Crazy headache today, not sure if it was the 'diet vanilla Pepsi' at lunch or just stress or what. The next reorg is looming larger now, next Thursday is supposed to be the day that it all goes down. Dbag is going to talk with my team before then, give them all a little one-on-one time. Wonder who will throw me under the bus? I can think of a few people off hand, but if dbag's history is any indication he won't take any input anyway... oh wait this input would support his conclusion. Damn.

Nothing from the other group since my return, wonder what's going on over there? Maybe something good. I'm downloading the netapp simulator so I can start refreshing my filer knowledge, can't hurt to be up to date when I go into the interview.

Two last pictures, one of the business class lounge in Tel Aviv, the other is my latest passport stamp. :)

My first official blunder today, I didn't know the difference between a 10 shekel coin and a 10 agorot coin. Doh! Stupid high value coins. The good news is the guy I called on for the 'mistake' will never see me again. :) Lunch was at a Japanese restaurant, best sushi I've had in a while. Miso was a little heavy on the seaweed but otherwise it was all good stuff.

Vareck is always saying to take pictures so here are two spy shots of hotties I saw today while out at lunch. Most Israeli women are not so cute, these were trying.

We went out again last night, seems to be the thing they want to do with guests here. First we had a bite to eat at the hotel around 9:30pm, then quickly went to the mall to buy some shirts/socks/underwear for the IS&T guy who's luggage is lost (with all of the spare juniper hardware), then wen went to some pub like place. Before we even went into the club I was feeling really sick and so while they went inside I found a dark corner of the parking lot and puked. :( I was feeling much better after that, but still wasn't happy about whatever bad food or whatever I had. Not sick today which is nice.

I was scheduled to meet with a local reseller and HP rep today and when I walked into the lobby there were two people in suits waiting. I figured that was probably them but I just went inside the office anyway to drop my stuff off. When I came back out they were surprised that I was the American. They said I look and walk like an Israeli. Interesting.

Some pictures from the Israel trip, lotta food centric stuff but I guess that's what I find interesting now. The architecture of the new areas I'm in aren't all that interesting. About the same level of charm as low rise industrial areas back home.

The menu on the airplane....

My first view of the city as seen from the back of a cab...

The view out my hotel room...

The first breakfast plate at the hotel. I like the salad for breakfast idea, and those sprouts are pretty good whatever they are...

The first lunch, lamb nuggets served on the beach at one of the "Bell Beach" cafes (which you can sorta make out in the picture out the window above)...

Found it, but haven't tried it yet...

A rare picture of me at the club...

Artichoke ravioli, all I ate last night because of the big lunch. They thought I was strange in not wanting a salad or sides. Not sure what a side dish to ravioli is but whatever...

The local IT guy is into dirt bikes and 4x4ing, his turbo diesel Pajero that smells really bad due to his driving through a 'lake' and having water flood the whole thing. Lake? Translation error?

The tiny ass elevator at the hotel, not much larger than 1m square. It's good for 3 people at most, 1 with a large bag. I've noticed they have small elevators everywhere, the office, the mall, etc. I realize they're not fat like Americans but come on, even Asian countries have elevators large enough to hold a few people comfortably.

Just got back from lunch, although my body thinks it's a little before 5am. The transition hasn't been too bad, I tried to stay awake as much as possible yesterday but ended up taking about 4 hour long naps. Probably should have just slept solid through but then I would be up at all strange hours.

Last night I met up with Gilad (from Skyrider) and he took me to http://radioepgb.com/?page_id=2 which is a sort of underground music/bar/club thing. I told him I had nothing to wear to such a place and he assured me it didn't matter, and in fact it didn't. Some people were dressed to go to a club, many were just in casual stuff like I was wearing.

The energy here in the office is really strange. A lot more loud hallway conversations, a lot more moving around.

The ice pack the offered me on the way out of the ER a few weeks back? Just got a bill, just for that ice pack. $16. Spendy ice. Love how someone had to bill for that separately and mail a bill and will have to process it as well. No wonder medical is so f'ed up. At least my insurance is better than the woman's, they're making her pay for her own xrays.

