A whole week with no update... yea, that's about right since nothing has really happened this week other than me getting cranky at work. That's hardly news.

Made it back from Israel in one piece, even managed to make it to work on Thursday after arriving at 2am. Why didn't I take some time off? Good question. Mostly it's because douche bag doesn't do comp time, you just get to work extra all the time. Technically it's true, we're all salaried so you just work until the job is done but it sure doesn't make people want to do extra for you. No comp, no bonuses, no nothing. Don't like it? Get another job. Unfortunately my best people are working on that, had the first guy (my senior architect) come to me on Friday and officially tell me he's interviewing with another group and looking for an internal transfer. Sigh. I've not told douche bag, I don't think he'll handle it like an adult and if the guy doesn't transfer he would want me to manage him out.

Finishing up the Israel trip we took a quick tour into Jerusalem so I could check out the old city. I imagine it's pretty impressive if you're religious, seeing the west wall, seeing where Jesus was killed, buried, etc. If you're not, it's just a bunch of not that interesting old stuff. Much of the city has been rebuilt so it feels more like a Disneyland attraction vs. actual history. The buildings look old, but they've got AC and stuff. The originals have probably been burned/blown up/whatever long ago when you think about the fighting in the region.

One interesting comment from the office people I was with was when we were in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I mentioned that they probably didn't care about anything here since they don't do the whole Jesus thing (as they're all Jews in the office). Vered (the IT manager) said "Oh no, we believe Jesus existed. He's just a Jew that started a cult so they killed him." I joked that he was the David Koresh of their world. They didn't get it. Religious humor is tough.

I also want to make a note here of the $30 string. I'm not telling the story but perhaps when I'm reading this when I'm old and senile this plug will remind me of the story. Maybe then I'll tell someone who wasn't there what happened.

All of the pictures are linked from the main page. That shot of the wine and cheese on a patio looking thing overlooking a city? That's our late night snack in some hotel overlooking the old city. About half way through the Muslim prayer thing started up and you could hear it everywhere in the old city, kinda creepy.

On to new topics, as Israel is so last week. I got my batch of turkey jerky done yesterday, and at first I was disappointed, but now having some today it's actually pretty good. It seems now that when I take jerky out of the dehydrator it's not that good, but after it sits overnight it gets some flavor back. Or perhaps having the whole house smell of jerky sorta deadens the taste enjoyment? Both the light and dark meats have distinct flavors so I'm glad the extra work resulted in some tangible benifits. Needs more cayenne pepper though, I really should write down what I use each time so I can adjust.

Yesterday was our homeowners associate / neighborhood watch / whatever safety fair, which was mostly coordinated by the woman. She had the SAFE people there, the cops doing fingerprinting and whatever, the fire people to do equipment demos (canceled due to the high winds, they didn't want crap getting all over people's cars and houses which I thought was nice of them), etc. It was pretty boring for me, although I did meet the guy who did the voice for the W6MLP repeater ID. Probably only Kenny thinks that's cool. I didn't take a lot of pictures but I'm sure she'll put some up from the dozens of cameras that were there.

The signs of the recession are everywhere, especially at the shopping center by our house. I went there this morning after briefly stopping by the horse show the woman is at but not riding in (she's just helping the new riders get ready) and the Jamba Juice is gone now. There are ~15 empty shops there, the only things left are a bank, starbucks, best buy, taco bell and walmart... and isn't best buy the next one on the hit list?

The starbucks by the gym is dead. It's in an odd place but the high school kiddies are constantly walking out of there with beverages in the morning, you would think that would keep a starbucks afloat but I guess not.

Put the prepper goodies into the under-stairs storage, lots of room down there and I'm hoping since it's 'low' it will stay cool. Unfortunately if things flood we're screwed, but I guess the MREs are sealed twice, the military can't worry about their food getting wet... can they?

The woman brought some fresh eggs home from the show today, one of the riders has some chickens. I whipped up some new pasta with a few of them, trying shapes now rather than just boring stuff. It' heavy, but we'll use it with the leftover steak from tonight for dinner tomorrow, mix the diced meat in some tomato based sauce and serve.

Took a different walking route to work today, took a little longer but I got to see some different neighborhoods.

Yesterday was pretty busy, didn't get out of the office until 10:30pm or so. Vered and I went to a local bar (what is it with them wanting drinks after dinner, or is that how it is in big cities everywhere? like some sort of sitcom?) and I saw they had captain morgan so I ordered my usual. It came deconstructed, you build them yourself. Vered said it's because they don't trust the bartender to give them the right amount of alcohol so they give it to you in kit form and you know what's it in. Interesting. Also, a pic of the mystery meat from the office lunchroom. Kinda looks like pork on the package, but it's some funky turkey inside.

I forgot to mention yesterday that the guy next to me on the plane was also from Milpitas, but he lived up in the hills off 237. Two acres, wonder how much that set him back?

