It's freaky hot in the data center right now, they've got fans going in the doorways and it's not helping. I wonder if they have all the ac units on or not, there was a threat of blackouts so maybe they've cut usage in case we lose power the generators don't overload? You would think they have that worked out ahead of time though.

Kristen sent email from Ireland, she's apparently made it safe and sound. She's got to do her blog contest from there so I imagine she's going to be finding internet cafes at every town. I had trouble sleeping last night, it's been a long time since the bed has been empty at night.

The con is this weekend. Registration is open until 9pm on Friday night so I'm going to head up there and get my stuff rather than waiting until Saturday morning. The game starts at 9:30, I don't want to have to get up so early to go get registered and figure out where things are. Last night I made sure all my riding gear would fit in the KLR luggage so I can ride the bike up and change into normal stuff in the parking lot and not look like biker scum all day. It's going to be a warm day, I hope I can find a spot inside a parking garage to shield the bike.

Yesterday I took that cake over to dad's office and we went to lunch for his birthday. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've taken him anywhere for his birthday. Quite odd.

I never could figure out why I can't understand when Aleks and Lina are talking in the cube behind me. I always assumed it was because I can't hear, but at the moment I've got my ears in and it turns out it's because they're speaking Russian. That makes sense.

Lots of interviewing with yahoo and another startup in Mountain View this week, should know more later. I'm really getting burnt out on the secret interviews. I would so not do well as a secret agent.

Yahoo interviews all day tomorrow: 9:30am-1pm in Mountain View, then 1:45-2:30pm with the hiring manager of a different group in Santa Clara. The 2nd one already got good news about me from the guy that didn't hire me (man that sounds funny) so I get to skip the tech part. Very exciting, I'm tired of debugging hypothetical problems.

Busy weekend. I went to the range not once, but twice with the new rifle. I actually did better the first day, but the 2nd day I ran into some guys from "snipers hide" (the psycho board I read) and they showed me a better way to use the AI stock. Trying to adjust to it screwed up my groups something fierce, but in the end I'm sure it will be better. Here is yesterday's target though, a mix of different ammo types and scope settings. What's amazing is that my average for the day was a 0.684" center-to-center group (at 100 yards), with the worst still being under 1". That's pretty impressive from a consistency standpoint for me.

Saturday we took the hard top off the Porsche and drove around a little bit. I don't normally like convertibles, but for some reason I was just in a happy mood and wanted to drive with the top down. We tried to go up the hill toward all the rich folks homes so we could get a bit of a view of the valley but it turns out that everything is gated. The neighborhood at the bottom of the hill is filled with $1.5M homes (so $400k anywhere else in the US) with their 3 car garages and yards you would actually need to mow, but everything else is locked up.

I found some of that seafoam stuff that the guys on the KLR list were talking about. There is a huge display of it inside Kragens, not sure why I've never seen it before. In addition to curing cancer, making your car go faster and promoting world peace, it's also supposed to be a fuel stabilizer. I put some in both cars since I usually use a tank of gas every few months and it's gotta be bad for them to sit so much with untreated gas. It does so much, I don't see how it can't be a scam.

Today I've done the mundane stuff like vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and running all the brass I shot through the tumbler. I can't believe I've loaded and fired over 100 rounds this weekend. That's a lot compared to most range trips.

I almost forgot we refinanced the house on Saturday morning. I guess it wasn't so exciting that it would be in the front of my mind. We now have 1 loan instead of 2, and it's fixed for 30 years. Too bad we didn't do some wacky 1% reverse amortization cash out dumbass loan, we could look forward to some government bail out.

Also, here is a picture of the woman and the strange NASCAR themed cake she made for my dad for his birthday. I'm sure it all makes sense, if you're 'in the club'.

Patrick finished my review today, so I should see some token raise coming soon. They're also going to back-date it to my real 1-year so I'll get some back pay... sorta like a mini bonus! Woo, maybe I'll get some new tires for the KLR. :)

I talked to another hiring manager at yahoo today, we're going to setup some small on-site interview for me next week. I also got a call from a recruiter at yahoo who wants me to talk to some other dude in some other group. Apparently my resume is making the rounds. Maybe some good will come out of this after all.

Got some feedback from the yahoo manager who didn't hire me last week. Good info:

This is where HR doesn't want me to say anything.  Hiring mistakes are
easier to measure than non-hire mistakes.

