Wow, the bike is so much better now. With the new chain and sprockets it's not jerky at all, the drive line lash is almost non-existent. I didn't know it could be this smooth. I also fired a bunch of carb cleaner through the top end of the carb via the air filter, so if there was any leftover junk in there that should have blown it out.

The game last night was long, very long. Vicki and I ended up at the lower table again and got stuck with a bunch of crappy players. That 12-13 year old kid that David is teaching is damn good, he's better than half the regulars we play with. Kinda scary how smart he is and how fast he can think through problems.

Dad came by for lunch yesterday to check out the mac store (he wants to get something for the trailer so he can do his quicken stuff and surf during the week) and while he was here silver hit $16.50 (which is the buy price that David said we should jump in at). I coudln't go to the store, but David went and picked up two bars and let me buy one of them off him. Cool. They're the 'ugly' J&M bars, but the dealer said he's got the 'pretty' ones coming in and we can swap them out if we want. It's all the same silver, just some are pressed and some are sand cast. Likely we'll end up keeping these and getting one of the pretty ones too. :) It's kinda funky to hold, it's like the size of a small whiteboard erraser but it weighs 100 oz. Density is strange.

Damn, another long time without an update. I gotta get back in the groove.

Saturday I went to the range again, and then we went up to Alameda to see Jan & Rex's kid in her high school musical (Grease). The play was what I imagined typical high school quality to be, although I don't remember all that much from my time on the stage crew in high school. What's kinda freaky is that their kid is now 17 and looking pretty hot. She's going to be a knockout when she's all grown up. I guess it happens, in only a few more years she'll be on "Catholic girls gone wild" or some such.

Sunday morning after Starbucks I went to the archery range with Seth while the woman went riding. Sunday evening after working on the bike trying to get the carburetor sorted out I thought I should change out the chain and sprockets since they're getting dangerously worn. Simple job, and it was going quite well until.... my torque wrench jammed. I didn't notice it and when I started torquing down the bolts... SNAP, one of the wheel studs broke off. Crap! Then I figured that I could ride on 7 of 8, and would undo and re-torque the remaining ones. No good, when I tried to remove one, SNAP, it broke too. I was pretty pissed figuring I would be driving in for a week or more while I waited for parts.

After some posting on the KLR board one of the guys suggested that I could make the wheel studs (they are thankfully replaceable) using common tools and generic bolts available at the hardware store. Monday morning I went by OSH and found that they actually had M8 studs. Crazy. I got some and last night I installed them after much work with vice grips getting the old ones out. Everything went well until I found that the studs were just a little too long, and would hit the swingarm. Using my trusty dremel and a cutting disk I took 3mm of each stud and all is well... or at least I think it's good. I finished assembling everything last night but was too tired to take a test run and wasn't willing to do it this morning. Bad move, it took me 55 minutes to get to work in the car. Stupid traffic. Tomorrow I'm going to risk it.

Pictures of the whole wheel mess are here.

And a totally random picture, but the woman said she was looking cute and since I was using her camera to take bike pics I couldn't say no to taking one of her. Guess I don't have to post it here (and she doesn't see this so she won't even know I did) but I'll probably want to look back on it in the future. :)

What a crappy week so far. I'm on pager duty which usually isn't that bad, except here they use the pager for everything. If anyone submits a ticket of any priority after hours, the pager goes off. Any messages? Page. It's supposed to be the pager guy's job to drop everything and login and check to see just in case it could be serious and then ignore it if it's not. Monday I got 35 pages. Tuesday I went all ape shit and called them out on the stupid use of the pager and how if everyone is used to ignoring it all the time it's useless as an emergency tool. They sorta got it, and I got them to change the whole thing around. What's amazing is that other people have been bitching about it as well for months. One chick wrote down all the pages she got in a week. 244. Yea, over two hundred pages. How many were emergencies? none. zero. WTF? You think they would have listened then.

In addition to pager duty, I'm also interrupt guy again so every ticket the help desk can't deal with is bounced to me. Some are real, some are just stupid and take tons of user hand holding time. Both in one week is rough when you've also got projects to work on and a constant stream of incoming stuff.

On the plus side my trigger arrived and I got it installed this morning. It took me 20 minutes from the time I walked into the garage until the time I left. Having the right tools and having pulled the other trigger off once already (so I knew what I was doing) made it an easy job. I'm a little worried that the replacement pins are very lose in there and the old one had to be punched out, but the dealer said that the stock pins are hammered in there to make them 'tamper proof' and the replacements aren't. He said that the stock will hold the pins and keep them from moving around, no reason to bash them into place. Makes sense, and it's easier on the rifle and the trigger parts not to be hammering on them. It also makes it super easy to take the trigger with you somewhere else. I might end up swapping the old style (good) Remington trigger from my old rifle onto the hunting rig and put the spiffy new one on the old rifle (which is more of a target gun and won't be seeing any field use anymore).

