This morning I shipped the VTR off to GAP. Now, the waiting begins. I didn't have time for a range run, so I now have 20 rounds that won't fit in any other gun. Maybe Don's .308 chamber will be large enough to fit them, or I'll try to use the bullet puller I got in '91 but have been, so far, afraid to try.

I also rebuilt the front brake caliper on the KLR while the woman was at the barn. Oddly I didn't take any pictures of the disassembled parts while I was cleaning it. Must be getting old and forgetful.

We also went up to SF today for lunch a 'wichcraft (we've done SF and Vegas, next up is NYC) and the SF auto show. The show was disappointing, there was only 1 concept car, and nothing really spiffy. Jeep didn't even have a real Wrangler on display (on the 4-door weird ones). The woman still likes the Eos, but knows it's impractical because the doors are too big, you could never get out of it without bashing the cars next to you in the BART lot. Oh yea, we did take BART up, no issues at all. Wasn't all that crowded and zero stink or homeless prowling around causing trouble.

Tomorrow, we fly. Got the passport and $50NZ out of the safe, got some clothes laid out. It's almost like we're going on vacation!

Crazy busy week trying to get the DA12/RC9 move scheduled (including the build out of the RC9 temp data center) and getting ready to leave for the Cook Islands on Sunday. On top of it all I've had to take the Taos TIV interviewing training and do a sample writeup all while being sick still. A week off should just about give me time to recover and hopefully get rid of this sore throat and stuffiness, although I'm beginning to like the taste of throat drops...

Some pictures of the data center build out (from my craptastic cell phone camera) are here: build out.

Oh, and tomorrow at the range will be the VTR's last day of being a VTR. I'm sending it off to GAP to have them totally true the action and replace the barrel. With all the work I've done it's still just barely a 1 MOA gun and that's not good enough. GAP guarantees a 1/2 MOA gun, and that's with factory federal match ammo. I'm sure with hand loads I can tweak it down to out-shoot my norcal precision based rifle since it's using a tuned factory barrel and the GAP will be sporting top-of-the-line aftermarket stuff. When this whole project is done, I will basically have the rifle I wanted GAP to build in the first place, but will have saved about $1k by doing it in stages and using the local smith to do some of the less technically stuff. It's almost like buying one used, but mine will be new and I'll know exactly what's gone on at each stage.

Clearly on the mend, I should be back to normal in a few more days. I'm tired, but will go to work rather than face another day of laying around doing nothing.

Last night we went to dinner with some of the woman's' friends at a Oaxacan restaurant. Really good Mexican basically. :) I had prawns that were pretty good with black beans and rice and some sort of veggie/salsa/something medley. We got chips and an assortment of moles (he he, in English that looks funny). The chocolate one was boring but they had this other one based on 22+ spices that was very, very tasty. Good stuff, but the service was bad, they screwed up several times getting us our food, beverages and whatnot. They did serve Mexican coke though, right out of the bottle.

Stayed home yesterday, did a little work but mostly just lounged around and rested. Today I'm feeling better throat wise, only a little lingering soreness, but I'm clearly not healthy yet. Just doing odd jobs around the house is making me winded and sweating. Stupid sickness.

At least I got the Hogue front grip modified enough it fits on my shotgun now. That project has been pending for almost, what, two years now?

Around 4pm yesterday I noticed I was getting a sore throat, though it might just be from talking too much (lots of meetings and stuff yesterday) but that doesn't appear to be it. It's still around today; hope it's not the start of some more serious sickness before vacation. :(

I bailed from work early, my throat is killing me and I'm feeling clammy and feverish. Double :(

Made some of the elk franks from Seth for dinner last night (part of the 14lbs+ of elk meat I picked up from him on Monday). Tasty stuff. I also shared a bunch of the pig teriyaki stick from my pig which I also picked up on Monday. Everyone in the office loved that. Too bad they're not getting any more! :)

It can't be my eyes that are causing me headaches, I wake up with a headache now and I'm pretty sure I'm not reading or watching a screen while I'm sleeping.