Yesterday evening when I got back to the hotel I went for a run on the beach, and again this morning I went for another run. They gym isn't included in the hotel price and I'm sure dbag won't approve stuff like that so I'll just keep running and doing push-ups/sit-ups/whatever in the room. I'm only running 2k but it's really killing me, not sure if it's the sand or the humidity or what. I don't feel out of breath or like my heart is going to explode, more like I'm going to puke. I'm clearly not a runner.

The only real thing I don't like about Israel is the breakfasts. Say what you will about American food but we have the best breakfasts. Bacon, eggs, toast, waffles or pancakes, whatever. This is just strange to me (it looks like an egg roll but it's not), and all these oiled fish bits make you burp up low tide all day:

36 hours to get from home to the hotel in Israel. Why? Well... it's complicated.

First up I leave the house at 3:20am to get to SFO. I arrive there with zero problems only to find that my 6am flight is delayed until 7:20am due to 'mandatory crew break'. The plane was late coming in last night so they didn't get any sleep is my guess. That delay means I miss my connection in New Jersey so they rebook me on the 10:50pm flight. Sitting there at SFO I'm trying to think what the hell I'm going to do in Jersey for that long and I start snooping around on the web and get inspired. I'll go to Les Halles, Anthony Bordain's old restaurant. How hard can it be to get from EWR to downtown NYC?

The answer is, not that hard. I take the airtrain from the terminal out to the real train station and get on a train to Penn Station. Unknown to me is that there are 2 Penn Stations, the one in Jersey and the one in NYC proper. I take the long ride to the (wrong) one in NYC and then take the E train downtown to the World Trade Center hole in the ground and walk the couple blocks to the restaurant. Had I picked the right Penn Station I would have had a shorter trip but the mechanics are the same. Big train to subway. I'm pretty impressed with myself, taking the 'risk' of traveling outside the airport into the unknown. That's pretty big for me, I'm not really a good traveler.

Couple of random pics taken in stealth mode. Oddly not a lot of people had phones out on the trains or subway. Too much of a theft risk? Apologies to Vareck for not getting a pic of the actual hot chick sitting next to me before she got off the subway.

Dinner was tasty and I chatted with the people next to me in the restaurant a bit just to combat the loneliness. Strange city, fatigued from flying and stress, etc, tends to catch up to you after a while.

Another stealth shot, the WTC construction site outside the subway station.

I get back to the airport and through security with plenty of time to spare, when this happens:

Denied. WTF? Another 8+ hours of delays? They never did explain what was going on but they did put us business class people up in a hotel. Everyone else had to sleep in the terminal, they wouldn't let them out of security. That's nuts.

While standing in various lines and trying to get hotel vouchers and stuff I ended up talking to several people who were all traveling home to Israel and since they didn't know the train system to get to the hotels I became the unofficial guide. My 1 trip on the train made me the expert in the group. We all made it to the Double Tree and hopefully me being helpful make them think better of people in the US. One of the chicks was a 30-something named Molly who worked at paypal and was just in Salt Lake visiting their datacenter. We ended up hanging out in the lounge together before the flight and at one point on the flight she walked by and said hello, asked how I was doing, etc, just random small talk. The other Apple guys (who I didn't know were on the flight until they showed up) were totally confused as to how I knew some random chick on the plane. I honestly think that if I were single I could have tried to put some sort of move on her the night before since we had already spent a few hours together in the lines, shuttles, etc. I know, probably not but leave me to my illusion that I still have game. :) Wait, did I ever have game?

On the plane I watched Ra.One a cheesy Bollywood action flick. Most of the visuals were a rip-off of other movies like Terminator and a ton from the Matrix, and probably other more modern action flicks I've not seen. Mostly I picked that movie because it was subtitled and nothing else on the plane was or had captions.

This morning after arriving at 2am and getting a few hours sleep I awaken to a humid and overcast day. Staying at the Daniel, which is up the street from the hotel I was at last time. I think I like the other one better, even though the Daniel is newer. I couldn't find any bread this morning and Shamir says it's because of passover, they're now allowed bread at all. Sigh. Hope that nonsense ends soon, it was supposed to be done as of yesterday.

Our financial adviser guy came to the office today (and the woman did as well) for our semi-annual pep talk. He said our lives are pretty simple, and by simple I think he meant boring. No crazy relationship issues, no mistresses, ex'es, child custody issues, no illegal business dealings, no substance abuse problems, etc. Guess all that is pretty prevalent in the higher escutcheons of society; we're not high up enough to have all that. On the plus side, he thinks our retirement goals are pretty realistic and we're on track with our savings and whatnot. It's also interesting to see that they're not even mentioning social security anymore, they used to say it would be 'a nice bonus if you got it', but now it's not even in their documentation anymore. Looks like the pros have completely written off the greatest ponzi scheme in history.

