I've not worked this much in years. Not stupid meetings or whatnot but actually doing stuff that matters and has semi-solid deadlines that are actually achievable. Time sure flies when you're stuck in the data center 10 hours a day.

Spent all day today at the NASCAR race in Sonoma. It was hot, and there were a lot of red necks. Pictures are up on the front page. One pick that I really like though (which looks better when it's cropped) is this one of Kristen's driver. He sailed through this huge wreck untouched (although he spun on the last lap and finished like 24th or something). Lucky I had the camera out and pointed at that corner at the time. Every one of those cars is in motion spinning or sliding.

Saturday I did a bunch of stuff I had been wanting to do, and spent way, way too much time working on the bike. The light bulbs that illuminate the speedometer burnt out, and the low beam headlight was burnt out as well. (The bike just turned over 31k miles and since all these lights are on all the time it's probably not bad bulb life). Anyway, you basically have to strip the whole front of the bike apart to get the gages out to replace the bulbs. I also removed the HUGE 5lb speakers from the dash while I had it apart. That added significantly to the time this whole operation required and caused me to have to remove both side panels (19 screws each). On my test run I swear I could tell the difference without all that speaker weight in there. It doesn't seem like much, but it's high up on the bike and you can really feel it. All told pulling the radio and speakers out has probably dropped 10-15lbs off the bike. Everything is so over-engineered too. There is a dial on the dash that turns a cable in a solid metal tube that in turn is attached to the dial on the gauge that resets the trip meter. Several controls, tubes and wires just to move the knob from the left side of the gauge to the front panel. Germans....

Went to the dentist this morning, showed up at 9:15am just like it says on my card. They claimed I was late, and that my appointment was at 9am. Eventually they admitted that they changed all the appointment times and didn't call. Now had they tried to call it would have failed as they had my old number, but still, they didn't even try. Slackers. To top it off, I didn't even get to see the real doc, but just one of the random assistants. She wasn't as good as the real thing, but I guess it's just a cleaning.

When leaving the dentist there was a 1000 year old grandma in the parking lot with a flat tire. She looked pretty confused so I offered to change her tire, figuring it would take like 5 minutes. Swapping the spare did take no time at all, but her spare was pretty much flat too. Doh. I used the emergency CO2 inflator cartridge things from my bike to get enough pressure she could drive on it, but I ended up using all 4 of the cartridges I had. Hope the German air doesn't react with the French tire on her Japanese car. She did pay me $10 to replace the cartridges which was nice of her. I was just sorta happy to be able to test them out. I gave her one of the empties as a memento, I'm sure it will give her something to talk about at the home, or bingo parlor or wherever she ends up.

I got my UPS package on Monday night, but my hand is still so screwed up from the weekend that I can't use the fancy trimmer doodad I got. The big blister/scab thing is healing, and it doesn't hurt like crazy when I try to put pressure on my hand so it's obviously on the mend.

This picture looks totally fake, probably because it's so out of place. Scott and Kristen (not my Kristen obviously) bought a Ferrari F360 Spyder and for some strange ass reason drove it to the psycho class on Saturday.

Another long crazy day of getting stuff done. I checked the bank though, they at least paid us. Woohoo!

Stopped by to verify plugs and circuits. Framing pic, tomorrow it should be sheet rocked.

Oh, and I think the 640x480s from yesterday are way better than this 1280x960 pic. I don't think they really do 1 megapixel, I think it's just VGA and they make it larger. Look at the crappy artifacts and whatnot.

Crazy busy day again today working at the co-lo and the new office. Never had to specify everything in a data closet before. Today I had to make the final call on positioning the HVAC, racks, wiring to the cubes, power to the cubes and some stuff in the new office kitchen. Crazy what you can do when you're the only one giving answers. Monday was just the design, today they were busting walls and putting in framing and doing all sorts of stuff that makes the design pretty real.

