Awesome Movies

I couldn't fit all my favorite movies into the little space they give you, so here's a list. Not that anyone cares, but if you really like one of the categories in general, and haven't seen a movie I put in that category, I recommend that you see it.

Comedy

Office Space

Elf

Drop Dead Gorgeous - this is one of the funniest movies you've never seen

Houseguest - it's too bad that Sinbad hasn't made any more movies

Amelie

Daddy Day Care - very funny and Steve Zahn is hilarious

Grosse Pointe Blank

The Princess Bride

Groundhog Day - you have to watch a few times to appreciate how funny Bill Murray is.

What About Bob - the first time I saw this, I thought it was stupid. But the more I see it, the funnier it gets.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

A Christmas Story

Happy Gilmore

Fletch

Liar Liar

Blues Brothers

This is Spinal Tap

Big

A League of Their Own


Thriller

The Sixth Sense

Identity - great movie that I'd never heard of

Memento

The Da Vinci Code

The Usual Suspects

The Silence of the Lambs

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The Spanish Prisoner

Heist

Signs

Runaway Jury

Seven

Action/Adventure

Braveheart

Saving Private Ryan

Minority Report

Pulp Fiction

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Drama

Catch Me If You Can - I wouldn't exactly call it a drama...it's funny, it's a true story, it has elements of a thriller. An all-around great movie.

Almost Famous

A Beautiful Mind

Forrest Gump

Lost in Translation

The Shawshank Redemption

Erin Brockovich

Stand by Me

The Untouchables

Glengary Glen Ross

Titanic

Hotel Rwanda

American Beauty

Witness


Sports

Remember the Titans

Breaking Away

Rudy

Science Fiction/Fantasy

Twelve Monkeys

Blade Runner

The Matrix

The Lord of the Rings

Harry Potter

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Star Wars

Brazil

Jurassic Park

Gattaca

For Kids

The Incredibles

Monsters Inc

Madagascar

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Over the Hedge

Robots

Finding Nemo

Toy Story

A Bug's Life

Music

Purple Rain

That Thing You Do

Documentaries

Spellbound

Bowling for Columbine

- schneid

Volleyball

I actually played volleyball today at lunch for the first time in about four years, if you don't count Westy's annual beer parties. Now that I'm back at Tellabs, Mike K. put me on his 4-man team, and we play once a week during lunchtime. I didn't think I would survive...that 75 minutes was the longest I've exercised in three years. Yes, I'm that badly out of shape and overweight. 205 lbs. is not a proper weight for someone 5'7". But it actually felt great to be out there, and my body does remember how to play volleyball. I'd like to work my way up to playing basketball at lunchtime too. The courts are right here at the Tellabs facility, which is very convenient. I might ride my bicycle to work a couple of times a week from the new house. Home and work are both near the Prairie Path, so I could ride without getting killed. It's about 8 or 9 miles which is a reasonable distance, and would probably take about 45 minutes.

These social+athletic+fun pursuits are another big reason why Tellabs is such a great place to work.

- schneid

We have paint and carpet!

The carpet has been installed at the new house and the painters are almost done. The only white walls left in the house are in closets - everything else has been painted a different color. Now that the carpet is down, it will be easier to work at the house because we can take the kids with us. We didn't want the kids playing in the house due to the bare floors and tack strips.

Remaining tasks: bathroom countertops, tile, vinyl, and appliances. We're planning on moving in July, although we haven't set a date yet.

- schneid

House is progressing...

The granite countertops were installed at our new house. The painters are in there right now, and I'm waiting to receive one more estimate before getting the carpet and flooring done. When it's complete, we can move in. But we're not sure if we want to leave the old house empty when we're trying to sell it. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

- schneid

Lots of work to do on new house

We have a lot of work to arrange on the new house when I return from my trip. Within the next few weeks, we hope to finish the carpet, tile floors, paint, countertops, bathroom counters, and refinish the wood floors, not to mention general cleaning and landscaping. We're going to be pretty busy and our current house is still for sale.

- schneid

Trip Report

I've almost finished a long two weeks of traveling. I plan to write a few posts on the details of the trips, but here's a quick summary.

