The tax-lien property auction is over, and Griffith got NONE of the 6 places he was bidding on. Everything went either too close to market price (and since you can't see inside or inspect them you really don't know what you're getting or how much it will take to make it sellable at market rate again) or over market rate. WTF? Why pay top dollar for a POS you can't even see? Just go buy one of the dozens of trailers that were for sale. People go nuts at auctions apparently. Anyway, no more lake county adventures for a year (the next auction).

Yesterday I went down to SJ BMW and looked at the new 1200RT and 1200ST since they have them in stock now and Cal BMW doesn't. The RT is fugly looking, I hate the new side case design, and it's going for around $20k (mind was $16500 and that was absolute top dollar, I overpaid for the privilege of getting the first of the twin-spark model). The ST is really cool and low and light, but doesn't come with the bags. Once you add bags to the ABS model it's $17,500. Damn. Plus the nod to the state, and the 600 mile service will be another $500 or something stupid you're still looking at way too much money. I told Cal BMW that I'll just take my deposit back, that the new machines are of no interest to me anymore.

Work is quiet because my boss is out of town. With him gone, there is no one to randomly escalate issues and people have to talk directly to me instead. It's kinda nice, things get solved in 5 minutes without having to spend the rest of the day calming down Ed and stopping all the email threads.

The property trip was fun. We got to look for crappy trailers on dirt roads all over the place. The Montero came in handy, we needed good ground clearance and 4WD a few times, and once 4-low came into play. The pics are up off the main page, but are sorta boring. We got sorta lost following the GPS and map software down this dirt road shortcut. We ended up at a locked gate and after seeing a few red necks on dirt bikes with dead turkeys hooked to them (hunters we're hoping) decided to turn back. We ran into another red neck that said even if we got around the gate (which he was trying to find a way to do) it was 30 miles and a river crossing to I505. He didn't think we could do the river in the Montero at this time of year.

Griffith and I were supposed to go up to Lake county to look at property this afternoon. He's the guy that works for me that has all the crappy properties he buys at tax auctions and fixes up and sells. I don't want to do that, I just want to pick up some cheap land somewhere just for the hell of it. Anyway, he was doing on-line title research today and didn't call back after this morning. Now his phone seems to be off. Wonder what's going on?

This morning was my first horse lesson. It wasn't too bad and might have actually bordered on fun. My new spiffy boots worked well and everyone there seemed to like them. I got to go forward and backwards, do some turns and work on "posting" which is when you bob up and down when the trot to keep you from getting thrown off and keep me from crushing my nuts. That's important. I also got all advanced and learned to "heel rein" in which you get them to scoot their ass left/right while moving forward. It's handy when they're walking just a few feet left/right of where you want them to be walking and just want them to scoot sideways a step or two. The barn is a total chick fest too, I was the only guy there other than the illegals there to tend the horses. My trainer is this quasi-hot Asian chick and the 18 year old trust fund chicks there were checking me out. Rod should go learn to ride just to pick up on chicks.

I got my tax returns from the accountants last night. Their first estimate last month was that I would owe about $11k (federal and state) which I thought was acceptable. Turns out I get a refund of $6k instead. Woohoo! I like really conservative estimates like that. I'll probably send in some of it as estimates for next year to make up for any ESPP gains I make.

The woman is now annoying me with her stupid March Madness crap. Yea, AZ is only down by 2. Oy.

AZ lost the basketball game. No more basketball for us. Whew.

Griffith called, we're going up tomorrow at 6am. There are 2 properties that he thinks I'll like, and who knows how much he will want to look at. We'll see. I'll take pictures. Speaking of property, the woman lost another bid on another condo. The winning bid was supposed to be "substantially higher than offering". Yep, that's always the case.

Here are the bookcases, empty. They're also not in place and not bolted to the wall but you get the idea.

I just picked up my 10th direct report. This is kinda crazy. Also this week I had my quarterly 1-on-1 in which Ed said I'm not getting his old job (as he said I would get in 6-12 months before). Oh well.

The book cases are in, I'll take some pictures tonight perhaps. They're pretty damn big.