What I can say is that a few of us felt that while you'd do fine in the
ongoing technical issues, but wouldn't thrive in the part of the job that
requires pushing people to be responsive when they are often busy with other
priorities.  It's not a strength nor weakness, but simply a personal
characteristic that matters for some roles, and not for others.

First rejected by google, now by yahoo. Sigh.

On a positive note we had a BBQ for the departing interns at work today and I got to play grill master. Steaks, hot dogs, burgers, tri-tip, turkey strips, veggie burgers and veggies on a stick were all done to perfection (or at least people kept saying that). The only downside is I smell like a fire now.

Yesterday I wasted most of the day riding around and eventually having the KLR crap out on me while I was close to home. I pushed it to the garage and began to try to debug things. I found that the fuel filter's internal little screen had come loose.... perhaps some crap had got past and into the carb? The guys on the KLR list think it's possible so I pulled the carb out and took a look. Not sure if it's important or not, but there was a lot of crap in the float bowl so I cleaned it out:

For dinner the two sets of parents and us went to the German place in San Jose. I had boar which was pretty tasty, the woman got her cheese spaetzle and everyone was happy.

While running around today looking for the funky light bulbs for dad's truck I found some hex wrenches cheap and completed my on-bike tool kit. I think the hard drive shipping container as a case ads a lot of class. :)

Also, while reading last night I came across a review of the new '08 Buell Ulysses, an American built competitor to the BMW 1200GS and KTM950. I stopped by and checked them out while out for parts. They seem pretty cool, if they have test rides at the motorcycle show in October I'll definitely try one out. They have full luggage available but none of the pictures on their site show it (but it's in the paper brochure they foisted on me at the dealership).

The interview with the financial place turned out to be a total bust. 30 minutes into it... he mentions they're 100% windows now. Well no wonder their stuff is so screwed up! Oh well. I'll have to keep checking the job boards.

Kenny can't believe the link from my office is too slow to run vi over, but it is. We have 20+ people trying to run our application (which is way too chatty with the back-end server and is constantly downloading crap via p2p) over what amounts to 3, ~2mbit DSL lines. We're in the middle of one of the tech areas in the USA and we can't get a 6mbit DSL let alone anything else over T1 speeds without paying $10k/month. It's just lame I know, but it's what we've got. Sometimes I can do some back-door routing tricks to get out with some speed, but sometimes there just isn't bandwidth anywhere to be stolen.

Kristen's parents are in town, they're upstairs now arguing about something or another. Her parents couldn't believe we have glass glasses instead of plastic, and we set them directly on the coffee table. Well, the coffee table is that POS 80's throwback thing I got from the condo I bought from Gary 8 years ago; I don't think it's all that valuable. As a bonus, the water rings wipe right off it (a glass surface is good for something other than collecting dust). Yes, if someone threw a glass it would likely break, or if someone bashed on the coffee table with some heavy object it would likely break, but oddly those things don't happen around here.

I made Patrick leave the office today (he never goes anywhere for lunch) and we went to the hardware store. I found a 18mm spark plug socket and got a 1/4" drive adapter for it. I now have a very tiny toolkit for the bike that I can use to take the seat and tank off, pull the plug, access the electrical stuff & fan, pull the valve cover, etc. That's way more than I would do on the side of the road, but it's nice I can try if I absolutely had to. I also have one of those tiny 3" shake flashlights and some zip ties. I'll need some pliers and some wire, duct tape and some misc screws.

While off site, Patrick mentioned that he has a job offer and will be talking to them again on Saturday and will know by Monday if he is going to take it. If he quits, and I quit, the company is going to be in a bit of a bind.

Link is too slow to update, I'll do it at home tonight.

Yep, here is Jason looking cranky as I make roadside repairs on the KLR. It's an adventure!

I fell asleep on the sofa for about 1.5 hours this afternoon, so of course now I'm awake at 10:39pm. That's not right.