Some pictures from the weekend I'll have to explain later (gotta go to bed now):

I'm getting used to the mac. I'm sitting working at the radio PC in the office and I keep hitting F12 to bring up the clock, calendar or calculator. Doesn't work under windows.

I'll skip all the work stuff, the more important bit is what I told the foo guys today. I think it summarizes it well and really makes me feel like I'm starting to "get it" about my life.

Appreciate all the feedback.

The woman pulled out all the stops, she made me go through an actual therapy
session pretty much the same way she does with real clients facing these sorts 
of issues (although she was holding a sleeping hamster during the session, I 
don't think that's part of the regular process).  I had to do the homework too, 
and she thought it was amusing that when she said to make a pro/con list so 
we could check for distortions I did it in excel and tried to turn it into a 
pro/con/neutral list with weightings for each item.

The session and follow up were very enlightening, as well was an activity at work.  
Dbag wanted his other IT manager and I to combine the groups and split them back 
up 'equally', I had too many people and he didn't have enough.  The other 
manager (despite being a director at another company in a previous life) couldn't 
visualize the mix and mostly just followed along with my thought process as he 
couldn't figure out exactly what we do.  In the end I had broken up the groups 
and he was 100% happy with the mix and its more even.  Monday we present to dbag, 
and I'm responsible for making the presentation materials because apparently I'm 
better at making slides.  From the stuff the other guy has put out I would 
believe that.

Anyway, the important bit here is that other IT guy said "I would have no problem 
if you took over the whole group, I would work for you".  I didn't ask him that, 
he just offered it up.  That got me to thinking, "do I want to run the whole 
group?"  The answer, for the first time is NO.  I do not want to run this group.  
If dbag told me Monday the whole thing was mine, I wouldn't be happy about it.  
I don't care for what the other group is doing, their technology is lame and 
reeks of corporate IT.

So, let's assume I had an upward path with dbag.  Even if true, that path 
leads somewhere I don't want to go.  I don't want to run the combined group, I 
don't like dbag and I don't like dbag's boss.  I'm learning what his management 
style is and I don't care for it.  Yes, he's successful and has a ton of power, 
but it's over boring stuff and everyone that works for him seems to either hate 
him or just hold him in contempt.  What's the fun of that?  Yes, you get money 
and power, but in the end you're someone that people wouldn't piss on if you 
were on fire.  Who wants to spend all day in that environment?  I want people 
above and below me to respect me.  Respect is better than raw power (hence I 
would never make a good politician).

What bugs me about the group and how we work is that it's really 'customer service'.  
Things break and they bring them to us.  We find problems and fix them.  What 
we don't do is get to build things.  We're not part of the process, our efforts 
enable other people but in the end our 'customers' and upper management don't 
say "wow, ECS really helped make XYZ possible".  At best we're invisible, at 
worst we're the scapegoat (so far we've not been the actual problem).  The 
majority of the work we do is break fix, or cleaning up someone else mess who 
got in over their head.

Now I look at the job in the other group.  I'm moving down, I get that, but 
if I'm honest with myself there is no way I'll stay down.  I came into apple 
and they had me collecting sun workstations and hauling them off to recycle.  
That was one of my first jobs.  Forward a few years and I'm a manager, a few 
more and I've got a staff of 24.  I can just do that again in the new group.  
I'll come in allocating storage, figure out what I can do there, start doing it, 
get people on board with me and poof, I'm back moving upward.  The difference 
here is that although it's 2 years later and I'm "back where I was", the forward 
path leads somewhere I want to go.  My boss doesn't seem like a dbag (although he 
prefers 9mm over .45 so Phil might have issue with him in that way :), and his 
boss is downright cool.  They work with the developers to make the money printing 
machine go.  Apple is doing something right, I wouldn't mind being part of 
that process directly.

I also know that I like infrastructure.  Large compute farms, data centers, storage 
arrays, that stuff is all really cool.  Web apps, data bases, wonky OSX LDAP servers, 
boring.  If I thought they were cool I would have touched them in the last 20 years.  
Hasn't happened so either I'm blind or I'm really going after what I want with 
what I'm learning.  