Saturday Don came up and we loaded the first of the 50 BMG ammo. There were two hardware store runs, the first for a drill bit (I didn't have one big enough for the bolts dad gave me) and the second for an adjustable wrench that would go out to 1.5". I don't have anything that big and we couldn't adjust some of the parts of the press. Crazy how big the stuff is. After we loaded the rounds we went to Reeds and looked at rifles and suddenly .308 seemed really wimpy.

In the photos you can see the high-tech metering device we used to trickle the powder to the right amount. My powder throw will do at max 15 grains per throw. These rounds needed 210 grains of powder so we just got it close on the scale and then "tapped" more in through the paper funnel to get it exactly right. Slow, but accurate. We only loaded 10 rounds total, now Don has to go test fire them and make sure they're right.

Sunday I had another psycho class. I wasn't all _that_ excited about it, I was kinda gunned-out by then but it was still good. I'm only sorta sore. The next class is April 30th.

Today I rode up to SF to drop off a check with the investment people. Their building is right across from Kristen's office, maybe 100m at most away. I stopped in and saw her between clients and went across the street to try the new Mexican place for lunch (it was only so-so, not SF quality I wouldn't think). It rained a little on the way back to work, and rained a lot after I got there. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

11 to 11 is an amusing time in German. :)

So instead of just bitching how much I hate work all the time, the woman suggested that I start tracking it. So, on the upstairs big dry erase calendar that we keep all the stuff on I'm going to be marking down a "crappy day at work" number as well. Since it's "how shitty was work today", it's got to start at 0 because if a day wasn't shitty, it shouldn't get any points. So, I'm thinking (and let's see if I can remember the table format off the top of my head):

So, yesterday was just a 3. Not so bad in the grand scheme of things. She said that I have to record it each day and then come up with some sort of average and then figure out if it's really a problem or just a few spikes. Personally I think I have some sort of anger problem. I'm unable to let things go and take them all personally when in fact I shouldn't give a crap and just let things fall apart. That's gotta be healthier.

I was talking to HR yesterday about a problem employee and he mentioned that the April focal (reviews and raises) won't actually happen as they're trying to come up with a new compensation plan. I'm due in April for a raise so it looks like I lose again.

Someone is eating onions somewhere around the cube area and while it smells tasty it's making my eyes water like crazy.

If Kenny is all unemployed now, you would think he would have time to put something in his log. Slacker.

Weekends are getting so good, maybe to compensate for the crappy weeks, who knows. Saturday I rode up to see Kristen ride at the barn and took some video (just with the camera) of her jumping. I don't think it's that exciting but she seems to love it. After that we went to the garden center and got a raspberry bush and a trellis to put up in place of the hickima that won't grow. I think it's too cold for the hickima around here, at least at this time of year. It looks pretty good in the little pot, even though it probably won't grow big enough to give us berries (so they say at the garden center). The plan is for it to grow up the trellis and then grow down the back side and drape down the 8' wall it's sitting on. Time will tell.

Here are the horse jumping videos. The first are short, and she screws up the little jumps but the later ones are more complex and she doesn't suck so bad.

Today we went for coffee and then went to Santa Cruz to look at property for the woman. We looked at 8 condos, and the first one was the best. She's putting an offer in for it tomorrow but it's doubtful that she'll actually get it as there are like a zillion people walking through it. Oh well, it will give her the feel for putting in an offer and losing a place which is important to know, I guess. After house hunting we went to Santana Row on the way home and walked around a bit (Kristen hadn't ever been there before) and we ate at the cheesecake factory. My chicken pot pie was pretty gross, I was very disappointed. At least the wheat bread was good.

Work sucks, blah blah. Nothing new to report on that front other than I'm still doing my best not to read email at home anymore. I'm still leaving the crackberry at work and my boss knows it. I'm sure it's going to cost me a promotion or something but my mental health is worth something.

I think about Kenny every so often and wonder what's going through his mind. He's the first of us to lose a job like this... or at least the first I remember. I dunno if Dennis had anything happen like that in the diamond/S3 shake up. Actually, I don't even remember how that went down. Oy my memory sucks.

