air conditioning and try to cool down. The heat led to some issues as we were irritable and uncomfortable, but for the most part things went well. While I believe we will visit South Haven again in the future, I do not believe we will revisit Jellystone, as far as camping goes it was expensive compared to other parks due to its commercial appeal, but we wanted the kids to have the experience of the themed park. Next time we will either stay at a hotel or find a state park to camp at. In any event, it was a lot of fun and we are looking forward to our next camping trip which is planned for next month!
Shop Wall Overhaul
One of the main selling points of this house, for me anyway, was the secondary structure. That structure is an additional 1 ½ car detached garage in the backyard. From what we were told from the previous owner, this building was her late husband’s workshop; he had lots of woodworking equipment out there. As such we have continued to reference this building as “the shop,” and for me the added space was exactly what I wanted in order to ensure that the main garage attached to the house could be used for our cars. The shop is where the motorcycle stays along with all the lawn care tools, snow blower, etc., and is a real valuable feature of the house to me. That being said, we have known from the beginning that this building needed some small repair work. The external paneling on the back wall had a small hole right below an external piece of duct. It looks like at some point he may have had a wood stove inside the shop and this was the exhaust vent. It appeared that the steam released from this pipe has caused some accelerated weathering and water damage to the paneling. So yesterday, with a lot of help from Zack, we replaced this back panel… and then some. I began removing the panel before he arrived in the morning and my anxiety quickly rose to heights previously unknown. The trigger for this was when I pulled off the first panel and the wall stud came out with it! After Zack arrived and we continued the removal of bad paneling and more and more of the interior studs came out, we realized this was going to be a larger project. Thankfully Zack stayed calm throughout all of this and took it in stride, his broader experience and deeper skill set really made this project possible. We were able to salvage the internal drywall to reuse, but that was about it. Everything on the inside of the wall was rotted and falling apart. I have a sneaking suspicion that the previous owner (or perhaps her kids) knew this wall was failing and simply put up new drywall inside to hide it. With the exception of about a two feet, the entire back wall was removed. At one point the roof was being held up by my 3 ton car jack on cement blocks with a 2×4 propped on the jack saddle. I have framed a wall before, but never while the roof was hanging over my head with basically no support. We determined the main cause of the failure was the rotting of the bottom plate. This caused the roof to sag by about 3 inches (something we didn’t notice until attempting to put the new studs in) and allowing for the studs to pull out as well. We replaced the bottom plate with some Trex 2×4’s that were left in the shop, so we have little concern about that particular piece ever rotting again. The top plate remained and was solid, which aided in using the jack to hold up the roof, but did make it a little tougher to place the new studs and bottom plate. So the project that started out as just replacing a couple of panels with an estimated time of 3 hours, turned into the complete rebuilding of the back wall and taking 17 hours. When all was said and done we replaced approximately 10 feet of a 12 foot wall. I learned a lot from this experience and from Zack in particular. I’m very lucky that he has the knowledge and skills that he does, as there is no way I would have been able to do this on my own. Now we need to start stripping and sealing the rest of the walls in preparation to paint the structure, as it is long overdue for that as well.
New Brakes, Part 2
Man, that was one heck of an ordeal. So we finally got everything back together and fully changed out. We ran into a number of problems today that we were not anticipating that slowed us way down. We had broken bolts that caused us to have to exchange brackets and two defective calipers. The original O’Riely’s store didn’t have the replacement parts for the parts we purchased from them to replace the defective parts we got, so we had to go to another store to get them. It seemed like we ran into issue after issue. Diagnosing the second defective caliper took a lot of time because it wasn’t until we were trying to bleed the brakes that it was discovered. I can’t even explain all the stuff I learned in one way or the other during this entire process. However, the main thing I can say I learned is that changing brakes is nowhere near as difficult as I had thought for so many years. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but basically it’s very easy! While it has been a very long two days that has been both physically and mentally exhausting, I am very happy to have gone through it and learned everything that I have. I am very grateful to have such good friends as Nicole and Alex, who took a lot of time out of their days to help me, and especially Nicole for teaching me everything she did! So, after roughly 118,500 miles and 10 years, the original brakes, rotors, and rear calipers have finally been replaced on the Envoy!
New Brakes, Part 1
I’ve had my truck now for just about 7 years, and in that time I really haven’t had to put too much money into it. There have been some parts replaced here and there, oil changes and new tires and such. I’ve even been really lucky in the sense that a number of these repairs have been performed by friends for the cost of parts, smokes, and food. In addition to that, I am also learning things that I have never had the opportunity to learn before. Today was another of those learning experiences. Last night my brakes started making some really bad grinding noises. I’m not really surprised as I knew they were getting low, particularly since during one of the previous repairs my friend told me that it appeared my rotors were original to the truck. So today my friend Nicole help me and taught me how to change the brakes and rotors on my truck, all of them. I picked up a new jack and some various other tools along with the necessary parts and in about 8 hours we changed all four brakes and rotors. The front ones did not give us any issues but it turns out we are going to have change the calipers on the back as well, which means most likely bleeding the brakes too. Something else to learn! But that’ll have to happen tomorrow.
Memorial Day Weekend Recap
What a great weekend! We just returned from spending the weekend up north at Chris and Tracey’s cabin. It’s the first time Kylie and I have been there in almost 10 years, and it’s the first time for Melissa! We had a really good time, the kids all got to play together and the adults got to relax a bit. Even though it was a long weekend the time still went by really fast. The drive up and back took a bit longer than they normally would due to the holiday traffic, but luckily there were no real standing points, just congestion and slow downs. We are already talking about trying to find some more time to go back up this summer. Not sure if we are going to be able to or not, but we definitely won’t wait another ten years to get up there!