Went to get the Tracker aligned today and they said that that alignment is good, it's the tires that are causing the problems. Apparently one of the tires had some broken belts in it which makes it react strangely under load (but not on a balancing machine). Since I rotated them, it's more noticeable now that the bad tire is in the front. They also said the pressures were all wacky which I found surprising since I just inflated and checked them all. Anyway, I've accelerated my tire replacement plan and ordered up a set from tire rack and will have them drop shipped to the installer. I can tell I'm getting old though, I didn't go for larger tires, or the really fancy BFG-ATs I normally run. I just went with one of the 'best seller' tires that tire rack had in stock. They're supposed to be OK, cheap and last a while. I don't imagine they're anything special but they'll work for what I want to do. If I find myself rock crawling or something, then I can upgrade. I can't believe the 640 tread ware rating, but maybe it's right. I got 60k miles out of the BFGs on the Montero. Anyway, they look spiffy:

Thanksgiving for us was pretty non-traditional. First we drove to Plesanton, and then parked and took BART into SF to go to the international auto show. Nothing too exciting there, but we did run into all sorts of trouble trying to have dinner. There were lots of people around, but all the restaurants were closed. We ended up eating in the only open place we could find that didn't totally suck... the 'firewood grill' in the Metreon food court. I had a mushroom pizza that wasn't too bad and the woman and some sort of pasta dish. Better than Denny's'! I didn't take many pictures of the show (there wasn't anything super cool other than the plug-in hybrid conversion) but the woman wanted to pose with this thing VW had in their booth. No idea what it's supposed to be:

After the show we headed up to my parents. Kristen asked them why we weren't invited down to my aunt's house for t-day, and it turns out that the aunt's kids are fighting and none of them were invited and by extension we weren't invited. Seems one of the grandkids is a total terror at 8 years old (supposed to be on meds, taking knives to school, sexually molesting the other grandkids, etc) so my aunt's kids are afraid to bring their kids (the ~20000 other grandkids) over anymore since the 8 year old is such an 'uncontrollable terror'. Supposedly this will keep us from having any further family gatherings until it's resolved. Yea!

Friday morning I drove around the back yard in low-range 4x4 checking it out and it works pretty well. I forgot how fun 4x4ing is. The deer were not amused as they scattered several times as I came crashing through the bushes. Mom's been feeding them melon rinds again and they hang out waiting for their daily snack. I got a few good shots of the car before we headed out:

The rest of the day was spent sorting the junk in the shed at the cabin into the 'keep' pile and the 'dump' pile. There was a lot of really old stuff that had never been sorted out, mostly from my grandfather. I found some old army bags dated 1959 and in one of them I found a totally trashed cleaning rod and some old cotton gun cleaning patches. WWII relics? The rod I tossed (it was brass but totally un-fixable) but the patches I kept; they appear to be really high quality. They did make things better in the old days. It took us most of the day to sort and make a dump run. The dude at the dump screwed up, so we only had to pay $25 for the entire trailer load (should have been $200+ easily). He weighted us at 7200 lbs coming in, and 10000 lbs going out. So, we gained 3k lbs? Must have been all the scrap iron we stole. :) Since he couldn't figure out what happened, he let us go for the charge of 2 sq. yards of yard waste (half the trailer was loaded with pine needles and branches). Hopefully it's the last dump run we have to make. The tenants move in next week, and I'm a little apprehensive. Guess time will tell if it was a mistake or not.

After cleaning ourselves up we went to the Indian casino for dinner (seafood buffet) and to let mom and the woman gamble a bit. Mom helped out some starving Indian by donating all her quarters to the machine, but Kristen managed to double her money, all at the last moment. A luck hit on a $80 jackpot on the video nickel machine put her back into the plus column. From there we went home.

Today we went to Trader Joe's, big!lots and snob hill for groceries. I think we got everything on the list, and other than some over priced fancy-ass salami for me for my lunch we kept to the sale stuff pretty well. We were very afraid of going to Costco, so the woman will go on Wednesday to get the pallet quantities of toilet paper and meats for us to freeze.

Observe as dad fires up the monster 1972 Chevelle SS. Ooh... ahh... (mom's expression in the background shows how little she's impressed). I think he burned 2 gallons of gas just idling it in the garage.

More updates and photos later, but right now I'm going to sleep.

I'm becoming all Kenny-like in my updates, ie a slacker!