Had to drive in today as I'm picking up the woman from the airport on the way home. Driving just about doubled the time it took to get in, and traffic today wasn't all that heavy. It takes me about 20 minutes to get to work on the bike, and it took 20 minutes just to do the nasty merge onto 237 with about 1/2 the backup there usually is as I zoom by in the carpool lane.

The woman's car has an annoying sticking throttle. When it's closed it binds up causing you to have to really push hard on the pedal and then it finally moves and the car jerks forward. Very annoying. I've tried to track it down before but was unable to figure it out. Today I got motivated to fix it (it seems a lot worse than usual) and think I found it. I've always looked at the cable ends, both at the pedal, the pedal pivot point and the connection at the throttle body. They all seem well lubricated and unbinding. Today I tracked the cable behind the engine and found this really 'intricate' bracket holding the cable and it appeared to be holding the cable crooked.... perhaps bent when the car was hit when it was new and never properly repaired? A few tweaks with some pliers and now the cable doesn't bind up in the middle anymore. Ha! The cable is probably damaged from years of rubbing inside the sheath at that funny angle and could have a kink in it still, but it's a lot better than it was before. Wonder how much a new cable would set her back?

Yesterday I got a headache so bad I couldn't do anything but lay down and try to sleep. Started around 3pm, gave up hoping it would go away around 9pm. Can't tell if I'm having caffeine withdrawals (didn't think I got that much caffeine anymore) or what. Dehydrated? Tumor? Too much time watching TV?

With the woman out of town I had two days to myself to get random crap done. I was going to go to the land, but with it raining up that way it seemed like a boring drive followed by either a night in the Howard Johnson's or driving back up (or camping in the car). None seemed like good options so we'll just wait a few weeks and go together... although with the upcoming trip I don't see it happening until December.

First I went to the range. I had ordered some of those 'final finish' bullets, they basically come in a kit with 5 different grits of polishing compound on them. You load them up and fire them in order and it's supposed to lap in the barrel and improve accuracy and reduce fouling. It does make it a whole lot easier to clean, I'll give them that much. Accuracy is still kinda random, some groups were good, others sucked major ass. Most of it was me though, and the stock getting really hot and flexing (I had the hunting stock on the VTR instead of the good one). I've since mounted it back in the good stock and am just going to shoot it that way. All this back and forth is nuts, if the nice stock gets dinged up I'll just have to live with it.

After the range I cleaned up and watched a little TV. That's when my headache kicked in big time and I lost most of the day other than sorting paperwork and mail that was in easy reach from the sofa. I did get to see a 3 hour marathon of those shows telling you how to bet in Vegas. I may have to play some blackjack when I'm there next. Never done it before but it seems like a grown up activity. The woman always wants to try the off-strip cheap places so she can play roulette longer, maybe they'll have cheap blackjack tables too.

Today I went to Starbucks alone which kinda sucked and read for a bit which was nice. Then I came home and attempted to go to the mall to buy some pants to replace the ones that are starting to fray. My mistake was thinking the mall opened at 10am, which it does not. So rather than try to go home or something for the hour before the mall opened I decided to just walk around. I went over to Santana Row since there were signs pointing to a farmers market but I never actually found the market. Then I wandered around the mall itself checking out stores seeing if they had any cargo pants visible from the window. When the stores opened I didn't find anything and gave up after an hour or so. I had wanted to go for a hike, but walking around the mall for a few hours would have to suffice. I resisted the temptation to get a pretzel.

