Nothing too interesting to report, other than dad came by for lunch yesterday and said he's going in for the pre-surgery blood work/checkup thing for his knee replacement. Sounds like he's really going to do it over the holiday in December.

Web browsing via a VM running on a system you're trying to benchmark is not the brightest thing to be doing. Doh. I totally spaced the fact that I'm using the same machine I'm testing on. Maybe it's because I had to come in early today to do some server maintenance stuff at 7am. I may leave early though, wonder what it's like to get off work at 4pm?

Both days were mostly spent cleaning this weekend. We only came up with a few boxes of stuff to throw out (and some clothes to donate) but everything is way better organized now and takes up a lot less room in the closets. I assembled the welding cart too to see how much room it's going to take up and really it's not as big as we thought. In fact, it's too small to actually hold both tanks of gas. Doh. Dad says we can just weld a platform onto the back of it to make more room. Everything seems to look like a welding project now. :)

Sunday morning I went to the range with Seth since the 200 yard range was open. The VTR shot OK, I've got it dialed in with a 200 yard zero with the hunting load so everything is set for next weekend. One thing that was pretty cool was I hit 3 for 4 shots on a metal swinging target about the size of a milk jug at 200 yards using just the sling. That TIS sling is pretty awesome as it turns out, very glad I learned about that in class.

Had some really strange dreams last night. The first one I was interviewing with some start up but couldn't tell what they did or why they wanted to hire me. Then in the middle of the interview my current boss shows up and says "you better not be billing me for this time". Ha. The second was a standard sort of sex dream, but when I thought I was waking up I realized that I was dreaming and somehow went back into the dream. Now what I can't figure out was if I was dreaming about figuring out I was dreaming and waking up? Or was it one solid dream the whole time and I didn't wake up at all? Ooo... spooky.

Yesterday the team outing was to boccie ball which I had never played. Turns out it's actually a fun social sport. You can roll, then get your beverage and then start paying attention to the end of your roll since it seems to take 20 seconds or more for it to finish up. The 20-something chick in space planning was getting blasted and jumping around to the amusement of everyone on our side of the field. Not very professional, but entertaining anyway.

Not a lot going on other than cleaning the house and taking deliveries of welding stuff. I got the torches, hood and oxygen and acetylene tanks last night so I really, really need to get on getting the garage redone so I can put this stuff somewhere other than the middle of the floor.

We saw the musical episode of Buffy in season 6 last night. Steve (guy I used to work with who's a big fan) had mentioned it was in there and was a good episode. He was right, it was well done and it wasn't a 'throwaway' episode, it had real stuff in it relevant to the show. I'm kinda bummed Giles didn't bust out the guitar again, but he can sing.

Friday night I drove up to my parents (the woman was afraid of me riding the bike in the dark, yada, yada, yada so I drove to keep her happy). Saturday morning we took mom's cat in for it's shots (mom is off helping my great aunt so she was unable to do the vet trip) and then went by the gunsmith to pickup the rifle:

At the range on Sunday the groups stared out crappy and stayed crappy, so I figured that the work he did wasn't enough to solve the problems the rifle had and I moved it back into the original stock. It's good enough for a hunting rig but that's about it. To get ready for the hunt I made sure it was zeroed in and tried to shoot a few groups just for the hell of it. Suddenly, the rifle started shooting well.... really well, and it only got better. The last two groups of 3 were well into the 1/2" size that the other rifle puts out. So my theory is that the stock makes very little difference, but what does make a difference is getting some copper fouling in the barrel. Cheap factory barrels take a few rounds to settle in after they're cleaned as jacket material fills in the low spots in the rifling. My good gun with the factory barrel shoots pretty crazy for the first 3-4 shots and then settles back into it's usual groupings. Maybe the VTR barrel is really rough and just needs a lot of fouling in order to shoot well? I've not cleaned the barrel since getting back, so next week I'll go shoot again dirty and see if it's still shooting well. Then I'll clean it at the range and see if it opens back up again and then closes up with more rounds through it. If it likes shooting dirty that's not a problem, just means less cleaning for me.

Saturday night we went to dinner with Felice and her new guy at Mad & Fifth. I had the game hen which was fair, but the woman's pumpkin pasta was really, really good. Clearly the best meal at the table. So the food was only OK, but what's really interesting is that Felice co-produced some sort of wacky pet-porn movie and while in LA she met Ron Jeremy (sp?) and Hugh Hefner. She's going to try to get the film screened at the Playboy mansion! I suggested she get me in and she said she would try. How freakin' cool would that be? Talk about some serious street cred!

Woo, I did it. Or half of it anyway. The bike shop got my new rear tire in (front won't be here for another few weeks!) and since the rear is the one I really needed I went down after work to have it installed. Rather than pay the $30 or whatever to have them do it 'on the bike' (meaning they pull and reinstall the wheel) I just did it myself in the parking lot. I'm getting all hard core biker now. The guy with the tire changing machine was really fast, I was in and out in less than 20 minutes. This morning I reset the chain slack and used a torque wrench on the axle nut rather than just the guess I did in the parking lot, but otherwise it was correct. The front should be a lot easier.