What a good day. Went to Starbucks this morning, and the lemon scones were good but they were out of newspapers. That's probably a good thing, there is never anything actually worth reading in the paper. After that we went grocery shopping, worked on the plants and BBQ-ed ribs. They were the first ribs we've tried and they were very tasty. We invited Sue over and we sat outside on the patio and ate and visited and whatnot. It was cool to cook and be social; I think we'll be doing more of that in the summer.

Yesterday was crazy busy. The woman went riding and I cleaned the garage and tumbled all the brass I got at the range as well as some misc crapola. After that we went to Santa Cruz. I went to the BMW dealer and got the thermometer I've been wanting for 2 years (not sure why Cal BMW doesn't carry the 3rd party stuff anymore) and some oil. The thermometer is mostly useless on my bike because unlike the picture my triple clamp is really far down inside the bodywork so it will get a lot of heat from the frame and the engine. The range on the thermometer is also -20F to 140F, so the usable 50-80 range is like 1/4 or the dial. Someone wasn't thinking. On the plus side, it fits really well and is made of really nice aluminum and glass and is water proof and has a rubber vibration dampening ring on it. Quite slick, actually.

After that we walked across the way to the Yamaha dealer so we could look at the FZ6. Man those things are cheap! The woman thought I looked good on it though and could see me owning one some day. I'll try to wear out the BMW first.

Then we went to a real estate office so the woman could look at beach property. Ha. In all of Santa Cruz, Aptos, Capitola and the rest of the little coastal towns there were a grand total of about 10 properties under $500k. The craziest one was a 525 sq. ft. one room studio on top of a 2-car garage. The garage was nice, but it's 525 sq. ft! Great for one single guy. The kicker, it was $500k! Crazy. The city isn't that bad. Well, mostly but still, some hole in Santa Cruz isn't even in the city. My place just keeps looking better and better! On the way back from Santa Cruz we stopped at Reed's so I could get some primers and powder. I'll reload some more ammo this week perhaps. I've got a class coming up in 2-3 weeks and will need something to shoot.

Oh, and we also talked about getting married. We're guessing at October '06 as being the tentative date. Nothing will really happen for another 3-6 months, then she thinks we should get engaged.

I forgot to mention Wednesday. Eric and Elena came down and we went to ladies night at the range. Kristen caught a piece of hot brass down her shirt and has a spiffy little burn mark now. She was somewhat amused, until Elana showed her all her burn marks... apparently girls burn easy.

I am retarded. After two years of struggling to fit my helmet in the BMW top case, this morning I flipped it around 180 degrees and it fell into the case like a charm. No struggling, no pushing or forcing the lid down. Doh. If they have a little sticker on the BMW cars that shows you how to fit 3 golf bags into the 530i's trunk, why can't they have a sticker showing you how 1 helmet fits into the top case on the bike? Obviously, either I really am retarded or it's just not that obvious (or in the manual which I actually read).

It's raining again. I didn't get very wet on the ride home, the re-waterproofed cheapie stuff seems to be holding out.

Other than rain, not much to say. Stuff going on at work, the VP of the apps team just quit today, but not as stressful as other days.

The woman wants to get a place in Santa Cruz to use as a weekend/beach house. I don't think she knows exactly how expensive it is. I did a quick search, you have to pay $500k before you even see the ocean, and that's from a 3rd story of a condo building.

Angry, angry, angry. I fucking hate the people at this place. Our VPs can not make a consistent decision ever. They want stuff NOW but then don't want it NOW because they suddenly realize that it's not what they wanted, but whatever it is they do want they probably want NOW but can't be bothered to actually tell anyone what it is. So they just sit quietly and do nothing. But then they can't figure out why nothing happens. I just don't get it.

And of course I've wasted so much time spinning in circles trying to do the manager thing I don't have any real tech skills left so I can't leave. God dammit I'm stupid sometimes. I walked into this problem. How do other managers actually get jobs at other companies? Do they have to go back down to the bottom of the tech ranks and then work up again? It's very frustrating to know I can't go anywhere without going down. Plus, there are no jobs "down there". I just looked at hotjobs and confirmed it. Double sigh.