I've been participating as a member of the appraisal team in a CMMI Level 2 appraisal of an organization in Tellabs. This is a very intensive process which, not including prework, has lasted 10 working days at 3 sites - Naperville, Dallas, and Petaluma. We started each day at 8:30 and almost always finished around 6:30.

In addition, my mom took us to Las Vegas for four days in the middle of the appraisal to celebrate her 60th birthday. The appraisal was coincidentally scheduled around my vacation. So, here is my travel/work schedule from the last two weeks. Monday and Tuesday in Naperville, went to Dallas Tuesday night, Wednesday in Dallas, went home Wednesday night, left for Las Vegas on Thursday. I was supposed to come home to see my kids on Sunday, but our flight was cancelled. If I went home on Monday, I would have missed my flight to San Francisco on Monday afternoon, so I flew directly from LV to SF. I arrived in SF on Monday, and came home on the red eye on Friday night, arriving at my front door at 7:00 AM on Saturday. At 11:45 on Sunday morning, a limo brought me to O'Hare to return to Petaluma. I continued to work on the appraisal in Petaluma until Wednesday, then took a red eye back to Chicago. Whew. I'm taking Thursday and Friday off.

When we were in Las Vegas, that was the first time that my wife and I had left our kids with anyone for more than one night. My mother-in-law flew in from Florida to watch our kids. Including the first half of my Petaluma visit, I was gone for 9 days which is by far the longest I've ever been away from my kids. I really missed them.

We had a fantastic time in Las Vegas and were fortunate to stay at Bellagio and saw Cirque de Soleil and Danny Gans, and had dinner at Circo. Thanks Mom! I also played some poker, saw lots of poker pros in Vegas, shook hands with Phil Ivey. Hung out with Rodney and Rebecca in Mill Valley, played poker in Petaluma, had dinner at The Girl and the Fig and hung out with Rodney in Sonoma, had dinner with the appraisal team in Bodega Bay, visited my cousin Mimi and her husband David in San Francisco.

These will probably be the only details I'll add: the poker pros that I saw playing at the Bellagio were: Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Chip Reese, David Sklansky, David Gray, Johnny Chan, Eli Elezra, Scott Fischman, Minh Ly, and Eskimo Clark. I'm sure there were others that I didn't recognize.

I was only in Dallas for 18 hours and I can't even remember it now.

- schneid

Working on the New House

We've been busy cleaning up the new house. We removed all the carpet and pad. We are washing all the walls and ceilings, which is very tedious. We had the furnace and A/C serviced and the humidifier replaced.

My dad arrived yesterday to help us out, in particular with getting estimates from contractors on a lot of the work to be done - painting, carpeting, countertops, vinyl floors, and refinishing the wood floors.

Some of the work that we will probably do ourselves includes repairing drywall, replacing the light fixtures and installing cabinets in the laundry room.

Greg T. and I are going to finish the basement when the other work is done. The plumbing is roughed in for a full bath, but we need to get a plumber due to city code. I'd like to have a bar, rec room, bedroom, bathroom, and storage room.

You know, it's a real pain having two houses. We need to spend all our spare time at the new house, but things still need to get done at our current house, like moving the lawn, cleaning, etc. And you have bills for both houses too!

Hopefully we are on track for moving in June.

- schneid

Buying a House Before Selling Your House

Here are some lessons learned about buying a house before selling your current home. I'll try to add more information as things happen, since we only just closed on the bridge loan today and haven't closed on the new house yet.

We obtained a bridge loan, which allows you to purchase a new home before selling your current home. It doesn't allow you to just sell your current home at your leisure. You need to put your current home on the market quickly after your offer is accepted on the new house.

The bridge loan pays off the mortgage on your current home. It is an interest-only loan, and the monthly payment is a similar amount to our current mortgage + taxes monthly payment. When we sell the current house, the proceeds (equity) from that house will be used to pay off the bridge loan in whole, and we get any leftover money. If we weren't going to use that money for home improvements on the new house, then there might be tax implications for the capital gain, because the price of our new house was much less than the sale price of our current house. When we signed the bridge loan, we also receive a check (which is basically some of our equity) that is used as the down payment on the new house. Starting in May (a month after closing on the new house), we will have a monthly mortgage payment on the new house and a monthly payment for the bridge loan; therefore, it's prudent to get our home sold quickly.

