Forgot to mention that I picked up the bike from the shop last Friday. Several of the valves did need adjusting and now that it's done you can really hear and feel the difference in the engine. Tweaking the valves, getting the throttle bodies in sync, getting the cables adjusted, etc really made a noticeable difference in how the bike responds and rides. It's almost like new in many ways once again. They also washed it and detailed it a little which was unexpected, it doesn't look like my bike with it being all clean.

I've been telling people at work about my leaving, and reactions have ranged from stunned silence, to disbelief, to sadness to in at least one case some happiness. Three groups want to take me to lunch, several of the higher ups in Austin want to get to talk to me before I leave, etc. Basically it's making me feel like I did make some sort of positive difference here and that in spite of dbag's negativity that in fact I'm not such a bad guy after all.

Little behind, but the biggest news is that I took the Netapp gig and gave notice at Apple. Dbag didn't respond but HR did. I don't suspect I'll hear from him for a week until he gets back from his work of "working in Tahoe". His boss says he needs the R&R. Really, from what? All that slacking making him tired?

Yesterday I loaded up some ammo and took the 300 out to the range for some test firing. I got it zeroed in and fired some groups with various loads. As you can see, it's a 1/2 MOA gun or better considering these groups were all under half inch at 100 yards and that's with me having not fired a rifle in a good long while. I've loaded up more ammo of various charge weights and I'll shoot them over the chronograph next weekend.

Last night we went to Chez TJ for a combo celebration dinner, the woman's 41st birthday and my new job. The menu we got was pretty close to this menu, and it wasn't bad. I think it was a bit overpriced for the quality but we saved not having to drive into the city and deal with that nonsense so maybe we'll just have to settle. The woman picked this one because the chef from Station 1 started here as well as a few other chefs, and it is a Michelin rated (1 star) restaurant so it can't be all that bad. In addition to 3 little bites not on the menu, they gave the woman a birthday card and a few extra dessert bites and the chef came out to say hello. Nice touch.

Today we went to the mall to pickup some new clothes for my new job and to get the woman a macbook air. I used my 25% off personal discount and my "once every 3 years" $500 credit so her total out of pocket cost for an air was just over $425 (including tax). That's pretty good, I don't think you could come up with anything half as good in the PC world for that. Files are transferring now, I'm moving my account off my work air before returning it.

I found some RC cola at the store today, Delaney says it's what they use in restaurants which is why my captain and coke at home never tastes the same. It does taste different.

Also today I loaded up 100 more of those shotgun shells, I'll try them out on Tuesday.

Another round of interviews last night, a bit tricky trying to find a room with a dial-out phone and privacy but I managed. Heard back from them after that it all went well and they're putting an offer through. Woo!

Kenny mentions finding and being able to read a 3.5" floppy, but then not remembering why he saved the files. I too have a few 3.5" floppies laying around, but I know exactly what's on them... a pascal program I wrote around 1988 or 1989 that generates solar systems for the Hero System gaming rules. I can't remember if there was a "Star Hero" book at that time, but we had our own set of rules for everything based on the generic hero system rules as pulled from the "Champions" game. It was a pretty big program at the time, read from a half dozen data files on star and planet data and did a bunch of randomizing and then printed it all out in a game compatible sheet formatted for the printer. No laptops in those days to carry around, everything had to be paper based. Oddly that was a rule at the last gaming table I was at in 2010... no computers. Seems the old ways are still the best when you're trying to preserve that vintage 70s feel.

Apparently someone knows something about what Apple is doing in Israel now. So much for secrecy. :)

We went up to Haifa to pick up some equipment that had been "borrowed" and for me to see the office and talk to some of the engineers up there who will be using the environment we setup. No one has told them any of what's going on. No shock really, there are no leads on this project so who's going to remember to tell the locals anything? On the way up we stopped for lunch at what else by a roadside falafel hut next to a gas station. It actually wasn't half bad:

I didn't get to see much of Haifa itself but the industrial park was interesting. It looked very crowded, with Intel having the most number of buildings (3 from what I could see) and everyone else sharing. Yahoo and Google were in the same building each with their signs on alternate sides of the tower. I can see Apple security is going to have a fit, there just aren't any available single occupant buildings in that area, they each have 10-15 companies in them at least. I probably should have taken pictures but my guess is you can see it on google street view...

