I got a look at Shannon's new house (this is on 6/17/00). It's an old house, built after the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Only a few blocks southwest of the UC Berkeley Campus. A two-story home, the first story has largish living and family rooms, a good-sized kitchen and a bathroom (not a big stove, but lots of floor space).

The second floor has four smallish rooms, with the last being oddly sized. The backyard is small, the carriage house out front needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It needs a lot of work to make it look new, but it's big and looks like it'll be quite nice when it's finally redone.

It's not a house that I would want to live in. I suppose I would rather live in something newer and with a more modern style. Perhaps living in an apartment with a large bedroom has spoiled me, but the bedrooms are quite small and a bit claustrophobic. And of course I don't think I'd want to live in Berkeley.

This brings up the question of where I would like to live. I've probably gone over this before, so I'll just say that I don't know exactly. My sister is going to start looking for a house (again), and if she finds one she can't afford, I'll help her buy it.

For myself I've given up on looking for now. My enthusiasm is quite mercurial, so perhaps I'll want to look more in a few months. I have been sort of looking at some apartments. There is a complex being built near Jack London Square in Oakland that looks like it'll be quite nice.

It also looks like it'll be expensive. So I'll have to wait to see what the rent will be before I decide to move. I do like my current apartment. It's big for a 1 bedroom, airy with lots of windows, with cable tv and a DSL line set up already. It has a bar with a sink, although I put my servers on the bar area.

There are a few bad things about my apartment. Insulation is awful, so it's hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and the windows leak heat/cold like crazy. The fridge has a malfunctioning thermostat, so it freezes things in summer and lets things get a bit too warm in winter. The bathroom light switch can be hard to make click, the runner for the bedroom closet doors (big mirror doors) came unglued from the ceiling. The neighborhood can be a bit noisy at times, which wouldn't be so bad if the kids played country music instead of latin music.

Still, it's home and so I'm not particularly enthusiastic about looking for another place to live. I'll probably stay there until I'm pushed out by circumstances. There are also too many things to keep in mind when looking for a house. Nearby grocery stores and other shops, grade and high schools, the neighbors, BART and other public transportation, access to the freeway, weather, pollution, city and county government. Charts and charts and charts on the web sites, but it's just so much information overload.

If I last another five years, I'll probably get a house then. That assumes way too many things about how the housing market will be then. But by then I'll have the most money versus time that I expect to have. Right now I'm making a good amount of money versus the rise in housing prices. In three or four years that's likely to slow down, so that I won't be generating as much money and may start to lose ground. So that may be the point for me to buy a house.