All my homework is complete for Spring Semester 2022. There are is only one more class to attend where I will present my final ArcGIS project. Then, I will only have two three hour classes and an additional 30 credits of research before my credit requirements will be complete. I am scheduled to take my Comprehensive Exam and present my thesis proposal in January 2023 with the goal of completing my dissertation defense before the end of Spring Semester 2023. This summer will be spent on doing the research for my third and final paper. The three papers, when completed will be the three chapters of my dissertation. The plan for this summer is to finish the software and start processing images that have not yet been captured yet. The camera is on Turkey Creek in something called the Kearney Outdoor Learning Area (KOLA) south of Kearney West High School near Kearney, Nebraska. It is a beautiful setting and I am glad it is there. The latest functionality added to the research software (GRIME2) is shown in the video below.
We are all but finished in the remodel of the first house and are moving forward to try to figure out what to do with the second one. The lot for the house is not that big, but the size of the house is not small, taking up the entire footprint of the property. We have started talking with an architect because we want to make sure to have a design the current house structure can support. In those discussions we have vacillated between two different styles. We are leaning toward a traditional/contemporary design whose outward appearance would be somewhat like the house on the bottom right in the images above. Lynn suggested we have the architect render the house also as a full blown contemporary style house of the type shown in the bottom left image. None of the interior of the house will be affected much but we want the outside to fit into the neighborhood and still have the kind of design that works for the way we want to use the place.
As for the first house, we are not sure what to do with it yet–we were thinking of keeping it and renting it out but we were approached by someone who wants to buy it from us. They are bringing us an offer in the next week or so. We will almost certainly sell it if it is a good offer because that will allow us to start in on another property.
This is the view from the apartments that are almost complete that are four or five blocks down the hill from the second house we bought and hope to remodel for ourselves. We were pretty amazed with the wonderful view. The following images are from inside the house. The unfinished box-looking things up on the walls are areas where mini-split air conditioners will be installed. The idea we have now is to keep the apartments for awhile. There are currently four of them but room for three more. Lynn said he would like to rent those out and let the income from the first floor finance the addition of the final three. We thought that was a great idea and is now our current plan.
Lynn gave Tio Lauro and Grandma Conchita a tour. The first image is of the opening between the two apartments on the second floor. The second is a similar view of the two apartments on the first floor. We were very surprised with how much natural light enters all of the apartments.
Lynn showed the apartment remodel to two potential purchasers last week with another one scheduled for the coming week. The floors are all in now with the shower heads, toilets, and painting to follow in the next week or two. We have decide to finish out the basement apartment before we sell and start soliciting renters as we believe having the place occupied will improve the price we can ask. We have had to go more slowly than would have been possible had we had more funding but are pleased with the progress. Lynn has his eye on some other properties that might work for our second project when (if) we get the thing sold. We will see how easy it is to attract renters soon–everyone with whom Lynn has spoken in the real estate world says there are insufficient rentals available in the area for apartments in our price range. We are hoping that is true.
It is going to be a very busy semester. I have a three credit class in the use of ArcGIS in Hydrology, a one credit seminar, and six research credits, but this next few months is going to be very busy in my day job and the house models in Mexico are still in full swing. We will be transitioning from the apartment building remodel to our own house up on the hill, hopefully, in March. In the meantime, the reviews for the initial submission of my second journal article have returned so I have to find time to a response and revisions required to be completed by March 18 but I am hoping to complete it by the end of February.
The latest fun thing with my research is that I have ported the GaugeCam GRIME2 programs to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Hopefully, we will use it for research on camera based water level measurement in a small nature preserve just south of Kearney High School in Kearney Nebraska where we will be testing the ability of GRIME2 to create calibrations from a new style of calibration target inspired by the ubiquitous, octagonal, red stop sign.
The first house in Mexico is not converted to four (soon to be five) apartments with just the flooring, interior work, and some external doors to go. We put it on the market yesterday. You can see the offering here. The page will be updated with interior pictures as soon as the finish work is complete. We have our eyes on a couple of places for our next project if this one sells pretty quickly.