Last night around 2:30am I got a call from the bike shop saying my bike was done. Wasn't happy about getting woken up since it took me forever to get to sleep but I guess I should remember to turn the phone into airplane mode at night so I an still use it as an alarm and not be woken up by stateside calls. I always wondered if they joy ride around on the bikes and sure enough, they did ride around the block. That's not really a joy ride, but at least I know they rode it. I remember on a few occasions the BMW dealer said they test rode my bike after a service but when I went to pick it up it was missing obvious stuff like the mirrors (had to pull the RT's mirror housings to get the fairing off). Having the beacon on when I'm no there is probably some sort of FCC violation on my part... guess I won't tell anyone about that little trick.

Yesterday we actually took a day off, the first one in 4 trips. It wasn't very eventful, I slept until almost noon, read, ended up having a late lunch with Delaney at the fish restaurant by the beach (Yam 7), reading some more, then reading by the pool after the sun went down enough for there to be some shade, then reading in the room and finally to sleep. A whole big day of nothing. I was going to try to see a movie but the only theater showing "The Avengers" (the only movie I could think I would want to see) was 16km away and I wasn't up for a cab ride. Probably a good thing I didn't go as there were a bunch of protests about something or another scheduled for that evening. One was because some guy who lit himself on fire at the last protest finally died... what a lame reason to protest.

I'm still in the office at 10:20pm here in Israel and I'm afraid they'll set the alarm on me and/or physically lock the door. I'm on a call though so I can't get up just yet... maybe they'll hear the speakerphone when they do a walk through.

There is a ton of stuff going on with the job search, but I'm a bit fried thinking about it now so I won't recount it here. Maybe my next journal will say I've got a new job.

Also the refi is a hot mess. Trying to get Claudia to get us a loan while Citibank was dorking around has pissed Claudia off to no end, she jumped to some conclusions and told me off via email, so now we'll never deal with her again (that's what she said, she's done with us... people who shop loans are not welcome). No loss I guess, she's gotta understand that loans are competitive these days of no easy money.

Before I went on the trip I managed to get up to Concord and pick up my rifle! The scope isn't torqued down yet but this is what it will look like when it's ready to go when I get home and finish up with it:

I remembered to pull the APRS data off the web site for the Cambria trip. It's interesting that we had coverage while off the pavement in the mountains, but almost no coverage at all down by Cambria. Guess being on a mountain top really helps, I just wish I had remembered to put the higher gain antenna on before the trip (why I don't have that stored in the 4runner is a mystery).

We've spent the last few days down south on a mini-vacation, just trying to relax and forget about work for a while (or at least that's what I've been doing). We had some decent meals, went tide-pooling, wine tasting, did one of the smaller tours at Hurst Castle (guest houses, kitchen and wine cellar), drove that 4x4 road along the coastal range, visited with Don in Carmel and somehow managed to relax. Sorta. Now that it's Sunday night I'm freaking out about work again as usual, the rest didn't stick. Pictures of it all can be found here.

I think the part the woman liked best was feeding the squirrels by the B&B. They're well trained, when they see someone coming along the path they jump out and beg, and they'll come running from 50-100 yards down the trail when they see a crowd of their friends gathering. The woman was sneaking granola out of breakfast and swiping extra crackers from the wine and cheese tasting the B&B set out just to make sure the rodents weren't starving. Somehow I don't think they were starving.

Before the trip we went up to Alameda for the annual 4th BBQ at the Mines. It was good as usual, or as good as a BBQ can be when you don't know 95% of the people. I helped out by cutting up the ribs... there were a lot more than I originally thought...