Couple pics from the camera phone. First is the illegals doing some of the demolition work on the wall and getting ready to frame in the "data center" and the kitchen. Yea, I went from a 10000 sq ft data center down to a 225 sq ft data center. Did I mention culture shock already?. Next is the tech at the co-lo risking death to attach a clamp meter to one of our circuits. It's a 20 amp 120v circuit, so we shouldn't be pushing it over 16 amps. Uh, 19.71A is way over 16. It's only a matter of time before that breaker heats up and pops. Glad we're moving to the larger cage with more power soon.

Does it look better at 640x480 instead of 1280x960? Dunno, still look mostly blurry to me.

The framing was up by this afternoon (went back to check on them but the office was closed so we had to look in the windows). Tomorrow AM I've got to go mark where the outlets go so they end up behind the racks, and the location of the sub panels.

I got to design a kitchen today, somehow. I went to the new office to talk to the construction guys about the "data center" there and ended up helping design the kitchen too. It's kinda fun, getting to help out and do stuff for the company. I just hope people like the kitchen, cubes, copy room and data center now that my name is stamped on them.

There are 5 or so DSL connections into the office here, I'm not sure how many of them we'll be moving to the new office. Do we really need 5?

Kristen says I love my corn more than her. Not true! I wouldn't let my corn walk with me to Starbucks nor use my camera. (her parents wanted a picture of the farmer and his crop so this is what they got).

Last night we saw District B13 this French (with subtitles) action flick. I thought it was good and even the woman really liked it. More action, less violence than a typical US movie these days. Could have used some more gratuitous nudity or something, but it's lack of that is probably why the woman liked it more than usual. The rap, in French, took some getting used to.

Today we took a load of books back to the used book store (they don't give you squat when you sell them back anymore, less than 10%) and picked up a bunch more to read. I'm finally remembering to write down all the books I've read and which I liked and which suck so I will have a list of authors I like when I'm searching the discount bins. Being 5-10 years out of date when it comes to popular fiction really helps with the selection. Most trilogies are finished being published in paperback by the time I start reading them. On the way back from the bookstore we went to BevMo and got me some more diet root beer for my lunches.

Also today I hung up the woman's 2nd saddle rack in the garage. Yea, two saddles, zero horses. Her old jumping saddle finally failed to the point where it couldn't be used and it couldn't be repaired again. After trying 3 saddles she finally found a used one she liked. It's in awesome shape and was 50% less than new, so she's totally happy about that. While I was stripping screws I figured I should mount the little gun vault somewhere in the bedroom. I've got it really screwed down to the closet now; it's easy to get to but out of the way so it won't get kicked. I had to clean the old Taurus wheel gun up, it's been sitting uncleaned for over two years now...? Wow, is that right? Scary how time is flying by. Anyway, the trusty Taurus 608 is now the house gun again. Crude, but effective and easy enough for the woman to figure out. No slide, no safety, just point and click. If you can't do it with 8 shots, you probably can't do it.

We're making lasagna for dinner tonight. The recipe says it serves 9, so there should be leftovers for me to take to work for a bunch of days. I'll freeze them in lunch-sized chunks and nuke it at the office. I'm sure eating a lot better now that I don't have the NVDA cafe to take care of me.

How exactly did LaunchCast decide I wanted to hear some "The Captain & Tennille" anyway?

I finished up my last estimated tax payment that's due next week. No more stock for me, so no more estimated payments. Yea, no more estimates, boo that I'm not making the big bucks anymore. This year I'll make about 50% less than last year, and I'll make another 50% less next year (assuming cRight is still around to be paying me).

The whole new job thing is really throwing me. This operation is just so freaky small. I've worked at small companies before (smaller than this even at VSYS) but the culture shock is pretty dramatic this time. They don't even have screwdrivers. That's about as simple as you can get. It's like working in India, although Fry's is just around the corner. Friday I went to pickup some replacement drives and a power supply for the Sun T3 storage arrays they're using for some reason. 9 disk arrays to get RAID5 and 250gb of storage? What, is this 1998? Anyway, they get parts from this vendor called "UNIX Surplus". Oy. I went there (no one from the office has ever done will call and actually gone to the store) and what a shit hole. It was in an industrial area, next to a chop shop of some sort and a gutter installer. Yea, gutter installers have stores apparently. The vendor looked like Sun Micro had exploded and all the rubble was moved into this warehouse. They had one of those little rat poodle dogs running around shitting on the floor, lots of box fans trying to cool the sweatshop down from 90F+, etc. It looked like something out of Mad Max, complete with a few deformed mutants working on cryptic hardware. They were friendly enough though. That's something. Guess we know where all that Sun hardware we throw out goes to. Anyway, going to have to adjust.

