Reading Dennis' journal I don't quite get the MSFT people building some sort of private shopping mall on their campus. Are there that many trophy wives still working there that they can support a whole bunch of private boutique stores? Are MSFT employees crazy hard core boutique shoppers? I just don't get it.

Noticed last night that the rear pads on the KLR were pretty dead. Well, one of the pads was dead, the other was 75%+. The caliper must be partially seized or something. I worked the pins a bit when I took it apart this morning and it seems OK, but it probably could stand a full rebuild like I did on the fronts... but I just stuck some fresh pads on there and will keep and eye on it. If it shows signs of irregular wear I'll order the seals and have a go at it. Compare the old pad (left) with the new one, shows some wear after 26k miles:

OK, lots to update. First for the weekend. Friday night some guys came from sacto and did end up buying the Suzuki. That's good. Saturday AM I took the Benelli over to Big 5 and did the transfer to the guy from work, so that's sold too. Feels good to get rid of some of the 'extra' junk I didn't need anymore. Some could argue that I never really did need/want the Benelli since I never fired it, but whatever. I made money on the deal in any case.

After all the sales stuff on Saturday we went up to Absinthe in SF for dinner with Ellen. At first I was bummed because the chef made a bunch of scallop dishes on Top Chef but there were none on the . To be fair, the scallop dish got trashed in a review in the paper just a month ago, but still, no reason to totally pull it. Maybe scallops are just out of season or something. I had the scallop and clam chowder and the trout (and a glass of chardonnay to go with it, can't say I like that type of wine) and although the trout looks kinda nasty in the pictures it was very very good. The woman had the pork, Ellen had the halibut. Ellen got the shaft I think, hers was OK but really boring. The woman got the best meal I think, but I was in a fish mood so I was happy with my meal. Pictures are kinda blurry but I didn't want to use the flash and look like a total tourist! :)

Sunday Seth and I went out to Bass Pro Shops in Manteca. Writing out "mateca" makes me think we've been saying it wrong. In English it's man-teek-ah and I bet in Spanish it's man-tech-eh. Anyway, we looked at all sorts of crap and I got the tools and parts to re-fletch all those arrows I damaged while in the learning phase. I couldn't find a bow I liked enough to spend money on though, still have to figure that out.

Next up is some random pictures of the woman being 'on TV'. She was walking around behind Kurt during his interview (he came in 2nd or something I think) and you can see her pumpkin head in the background. I told her next time to go be more obvious.

Finally we have a picture from yesterday. We went to lunch with the F5 guys, ended up going to Benihana which I've not been to in years. Food is pretty much exactly what I remembered. Anyway, when we left we found that the sales guy's car had been the victim of a smash-n-grab, they snagged his bluetooth headset and a laptop case. Liz had to come from the office and give us a ride home so we didn't have to sit and wait for the sheriff. Surprisingly Cupertino isn't large enough to have it's own police force so they use the county sheriff. Seems strange.

Bike sold last night, shotgun sold this morning and I gave away that old bow that was too big for me (and since I got it free myself it only made sense to pass it along to someone else for free). The guy wants to try archery, so what better use for that bow than to suck someone else into the sport? Better than tossing it, which I could never bring myself to do anyway.

Apple is having an "earth day beer bash" and they've got some electric and hydrogen vehicles parked in the quad area. Exciting, it's almost like we're google or something. OK, not that cool.

The first guy looked at the DR350 last night but didn't buy it right away. That's OK, I've got 4 other people waiting to check it out. This will be a good lesson in patients for me.

The mosquitoes were crazy last night in the park (where I met the guy with the bike). Last year they had us vote on a supplemental property tax assessment explicitly to pay for spraying for mosquitoes around the various water sources in the area like the creek, the duck marsh, etc. It passed and the spraying did wonders. Now, with the supplemental assessment still being assessed will we get our spraying this year? Seems like the answer so far is 'no'. Wonder where our 'only used for mosquito control purposes' money got moved to?

Busy week so far with both the move, interviewing candidates and dealing with users who are getting more and more irrational. There are lots of big projects going on and bad management is starting to show. Yelling at us because your java code doesn't work is not going to get the problem solved. What's even more annoying is that when our guys did figure out what was wrong with the dev teams java stuff (because isn't it always the sysadmin that has to figure out the coders code?) they didn't actually try any of the suggestions, they just keep saying the same things over and over again blaming some 'system' problem. Must suck to be under a crazy deadline and have no real idea of what you're doing.

I put the Suzuki up for sale on CL with the intention to see if there was interest and then have dad bring it down. Turns out there is a lot of interest so he's bringing it down today so the first guy can check it out tonight. I hope it's sold by the weekend.

Also in the realm of selling stuff one of the guys in the office wants to buy my Benelli shotgun. I've never fired it and it's unlikely I ever will (since the 3 mossbergs I have are better suited to almost every shotgun task I have) so I'm happy to sell it off. Even giving him a screaming deal I will have made a little money on it, and although I swore I wouldn't sell any guns anymore it just doesn't make sense not to in this case. Shotguns are way down on the ban list so I can always buy one back if I really wanted it. Gotta go to Big 5 and do the legal transfer stuff.