So we had the day off today to make up for all those weekends we worked and I mostly squandered it. I was going to go to the range, wax the Tracker, etc. What I actually got done was take the on-line skills test for my linkedin interview next week, shipped that rifle case back (it was way too small for any of my rifles, how dare they call it a 'large scoped rifle case'), got some snack food for tonight's game and took all the change to coin star. They don't charge for starbucks cards so now I've got $96 loaded back onto my card. That should hold us for a few months of Sundays. I've also watched a bunch of crap TV I had stored up on the replay. The woman is freaking because I recorded the entire Andromeda marathon they had on SciFi the other day. I've got the new BSG prequel show ready to record too.

I forgot to mention that Friday night I went to the motorcycle show. I didn't find anything too spiffy that I didn't know about except the new BMW F800GS, the bike everyone said they should build. It's pretty cool, but it's $4k more than the Suzuki that I've picked out to replace the KLR when it dies, so it's unlikely I'll get one. However, now that I've seen it with luggage and in a good color, it's a damn fine looking machine:

At the show I got this fancy visor wax that's supposed to keep the visor from fogging. I tried it out yesterday morning and it seems to work, I couldn't get my visor to fog at all. I also used it on the mirrors which was a mistake because without the fog on there the headlights from the cars behind me really blind me. Guess I gotta let another layer of crust form on the mirrors to dull the reflection down.

Sunday's class was only OK as well, just like Saturday. The instructor and I got into a disagreement though. He was having us shoot at this 3D moving human form targets (wearing clothes and everything) and on one of the hostage drills he claimed I made a bad hit on a good guy. He couldn't show me were I hit it, and his assistant had been marking all the hits as people made them so you would know if you were guilty or not. That kinda upset me. I'll admit it was a crazy risky shot through the head of the bad guy with the bullet passing over the shoulder of the good guy as it came out the back of the bad guy's head, but I didn't think he was going to give me a better shot so I took it. Ah well, I don't have to take classes from him. I really don't need more instruction at this point, I just need to practice if I want to get better.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to SF to the car show which is oddly open on thanksgiving, and then have an early dinner. After that we'll go to my parents and come home Friday night so the woman and I have the whole weekend to do whatever. Avoiding the mall crowd is at the top of the list of things to do. :)

The jury is still out on the new instructor. He seems just "OK" at this point, I don't see what those guys were raving about. What's really different is being in a level 2 class (on their class scale I'm normally running about a level 7). These guys suck, bad. Major screw ups all over the place. Only 1 safety violation, but just oodles of tactical errors and omissions. There are 2 cops in the class who are young (25-26) and pretty cocky but they're only OK shooters. In the quick draw drills they were trying to beat me, which didn't happen. I may be rusty, but in that last class I did win the top spot in the speed/accuracy shoot off. Tomorrow I'll only be better since it's unlikely that they too haven't fired a handgun in almost a year like I hadn't. We've also got 1 military dude, and 1 commercial airline pilot. The pilot is interesting, he said that they gave him a gun to carry on the plane, but didn't give him any instruction. He has to get it on his own, at his own expense, and it wasn't required. That seems really lame, putting untrained shooters in really bad spots. Who thinks this stuff up? The FAA, or the airlines? Maybe it's those TSA guys?

Got a call from the woman tonight, she's very tired and wants to come home. Still having fun, but it's clearly starting to get to her (all the bad travel, every one of her flights has been delayed on all 3 trips).

I ate way, way too much for lunch. We went to Panera and I got a half salad and a bread bowl of chicken noodle soup and ate every last bit of it. When you pay $9 for lunch, you had best make it count. Good thing Kristen is on her way to Miami so I won't have to eat dinner tonight.

Now how did that just happen? My boss wanted to go see the pistol range, he wants to get something now that he lives outside of NY. So we went and while talking to the guys there (who I've not seen in 9+ months) we were talking about how their new instructor was working out, etc. The class this weekend didn't look full on the board and they said it really was, no one had updated the board though. I said that if there was an opening I would have gone. Eventually the owner of the place said that he would make a spot for me in the class, so that pretty much opened it up for me to make good on my word that I would sign up. Doh. it's a 2-day 16 hour class, hadn't really expected to spend this weekend at the range but I guess that's what I'm doing. I wonder if I even have enough ammo? I'm sure I have a case of .45 around somewhere, but I don't have any of the light 185gr loads so I'm going to get beaten to death. I've not fired a pistol since last December.

