Nice, a week without an update. Oy. Let's see if I can remember everything. On the work front I found a new guy to replace Marc (who left to go back to yahoo! where he can get a full time gig instead of a contract). The interview went well and hopefully this guy can perform. Oddly all the interviews and stuff took up most of the 3 days we had this week. Glad it's over, hopefully no one else quits for at least the rest of the year.

We went up to my parents for the holiday and over the course of two days had elk chili, kangaroo jerky, chuckar and abalone (along with turkey). Crazy selection of meats. The big event wasn't me spending hours getting mom's laptop sane again, but the amount of time we spent cutting down trees. It rained on us on Friday as we spent 4 hours knocking down small trees to let the larger ones grow as well as limbing all the remaining trees up to about 5 ft. While I ran the chainsaw the women folk hauled branches while dad ran the chipper. My shoulders, arms and back are totally wiped out from all the chainsaw work. It's not something I mimic at the gym. Unfortunately there are no pictures because it was raining hard enough I didn't want to risk the camera.

The other thing I got done on my to-do list was to finally bury the burying pipe. I loaded it up with my vacuum packed 'treasure' which when I was detailing sounded like something from a D&D game. 3 platinum, 27 gold, 360 silver. Wonder what treasure type I am? :)

Back home on Saturday and we decided we want to get rid of the spinning DVD rack and put some shelves in next to the fireplace to hold the DVDs. This would also let me stack the wood back in the 'wood box' to make more room for the chair which got displaced by the hamsters. Rather than buying a lot of spendy shelving I made it all out of one $12 piece of board. I had the guy at "The WorkBench" cut the board into shelf sized pieces and cut 6 1" wide strips I could use to hold them up. Nothing in the house is straight and the wood box is no exception but I got it fairly close to aligning with the walls and gravity.

While thinking about the shelf project I helped stimulate the economy by picking up a backpack, some bullets (to load more .416 for Dave) and a couple of hard drive and RAM to rebuild my home system a bit. Going to mirror the main drive and run the web server out of a VM, just for fun/security.

This morning I tried to make pancakes but they came out really, really bad. Something seemed wrong and this was it:

The tip-off that it was expired should have been the Albertsons brand, we don't have one of those around here. The woman uses some other batter mix but me not being in the secret club grabbed the box labeled 'pancake mix' and started cooking. Why are we keeping expired stuff up front and the good stuff in the back?? At least we know you can eat 4 year expired open pancake mix and not barf.

I changed the oil in the Jeep and in the bike (way easier than the KLR, whoever designed the DL650 motor decided that oil changes should be easy) and while I was n the garage I decided to pull out the brake light flasher in the bike. My BMW had a flasher, it blinked the lights 3 times then went solid. This one does the same for the most part, but when when you sit there at a light with the brakes on it cycles every 5-10 seconds with more annoying flashing. That's unnecessary. While figuring out how it was wired it I got to see first hand just how shitty of a job the shop did at wiring it in for the guy. Splices into splices, brakes piggybacking off some other random wires, etc. Worst was the damn accessory socket, it's ground wire didn't even have a ring connector on it, the wire was just jammed into the negative terminal and sorta held in by friction and luck. It's much cleaner now, things make sense. I wish they hadn't spliced into the factory harness with those dumb vampire taps.

Before and after pictures, you can see all the random splices in the first bad picture. The second is the best I could do cleaning it up still maintaining all the connections that needed to be there. One positive thing, he's got two brake lights wired into the rear, looks like the factory assembly has spots for two bulbs but only has one wired. Probably saved the 25 cents for the second bulb and socket.

Here is a pic of the new jacket since I was walking by with the camera.

Actually something to report today other than work crap (which is actually going well and I'm very busy but whatever, there will always be work). Dad cut me the necessary parts to make a frame table to hold the hamsters and today I fired up the welder and put it together. I had to use the grinder to take off the galvanized finish on some of the parts as he was just using whatever scrap he had around and the metals were mis-matched. The mis-match made for some really bad welds as I tried to figure out the wire speed and how much juice to dial it to but it will hold. The union won't be offering me a job anytime soon and Mr. T's position as the guy putting the expanded metal over the windows of old cars is safe.... but at least the table is solid. The woman's idea is to use some magnets to hold a cloth skirt (that mom is going to sew up over the holiday) to hide the table and their food and shavings and whatnot she'll store underneath. The fabric is a bit busy, but she can figure that out on her own.

Tonight we went up to SF to have dinner with Ellen at SPQR. (Menu download). It was no where as good as A16, although the wine pairing they did with my rabbit entree was awesome.

Last night dad and I went to the motorcycle show in San Mateo. It was the smallest show ever, only 2 main buildings. No Triumph, no KTM, no scooters, much smaller BMW booth, none of the tour companies, etc. I tried on a bunch of jackets but ended up just getting the latest version of the jacket I already have, minus the road-rash holes. I did for the first time not get a black jacket. It's silver, sorta matches the helmet and bike. Probably going to look dingy after a while but it's nice and spiffy looking for now.

Got a crazy notice from my dentist on Friday saying my insurance company wasn't paying and I had to. I also got a notice on Friday from the insurance company saying that they refused to pay my claim because they already paid it. Sigh. Called the insurance company first and they said they paid me via check. Why me? I didn't bill them, the dentist did. They also said that check hadn't been cashed. Then I called the dentist and they re-billed and asked for the check to be sent to them. Then I called the insurance company back and told them to go ahead and cancel the check and that it would be re-billed by the dentist. The big question is, why do I have to be the middle-man for their billing screw-ups? Why wouldn't the dentist have called them and asked for their money earlier? Why ask why I guess.

Saturday Scott and Lina came over for dinner and I think it worked out well. We did our usual BBQ lamb racks (complicated by running out of gas in the middle of cooking so we lost some time while I swapped to the backup tank) along with mushroom risotto and some strange pea dish. Scott was worried about the lamb being crappy (he remembers lamb from his childhood as being awful) but he ate everything he was served and wanted more. They also loved the hamsters and spent a good hour playing with them. Strange.

I also spent some time at the archery range on Saturday AM, but it was getting a bit rainy and cold so I gave up after about 45 minutes.

I don't have too much to update really. The woman went to the Burger Bar on Tuesday and actually met Huber Keller, but alas neither her nor Lisa had a camera or camera phone so the event was not captured She did twitter about it so it must be true! :)

Went to the doctor yesterday and got some meds to knock out the sinus infection, and now I'm starting to feel better. Still can't breathe or smell or taste anything, but at least some of the pain is gone. I'm really light sensitive now so it's easier if I just stay inside.

The other big news is that the KLR sold today. Guy came and loaded it into a truck and away it went. We talked for about and hour, he seemed like a cool enough guy and knew enough to appreciate the KLR for what it was and what it wasn't. Got a little weepy when we loaded it up, I didn't watch it drive away though. :(

Being sick sucks.

Quick trip to the Oakland shelter and now the woman finally has her hamsters. She got 5 of the 8 they had there. Pics are of them in their 'travel' cage, in their real cage at home and one of what they do best (ie nothing). Mostly they're sleeping, eating or running on the wheel. She loves them though.

On the way to Oakland we stopped by the archery store so I could get some hunting broad heads. The guy told me NOT to 'test' these in the sand pit that it would ruin them after only a few shots. I'll try a few shots with one into the foam target just to make sure they really do fly just like the field points. I was sure I would go with fixed broad heads, but he convinced me these mechanical were the way to go. They start out closed and pop open when they go in. 1.5" span on the blades when deployed. Nasty.

Normal practice point:

Broad head (deployed):