I saw a charge on my card for the rings and base too, hopefully they're in tonight, although I doubt I'll get them installed before the weekend as I have to load ammo tonight and have a game tomorrow. I think Seth and I are going to do both the archery range and the rifle range in the same day. Depends on how we feel, how much time he can get away from his family and if Don is headed up.

Troy and Kristen came over last night for dinner, the woman made some sort of chicken stuff with fried (I think) perschutto strips on it. Pretty good stuff. We even had risotto, and with the huge rice shortage and all that's a rare treat. Yea, whatever.

Saturday we went up to south Berkeley for a BBQ/birthday party. One of the doctors that Kristen used to work with during her internship was turning 60. Lots of people there, and TONS of food. Even after everyone ate there was a full load of goodies. The doctor chick is Japanese so lots of her friends brought sushi, noodles and other Asian foods that were home made and super tasty. I didn't even have any of the ribs I was so full of shrimp. :)

Before the BBQ I went to the range to test out the new rifle. It didn't kick as bad as I thought it would, and accuracy was better than I suspected. Groups ranged from one hole (probably the smallest I've ever fired) to 1.5". I'm hoping it was just all me throwing shots around, I would love to think the rifle was super accurate right out of the box. I talked to the cranky gunsmith on Friday and he wasn't sure he could do anything with the triangular barrel in terms of turning it to cut a new chamber. It might just not need that though. In theory, 1 MOA is plenty accurate for a hunting gun. Those were with some hand loads I whipped up, so the real test will be when I try some of the hunting ammo.

Since I stripped out one of the adjustment screws on the trigger trying to get the anti-tamper stuff out of it (lawyers say we need a 5.5# trigger, they're wrong) I had to buy some replacement parts off the net. I got another trigger assembly with a broken safety lever for $15 and used it's parts to rebuild my trigger. It worked, but I can't get it adjusted the way I like. To make it 'drop safe' the trigger has to be 3.5# and the feel is really poor, but the sear locks up well. I can make it lighter and crisper, but then it's too twitchy. I guess the net guys were right saying the new Remington triggers are crap. I ordered up an aftermarket trigger on Thursday. It's coming factory set at 2.5# and is supposed to be glass smooth. We shall see.... although with all the praises that have been sung about it I don't see why it would be anything less than perfect.

After the BBQ, we stopped by the mall. The woman wanted to look for stuff and didn't want to waste the trip to Berkeley. She managed to find a lot of sale racks and came away with a bunch of stuff for something like $35. I even like some of it. After shopping and random stuff around the house I managed to fall asleep at 8:30pm and didn't wake up until 7am Sunday.

Today I adjusted the chain on the bike (it's really getting close to needing replacing, I've got 2000+ miles on the chain that was just supposed to get me home from PHX), did a better job of cleaning the rifle and processed the brass from yesterday. Then I took a quick ride up to the barn to see the horse the woman was riding, and when we got back home we spent some time in the hot tub. I read for a few hours, BBQed turkey burgers and some trout and generally wasted the rest of the day doing nothing. Kinda felt good. I'm almost ready to face next week. Almost.

Tamara and Ellen came over for dinner and Top Chef last night. The dinner was only OK, but the table worked well! :)

Busy at work all this week, struggling with things I'm not really sure how to do, but the good news is that no one else does either so my bumbling isn't any better or worse than theirs.

I can't believe I'm still dragging from staying up so late on Friday. That, or I'm sick or just all the caffeine I used to try to normalize my sleep routine has finally jacked me up to the point of no return. I've had 3 sodas in 2 days, that's usually a month's supply or more.

Work went well today, had to make some last minute changes as expected but otherwise we were done in only 2.5 hours. I'll take the cash.

I went down to road rider yesterday and got some summer pants to replace my trashed ones. I couldn't fine a pure summer only pant, I ended up with a 3 season pair. They're mesh on the outside with two, yes two, removable liners. One for warmth, one for water resistance. Pulling those out makes them very lightweight. Well except for all the armor. Oh, and the knee armor can be adjusted into 3 positions using a series of velcro tabs. That's pretty cool because on my fancy BMW pants the armor slips down when I'm off the bike and I end up getting whacked in the kneecap with the top edge of the armor. That's annoying. Not quite as annoying as this macbook keyboard that requires you to FIRMLY PRESS EVERY KEY EVERY TIME using 10 FT/Lbs of pressure. Anyway, the pants seem pretty good, I hope they last.

