Santa/UPS delivered my ammo order to dad's office yesterday and he brought it by in the evening. 2500 rounds of federal match 308, 400 rounds of good .223, 1000 rounds of crappy .223 I'm splitting with someone at work and 1000 rounds of good 9mm I'm splitting with Don. Saved 20% on the 308 because I ordered 5 cases. :) They wrapped the boxes in packing tape, did a really good job as they're nearly impossible to open. I'm still amazed at how small that 400 round box of .223 is.

Busy week, not much time for anything but actual work... except on Friday afternoon I actually managed to bang out a script that I've been wanting to write for months. I also tracked down why our perforce backups were failing to run. Turns out there is a bug in vixie cron in RHEL4 and RHEL5 that requires root to be able to read your home dir for any of your crontabs to run. We've locked down the p4 dirs to only be readable by the account that each p4 server runs as and since they're over NFS and not exported root to the p4 machines root is coming across as nfsnobody and can't read the dirs. In theory that shouldn't matter, the crontab is supposed to run as the user, not as root. Anyway, it's a known bug and RedHat says it's not important and will be in the 'next major release'. I thought only Apple pulled that sort of crap when confronted with a glaring bug.

Our downtime got pushed from 1/31 to 2/12 so we can't go on the Jeep trip even if we wanted to now. Bummer. Now that the downtime is further out we've pulled the reorg in sooner, it's now 2/1. That gives me just next week to get my crap together and finish my reorg docs. I've already met with my soon to be new team leads and got them squared away so the really important stuff is done, only the paperwork remains. 15 employees is going to be a personal record for me, and it leaves Grant just 2. I'm going to be running the department within a few years unless I totally bungle something.

My parts came in from midway and you can see the missing bits on the slide stop when set next to a non-broken one. I polished the end of the new one a bit and it worked fine, but it wasn't as slick as the one the smith made. All those angles/cuts on the broken one actually help it work better, it lets the detent slide easier and lock into place a little easier. I decided to risk it and cut those groves and ramps in the new one myself and it actually worked. Took me a few tries to get it right but going slowly let me make multiple cuts without going too far. I also shortened the cross pin so it's recessed into the frame like the one the smith made. Perfect! It seems to work correctly cycling by hand, but at some point I need to take it to the range and bang it around and make sure. I like doing things myself. The other bonus is that the bluing on the replacement part is more like a parkerized black that matches up with the Kimber perfectly. Now I only have 3 shades of black on the gun instead of 4.

Since my tool order came in from Amazon I got to pulling the wheels off the vstrom and took them to Road Rider to get some new tires installed. The KLR looked mostly normal with the wheels off but the vstrom looks like a disaster when stripped down. You can also really see all that reflective tape in the flash, it hardly shows up when you're just looking at the bike in normal light. I went with the non-EXP versions of the Tourance because the non-EXP last 30% longer than the EXP. I'm not that aggressive of a rider, I don't need the EXP as much as I need a longer tread life. I read all the forums and was going to get the Conti Trail Attack but they've moved part of their production to Korea and the tires coming out have really bad quality control problems. Reports of wobbles and whatnot with the Korean versions rather than the German made ones. Screw that noise, I'm not going to die when a cheaply made tire blows apart to pad someones profit margin. Both my Tourances had production codes of less than 6 months old and both were made in Germany. Who would have thought that the Germans and the French make the best tires?

I tried to impulse buy a new chain and sprockets in prep for a replacement but they didn't have the rear in stock and they didn't have the correct length chain. It's not hard to knock links out (which is why they always stock the longest versions, they can be made to fit anything) but I'm lazy so I just ordered it all on-line and got it in the right length. I am going with all the recommendations and using a rivet style master link instead of the clip-on, which meant buying a chain riveting tool. More money! I'm trying to stimulate the economy all on my own again this weekend.

The bed is well worth the hassle. I've been sleeping better, not snoring as much (according to the woman) and I don't wake up sore... and that's a good thing.

Last night went to one of the woman's friends' 40th birthday party and some 'spiritual center' up in Oakland. She had a Nikon D80 and asked me to be the official photographer which was fun, I had something to do all night and didn't have to try to fake interest in the religious crapola because I was busy with the camera. We did figure out that I was the only straight guy in the room; guess that's the hazard of going to a party for someone high up in the marriage equality organization, they don't hang around many straight people. The food was a bit fluffy, but they did have these huge bowls of snap peas scattered around, I must have eaten 50 lbs of the damn things. Way better than chips and just as addictive.

Since we were headed way north to Oaktown we stopped by the archery store on the way. I had them double check my bow was OK (it's been rained on enough to have made me worry about it) and to get some freebie advice. They mentioned I was holding the bow too tightly (especially on high-angle shots) and suggested I get a bow sling so I don't have to worry about holding onto the bow so much which will reduce the torquing effects with my death grip. Sounds like a gimmick but I did notice that no one else at the range holds it as tight as I do, so maybe there is something to it. I still can't pick a stabilizer that I like so I just got a little bolt thingy that holds the sling on there and will add the stabilizer once I've shot more and know which type will help me the most.

I got to use my new thumbnail script for the first time today. Very exciting. Too bad it's just pictures of the bed:

The bed showed up yesterday, damn is it heavy compared to the old mattress. Fortunately I didn't have to help them move it around much. The woman isn't too sure about it yet, but last night I slept fine and she said I didn't toss and turn at all and I didn't snore at all either. Both sound like wins to me.