The day started with a run up to the range in San Leandro to meet Eric and check out the rifle. My first group out of it was 3". WTF? That's like 30/30 territory. I was using some crappy PMC ammo and Eric gave me a box of Federal Match, which isn't as good as hand loads but damn close. My next groups were .354" and .450". That's better, and actually pretty good considering I'd had about 2 minutes to figure out the rifle and start shooting, with no rear bag even. Once I knew it was shooting OK we went to Target masters to do the transfer. There was someone in line ahead of us and they said it would take 3 hours. 3 hours!??! To fill out some forms? What morons. We then went to Big 5 sporting goods and it took 25 minutes, and that included the chick having to go do some other stuff because she was the store manager as well as running the gun counter. I also saved some money that way, TM wanted $75 on top of the state fees/taxes, and Big 5 only wanted $10. I just hope they don't jack up the rifle while they're holding it during the waiting period. We took off everything we could, including the bolt, so they can't do much but damage the scope.... As a side note, the gun counter chick was named Kelly and she was very cute in an Irish sort of way. Had I not been married and all that I would have had to ask her out. :)

Kristen and I went to the store when I got home, first for another spark plug (just a backup) for the KLR and for food. We scored a bunch of frozen stuff for my lunch super cheap (not sure why my favorite meals were 65% off, maybe they contain contaminated gluten from China?) as well as misc supplies to make salsa. We used the tomatoes from the porch, but had to buy the spices, peppers, lemon, lime, etc. Now I'm excited to try to grow some peppers next season so we can make it more from scratch. She was worried about it being too spicy because I wanted to use both red and green peppers in it, but it's totally mild. Not bad, just not zippy, but definitely good for a first attempt. Hmm... now I'm hungry for salsa again.

Dinner was BBQ chicken on a stick and asparagus. We tried to use the fancy grill basket we got as a wedding gift but it doesn't actually fit inside the BBQ. I rigged up a pan using foil for the asparagus and it worked well enough. Usually I lose a few sticks through the grill but not so this time.

Not much else to report, I didn't work on much since I fell asleep after putting the bike back together. I'm going to ride with Jason tomorrow while the woman goes to the barn. I'll be carrying my new CDI box, coil, plug and all the tools I need with me on the ride so if the bike acts up again I can just take it apart on the side of the road and swap things out. That should make for an adventure, or at least a few good photos. We're riding up Mt. Hamilton too, so if I can't get it running again I can always just coast down.

I've got class tonight to make up for missing Monday. It's been a hectic week.

Last night I had the woman help me do some debug work on the bike. We followed the CDI test procedure in the service manual and it looks like the CDI unit is really bad. Anyway, when I posted the results to the KLR board several people told me that the test procedure is bogus and that even Kawasaki trained techs (which one of them claims to be) says that the test won't really tell you if the unit it working. It can tell you if it's totally dead, but if you get any readings at all it may or may not be good. Even if the readings are all in spec. What a crock. At least I'll have all new CDI and coil pieces so I can swap things out until I figure out what the real problem is. No way that crappy dealer would ever figure this out.

At the game last night my character lost his dog. I had a trained attack dog (very common for low level characters to supplement their fighting ability with dogs) and it ran up to this big monster thingy that hit it and ate it in one bite! Well, at least my character survived. We did lose one player, but it wasn't me and I couldn't be blamed for it. My dog should have been the clue for everyone else, don't get too close!

My bike is apart in the garage, it crapped out on Monday night again and this time I'm not going to move it until I find the source of the trouble. I've got my volt meter and the diagnostic manual and will be testing all the parts in the ignition system either tonight or Friday. I found a complete ignition system on eBay from one of the salvage guys for $200, which is about 40% of the cost of a new one so I got the whole thing. Worst case is I'll have a spare. These parts are pulled off the new KLRs that are rebuilt for the military. Since the military is using a diesel engine they don't use any of the engine electrical off the original bike and they all end up with this guy on eBay. Handy for us.

I had the yahoo interview yesterday, and it was a long story problem, very similar in style to the ones that google uses although instead of shooting a rocket into space with a misconfigured LAN on it, they had me troubleshoot a couple of boxes that were supposed to be processing web crawling results. After all sorts of analysis of the apps and flows and network and stuff it comes down to someone having the box swap to the same disk you're writing the results to which is causing the writer to block on write to disk and the feeder applications to block on socket writes to the back end box. When he said "the report is coming in that the crawl log processing is running slower than expected" I did the usual sweep of the boxes looking for the obvious dumb stuff (out of disk/memory/CPU, bad NFS mounts, disk errors, Vareck running crack, etc) and he said "you don't see anything out of the ordinary" and then let me wander around trying all sorts of stuff. Later he admitted that if he said "you notice the box is out of memory" he thought I would figure it out too fast and not use strace, iostat, tcpdump, netstat, lsof, /proc to poke around. They must have liked my answers, they asked me in for a 5-hour in person interview on Monday.