I also had to call the bank today. Turns out the new ATM card they sent me was for the joint account, not my personal account. Not realizing that I cut up my 'old' card and replaced it with the new one. When I tried to deposit the rent check it locked me out. Doh, I've been carrying one joint account card (which I don't have a pin for, I just use as a credit card at restaurant) and one expired joint card. The dude on the phone, who was clearly in a foreign call center but without the 250ms delay so I have no idea where his accent was from, got a good laugh out of it when I had to admit I cut up my good card. Nope, not lost or stolen, just destroyed. Good thing I've got cash in the safe to tide me over until my replacement card gets here and Kristen can deposit the rent check into he joint account and I can transfer it.

I probably should be outside, it's really warm and nice out and I've been inside working all day.

I pulled the rings and base off the old Remington (I'm going to rotate scopes anyway, I want to put the high power scope back on the 50 and move my old Springfield scope onto the old Remington) and test mounted the Leupold on the new Remington. It looks pretty good up there. I'll have to see which ring/base combo works best where when I get the set I've got on order. Should be here next week if all goes well.

Last night's game ran until 2:30am, I didn't get into bed until 3am. Who knew it was a double mod before we started? The judge I guess, we were all pretty much in the dark. I still managed to get a little sleep and get to work by 7:50am. The electrical work in one of the panels that feed our data center was just beginning, they called me to let me know they're starting just as I walked up. Looked like I was right on time.

There was some huge trouble with engineering over the last few days, they were calling me all last night during the game as we tried various things to solve it. They figured it out finally, and I can't tell who the fault lies with. Should be an interesting tale and very telling on how they deal with major problems around here. Will everyone be happy it's fixed and move on or will they start looking to place blame?

The notary showed up yesterday and we signed all the papers. We're set at 5.5% for the next 30 years as of Monday, so that's good. I doubt rates will go significantly lower at this point, but I guess if they do we'll have to refi again. We're saving about $400/month so it's going to take us 11 months to break even on the fees and whatnot but it's worth it. I don't see us going anywhere in the next few years.

My boss' boss got on my case yesterday and today about my ticket handling. Apparently I'm not following the SLAs enough. I guessed when they gave me 12+ month old 'urgent' tickets that they really just weren't all that urgent. Today she said I'm not tagging them with all the right tags (I wasn't tagging them at all, didn't know anyone cared). I guess they take tickets very seriously here, even more so than doing the actual work. Good to know.

Today I had 4 visitors at lunch. Dan, Peter, Gilbert and Ellen from Skyrider came by. Dan of course is in retirement mode not working at all so he's doing fine. Peter is leaving Skyrider next week, Gilbert is going to be taking over what's left of ops (so he'll be carrying all the gear out of the data center to the surplus place I guess :) and Ellen is of course perfectly fine being a marketing chick at a company with no product.

Oh, and Sue emailed with the pics of her kid. I'm not sure why I would put them up here, but some of the people who read this are into kids so they might care. The kid's name is Zane. Zane Pepper Earle? Oy. Unless things have changed this kid is in for more of a beating that I took.

The tracking thing says both my UPS and FedEx packages have arrived at the house. It's just like giftmas, only it's stuff I want. Should be my cheek pad, brass, tools (100 piece bit set and punch set) and a couple of other things I can't remember right off hand. Wee. Now when my trigger gets here I'll have all the correct tools to work on it and switch it out.

Last night's game was a cake walk, we were done by 10:30 and I was home by 11pm. Nice to not be out so late.

Tonight we're supposed to close on the refinance, although I haven't heard any sort of confirmation from the lender. They know that the woman is going out of town so if we don't do it today they have to wait until Monday.

Good tail wind on the way to the office today. It didn't make me go any faster but it did cut down on the turbulence. When I've got ahead went just trying to run at 74 indicated is very bouncy. There was some sort of serious pileup on 880 north so everyone was totally stopped going the other direction so maybe the lack of cars whizzing by cut down on the wind in my face. I'm sure there would be a way to test the effects of cars going in the opposite direction.

Game night tonight for me and the woman is having dinner with Darcy in the city. Thursday AM I have to take her to the airport (she's headed to PHX for the race... I think it's PHX anyway) so I'll have this weekend to myself. So far I'm scheduled to work on Saturday which cuts into the time but I will get paid for it which is new and different.

I can't believe that worked. We actually managed to cut herbs from the 'garden' and season the lamb and BBQ the rack without it getting totally incinerated and actually tasting like lamb when it was all done. Amazing.

Dinner and the comedy club last night were mearly OK. The food was just average at best (but at SF prices of course) and while the first two comics were good, the headliner dude was sorta a dud. At least we got to hang out with friends (who are trying to get ideas out of us for their wedding so the woman is all excited to get to help plan another one).

Got VPN working to work, not sure if that's a good thing or not. I also moved my old laptop downstairs and wired it to the network so I can RDP to it. It's like my virtual XP box but it's a whole lot faster. Good for browsing sites I have bookmarked but have yet to move to the mac.

