Moving West
We finally sold our house (still waiting for the deal to close) and we have found a house on the west side of Cleveland near our parents. We really liked Hudson but we decided to move back to be even closer to family. The new house is much bigger than our current home but it was built in 1983 so it will take some serious updating. D is scaring me with all of her plans – it will be a lot to pay for. Both of our families are pretty happy about the move west. It should make a lot of things easier: less driving at Christmas, more babysitting from family, easier vacations, etc. Our main motivation was the school system. Hudson was #3 in Cleveland but on the west side the best rank was Rocky River at #8. We are moving to Westlake at #10 (a good improvement over Twinsburg at #32). In the deal, we lost a good amount of money on the sale of our home but I think we made some of it up on the house we purchased. Now we just need to survive the inspections and the move itself.
The Bat to Gmail
Yesterday I used Gmail’s imap to import messages from The Bat. I’ve been using The Bat for several years now for business email for our colic business. It has worked well but I really wanted D to be able to check our business account from downstairs or from anywhere else on the web (like when I travel). So, yesterday I decided to try to get the email into Gmail. It worked, but it was a pain. I suspect that I lost a couple hundred messages in all because of unknown errors either from The Bat or Gmail.
It was painful. What I did was create a Gmail account and enable IMAP support. Then I setup that IMAP account inside The Bat. Then I created IMAP folders inside The Bat and copied messages from a folder in our old account in The Bat to this new folder in this new IMAP account in The Bat. Then I waited and watched The Bat struggle to push all these messages to the server. The points of pain were:
- Getting the settings correct in The Bat for the new Gmail IMAP account
- Doing a folder contents copy for each folder (about 4o of them) from the old account in The Bat to the IMAP account in The Bat
- The BAT doesn’t show you anything useful when it is trying to upload these messages to the server. In fact, sometimes it closes the connection window but keeps working. Other times it keeps the connection window open but stops working. So, I had to monitor the progress inside the Gmail folder to see how many messages had arrived.
When it was all done I disabled POP and IMAP access inside Gmail. I changed our old pop account to be a forwarder to push the mail to Gmail. I setup Gmail with our account so we can send mail from Gmail and have it look like it came from the old account.
So far, I’m impressed that Gmail does such a good job at detecting spam and not accidentally considering real email as Spam. So far I’ve had no false positives. Hopefully this works out and we can stay with Gmail from now on for our business email.
2-3 Cavs
The Cavs won last night. Now they just need to win the last 2 games to advance. It is a tall order especially since LBJ has been a superstar and they still barely won. The rest of the team needs to start playing like they want to win a championship. I think the biggest risk is that the team watches LBJ do his thing and he has an off night or Orlando decides to do ball denial or triple team him. Will the other guys score enough? I hope so.
3-2 Lakers
Go Lakers! I was up again last night watching the Lakers game. They played just so-so during most of the game but in the fourth quarter they played pretty well. Lamar Odom woke up and started rebounding. Kobe handle the double teams very well. Pau posted up and passed well. Go team! One more win and they will probably be playing Orlando in the finals 
Still bummed about Cleveland. The Cavs need a miracle now.
Sooo tired
We were up until 1 AM watching the Cavs game on Tivo. Then Z wet the bed last night at 4:00 AM – his first time ever. We were up for a half hour to clean up and get him back to sleep. We all got up at 7 AM for school and work. So, I’m dragging today.. I think D is taking a nap already.
OMG Cavs!#!
I can’t believe the Cavs are down 3 to 1 against Orlando! Amazing! The Cavs now need to win 3 straight to advance – very few teams have ever done that. I’m totally bummed out.
Smalltalk Site CleanUp
My Smalltalk site should remain spam free from now on. I added CAPTCHA images on every form submission and all submissions require my approval as well. That goes for:
Take that spammers!
C’mon Lakers and Cavs!
All I want is for the best teams in the league (Lakers and Cavs) to both make it to the finals. Both teams are trying their hardest to lose games. LA and Cleveland have both been playing bad compared to their regular season performances. C’mon! Get a rebound! Make a shot! Geez.
Long Weekend
We didn’t have any home showings so we didn’t have to clean and leave 
We stopped by my parents house for a little while to show them the new car and take them for a short drive. Then we went to eat at my in-laws house. My mother in law was in pain (nerve pain in her leg) so they took her to the ER. She has a various health issues that kept her there for the rest of the weekend and still. I hope she is improving and her pain is gone by now. We ate and then drove back home. Monday we didn’t do anything except lay around all day. I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs so that has been keeping me busy at night.
Kia Rondo – A Mini MiniVan
We bought a new car last week – a new 2008 Kia Rondo. We looked at a bunch of cars – Honda Odyssey (mini van), Toyota Highlander (SUV with 3rd row seats), Toyota Camry (and hybrid), Kia Optima, etc. We settled on the Rondo because:
- It has good reliability and safety ratings from Consumer Reports and it was one of their recommended cars
- It has the 3rd row of seats so we can put extra people in the car if we *need* to. These seats are tight so it would work fine for kids (our kids’ friends) or adults for a very short distance.
- It was a great time to buy.. Kia was giving a $4000 rebate and the dealers needed to get rid of the old 2008 models so this model was nearly $9000 under the MSRP
So far we’re both pretty happy. I traded in the old 1997 Geo with 135000 miles. Now my car is the 2000 Honda Civic with 60000 miles and D will drive the Rondo since she has the kids most of the time.
My main goal was to get D and the kids into a bigger and safer car than the civic. The Rondo has all sorts of safety features that are new to us – stability control, tons of air bags, anti-lock breaks, etc.
I had my reservations about Kia since they have had some bad reliability ratings in the past. Consumer Reports says this model should be reliable so I hope it is true.
We got the tricked out version (EX) with leather, heated seats, moon roof, power windows, power locks, rims, roof rails, 6 disc changer, etc, etc. We weren’t shopping for the upgraded model but as they flew off the lots because of the huge price discounts we ended up getting a better deal on the EX model than the normal model. Total price was $15,200 after trade in (They gave me $700 for the Geo after a fight).
