I really wish I knew where the thermal cutoff for the shredder was or how to take this thing apart to get better cooling. It always seems to over-heat about half way through the pile of shredding. Sure, I could just shred stuff as we get it rather than having the big pile to process every few months, but whatever, that wouldn't be as cool as increasing the cooling capacity of the shredder.

I think I've single handedly jump started the economy today. I've put off all my ordering for a while and done it in one day. I ordered a center stand for the KLR (to make working on the trans and chain adjustments easier/possible by myself), the rest of the seals to reseal the transmission and the stator case when I take it off to see if the dealer fixed the balancer (now that they screwed up one repair, I'm going to check them all), some power bars, a couple of books from our friends at Amazon and last but not least, a passport renewal form. The Amazon order took the longest because I was experimenting around trying to buy used copies of some books and I didn't want to get screwed on shipping. Turns out even if you order multiple items from the same seller, they charge you shipping on each one individually. That's lame, it takes away from buying 'in bulk' and getting all your stuff at once from one supplier. Maybe that's what they want? I should bug Kenny about their 'screw people on shipping' business model. Is there so little margin in the products for the used book sellers that shipping games are the only way to make money? Seems so unlikely since they pay pennies on the dollar for buying used books back at the local stores.

Kenny suggests "Breach" is a good movie and from the reviews it does look promising, but one guy says "there is no reason to see this in the theater". I'm guessing it's not chock full of explosions and super CGI that would look better on the big screen? Either way, I'll put it on the list of movies to take up to the parents to watch, it's better to buy a movie for $20 and stick it on a shelf when done with it (or give it to someone else) than to actually go to the theater and drop the $20 for two of us. There are way less annoying people at my parents than at the theater. Not zero, but less. :)

I managed to sneak to the store and then home at lunch on my way back from the data center yesterday and get some flowers and a card for the woman. She's been pretty stressed out about work and her goofy friends taking their relationship break-up stresses out on her and it seemed like to be a good time to get her some girlie stuff. Worked like a charm, especially since the flowers were already there when she got home and I didn't get home for a few hours after that.

Now, what was so important yesterday that I was going to write about but didn't have time? I've forgotten. Typical.

Looks like crappy weather for the weekend so I won't go to the 200 yard range even if it's open 'cause I don't want to lie on the ground in the rain. I'm not hard core. We're supposed to be going to dinner with Jenny and Tom on Saturday somewhere on the coast. They want to go to a restaurant on the beach north of Half Moon Bay which I can't remember the name of. I'm sure I've been there with Kelly5 though. Anyway, it was nice and sunny when we talked about it last so I figured we would take the p-car. We'll still do it, but if the roads are wet it will be a boring slog behind a bunch of bozos, as always.

Oh, and speaking of the p-car, the previous owner emailed me saying he has the front license plate bracket and that I should get it in case I get a fix-it ticket in SF. While emailing back and forth coming up with a plan I suggested I could come by his house to get it and he could let me drive his new GT-3. He agreed, when he's back from his trip and the car is out of break-in I can test drive. Sweet. Normally used car deals don't include a drive in the new car.

I'm now doing hashes of hashes of lists. Fancy data structures, but what do you want to bet that I'm passing them around in some stupid way (like not by reference).

Lots to write about I think, but I'm off to yoga for the moment.

Day 1 of officially working for marketing. So far, not so bad. Free food and no real worries. Too bad it won't last but 10 minutes until we actually have to make things work again vs. just talking about it.

I did fight for and I think I'm getting my bonus. After taxes it's not much, but it's enough to buy some parts to fix-up the KLR (naaa) or perhaps buy a new rifle or something. :)

I'm going to get some sort of complex. First, a piece of code I wrote (a simple little utility) has been in use for so long that I even forgot that I wrote it. Patrick actually explained how it worked to me before we both realized I wrote it. Funny. Next, I was going over a piece of auto-networking code I wrote and was going to have to go back and modify it to deal with some of the changes we've made to the standard network configs. Turns out, the code as written works just fine, I put some exception handling in there when I wrote it even though there were no exceptions to handle at the time (other than typos in the config). Damn, I was on a roll back then!

Shelves are up, and they look about as good as the last set. The shelves seems perfectly flat/level when I have them on the garage floor, but on the wall you can see they're not.... or the walls of the room vary by 1/4" or so along their length which we've already established.

We were going to go out last night and do something fun, but after dinner (I BBQed some pork on a stick) we sat on the sofa and that was it. I fell asleep around 8pm, and the woman watched TV for a few hours before getting tired of me sleeping on her and made us go to bed for real.

Today I've done a little work after cooking breakfast, and that's about it. The sun is out again, so I'll likely go ride. I was going to the range, but I didn't want to go alone this time an everyone else is busy with their own projects today.