To think that in '96-97 Jeff had a really cool digital that took pictures just a little better than this low end camera phone.

I got email from Jo last night, haven't heard from her in forever. Her truck blew up (overheated first and they charged her $1700 for a radiator/water pump/hoses, then the next day blew a head gasket they want $2700 to fix) and she's trying to get 'advice'. I suggested that if she's going to keep it spend $1600 on a rebuilt motor (even found it for her on-line, took only seconds) and have it put in and call it good for another 100k. She's not sure she can trust a rebuilt motor.... but she's willing to trust some clueless grease monkey that's going to rebuild the head once they get in there and find out it's warped or cracked or something? Ugh. I also told her to give up on her sucky low/no pay animal rescue jobs, go back to doing tech for a while to make some money and then try again to save the world. I'm sure that's going to go over like a lead balloon.

Damn the Friday lunch ride was hard. Not only was the new tire all slippery, but the leader dude was 'in the mood for some speed'. Fortunately they waited for my slow ass at the top.

Last night I had a 2.5 hour interview with Taos. We're testing the management rating matrix that I helped develop so we each have to be subjected to an interview. The technical interview is 2-3 hours long, so the management one isn't out of bounds, but if you do actually know a lot about SOX compliance or any of those other random acronyms that I had to pass on it could drag out a bit longer.

I've started consolidating my investment stuff, moving away from ING and into etrade. I'm going to have to roll my Taos 401k over and rather than giving it to Bernstein I'm going to handle it on my own. The woman is also afraid of the new Chase owned WaMu so we may move our banking away from there as well. That's kinda a hassle but if we do I'll just open yet another etrade account linked to my others. I like the all-in-one setup and the fact that they're using secure ID tokens to protect it all.

I didn't have breakfast this AM so I got some animal crackers out of the vending machine and then someone brought in donuts. Healthy eating at it's best.

We picked up a new shredder today as we're clearing out all the old records from both our filing cabinets. The stack of papers is over 1' tall. The new one can handle 12 sheets (which means 6) and the old one 6 (which means 3). I've got them both running and overheating and it's still going to take days to shred all this crap. The 55gal recycle bin is already full.

Dinner last night was pretty good, and the chef from Top Chef was actually there, we saw him a dozen times at least. The restaurant is also a lounge so it's pretty popular with the drunkard haggard marina crowd. That took away from the enjoyment a bit. We tried the lobster corn dogs of course, as well as the fries (which were not as good as Buchon's of course). For mains Ellen had the sea bass which I thought was excellent, the woman had some sort of pork dish which I really didn't like because of the cheese they used, and I had butternut squash ravioli. Tasty. Desert was a plate of doughnut hole like things for Ellen, the woman had a 'black and white' bread pudding and ice cream and I had butterscotch creme brulee. Traffic and parking were a bit of a challenge due to the fleet week stuff and the blue angels show, but they were done as we were coming in so most people were headed outbound rather than in. We also wandered by a neighborhood deli before dinner and picked up four really tasty salamis. Beats the crap out of the stuff at the regular store, but not quite as good as the stuff the woman got from the Berkeley hippies.

It got cold very fast. Yesterday on the lunchtime ride (where I lost the front end and did this crazy slide yet managed not to low side) I had to put on my fuzzy jacket under my riding jacket and I was still chilled and this morning I'm freezing my ass off around the house. It's sunny, just very cold. I do hate winter, I'm learning that much. Used to love winter, but now that I'm outside and doing things more often it's just not all that appealing.

Don stopped by yesterday and we went to the Korean place for dinner. We introduced him to Anthony Bordain's shows, I think he liked them.

Today the plan is to try to figure out how to organize the garage to accommodate the welding equipment and work bench that's being built. Then later we're headed up to the city for dinner at Circa.

Nothing says 'adult' like spending a Saturday morning replacing furnace filters and cleaning out the heater ducting.

I'm back in business with a working camera. Rod got an S400 before I did, but as expected he never really used it and it ended up sitting in his closet doing nothing. I asked if he wanted to sell and and got the camera, case, two batteries and a charger for $40. Sweet. Modern cameras are faster and have more pixels but since I don't shoot all that high-rez anyway my old S400 was perfect. Now I have what amounts to a brand new S400. Hopefully it runs for the next 15k pictures I take.

Yesterday I got some of the bug that the woman has and went home to sit on the toilet and read. Not a pleasant way to spend the afternoon for sure, but at least I got a lot of work related reading done. I bet if I had spent more time reading in college I would have done a lot better.

I got the oil report back on the KLR yesterday as well: Oil Report.

I also got two pictures from the trip. One of me standing in front of the hotel on the phone and one of the sign on the back of the room door. Not a lot of action going on, for someone carrying 2 cameras Josh's woman didn't take very many pictures.

Back from the trip, busily working on migrating one of the perforce servers. Getting bold, I'm doing it via VPN...

Here is the modified loop. The passes were closed due to snow, so we had to keep going north until we found an open one. Turns out we ended up going up past Pioneer which is a bit of a bummer. I'm kinda familiar with that road. Google says the route is only 530 miles, I thought it would be closer to 600 based on the odometer but the map is from the meet-up gas station and not from the house.