- schneid

We Are Moving!

In case you didn't already know it, I left GE Healthcare and returned to working at Tellabs in November, 2005. It's without a doubt the best (and easiest) decision I ever made. Except for marrying my wife, of course. And having kids. So it's the third best decision that I ever made. The drive from our current home to Naperville is 65-75 minutes each way, and I've never cared much for a long commute. I would much prefer to spend the time with my family or even pouring lemon juice on my paper cuts. But I digress...

Based on our criteria of nearness to work, great schools, and reasonably affordable houses, we narrowed down our search to Batavia and Geneva. Naperville is out because most of it is not affordable, and the traffic is ridiculous where it is affordable. Oswego (where we used to live) is too far, Aurora and North Aurora have poor schools, etc. etc. So we found a house in North Aurora. But wait, you said North Aurora had poor schools. Well, there is a small pocket of North Aurora, 75 houses to be exact, that butts up against Batavia and is in the Batavia school district. The houses on the opposite side of our own street are in the North Aurora school district (Schneider Elementary School, to be specific). My friend Greg T. lives three houses over and has about 12 kids and a pony (or is it a Great Dane?), so it will be fun for our families to get to know each other. They built their house and really like the neighborhood.

We actually signed the contract on the new house before putting our current house on the market. We obtained a bridge loan and were prepared to move quickly in case something good came up. Well, something good came up. For the first time in three months, a home was available in our preferred neighborhood, and it was listed about $30,000 under market price. In fact, we bought it for $60,000 less than a house we had looked a week before. So the answer to our question of "Should we buy a cheap house or a nice house?" was "Both!". There were three offers on the house within three days of going on the market, and we just barely won with our offer over the asking price, no contingency, and closing by the end of the month. We take possession on March 27, and our own house just went on the market. We hope to close on our new house in a couple of months and complete our move to the new house in early June when the school year ends.

I can't even begin to list all the great features of our new house. OK, I'll try. It's in a great location next to a country club, a large wooded cemetary, Marmion Academy, and the Fox River. So it's not in the middle of a sea of houses like our current house. There are two parks within two blocks. We live about 1/4 mile from the Prairie Path, which also rans almost right by my office, so I could ride my bike to work. It's a 15 minute drive from my office.

We are 5 minutes from downtown Batavia, 10 minutes from downtown Geneva, 7 minutes from I-88 (the house is north of Butterfield and just east of IL-25 if you want to see it on a map), 20 minutes from the Fox Valley mall, 10 minutes from the grocery store, and only 10 minutes from my weekly poker game. Heck, I can host the game myself now that I live near the other guys.

Our lot is 180 feet long, so we have a huge back yard. The house has a pretty large front porch, a large paver patio, and two swingsets, one of which is big and has a tornado slide. There is a three-car garage, and in the house, running the entire length of that garage, a huge 20x7 laundry room with an exterior door. The family room is pretty big and the kitchen is decent. The kids' bedrooms are large and both have walk-in closets. The master bedroom is a huge T-shape, 20x14 and 15x9, with a tray ceiling in the master and a cathedral ceiling in the sitting room. The master bath is large and has a separate tub and shower, actually a separate room for the shower and the toilet, a dressing table, plus a 8x11 walk-in closet.

The basement is huge and very open, since the stairs and mechanicals are next to walls. We plan to finish it with (approximately) a 13x10 bedroom, 12x10 full bathroom, a large storage area, and a 30x25 (maybe 35x25) rec room.

The previous owners have dogs, rabbits, and birds, so we're going to remove every bit of carpeting from the house and replace it, as well as repainting everything, and getting some of the floors redone before we move in. That's going to take some time. I will drop off a box or two most mornings on my way to work, so when we finish the actual move, we will just have movers take care of all the furniture.

We're very excited and can't wait to get in there and start working.

- schneid

Vow to Write More Personal Stuff

This does seem like a pretty convenient way to keep up to date with friends and family. I'm going to be spending a lot less time in the car and thus there will be fewer spontaneous calls from me.

So for those of you who don't give a damn about poker, please check in occasionally and I promise to post what's going on in the life of the Schneider family.

- schneid