It takes almost a full 10 minutes to mentally shrug off a nights worth of bad dreams. I had a bunch of anxiety/failure dreams and I just could not get rid of the thoughts even after I realized it was a dream and woke up. Annoying.

Took yesterday off for a guided turkey hunt int Auburn. I stayed in an RV park Sunday night (they had a few tent spots which worked well for me in the Jeep) and met up with the guide at 5am. We walked into a 'secret spot' in the dark and as dawn broke he managed to call 30 turkeys into the clearing. We kept waiting for a clear shot but they were so bunched up I couldn't hit one without taking out a bunch of others, damn shotgun technology. One thing about turkeys is that they see really, really well and at some point I moved my finger toward the trigger (just my finger!) and one of the hens that was 10 yards away caught sight of that and started peeping which alarmed all the birds and they wandered off. Sigh.

After getting busted in the morning we spent the next 8 hours or so walking, calling, walking, calling and waiting. We couldn't walk the valleys or we would have disturbed them so we had to walk over every ridge and bit of broken ground on the property. Around 1pm we gave up on this plot and moved to another section where we finally got two birds in close enough to shoot. When I hit the one bird and froze again the rest of the birds didn't do anything... the shot didn't scare them and their fellow bird lying on the ground didn't phase them either. We sat there for a bit while the other bird pecked the crap out of the bird on the ground (turkeys are nasty, they'll move in and kill any bird they think they can and wounded ones always get ganged up on) and after 5-10 minutes they left. Woo! I was in a really, really uncomfortable position after the shot, I could hardly stand when it came time to leave.

The guide lived 30 minutes north of us so it would have added another hour of driving to go to his place to have him clean the bird, so I just took it home whole and did it myself. The pig class helped, I knew how to de-bone things easier and although it took me two hours I got all the good meat off the bird, got it cleaned up and ground up for jerky and in the fridge. Not bad for a first attempt. I've got two batches, light meat and dark meat, we'll see how different it tastes.

I hadn't noticed how icky the fridge has been getting, time for another cleaning.

Also, on Sunday we made soft pretzels from a kit the woman got me as a gift. They taste OK but they look pretty bad. What I want to know is what's all that stuff that 'leaked' out of them onto the baking sheet???

I'm now officially old, turned 40 on Thursday. No party, no going out, just some home made ravioli with home made pancetta. We also broke out one of the best bottles of wine in the 'cellar', the exposure stuff we bought to drink on our respective 40th birthdays. The woman didn't open hers, but she wouldn't let me get away with saving mine:

Monday and Tuesday I was in Austin, pretty normal trip including the trip to Rudy's for 1/3 pound of 'cutters choice', some beans, bread and Mexican coke. Tasty stuff. Also of interest was the tornadoes in Dallas which screwed up the flights and sent news crews to the airport to film people standing around. I mentioned to Kenny that these guys do a 'ham field day' every day, driving around and having to setup and broadcast from wherever. Could be fun.

Wednesday when I got off the plane I had to immediately jump on the bike and ride up to Sutter Amador hospital to visit dad. He's having some bad reactions to the meds they're trying to use on his back and it's screwing up all sorts of things for him. He's out of the hospital now but he's still not exactly normal and not just due to his back problems. Mom is really freaking out, I think she's starting to see that dad's getting old and all those years of not taking care of himself are starting to catch up to him.

We got the taxes back and I reviewed them and signed everything today. Anyone doubt our tax code is stupidly complicated? Our 64 page federal return should be a clue. The state one is about the same. Here is a side view of the federal package:

Last thing was I received a letter from Wyoming Fish & Game saying they misprinted the licenses and we have to send them back. I hadn't noticed, but on the landowner portion it says "cow calf elk" (yes, you can shoot the kids if you want) but on the carcass tag it says "special elk fishing". It's probably really hard to catch an elk fishing...

Here in Austin there is a great radio station called 103.5 BOBFM; I've raved about it before I'm sure. At 9am they have "the 9 at 9", the top 9 songs from this day in some bygone year. Today was 1983 and I gotta say, the music of 1983 pretty much sucked. The top of the chart was some Michael Jackson song which was good, but everything leading up to that was pretty lame. Not everything about the '80s was good.

Having nothing interesting to take pictures of today, here is a shot of traffic on 360 north while I listen to BOBFM. :)

Almost midnight, what a long ass day. Sent off my revised presentation, took input from Israel this morning, updated it and sent it off tonight so the UK guys can check it out and comment while I'm asleep. Around the clock development... of keynote slides.

We went for a hike today, actually got off our butts and went to Sunol. There were tons of people there but one turn onto a trail that went up hill left all the annoying people and kids and strollers and dogs behind. We walked for a few hours, had a snack then came home. Nice to get outside. Here are two pics from our snack spot:

While looking at how to get there, I saw the google April fools day joke of the 'quest mode' on google maps. Funny.