Checkpoint is running so I can put more info here while it runs. The storm that came in really messed with the trip obviously. It was pouring down rain at 6am on Saturday and was just sorta drizzling by the 8am start. I had my good rain gear on over my BMW gear, so I was totally dry. Once the temps dropped into the 30-40 range I put my headed vest on and was dry and toasty warm which is more than I can say for the other two. Neither had waterproof gloves, nor real rain gear and were wearing a lot of cotton under their riding gear so they were cold, wet and miserable. Guess the kids have to learn somehow, but they weren't mocking me for the KLR's screen and hand guards any more. Oddly all that stupid crap on my bike is actually good for something it turns out.

The hotel was more hip than I expected. Well, hip if you're a 20-something. They had free 'beer' at check-in (it was PBR, so it's got alcohol in it which is probably all the kiddies care about), techno music blasting in the courtyard until 10pm and there were some seriously, seriously hot chicks walking around. There must have been some sort of dance or something because there were a bunch of drunk guys all dressed alike with a bunch of whore-ish looking women who were all wearing really short black dresses. Oh for a working camera! I don't think Josh's woman took any pictures of them which is really a shame. :) At the sushi place we also saw some younger people in suits/dresses, they looked more like high-schoolers than 20-somethings. Maybe it was a college event? Do they even have a college up there? Google says yes. Anyway, it provided a really interesting backdrop for the evening.

Today I got up early and walked around a bit, checked out the buffet choices and the casinos and the ski lift at Heavenly. Too bad the woman wasn't there, she would have liked the 'alpaca advantage' store (selling alpaca wool stuff, not actual animals) and how crisp and clean everything as after the storm. I wanted to get some cocoa and a scone and sit by the mountain and just veg, but instead I had breakfast with Josh and his woman and then headed home. They were staying to ride around the lake which would have been fun had I not been in such a hurry to get home to get this server work done.

I did stop by my parents place on the way back to see mom's new cat but they weren't home. Standing on the deck though I got 3 bars of cell coverage, that's pretty good, and oddly the same coverage I get at the house here.

The woman made it to Alabama yesterday evening. All her flights were on time and she didn't have any issues other than being in Alabama. :) Today she'll be going to the track for practice or qualifying or something or another, I didn't really read the whole schedule. She's going to be meeting some of her blog buddies who will be showing her around. 'hotfootlaurie' is some chick she's been trading email with for a year and is excited to meet the 'famous fox sports writer' in person. That's funny.

Dad picked up the welding machine yesterday. Or more appropriately, the welding machine came to him. He said two gangster looking black/Mexican guys showed up in some huge SUV with 24" rims and had the machines in the back. It really was new in box, and it really was $350 instead of $700. The guy claims he buys them in large quantities and can get as many as they need. Dad's shop foreman bought one too, and Gary (owner of Imperial) was upset he's been paying so much for them and wants dad to buy a few of these and order more for the company. Could those guys have stolen a whole truckload of these things? I can't believe home depot and real Lincoln distributors are getting over a 100% markup on this equipment.

Here is what I wrote on the foo list today, sorta summarizes the financial stuff for the moment:

I met for about 1.5 hours with my investment guy on Tuesday.  With all
the charts and numbers and everything he managed to show that the
firms average customer return, after fees and tax 'inefficiencies'
(due to individual holdings), for any 3,5,7,10,15 year period over the
last 35 years was basically S&P500 + 0.5-0.75% with slightly less
downside risk over the short term.  That's their whole pitch.  They
don't claim to crazily beat the markets, or perform miracles, it's
just index + a small margin.  I knew that, but now that I'm smarter it
actually makes sense.   Over 20 years, that half percent is a big deal
and if it's after fees, who's to complain?  It's more than I would
make indexing myself.

They also (again) showed me where I would be if I had left my money
alone instead of forcing them to screw with things during the tech
bubble.  Had I let them do their job I would be slightly ahead of the
indexes.  Since I didn't I basically shot myself in the foot and am
under performing.

I talked with them again at lunch today and he had ready answers for
all of my questions, even the really strange ones I cooked up based on
some reading I've been doing.

My plan going forward is to do some indexing on the side with money
every month and let them continue to hold the big money.  However, I'm
also going to look at EVERY trade they make and see exactly why
they're making it, and look at what they're holding and see if I can
figure out why.  Not going to try to change what they're doing, just
understand.  If I understand more, it makes it easier to take the
ride.  My adviser also said that the quarterly 'how and why' detailed
analysis papers usually only go out to the investors with $100M or
more which is why I don't see them, but he said he could forward me a
few so I can learn.  I don't think I'll ever be in that part of their
firm (who has $100M lying around exactly), but I can at least see what
they're thinking.

I've been coding like mad for 3 days now. What's interesting is that most my code has been for scanning utilities looking for problems so if all goes well they'll never actually report anything. People are starting to like the idea that scanners should only report failure and not send email to everyone every time they run just in case something happened. Apparently after all the time no one reads all the crap that gets generated each day. I know I just delete all 40 or so root emails that get generated daily. Things I care about are in nagios, or open trouble tickets when they have issues.