I also know I like deployments and building things.  This who Israel project is 
fun.  "Build a compute infrastructure with all the same functionality as our 
Cupertino environment, and put it in a data center you've never seen which may not 
be have any power, HVAC or networking, in a country you've never been to with a 
staff you've never met.  You have $0 to prototype so you'll have to beg/borrow/steal 
whatever you need, and it needs to be in production in 8 weeks.  Go."   These 
scenarios are why I think Vareck has a cool job.  Doing something in really odd 
conditions in really odd places mostly cut off from the real world.  If I was just 
out of college again I could look at doing military work, setting up communications 
gear or computer stuff at FOBs, or being a roadie for Britney Spears which is probably 
the same thing but with more screaming.  More evidence of this is in how much effort 
I put into the dxpedition (the ham stuff in the cook islands).  Deploy and operate 
in new places.  Interesting.  

Conclusion?  No matter what I do to succeed in the current position I won't be 
happy because it's not leading me somewhere I want to go.  I conclude I need to 
get off that path.  If I take the other path open to me now and fail due to not 
passing the interview or whatever then I can start over somewhere else.   If I 
can't make money, I'll do something I like and now that I know more about what that 
may be, it seems more realistic of an idea.  I got a call from a recruiter looking 
for people to join HP in attempting to build a cloud environment to compete with 
amazon.  Those jobs are likely to get more rare as time goes on, but there are 
always start-ups, until the government screws up the internet by passing anti-net-
neutrality stuff in the spectrum bill.  Then I can go to wyotech and become a machinist.  
I'm way smart enough to program CNC machines and custom gun and car stuff is still 
made in the USA.  By then, it's time to retire and I sponge off the woman.

Found a really cool backpack at REI today, it's only a 22L pack so it's a lot smaller than my current one but it's got all the right sized pockets to organize the stuff I use every day and although it's black, it's not tacticool so it shouldn't attract attention at security in Israel. I'm going to take my spiffy multicam military pack and actually use that for hunting and shooting now. What's the point of having pockets for 30 round mags, spots for range finders, radios, binos, etc if you're not going to fill them with those sorts of things and carry them around? this also means I'm finally going to throw away that really old NVDA backpack I use. The woman is upset about the number of backpacks around the house so I told her I would only get a new one if I tossed an old one and that NVDA pack is pretty beat and the sewing job mom did to put it back to 100% has started coming apart.

Working on travel to Israel for next week, not sure how that's going to work out since it requires VP approval for the tickets, but as it takes VPs forever to approve things the trip will be missed or the tickets will go up again since it will be last minute travel. Big company stuff I guess.

Had lunch with Nizam today, he came up with a job for me in his group. Major (temporary) step down. Could my ego deal with that?

I made a batch of jerky tonight with some really, really old freezer burnt meat. I figure in the olden days they make jerky out of crappy cuts of meat, but it probably didn't taste all that good either. Sorta like this batch. I think the seasoning packets are too old too, there is hardly any flavor other than the cayenne pepper I tossed in there. Hopefully it doesn't make me sick, I could just toss it but even bad jerky is better than no jerky.

Yesterday we went to the car show in San Jose so the woman could look around and see all of her potential choices in one spot. She ended up liking the Scion xD and the Kia Soul (of course). Oddly the Kia is more money than the little Toyota. She'll have to go drive them though, you can only tell so much by sitting in them. Other cars considered but scratched from the list were the Focus, the Mazda 3, the Elantra Touring (ie wagon), the Impreza and probably something else I'm forgetting.

Today we went for a couple of walks, grocery shopping and spent a bunch of time making dinner. A good relaxing day before heading back to work.

I had lunch with Markus on Friday, he doesn't really have a job opening for me but he's going to look around and see what he can find out. Maybe I'll get lucky. Meanwhile I'm updating my resume and getting it out there. It's looking pretty good, but I'm sure it can be better. I went through my last two reviews as well pulling out all the 'key accomplishments' to ensure nothing important is left off.