Went for ride, ended up going by the barn to watch the woman jump over poles on a cranky horse, cleaned up a bit, BBQed turkey burgers for dinner, and finished organizing my damn tax paperwork. yea!

What a freakin' mess. Remind me never to try to repair a CV joint again. The whole area is coated in nasty grease and is a pain to work on. I went through at least 5 pairs of gloves trying to stay clean since the instructions say "don't touch the new boot with greasy hands" a half dozen times. I get it, the glue won't stick and the thing will fly apart at speed. Still ended up with a bunch of grease on the outside of the boot; it's impossible not to. Here are 3 quick pics, first the obviously torn boot, then the joint itself with it's old grease full of grit (forgot to take a pic of the new grease it's packed with) and finally the end product with the new boot.

I give the whole thing 2 weeks before it flies apart and I end up replacing the whole assembly (or paying good money to have someone else do it since I won't have the right tools).

I stained the little boards that will become the next set of NASCAR Collectibles (TM) shelving, hopefully they dry soon so I can drill and countersink the holes so I can mount them up today. The woman spent all morning dusting crap so she deserves some sort of project out of me that's not car related.

I'll let the equipment speak for itself. That whole "it won't hurt, you'll just feel a pressure" thing is pure crap. Having a metal rod up your ass 15cm is not 'pressure'. The Valium helped, but man is it making me dizzy. I keep falling down.

Tomorrow I go in for the official anal probe. Let's hope the Valium works.

REI sent me a 30% off coupon for winter gear but it was just for snowboards and stuff. I told the woman I wanted to get a new sweatshirt as she got a new one and it's really nice not to have tattered sleeves and a torn collar like my running sweatshirt does. She said she had a birthday present for me and was going to give it to me early since I could use it now:

Yea, my very own Order of the Stick sweatshirt. I'm an über-nerd now. Of course, cooking hamburger helper at work on the backpacking stove doesn't help my rep any either (although one of the freaky marketing chicks brought me some organic oreos in payment for sharing my HH).

Why am I listening to "The Best of Willie Nelson"?

Mystery solved. Why is the water pump oil seal leaking on the KLR? Because the dealer screwed up the install and botched the seal (pic 1):

That little spring is supposed to be under the 'lip' on the edge of the seal, not half way off. There looks to be a little scratch on the impeller shaft from the spring rubbing on it too, but I don't think it will hurt anything as it's not touching the seal when properly installed. The job took about 6 hours for me to do, including stops for dinner and to solve a problem at work, so figure 4 hours of real work. A huge part of that time was scraping the old gaskets off, it's clear they've not been replaced. The dealer just shot a bead of gasket sealer around the edge and called it good. Humph.

I also swapped the clutch springs out, twice. The new ones were way shorter than stock and although they 'felt' about the same once compressed I didn't want to deal with having to take it all apart if in fact I got shipped the wrong springs. I measured all the stock ones and although they've got almost 13k miles on them they were clearly within spec so I just put them back. I'll just save the springs until I need to do the whole clutch job. I posted to the KLR group and they confirmed the EBC springs are shorter but work well. Little too late now.

The woman found one of "my" cookbooks (obviously a gift from mom a zillion years ago) and made some sort of beef stew with biscuits on top. White-trash-o-rama for sure, but not too bad. Not as good as the chicken stuff from last week, or the chicken and stuffing but you can't eat chicken all the time.

Yesterday before the KLR job we went out running errands, including going to the mall so the woman could get silicon muffin cups at crate & barrel. Ugh, the mall on a weekend. Anyway, in the store we ran into another ex-NVDA person. She's so happy to have left NVDA, and other than the stock money she doesn't miss a thing. Seems to be the common thread. Dog help that company if the stock takes a pounding for a quarter or two.

Today is more work on taxes and other menial stuff. I did get my Order of the Stick comic which will take all of 10 minutes to read so I've got to save it. Ex-gamer types should check out OOTS, the rest of you, eh, don't waste your time. Too much inside humor to be effective on norms. :)

I'm still tired and I don't know why. I didn't go to the gym this AM, I just slept in for an extra 1.5 hours. I wonder if I'm getting sick, I was feeling pretty crappy yesterday after lunch with dad, and since he's been in contact with my grandma who is sick in the hospital I'm beginning to wonder. At least it's raining out so I won't be motivated to try to go anywhere this weekend.

I'm still planning to fix the KLR this weekend, I can do that in the garage though and it's actually almost warm out (in the mid-50s at least).

I thought we were safe from Survivor for a while but last night the woman brought it up on the replay. Ugh, another season is upon us! Run! Hide!

Nothing too exciting at work, other than I found out I'm on the 'approved' list for a blackberry. Do I really want to be chained down again??