The camera phone is pretty bad at taking long range photos. It's probably "optimized" for pics taken at 6' or less, so the shot of the building I work in now isn't really in focus. Well, the edges are. I still think the 640x480 or whatever the rez was of the phone I had in India was better.

I know it's wrong, but I can't help it. That marketing babe sitting across from my desk.... her desk it 90 degrees off from mine so I just get a side profile view of her every time I look up. So far, she's not worn a skirt that goes past mid-thigh yet and she definitely has the body to pull them off. Yowza.

Got a new laptop, turns out I had the secretaries new laptop all along. Now I've got a dual core CPU (don't care) and a 1400x1050 display (do care). It seems kinda "shiny" compared to the old one, I wonder if this is one like Don was talking about on the new power books?

Other than that, not much to report on at the moment. Just getting the hang of things at the new place and trying to figure out where to start. So many things are busted.

Day 2 at the new job. Day 1 was easy enough, setting up my PC, digging around for spare LCDs, trying to get my church basement table arranged, setting up outlook, visiting the co-lo again, checking out the new building, etc. Today it should be more interesting as we're having our first "ops" meeting to talk about all of what needs to be done. We're also working on the cube layout for the new building, and the wiring. Both my boss and I hate having our backs to the cube door, so we're both up for a redesign before they get built. Probably go with the style we came up with at NVDA which worked out very well.

I rode the bike in and ran to the gym today. The route is 20% longer than it was from the old office to the old gym. That will change with the new building and new gym again in 6 weeks. I must say I'll miss the Mountain View Golds gym. The hottie count is way high in Mountain View. I had sorta forgotten about that. Lots more fake boobs and fake blondes than I remember.

One thing I can't figure out here yet is who these people are who are seemingly always in the conference room across from me. One chick who's pretty much just on her cell phone the whole day while eating Cheerios out of a zip lock bag, and some other dude working on a tiny ass laptop. They don't talk to anyone else in the office, they just sit in there and talk/type. Marketing or sales people? I did figure out that the Russian sounding dude who sits next to me must in fact be Russian. He says "Da" all the time on the phone. Well, he says more than that but that's the only word I can recognize.

My corn is doing really well for being stuck in a little box and overcrowded. There are actually a few little ears starting (with all the silk looking stuff coming out of them). I wonder if they'll be edible?

NVidia is now part of history. A small lunch with people on Thursday, and a very quiet exit on Friday and now I'm unemployed until Monday. Bummer I couldn't take more time between jobs, but they really want me to start and I want to get things done right there before they get too close to production. I already want to fix a few things they're doing wrong. My new boss was right when he said they don't know anything about operations and need help. They're making some amateur mistakes.

Yesterday dad and I went up to Shasta and built a shed and tested the well. Pictures are here. With the driving it was an 18 hour day... but we're done and everything is good. The shed is bolted to the slab, the wiring worked, the plumbing is done, etc, etc. Now I can ride up there every so often and fire up the generator (gotta bring fuel with, we ran the generator empty and brought the extra gas back because I didn't have any stabilizer with me). There was a tiny amount of dirt in the water and then it ran clean. We sure have a good well.

Today I've been "relaxing" by sorting through junk from my desk, washing and waxing the bike, running errands, etc. I still need to vacuum too, I better do that now.

On the way back from the bank we stopped at this hole in the wall dim sum place. We got some of the safe stuff to see if it was any good. The pork buns were low on pork and high on bun, but still tasty. Enough dim sum for both of us as a huge snack was $5, so that's a bargain in my book.