Totally wasted day for the most part. I had to go into work to push out the beta release that came out of QA, and I didn't know what time they would be done, so I ended up sitting at home all day. I got the kitchen knives sharpened, the plants watered and the chain on the KLR adjusted. Otherwise, nada. Sigh.

Doh. I think I just bought a new rifle. One of Erik's friends is selling off his stuff to raise cash for home improvements and I bought this one:

It's a .308 Remington 700 PSS action with a bunch of custom work done to it in an Accuracy International v1.5 stock with that really BIG muzzle brake on it. I really don't need another rifle at all, but the price is pretty cheap and I would hate to pass it up. I can just resell it later if I found myself not liking it. I want to try the ASIC stock though. If I like it I'll use it when I build up a fully custom rig and then take the Rem 700 action and reuse it in a lighter stock and turn it into a hunting rifle, or some such. I offered it to Don first, but he wants to buy another bike first. His bikes cost more than mine and don't come with engines. Very odd.

Today we screwed around in the morning and eventually ended up at the mall, yet again. We had some money left over on the Macy's wedding registry kick-back thing they give you when people buy stuff there and it actually expires this month. We didn't need anything but it is completely free money so I got some new casual shoes and a bunch of socks to replace the ones I have that have holes in them. The woman points out that I've had the same shoes the whole time she's known me other than the pair of Doc Martins I got for work. That's kinda scary. My Tevas are the pair I got for the Mexico trip that Dennis and Kenny and I went on in uh, what '97? '98? I guess I'm easy on equipment.

I also got to the hardware store to get some bolts to replace those that fell off the KLR. More lock-tight is needed, but I did get those nylock nuts which should help.

Dinner tonight was grilled trout for me (which turned out pretty well) and some random crap for the woman. We also made a few quesadillas and walked to 7-11 for desert. Now she's bugging me again to edit her NASCAR blog entry.

It must be hiring season at yahoo; I had one interview with a guy there last night (1.5 hours worth on the phone) and another guy called and wanted to talk to me from another group. I'm pushing the next set of interview until next week as I'm going to be busy getting the beta rolled out this weekend. I'm hoping that goes OK, but with the number of changes involved you never know.

Yesterday the KLR broke down on me yesterday, it was quite a pain. When I left in the morning it died when I was rounding the corner out of the drive, but I assumed that was a combo of me being retarded trying to ride slow and slipping the clutch as to avoid any random trucks that might be coming right for me and the choke being set too low. It took a bit to get it restarted but otherwise seemed normal. During the day I had to go to the data center and when I tried to leave I couldn't get the bike to re-fire. With lots of throttle I got it running but it wouldn't idle at all and was running funny. On the freeway I kept to the slow lane and was ready to pull off it it died. As I exited the freeway it died and would not re-fire at all. I pushed it the last mile or so to the office and rested for a bit. I called dad and he said that I might have a bad plug; that sometimes that happens. I could smell fuel in the exhaust so it was getting gas fine (which I could also see through the clear fuel filter). Borrowing a car (yet another 3-series BMW, this time a coupe) I went home and got my tools, stopped by the store and got another new plug, and came back and took the bike apart. Grounding both the current plug and the new plug to the exhaust while starting the bike produced spark, so I was really confused at this point since usually "fuel + spark + valve timing == bang" for sufficiently large values of fuel and spark. I put everything back together and the bike fired up and ran as if nothing was ever wrong. I rode to the game and back home and to work today and still it's running just fine. I'm hoping it was just a lose plug wire (which I was unable to tell reaching up under the tank screwing with the wire on the side of the road) and not some bad ground somewhere.

Last nights game was weird. It was a high-level adventure but there were not enough high level characters to really do it right so they had to half ass it with what we had. The hard-core guys were cranky, the judges were sorta cranky, etc. It was not the best game, but my character survived and actually got a few good hits in so that's worth something. Next week should be better.

The game ran short so I was home and in bed by 11pm but even after sleeping in until 8am today I am still really tired, and super sore. Guess pushing the bike that far in the heat took more out of me than I originally thought.