The woman's plane was 45 minutes late, so we didn't get home until some crazy time this morning. This is the 2nd of out of her 4 total flights that has been late due to mechanical failures. It's good that they're catching them on the ground obviously but what's up with all the failures in the first place? Ticket prices aren't rising to keep pace with fuel costs, so are they skipping on preventative stuff and just fixing it when it breaks? I can't imagine that's the case, seems risky. Must just be bad luck.

Slow day at the office since it's some sort of holiday. The roads were empty this AM, and I'm hoping they are going home as well.

I'm feeling kinda sludgy and fat, glad I can hit the gym tomorrow.

I'm not sure why I'm still doing the date/time in German, I think it's just habit at this point.

Today was another busy day. I got up and went to the range and tried out some of the hunting loads I came up with (so far, they suck), then came home and did a lot of brass prep. Tumbling, sizing, trimming, etc. That took a good few hours. I also took the clay bar to the hood of the Tracker to see if I could get it a bit smoother. Yes, it's smoother, but I don't think anyone will notice. I also cleaned the bathroom finally, paid bills, watched some TV (who knew there was a new 'bionic woman' show?) and generally relaxed. I was going to go for a ride, but it was a bit on the rainy side this AM and was only getting sunny around 3pm at which time it started getting cold.

I talked to the woman a bit today, she's going to arrive tonight at midnight so I've got to head up to the airport and get her. I'll head up early and sit in the parking lot of the Hilton again so I can just zip through the airport once and get her rather than having to circle.

Stupid wireless, it keeps dropping every few minutes which is easy to refresh on a browser but annoying for a putty session. Ever since changing over to WPA the upstairs connection has been really bad. Too bad there is no updated driver for this card, I bet it's got issues with the security stuff (duh).

I finally took a picture of the new hand guards installed on the KLR. They're too shiny, but I'm sure they'll fade over time. Kristen said they'll just get some dirt or crap on them and they'll blend right in. I'm not going to try to paint them, that's for sure. I already have enough random shades of green on the bike...

Did the differentials this morning, ran the oil to the recycle bin at the parts store (and picked up wiper blades), got grocery shopping done, did the laundry, cut my hair, vacuumed the house, made a spreadsheet out of all the Tracker maintenance records (and then quickly rotated the tires since they're way overdue for that), uh, what else. Been busy I guess. Still have to load ammo for tomorrow.

So sleepy! And so sick too. I went to lunch with Dan and Patrick (my old boss) at our usual Chinese place and I'm really not feeling very well. I ate less than usual, so that's not it, and I've not been pigging out on candy or anything either. No idea what's going on in my gut.

I got the transmission and transfer case oil changed in about an hour and a half tonight. Had to make a fancy setup using a cut bottle and some tape to be able to pump the oil in without making a huge mess and it worked a lot better than the last time time I did it. I also had to pick up another set of jack stands, I had to raise the Tracker to get under it since it sits a lot lower than the Montero did and it has to sit level to change the fluid.

Before working on the car I went to dinner with dad. He took me to their local Mexican place and although they spoke no English we got by OK. The food was pretty good. I tried to bust out some Spanish but the chick just looked at me funny. Dad said I was using half Spanish and half German. Ugh. I really thought it was all Spanish, I think it was just too poor of a job for the waitress to understand me. So much for being all 'Mr. international'.

I'm running a convert on all of the woman's images to get them down to a reasonable size of the web site and it's taking forever. You really don't feel the lack of speed on pong until you try to do some heavy CPU stuff like image manipulation or video playback. Running 5 converts in parallel on a single CPU system probably doesn't help any either. Fortunately I can still journal while it's working, vi isn't all that much of a CPU hound. However, I just realized why the web browser is running so slow, it's using pong as as squid cache. I sure rely on this PIII a lot.

It's officially getting into winter, I brought out the little space heater as the bedroom is quite chilly in the AM. I don't know if I will setup the ionic breeze thingy to act as a silent fan this year. Kristen always says the fan makes the room colder. Yea, she doesn't understand thermodynamics, we went over that last year.

Tonight I got dad and sent him home with the Sentra. It's stage 1 in weening me off having a 'backup' car and trying to treat the tracker as the 'good' car. One car only!