It's kinda cold out today so I'm not motivated to go for a ride. I did wash my helmet liner though, that's something. I also tweaked on the car again trying to get the EGR problem sorted out. I didn't do much this time, so I don't expect any real results. It's blowing some sort of gray smoke at start up. It doesn't smell like oil or coolant, not sure what it is. Could be really running rich or something, but it's got EFI so I don't see how that could be happening unless something was very wrong and it runs too well for that.

Going to try to BBQ rack of lamb tonight, one of the woman's Costco finds I guess. I also got a piece of breaded fish while at the store so perhaps I can BBQ that one night this week. My few attempts at fish have turned out edible but not quite 'good' yet.

I've got the track-pad on the mac to respond to taps now, and the two finger scrolling thing is pretty nice. I still like the one key 'page down' on the old laptop but I'm sure I'll get used to using the pad.

I've been given a project dealing with people outside the group (apparently they think I'm ready to talk to people on my own now) but alas, I can't get any of the required people to agree to a meeting time, or even really respond. Odd how the people making the request don't want to actually get together and say what they want. I'm hoping they're just not here and that it's not that they're being assholes about it. If I wanted attitude, I could have stayed at NVDA.

Spent a few hours trying to debug the new macbook at home. Turns out nearly everything was related to the damn wireless not working quite right. Now that it's plugged into the hub directly it's all working, but shouldn't wireless sorta just work by now? Eric says the apple APs suck (and we have evidence of that in the office too) so now who's POS wireless router should I buy?

OK that was strange. Kevin and Don from NVDA were just here, they're were visiting to get a look at the parking garages. NVDA just bought 36 acres across from the current campus and is going to be building some crazy 8+ story office towers to hold 8000 people. Sounds like things are going very well for them over there, other than having lots of work to do. Sigh. I was almost over being over that place, and now they have to come and show me the cool stuff they're doing. I guess as a consolation prize, those guys look really, really bad. They've aged a lot in the last few years.

That big beer bash is going on now so the office is pretty quiet. Hopefully I can finish up my documentation on the p4 stuff. I've volunteered to give an overview presentation to the team on Tuesday. It's not technically necessary but it will be good for me to get up in front of a group and present again, I'm way out of practice.

I also remembered I downloaded the handful of pics I took at the con last weekend. Here we have Jerry and Vicki looking fairly confused at the hotel Starbucks early on day 1. Next is the start of the 'battle interactive' where everyone plays the same mod at the same time (on different tables) and in theory there is a big battle at the end and you can wander from table to table joining different parts of it. Unfortunately we didn't have that happen this time but we still got the lovely introduction skit performed by the head dudes. The last two pics are from the last game on Sunday. First us wandering around a town, and the 2nd was after a big battle in a basement.

Let's try that again. I tried to do an update yesterday and got cut off after the first sentence. This place is hopping and sharing and office with other people means someone is always coming up with something to work on. Can't goof off enough! :)

So (obviously) it's Been a little crazy the last few days, let's see if I can remember everything that went on. Friday night my parents came by and wanted to take me to dinner for my birthday (which isn't until next week but they're going to be out of town and really don't want to wait until the get back). We rushed through some sushi because my ride was showing up to take me to the con. Tahoma was crazy late getting me so we didn't get to the hotel until 12:30am. I guess it was just as well I was burnt out for the first day at the con rather than being burnt out for only the second. Someone was really thinking ahead though, there was a starbucks inside the hotel right across from the gaming room. That helped a lot. The whole event was pretty good, although the 'special' mod that was twice as long for no increase in treasure was kinda a letdown. Twice the work, half the reward! Yea team! We got home around 9pm Sunday, much later than planned but the Sunday session ended at 7:30pm instead of the planned 6pm. Some of the combats took a long ass time.

Monday was quiet, Tuesday was another game at GK. Wednesday I knew we were working late so I went home at lunch to meet the appraiser as well as to go pick up my rifle. The rifle was exactly as described, so no worries there. Now I'm just waiting for the rings and base so I can finish assembling it and go give it a try. I was thinking of pulling the rings/base off my other rem 700, but I don't think it will work. The VTR has a fatter barrel profile so the rings have to be a smidgen higher. I think that Leupold is only a 50mm scope though, so it might just work. If I take the base off the old 700 I'll put the NXS scope back on the 50 where it belongs and mount up my Springfield scope on the old 700. I would stick the Springfield scope on the new 700 but the scope is 30% physically larger than the Leupold and small and light are the name of the game on the hunting rig. The old 700 is already big and heavy, so a big heavy scope is not a big deal.

I got the plug installed in the transmission, so that's good. The check engine light came on again though, so my 'fix' only lasted a few hundred miles. Time to go onto step 2 of 15 of the troubleshooting guide.

We've made plans to go to the city with Scott and Lina on Saturday to have dinner and check out one of the comedy clubs. I must get some sleep this weekend too, with all the running around and the extra cardio at the gym I'm really starting to run out of energy.