I submitted article number 2 last night which should turn into the second third of my dissertation. It had to do with the release of the GRIME2 software package as a free, open-source application with commercial-friendly licensing. I have now started work on my third and final article. When I have three, then my dissertation research is complete and all I have to do is accumulate them into a dissertation. Of course there are other procedural, exam, and classes to be completed but it is a great milestone.
I changed the header to the blog this morning. The image is of the City of San Pedro Garza Garcia where we have our house. The location of the house we plan to remodel and keep is about a quarter of the way up the left side of the mountain in the middle of the image. San Pedro is to the left of the mountain and Monterrey is to the right. The mountain is 6788 feet high. We should be able to post some new images in the next couple of days of the work Lynn has completed on first house we purchased that we plan to put on the market within the next month or so.
The end game for the remodel of the first house has really begun now. The final parts of the facade are a wall that rises to the level of the house to the left in the image to the left, large numbers for the street number of the building, and accent lighting for the numbers, pointing upward from below and pointing downward from just above the top windows.
Work is going on in earnest inside the house, too. The picture to the right shows the state of the walls inside the house. Plastering has started and our builder (and Lawyer), Lynn, has promised us pictures in the next day or two of progress that should give a better image of what we can expect for the final appearance of the house. The idea about what we are going to do with the building after the first phase is complete is still in a state of flux. We hope to have a much better idea of the possibilities within the next month or two.
We were looking at our map and browsing the internet and determined our house up on the hill in San Pedro Garza Garcia is only four miles from the largest building in Latin America (Torres Obispado) and a little over seven miles from what was the largest building in Mexico (Torre KOI) before that. I think we can so the both of them from the house on the hill but I am going to confirm that with Lynn, my brother-in-law and our contractor and lawyer or my artist brother-in-law Lauro who has promised us a couple of pieces specifically for the house that we can add to our collection of his work.
Lynn is our partner in this enterprise. It cannot be overstated how much it has helped us that at he is both a practicing lawyer and the owner of a construction company. He has deep connections in the kind of subcontractors and laborers as well as knowledge of the local economy and opportunities in the specific neighborhood where we are planning to continue this work. The economic realities in San Pedro are just as complicated as they are in the USA. Lynn has the finger on the pulse of raw material and labor prices, knowledge of what is a good deal and, more importantly, what is not, when to buy, when to sell, and about every other aspect of doing anything to do with real estate in his part of the world. We are glad to be in business with him. You can see his picture in front of the apartments to the right.
Work continues on the house on the apartments. The current schedule has the transition from work on the apartments starting in late December or early January. A couple of images of the current state of construction of the apartment transition below.
Life has been somewhat crazy since we left Centralia six months ago, but we have hope that the pace of change is slowing a little. The Texas house is getting organized, fall classes are in full swing, and the kids have already bought their airline tickets to come home for Thanksgiving. My countdown clock for retirement is well under a year now, but the definition of retirement is changing rapidly. With the current state of world affairs, the wildly interesting things I am doing at work that actually could contribute at some non-insignificant level to the precision, repeatability and velocity of biological research, a similar story for the research on which I contribute at University of Nebraska, the added benefit associated with making money rather than draining retirement savings, and a desire to do something rather than nothing in my retirement, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I hope to be at this for a few years more. I am considering the idea of staying on at work until I finish my degree. Hopefully, that will be around the end of spring semester 2024. After that all bets are off, but with my current mindset, maybe I will continue both my UNL research and to consult part time at my day job.
Lorena and I have been excited about this house. It is in a very quiet neighborhood up on a hill with just spectacular views. We cannot wait to take some pictures at the right time of day with the entire panorama. It is small enough that there will not be a lot of maintenance that needs to be done. We have a ton of things we want to do and, thankfully, there is not going to have to be a wholesale restructuring of the house like Casa Mexican #1.