Took the tracker to the mechanic today to get it in 100% mechanical condition. They got the timing belt and pulley assembly replaced, lots of other belts and hoses replaced, the valves checked (again, why does any modern car not have self adjusting valves??), etc. They figured out the AC and fan problem too (that was the cheap part). Apparently there is a thermal switch which makes the extra electric fan come on and turns off the AC when the engine is overheating. That switch was bad so the car always thought the engine was overheating so the fan was always on and the AC was always disabled. It took them an hour of diag work to figure that out, and after all is well with the fan and the AC. Sweetness on that. Still cost a ton for the timing belt job, but now I'm good for another 60k miles at least. Water pump is good, they replaced the crank seals that were sorta seeping, the rest look good. Underneath (which I got to poke around while they had it up on the lift trying to weld the cat converter heat shield to make it stop rattling) looks really good. I kept asking the mechanic "is that leaking?" and he said no. I asked "what is that?" and he said 'dirt'. Oh. Yea, happy car again, and I'm still 10% under budget even with taxes (paid yesterday at the DMV) and repairs. Kristen says the tires look too bald, but they've probably got 30-40% tread remaining. They're just little doughnut tires, I think she's comparing them to the BFG-ATs that were on the Montero. I'll get some for the tracker at some point too, but not until these are toast. I'm not doing a lot of 4x4ing just yet.

I finally got to talk to the hunting guide today and got my hunt scheduled. Jan 5-6, 2008 with these guys North Powder Outfitters. He says that it's still really warm and dry up on most of the ranches so they're still hunting in summer mode, whatever that means. He also says when it gets cold the poison oak goes dormant which is good. Apparently he's 'very sensitive' to it too, so he'll keep me out of trouble. They only have 1 hunt per weekend per ranch, so I'll have the entire 20k acres to myself, or rather to our hunting party. He says he'll go out with just me, or if I want to bring friends they can hunt too. I'll ask some people, but I'm guessing they'll not be interested. People flake when things really go down.

I kept meaning to take a picture of my official hunting license and pig tag but hadn't had the camera and the stuff in the same place at the same time until yesterday:

Saturday I spent more of the day at the new game store. It was the grand opening and I hope it doesn't stay that crazy all the time. The place was packed and while it is a nicer facility (with a starbucks and a sandwich store across the street) it's a bit loud. It's built into a warehouse so the walls and floor are all very hard with lots of echos, perhaps once they actually get things unpacked and some shelving up it will be better. If not, we're going to have to take up a collection to buy some acoustic foam or some such. The games were good, I got to play at a table with 5 judges (the new PC term for dungeon master). They were playing a new mod so they could run it at the regular game days, so I'll have some Tuesday off when they run as I've already played.

Also on Saturday I picked up my new ride, a '98 Chevy Tracker (aka Suzuki Sidekick) with only 72k miles on it. I got them down on price which is good because there is about $1k worth of stuff to fix up (AC, they skipped the timing belt on the 60k service the cheap bastards, etc) but after that I should have a 100% solid ride. I've got an appointment at the shop on Wednesday, then after that I should be able to do all the services myself until 120k miles (so 5 years at the rate I use a car?) It's no race car with it's 95 HP and 98 ft-lbs of torque, but it's oddly fun to drive. Maybe it's because I can just drive over all the shitty potholes and stuff on our street without getting rattled apart like in the Sentra. This one even has 2 airbags. Woo... welcome to 1997.

I just noticed what a crappy park job I did there last night, it's almost falling off the carpet squares. Oddly the Sentra, the Porsche and the Tracker all have the same wheelbase and nearly the same track width. The Tracker is only 156" long though whereas the Boxster and Sentra were around 170". Why is this relevant? Well, the shorter the car the less chance the woman backs into it when she's getting her saddles down from the rack.

Sunday I made a run up to the cabin to meet the people that are going to rent it out. They seem nice enough, although they're clearly not the sharpest spoon in the drawer. Rather than do the usual deposit setup, we got a little creative. The estimate to paint the inside of the house came to $2500 (which is actually pretty cheap). Since this guy is a painter, I said that if he painted the inside (prior to moving in) then I would wave the deposit. So right out of the gate I save the $2500. If they do less than $2500 worth of damage in the year they're renting, then I'm actually coming out way ahead in the deal. If they do more than that, well, I'm still better off than taking a $1500-ish deposit. It's a total win-win. They move in Dec 1st, should be interesting.

I'm going to have to put a rear tire on the KLR soon, it's really getting worn down. It's easily got 10k miles on it which is great for a motorcycle tire. Sport bikes eat a tire every 2-3k, these dual sport tires are hard and not so sticky, and the bikes light, so they may handle like crap but they last forever.