Speaking of the office, here are some pics from the phone. Liz said that I have a "Principal's chair" outside my room (really it's just a guest chair I moved outside while I was moving the desks around and never brought back in) but she took the joke to the next level making me a nice door sign to go with it. Oy.

I have a new iMac since the first photos were taken though, now I have one of the new black/aluminum ones with the glossy screen. Not sure if I like the gloss for text work but man does it make the screen saver pictures look good.

Behold, the Stock Wrench 2000! I kept going over this in my head, it seemed so simple to cut the shape I needed out of a piece of scrap bar stock and sure enough, with only an hour of fiddling with the dremel, some spray paint and some electrical tape (to protect the finish on the rifle, not to protect the wrench) I came up with this:

It seems to work, I can torque that stock ring down pretty well. Probably should double-check with Don't real wrench but this seems to do the job.

Oh, and the picture? Well I busted my original Nikon Coolpix out of the junk heap and charged it up. It's crazy slow and still sounds like it's chewing on gravel as it tries to auto-focus but it can still take a picture. I wish I liked any of the current small Nikons, I've had good luck with them in the past but Canon has the form factor down.

Seriously, why do these stupid people even live in CA? It's a beautiful day out, inaccuweather says it's 87 so it's gotta be 80. Light breeze, blue skies, etc. So what do all the neighbors do? Close the windows and fire up the AC. Right now it's 71 in the house with just the windows open. Why close off the outside and fire up your noisy ass HVAC? I know they're all from India so you would think they're used to 1000F and humid, neither of which it is right now. Maybe they close it off because they don't like the sound of everyone's AC units running.... but someone has to throw that first switch.

Anyway, got my gunsmithing projects complete and I washed and WAXED the tracker. Whew, I'm in a chore doing mood. I also finally got around to disabling the daytime running lights on the tracker. It wasn't so much that the lights are always on that bugs me, but that stupid light on the dash. I always thing something is wrong because that idiot light telling you the DRLs are on lights up. Now we just have blessed darkness.

Well the forest road adventure was a bust. Most the roads were closed, and those that weren't closed were impassible due to snow. I did find a few that were sorta open, but as I quickly found the KLR doesn't move through snow worth a crap. At least dad got a picture of me goofing around, uh, I mean trying to learn to ride through snow.

Dad road part of the way home with me, we took some alternative roads which made the trip down the hill take 2x as long, but it was at least interesting. Since dad was along I decided to see how far I could go on a tank before hitting reserve. Normally I fuel up at 150 miles and have pushed it to 200. Today I managed 260 on 4.4 gallons of gas which isn't right. I don't normally get 59, I get 49 at best but I guess with all the low speed stuff I did better than usual.

Since I had an evening to myself I went to Starbucks for a beverage and read for a bit, then came home and started working on the stack of gun projects. I got the GAP put back together and put the new stock on the AR (without losing any of those little damn springs surprisingly). I tried to take a picture with my mostly busted camera and got one picture. It's stuck in some strange ISO mode and it only took one picture before it went bonkers and produced nothing but images like the 2nd picture below. I thought it was just the LCD that was whacked, but apparently not since it records images like this too. I still need Don's stock wrench to tighten up that lock ring before I try to fire it but at least I know it fits.

Ah, a day off. I woke up late (after saying up until 1am trying to finish reading Freakenomics) and dorked around a bit before packing the bike and heading out. I'm just at my parents now, dad isn't going to be able to ride very far so I've decided to just chill here for the night. It's ~73F in the shade, I'm sitting on the patio in a t-shirt and am completely comfortable. Or am currently comfortable, I'm sure as soon as I try to fire up WoW the laptop will start cooking my legs. :)

Tomorrow I'm going to try to explore some of the forest roads up here, then will head back home. That leaves me all day Sunday to do whatever (perhaps assemble all the rifles I have broken down in the safe) until the woman gets home. This little mental break is going to do me wonders.

I did ride dad's bike today, now it's up to 6 miles on the odometer. It's really tight and rides pretty well, way less tiring than the KLR. The shifter is to short though, it hits me right on top of my foot and even though the boot it's kinda uncomfortable to shift and it's more sport bike like in it's lever position. Dad is going to have trouble with that for sure, I bet he ends up making his own lever before too long.

I didn't even get to finish my update on Sunday, but that picture of the garlic sprouts is already out of date. Just this morning I looked at they're all at least 2x as big as they are in the picture.

Sunday we did our usual Starbucks run, and then I took the woman on a ride on the KLR. She swore she would never ride on it but she ended up giving it a try anyway. Turns out it's just not that comfortable with the solo seat on there. We were both fighting for room, and she was afraid of moving back onto the luggage platform which made it even more cramped. Ah well, now I know it doesn't really work.