Saturday morning I went into the attic with the antenna analyzer and tweaked the 10m setup as best as I could. I got it down to 2.8:1 which is much better than were it was and about as good as I guess I should expect in the space restricted area I've got to work with surrounded by random bits of metal (roof joists, heating ducts, roof vents, electrical wiring, etc). What's still a mystery is why I can't get the tuner to work at 10m at all. The best I can tune that setup to with the tuner is 2.8:1, exactly what it is without the tuner. It works on 20m, just not 10m.

Last day of vacation, back to work for me tomorrow. Scary! I emailed Markus today though, told him I would take him up on his offer. No response yet. Even more scary!

Here is one of the frustrating/challenging/whatever things about HAM radio. Antennas as just freakin' magic. I spend some time getting a 10m hamstick all tuned up with two radials (did it with 1 and thought I could just add a second of the same length... no... that's not how it works apparently) in the upstairs bedroom. I figure it's easy then to move it another 10' in the air in the attic vent and I'll be golden. SWR of 1.2:1 is the best I can get in testing.... then when I deploy it with the same radials.... bam. 5.2:1, might as well just tune up a clothes hanger as Kenny says. Then I try to tune it with the manual tuner on the IC718... can't get it any better than 3:1 which is not right at all. I couldn't get the 10m dipole to tune better than 3:1 either, that makes me suspicious that something is just fundamentally wrong with my setup. 20m no problems, 10m is just odd. Damn magic.

I made dinner tonight too, pan seared some steaks and finished them in the oven just like they do in a restaurant. Worked well, but our oven isn't hot enough so I had to put them back in... too rare. While the steaks rested I de-glazed the pan with wine and added some onions and butter to make a "red-wine pan reduction beurre rouge", or so the book says. Blanched some green beans and sauteed them off at the end. Came out OK, made a few mistakes but it's the best steak I've made at home yet.

Here is a pic of me with my mise en place, I won't show the final product since the plating sucked nuts.

The neighbors brought out a 'critter catcher' and are trying to have the squirrels killed off. They also got the HOA to send us a letter telling us to take the squirrel feeder down saying it was against the regs. The woman actually sat down and read the regs and there is nothing in there preventing any sort of feeders on patios but she's taken it down anyway so the breeder neighbors don't get all riled up, or rather further riled up. She heard them talking outside and bitching to the critter guy about how bad the squirrels are and how dangerous they are to have around their kids. Really? You're worried about squirrels? Afraid your kids are going to catch the plague because there are rodents in the trees?

Santa dropped off some late goodies for me, 2000 rounds of 62gr goodness for the AR. Now that I have a little back stock available I can use the 3000 or so rounds I bought in 1994 or so and stockpiled for the mini-14. The manufacture date on the brass on these two cases are 2011 so it's fresh and will outlast me on a shelf.

Also of special note, I cleaned the radio room today. You can see the floor and there are no hidden piles of papers anywhere and all of my backpack gear has been moved from the middle of the room onto shelves. That's progress.

The big news is the addition to the family, a normal sized hamster named Poppler (either for the character in Futurama or because he pops out of your hands all the time, the people at the rescue shelter were mixed on which was the case). They didn't have a large batch of smaller hamsters so this was the 'backup rodent' she picked out. The full size ones like to live alone so the woman didn't feel too bad about only adopting one. So far he's been no trouble, no biting or anything and he's getting used to being held and being in a larger cage so his 'popping' habits are slowly fading. The woman is frustrated that he mostly just sleeps all the time, but that's all the other rodents did too, 23 hours of sleeping followed by an hour of running on wheels like crazy. The difference there was there were 5 of them so someone was always awake or getting stepped on and/or kicked out of their rodent house so it provided some action to watch.