Last night was my first in the latest series of German lessons; figured I should re-learn what I can for the trip. Here is what I learned, I've forgotten everything. Other than numbers and dates (which I'm using here obviously) I've pretty much got to start over. Ugh. At least I can understand this new teacher, and it's less than half of what I was paying at the old school.

I finished The Millionaire Next Door and while it's 10 years old now it's still relevant (you just have to adjust the numbers for inflation). It's prompted me to think about a budget again. The household budget is pretty well defined, but my personal stuff is still chaotic. The woman says the budget will help me get over my anxiety over money. Ha, yea, whatever.

The marketing chicks asked me to change the water bottle on the cooler today; apparently they're all too weak to do it. Come on man (or in this case, woman), don't be so lazy. My woman swaps those bottles by herself all the time.

So what fun went on this weekend. Saturday was errands and stuff, then I put the new windscreen on the KLR. It looks really stupid, but it works really well. At the dealer I saw they had an official Kawasaki tall windscreen so I got one of those to try it but while it looks a lot better, it doesn't work very well (lots of buffeting). So I had to drag that back and then get some cheapie aftermarket mirrors to work with the big screen as my non-standard handlebars put the mirrors in the wrong place and they smack into the big screen. It's still not perfect, but it's probably good enough. Now if I can just get the parts to fix the oil leak I'll be set.

Sunday I washed both cars, including the worst ever spray wax job on the Sentra. It took maybe 10 minutes, and it looks it. :) At least it's something on the paint. For the Porsche I took more time, and I went over the inside with leather conditioner. It's amazing how many of the surfaces in the passenger compartment are leather (seats, dash, most the door trim, shifter/e-brake) and how much they soaked up the oils. Convertibles are hell on their interior.

Lots of people were outside doing stuff since it was 60F or so out and I met the neighbors at the end of the driveway area. He seems pretty cool, an amateur rice boy who's project civic was stolen 2 months back. I wondered where that noisy as POS had gone too. Didn't want to say that though. He was doing oil changes and while he had his car ramps out we popped the Sentra up there to see what was making that grinding noise. The CV boots are torn on the passenger side and cracked on the driver's side. Typical FWD crap. :(

We had gone to the store to get lunch and dinner supplies and the woman made some sort of chicken gravy something with dumplings. It was amazingly good, another successful meal. She's getting better at the cooking stuff.

I blew a circuit while vacuuming the house. I had the vacuum plugged in to the downstairs bathroom (and with the crazy long cord on the Dyson I can reach the whole bottom floor and all the stairs without moving the plug) and the circuit went and took the hall lights out, and the heater in the bedroom (which must have just clicked on which is what pushed the load over the limit). Strange all of what's on that one circuit.

Today must have been the day for people to contact me. The gunsmith called and said my gun is ready, Kelly2 emailed saying hello and to mention she had just been in town, and some chick named "iamcrazyjen" IM'ed me (I keep IM running at work all the time since so many people use it for real work stuff) saying she knew me 4+ years ago. Freaky.

Since the gunsmith called I went over to the range tonight to pick up the Kimber. With the work he did to the slide and frame he had to refinish the whole gun. It was looking all beaten and worn, now it looks brand new! ugh! 20k rounds of abuse and I'm back to square one. He did a ton of extra stuff to it, removing sharp edges and smoothing things out. There is a scar on the top of my thumb where the edge of the safety cuts into my hand; he removed that edge as well as some others that typically cut me after a day of class. The bill came out to $250, and most of it says "misc cutting" and "etc, etc, etc". The custom sights are pretty sweet though, so other than the necessary refinishing I'm pretty happy with all the work. He even tweaked the trigger a bit, and I didn't think I would notice but it is better. I'm getting spoiled with the level of work that's going into this thing.

The woman is out with her friends tonight, so I had to make my own dinner. Three apples, a piece of cheese and some lunch meat. Oh how quickly we fall into old patterns. :)

Kenny is just a home improvement machine with that tile job. I wish I had some sort of physical skills like that, but I'm pretty much useless with tools other than loading equipment. That said, I'm going to try to fix the KLR by myself. The water pump oil seal is leaking badly again, this is one of the repairs I had the dealer do and obviously they didn't do it very well. So, I ordered the parts (all the parts, I'm not reusing gaskets as they obviously did) and will take it on. According to the article I read on the work, it's one of the easy big jobs. I'm guessing 4-5 hours to get it done baring any huge mistakes. While I'm in there the article says to swap out the old clutch springs as they get weak with age and to clean some internal oil screen. The springs were cheap so I got them, and this way I can check the clutch too. I figured the dealer would have said something if my clutch looks fried, but then again, they're morons.

Tuesday's firing of James went OK. Now I just have to be the IT guy and order laptops and power cables and all the other stupid shit that people can't do on their own. Sigh, I thought I had finally advanced beyond grunt IT work. :(