Scott and Lina came over and we made ribs, corn souffle and some strange potato and leek side dish. Everything was awesome, but I think they were expecting more wine. At their place they go through 3 bottles or more, whereas at our place we only had 1. It was a good one though. :)

While out running errands yesterday I stopped by Road Rider to find out about tires and they mentioned that I'm going to need a 12mm hex wrench to get the front tire off. Not a 12mm socket, but a 12mm hex key. Damn. They don't have them nor sell them. The local auto parts places have nothing so I'm going to have to pony up the big bucks at Sears, again. Much like my M60 torx bits for the Jeep bumper. They recommend getting a 12mm with a 3/8" socket driver back so I can put it into the stock toolkit in case I need to do tire repair on the road. Suzuki gives you everything you need in the stock kit to take the rear tire off, but not the front. Thanks Suzuki!

The other odd thing this weekend was I found that the Kimber was broken. It's not been fired in a year, but somehow the slide stop broke so it doesn't lock open on an empty mag like it should. This is the second time this has happened. Last time the gunsmith made me a fancy replacement part. This time I'm just ordering a Wilson replacement for $35 and calling it good. Doesn't even matter if the finish on the new part doesn't match the rest of the gun, the sights, safety and grip safety already don't quite match. No one seems to notice once the classes start though.

I am not looking forward to work tomorrow. Even though I hired a guy last week, I'm still looking for another so the interviews aren't going to stop anytime soon. I hired the mid-level guy which is always easier than a senior position to fill.

I'm sitting in the lobby of IL1 working, I was falling asleep in my office. There are some crazy hot chicks walking around here. No idea where they work, but I'm guessing marketing. They like to gather at the tables and show each other printed slides.

I got p0ned on one of the psycho boards, someone found GPS data in my iphone pics. I thought editing the pics blasted the data but it doesn't so I've got 'jhead' set to strip the data from any images that go to forums. I also found out it's got an 'auto rotate' feature that automatically orients pictures correctly. If it does work in all cases I've just simplified my page work a whole lot (with the woman who keeps taking pictures with the camera turned the wrong way!). I also cleaned up my really crufty old thumbnail program. My code looks so much better these days.

Why do people keep asking me if I'm OK? I don't think I look particularly bad, I'm not coughing or anything... what do they know that I don't?

Saturday Don came up and we went to the range and gave the .17s a good workout. His is all fancy with its' wood stock and bright bluing, but it doesn't seem to shoot any better than mine. Whew. Mechanically they're the same rifle, but the weight of the wood stock is actually nicer than the plastic on mine. Gives it more of a real feel.

Sunday the woman and I went and bought a bed. She rides with the daughter of the owner of one of the big mattress stores so we used that contact to get a ~58% discount off retail, which puts it just a little cheaper than buying from one of the unknown places on line. Since she knows this is her only chance to buy bed stuff she wisely agreed to get an actual bed frame too (might as well use the discount for as much as possible). Now we'll have a real headboard and everything, just like adults! Delivery is supposed to be next Saturday. We didn't get a mattress associated with the counting sheep I don't think, but the woman wanted to pet one anyway. I think she knows they're not real...

Today is the jeep meeting so I drove in, and it's trying to rain so I lucked out. Instead of sitting in traffic on the way in though I did a quick workout at home and then went to the archery range by work. I didn't actually shoot all that much, mostly I just hiked around the field range carrying my bow enjoying the smell of the woods after a rain. I really need to get out for a real hike one of these days. When I came back to the parking lot a flock of deer had taken up residence on the practice range again. I managed to take a picture with the phone camera through the rangefinder. Not as easy it would seem. I ended up getting within 24 yards of them before they ran off, but I couldn't get a pic of that. They had enough of me standing there trying to line the phone up with the eyepiece and ran off.

It's amazing how little you get done anywhere else when you're back at work. I was happy with all the progress I had made around the house during the break and now absolutely nothing else has gotten done. I can't even seem to find time to get the mail sorted and my crap picked up in the living room. Sigh.

On the plus side, Feb 8th is the day we announce the group reorg. I'm promoting two guys up to tech leads, and the former help desk manager and her crew are going to report to me. I've got two open slots to hire, and then I'll have 17 people working for me. I'm like a real manager again.

I just noticed this while putting away the drill bits. Looks like they actually forgot to translate a few lines on there...

Busy day yesterday. The two main things done were the shelving and the pasta. First up was the shelving. We had laid out the basic positions of the shelving behind the sofa but I finally got around to measuring it out for real and mounting it up. Took a lot longer than I thought but it also came out better than I thought. I actually got it even and centered and everything. Now it's just covered in horses though.

The next major accomplishment, which took longer than putting up the shelves, was making pasta using the new pasta roller gadget. The woman made up the dough and I made up the filing (a combo of pork, beef and cheese) and then I rolled out the dough and made/cut the ravioli out using the cutter we got at CIA. They turned out OK, although the dough was a little too thick. We need to run it though one smaller setting on the machine next time. I think it took 5 hours to make this batch, so it's not exactly fast to make dinner, especially when you have to dry the pasta for hours between stages. We froze a bunch of them, hopefully they'll cook up well so in the future we can make a really large batch and save them for weeknights. The pasta book we got was originally written in German and translated to English later. That must be why they refer to some store bought ravioli as insipid. Not a real popular English word, even if it is 100% accurate to use in this context.

I finally found a place I can dry fire in the house. Laying in the hall by the kitchen I can see out one of the 'library' windows across the drainage ditch over to the church. It only works because all the leaves are off the trees. It's not a super clear image because it passes through the window, the screen, a wire fence and some branches, but it works well enough for dry practice. The rangefinder says the building is 127 yards away. Perfect. During the day I can use a sign on the building, but at night when they have the lights on I can see inside so I've been using this door handle as my target. It's really hard to take pictures through the scope but I finally got one that at least shows the door.