Back at home I revived a really old project, I swapped the wire stock on the 50 lower with the full stock on the AR. I think the AR looks pretty good with the wire stock and the 50 looks a little more balanced, although I still need to get a cheek piece for it to actually shoot it well. I found an ergo grip for the AR too, no idea where that came from but after I remembered why I didn't put it on when I got it (because the mounting bolt was too short) I set about trying to make it happen this time. There was a spacer inside the grip and with the help of my handy punch set I popped the spacer out and now it fits. I broke the small punch in the process of removing the tab, but saved the piece that came off. Maybe I can weld it. :)

Tonight has been sorta wasted too. I cut up some boar sausage from the last of the stuff Seth gave us and fried it up and mixed it with scrambled eggs. Good stuff. Unfortunately my headache is returning, must be too much computer time? Are my eyes getting bad again? I don't seem to be squinting although maybe I could be. Seems last time I had the killer headaches I went to the eye doc and got checked out and it was nothing.

Spent the morning over at PA Semi working on the move and ended up having a late lunch that's left me sorta sluggish and bloated. The cafe is packed from before noon until after 1pm now, no quiet times to slip in an get a 'to go' order.

I'm thinking I won't go to the land as I was planning. It's supposed to rain and I don't want to camp in the rain nor sleep in the car. It would let me play with my stove and lantern, but a total of 10 hours driving there and back just to screw around? Eh, I'll pass. I've got lots of stuff to do by myself that doesn't involve lots of driving.

Took the woman to BART this morning, she's headed to SFO directly after work and flying to PHX for the last NASCAR race. This could be the last race she goes to in an 'official' capacity, she's not told them yet but she's not doing this again next year. Lots of work for no pay is fun for a while, but then it just gets old.

Had to order some seals for the front caliper on the KLR, looks like they're leaking. Shouldn't be hazardous to ride until the get here and I get it repaired, but I need to keep an eye on the fluid level. Also good news that EBC is sending me those free replacement pads for the crappy ones since the new OEM pads I put on there are now contaminated with brake fluid.

I spent time at lunch rewriting my 'blackhole route' generator (coding at lunch, suddenly I'm a nerd again?). Rather than the old 'tail -f on the security log' trick which doesn't deal well with rotating nor could it handle two attackers at once, the new one just grabs the whole log and processes it each time comparing it to the current routing table to see who's already blacklisted and who needs it. It also means that occasional attackers will get blocked too. I wrote it like I was going to expand it, the blocking/processing is separate from the attacker collection, so that I could add in http stuff later. Looking at the http logs though I don't actually see any attacks anymore. Apparently the hackers aren't into hitting https sites and accepting the invalid self signed certs then trying to guess passwords. Humph.

Some of the nVidia guys came by for lunch today, my boss wanted to meet them and talk a little shop. Apparently hearing me tell them the way things were done has grown old so they wanted to hear it from the authoritative source. Sounds like things are very much the same as when I left. Lots of craziness, corporate IT guys getting everything and engineering getting the shaft, etc. Glad I'm not living in that hell any longer.

The big news from the weekend of course is the pig hunt. After 3 outings I finally got one. The first shot I took I ended up missing. Dave (the guide guy) didn't want me to use a sling or shoot prone, he wanted me to shoot off his really high shooting sticks. Unfortunately the first shot we could take was a 225 yard downhill shot where we couldn't use the stupid sticks. I didn't have the cuff for my sling, nor was a carrying my bag to use as a rest so I ended up going prone on the side of the hill attempting to use the mound of a gopher hole as my rest. Didn't work out so well and I ended up shooting high. The second pig we found turned away from us so I had to get tricky with the shot placement. I had to shoot it more toward the back leg so that the bullet path would catch it behind the opposite shoulder where you're supposed to hit it (I remember that from the hunters ed course). Worked like a charm, the pig managed to turn around before it dropped. I don't think it moved more than 3' total after it was hit. Dave found a pig about 30 seconds later and took it down with two shots. We ended up getting back to camp in the dark and it was raining pretty hard before we finished skinning and gutting them.

Sunday morning we went out scouting around looking for a trophy pig now that we had the food pigs (and they're at the butcher now being turned into usable cuts). We ended up seeing about 50 pigs that morning, but none were super huge or anything so we didn't take any of them.

It was an interesting experience, a lot more hectic than I thought. Not sure if I want to do it again, it was fun and interesting but there is a lot of overhead.