Our builder, Lynn Neri, tells us there are going to be major changes in the appearance of the exterior of the house over the next 2-3 weeks. The area of the images marked in red is open to the soil in front of the house. A planter or two and a couple of trees are planned for that area. Tile for the entire facade of the house is scheduled to start this Saturday. I am not sure exactly what Lynn has in mind for the tile, but I am pretty sure it will create some pretty dramatic changes. After that, the clean-up and finish work required for the interior of the house is really minimal and should take only another 2-4 weeks. When the exterior is cleaned up and while we are still working on interior finish work, plumbing, and wiring, we will put the house on the market and start thinking about the next project.
A colleague of mine, John S., has joined me to start his PhD in Natural Resources Science at University of Nebraska. He is a highly skilled software architect and an image processing application development expert with decades of experience. He is less than ten years younger than I am so I am sure the average age of the PhD students in our department has gone up a good chunk. We will be doing a hydrology independent study class together and his research will extend some of the stuff I have already started. Honestly, his programming skills are broader and deeper than mine so he will be a huge addition to the program. I am really looking forward to working with him.
As for me, I will be two credits short of half way complete (will have 43, need 90) after fall semester. After that, I have four more classes to take, research to perform, comprehensive exams, and a dissertation and defense and I am done. There is some chance I can get this all done by the end of Fall 2023, God willing, but it will probably be Spring 2024 if I am being realistic. I am still really enjoying it, but have been disabused of any notion that I want to wallow in the petty politics of academia and especially in academic publications. That being said, I really enjoy writing and hope to continue to contribute scholarly work through Troy and his colleagues at UNL if/after I graduate.
Lorena just signed the contract to buy the house with the red circle around that features four arched windows. It is in the Monterrey area and we are very excited about it. We really liked the first house we purchased, but this is a category difference from the first house because of the spectacular view and proximity to very steep hillsides where it will be difficult for anyone to build. Because this is a house where we believe we would really like to stay and spend the time and effort to make it, God willing, the way we have done with previous homes, we hoping to keep this house. I will put up more pictures when we have some.
I might mention that I am using the “royal” we as Lorena is actually owner of the house and signer of the papers.
It is difficult to explain how much work has gone on in the house infrastructure, but Lynn has been very hard at work. We are hoping for completion of the house–actually conversion to apartments within less than six months, keep in mind this is a part time project for Lynn. We are very, very pleased with the progress. In the meantime, we are working on purchasing house #2 and it is not a house we plan to flip. We want to keep it.
Lynn has made great progress on the house over the last several weeks. Most of the internal infrastructure (plumbing, electrical, support structure) is complete and now the final structural elements are coming into place before the face of the house will start looking much more modern. The stairs on the right lead to the second floor of the house from the sidewalk. There will be a sister set of stairs to the to the left that will lead to the first floor of the house from the sidewalks. Most of the openings in the front of the house that are not blocked in will be windows. Notice, there will be no balcony on this (the street) side of the house which adds quite a bit of extra internal space.
The tear down is complete, all the interior structural work is done, and Lynn has started to rebuild. Notice that he has reclaimed what used to be an exterior balcony on the second floor and a porch on the first floor to increase the interior floor space of the house. There is a ton of plumbing for new bathroom and kitchen locations, adjustment of walls to add less invasive and easier to access stairways, and removal of interior walls to improve the layout. Next will come the front exterior which should change the street appearance in its entirety.
We sold our house, packed all our earthly goods, and are ready to load it on the truck so we can leave for our new house in Texas. We thought we would have been closed on the house in Texas by now, but the house was not ready on the date promised by the builder. They promised that it would be ready yesterday and that might have actually happened, but we are not sure about it. Nevertheless, we have an inspector lined up for next Tuesday, our real estate agent lined up to do a final walk-through on Wednesday, and a closing lined up with the escrow agency on Thursday. We just hope we can get to Texas in time to sign for the closing by 4:30 on Thursday and then all we have to do is wait for the truck to arrive with our stuff between May 3 and May 5. Excited to get this done!