After lunch we wanted to go to the book store so we drove part way and parked at the coyote creek trail head by the water treatment plant and walked the rest of the way to the shopping center. Took about an hour at a brisk pace. We got there and the book store didn't have the book I wanted, and Best Buy was closed so I couldn't look at cameras. Apparently it was easter, but I didn't think they would close a retail outlet due to some pagan religious crap. Aren't they even open on christmas now?

Today I'm going to lunch with Griffith. Nothing official, just going to hang out for a bit. It will be nice to talk to someone who does the same job I do rather than being stuck talking to either employees, or people who don't do anything.

Oh, and yesterday I was invited (again) to join Jerry's D&D v3.5 group. They have 12 people now who don't like 4E and have gathered all 1000+ living Greyhawk modules from all the old on-line sources and are going to hold twice monthly (or so) gaming sessions just for fun. At first I wasn't interested but this time around I gave in. I miss some of the people and it was fun to have friends to go do stuff with on a semi-regular basis. The only downside is they're meeting in Vacaville, so it's a long ass drive. I'm sure there will be carpools as it's inconvenient for everyone but with players from the south and north bays and sacto, it's the central most spot. Plus someone has a house big enough to host 9-12 people so they can run 2 tables. I'm thinking it will be good, it's by invite only so most of the really loser-ish geeks can't get in. It's only us cool geeks. :)

Yea, tell me your fancy city folk cookbooks have this in it:

Yesterday after not much of anything (although I did ride out 237 the back way to Livermore to visit the woman at the barn) we went to Evvia for dinner to use up the other gift certificate we had from Skyrider (from the office move in '06, was it that long ago???). The woman had the lamb shank and I had the daily rotisserie special which also happened to be lamb. Hers was pretty good, mine was just OK. I think I prefer OZ/NZ lamb to the US grown stuff. Just the fact that I'm comparing the two makes me think I'm a real foodie now. The swordfish appetizer was good, and the woman got her fried cheese thing which is the whole reason we came to the restaurant in the first place. We each had a glass of wine as well, I got a pinot noir which was lighter than the red she got. In any case, we had to walk around Palo Alto for about an hour (eating ice cream and browsing at the book store) for me to sober up. I'm such a lightweight. Here is the full menu for future reference in case they change it and someone reads this years from now.

Fail! I went to get my camera out to take pictures of the equipment installed in the new data center and when I figured it up the LCD was all scrambled. Looks like the scrambled porn channel only without the soundtrack. Doh. Guess I really need to get a new camera this time, buying a cheap used one didn't work out so well. I don't understand it though, it's been sitting on the shelf in the office, why would it suddenly go out? Maybe these things do have timers in them, or the LCDs or CCDs do rot away? Who knows. At least now I can tell dad what to get me for my birthday.

I still think Amazon purposely delays things to try to make people pay for faster shipping. My order sat for a week before it shipped, then it goes out slow boat. Everywhere else I order the shipment gets filled right away and then you're waiting for the actual transport. I can't imagine it takes Amazon a week to process an order, that stuff must be automated by now. Maybe they keep stock at off-site places and when you order low priority it comes from off-site to the on-site processing plant and then gets shipped out and they only keep a small stock of items on-hand at the plant for overnight orders? Something is up, but I still refuse to over pay their inflated shipping charges or join their shipping service. I just need to not wait so long to order.

My fancy cargo pants (both pairs) are starting to rip at the top corner of the cargo pockets. Looks like the fabric just fatigued from holding the pocket up. I like them though so I got some of those iron-on patches and put them on the inside of the legs to reinforce the weak areas. Seems to be working, you can't tell the difference from the outside but the pockets are stronger and the wearing has stopped.

Today I have lunch scheduled with that recruiter who's looking for someone to fill a unix/IT manager position at Netapp. I saw the job listing, they want a huge laundry list of stuff, I seriously doubt any 1 person would have all those skills and experience but I guess they can ask for the kitchen sink and hope that they find the one single guy in the world that can fill that role.

I got a call from Edelweiss confirming my bike and whatnot. Guess the trip is really, really real at this point. Maybe I should start studying German again? It really wasn't helpful the first few times, but maybe I can use it more this time as I'll be alone again.

Yesterday we went to BJs for the good-bye event for Peter. He left last week but we were too busy with downtime prep to actually do anything for him. The usual suspects got pretty smashed, that young chick in space planning drinks a lot and gets totally hammered at every company event. Kinda embarrassing but I guess when you're 23 or 24 or whatever it's fine to do.

I probably have some other stuff to write about, but it's not coming to me at the moment. Guess I'll go back to real work.

The downtime weekend is over! Yea! The good news on top of that is I logged 69 hours on my time card last week. I think that's enough to pay for all the junk I just got for the AR.

Dad called today, he forgot my birthday yesterday. I didn't mind, but the woman is/was getting all freaked out. She makes way too big of a deal about stuff like that.