I've been down to the Panoche Hills twice now this vacation, once by myself for some long range shooting and the second with Don. The first time I found a spot for 450 and 550 yard work and used the .308 exclusively both prone and off the sticks. It was surprisingly easy to get on target using the dope from the RO class. The target is 10" across, you only have to shoot at 2 MOA accuracy to hit it which isn't that impressive technically but when you see the target out there it seems like more of a challenge. You can't even see the target without optics really. The pics here are the target as seen at 550 yards from my shooting position, the target as seen from that position with the camera at max optic and digital zoom (14x total) and a pic of my setup.

With Don we did some .308 work and then broke out the ARs. The ACOG is way better at this sort of shooting than his aim point, but he was still able to make 400 yard hits with no magnification and the front sight blocking the target completely. We then hiked over to the next ridge and did some 500+ yard shots from a really odd angle. With the ACOG we could both make a few hits but it required prone with a front rest, trying to do it from a sitting position like we did at 400 was just not working out at all. Two pics here are of me looking over Don's shoulder at the target area and one of the Jeep on the other ridge where we were shooting from before. He said it as a 'tactical fail' because I parked on the ridge line but with two other groups of people out there it was better they could see where we were. Stealth is cool, but not getting accidentally shot is better in this case.

On actual giftmas day we flew to Vegas for a few days of eating, shows an donating money to the mob. It was way more crowded than I thought, with the cheap tickets and hotel I figured it was a totally dead time of year but things were packed, with more kids around than I've ever seen. The woman didn't mind as long as she got to turn money into these little worthless bits of paper at the "Lord of the Rings" slot machines. What's cool about them is you create an account and then can login at any casino and resume your saved games. The woman sent her login to her mom who's been using it at the indian casinos that have the game too so all the progress is being saved. Pretty good way of keeping players at your games even when they're traveling around.

Vegas for us is mostly about the restaurants anyway. For actual giftmas dinner we went to Craft Steak and had their tasting menu. It's a little deceptive, it says it's 3 courses but what they don't say is you get 2-3 items per course to share family style. We had lobster bisque as the soup (not counted as a course somehow), three salads, new york and fillet wagyu steaks, mushroom risotto, assorted mushrooms, brussels sprouts with bacon, 3 different sorbets, two baked desserts and some other stuff I'm probably forgetting. We were stuffed, and took away a bunch of the steak and some rolls to make little wagyu sliders for brunch the next morning.

A new one we tried was a tapas restaurant. Normally I hate tapas, they're just overpriced crap. This place was pretty good though, although the white fish ceviche burnt out my pallet so everything after that course tasted a bit off. Good thing we had the cheese sampler earlier in the meal or I wouldn't know which Spanish cheeses I like (the answer is... not many).

On the last day I was wanting breakfast but we didn't make it out of the room before 11 (having stayed up really late the night before for the blue man group show and some gambling) so everything was on the lunch menu. Eventually, after a momentary bout of craziness where I thought we should go to Denny's, we ended up at Bouchon for brunch. The woman told the waiter that we were 'old hat' when he asked if we had been there before. Old hat? OK, maybe it was our 5th time there but that's hardly enough to qualify as regulars or anything.

We saw two shows while were there, Peepshow with Holly Madison (Hefner's ex) and Blue Man Group. Peepshow, while not horrible was certainly not good. Mostly it was some singing and dancing an Holly's boobs. The woman saw blue man 10 years ago and said that it's been updated.

After we got back we took my parents to lunch and wine tasting in Lodi as their giftmas gift. Who knew there was actual wineries in Lodi? Apparently everyone but me. They specialize in zins which is good since I like them. :) Two of the wineries we went to had 'old vine' wines, grapes from vines that were over 100 years old (6 generations of farmers tending the same farm). You can really tell the difference in grapes from the old vines, they produce less fruit but it's got a more intense flavor. Dad said that old vine stuff is getting more rare because vineyards are tearing out old vines to put in younger vines that produce more grapes. More grapes = more wine, and since most people can't tell the difference you make more selling $20 bottles of new stuff than you do selling $40 bottles of old vine stuff. Since we could tell the difference we snagged a bottle of each vineyard's old vine stuff for storing. The wine fridge is almost full again, I've replaced most of the drinking wine with hording wine.