Today I mostly did nothing but watch a bunch of episodes of Firefly that got recorded off TV which is a bit lame since I have them on DVD too. They caption the Chinese on the TV now though which is useless, but cool in a way. Damn it's a good show. While watching I mounted up my new shotshell press and cranked out my first shotgun reloads. They crimped up better than I thought they would, but we'll have to see how they shoot later. I've got an interview scheduled over the top of my usual trap time on Tuesday and I'll be in Israel next Tuesday (or on a plane anyway) so it's going to be 3 weeks before I can shoot them at least.

They didn't have the parts for the bike service on Thursday so we'll have to take it back next weekend and it can sit there until I'm back from Israel. I'll have to drive in on Monday but that's not a big deal since I'll be going to class that night anyway.

There was a momentary power flicker which crashed my server (UPS died a long time ago) and now my windows VM is toast. Trying to 'auto fix' didn't work, so now I'm doing a checkpoint restore. I have a feeling that it's lost it's disk, but we'll see if the MSFT magic works. I've got it backed up and there shouldn't be much on there other than my Firefox stuff, but still it's annoying. Interesting it's now giving me a BSOD and rebooting. Haven't seen one of those in a long time.

Random picture of a work lunch on the phone. Always something strange in the cafe at Apple. For the record, the ostrich was sorta dry. Needed more sauce or some sort of salsa.

As of Tuesday I've officially moved over to DA02. I'll be down the street and in another building from the rest of my team and from douche bag, so I won't see him but once a week at most. Guess it's not all bad news. This new office is larger than my old one, but the way they have these huge desk setups in here I lose the sofa. So much flat surface for me to stack papers on, not a good thing. Last move I had several boxes I never opened, wonder if I can get away with only unpacking the one with my keyboard and cables?

Today I did some work on the 4runner, or at least checked some things out. First I removed the side steps which oddly makes it easier for me to get in and out of since I'm not trying to balance on the little step. It also makes it look more like an older vehicle or "unfinished". I like the look, it makes it look like less of a mall crawler. I forgot to take a before picture but when I ran to the store to get some extra green onions for the woman's cous cous salad for the 4th of July BBQ I ended up parking next to another green/brown 3rd gen. You can see how much higher mine looks even though we're both using stock sized tires and the stock ride height. Next cosmetic change I have to do is pull that chrome trim off from around the wheel wells and get a set of the black sport flairs that actually cover over the tire a little better.

I checked the transmission, transfer case and both differentials, and it looks like they changed the fluid in all of them at the dealer before I bought it. All were nice and clean, I just hope they used the correct fluids in each one. I can't imagine why they wouldn't, unless they got lazy. The transmission doesn't use regular gear oil, but it did look and smell different than the diff oil so I'm mostly thinking they did it right.

To get at the front diff you have to pull 2 skid plates and while under there I continued my search for the oil leak. What I found was that the oil filter is tipped down about 30 degrees so whenever you change it you dump oil all over the front axle assembly. As you can see here it then runs all over the place, making it look like everything is leaking. I used some de-greaser down there again and now everything is clean and oil-free, so with the 500 miles of driving we'll do in the next few days on our trip if anything is really seeping I should be able to see it. The steering rack I cleaned up last week is still bone dry and the fluid level is 100% full so I think that was a red herring.

We went to a retirement party for one of the horse police guys at the barn the woman used to volunteer at back in the day. It wasn't as bad as one of her work/shrink parties, at least these people had personality. They also had some old bottles of wine they were opening. Old doesn't necessarily mean good but the two I managed to have were pretty damn good. There was also an '84 BV which I didn't get to try as they opened it while I was in the living room and missed the pouring.

While at the party I wandered into the back yard and there was a huge vertical antenna stuck back behind some trees.... following the cable lead into the house and it looked sorta modern.... turns out that Jason (one of the cops the woman used to groom for) has been a ham since 1983. W6PDQ. His picture on QRZ is a little over the top though. This is the guy who's husband is the famous gay porn producer. He does more than gay porn now, he's branching out into this stuff, and tried to convince the woman that I should attend one of the "parties" to be a non-participating extra. Sweet, my break into the movies! :)

Monday I have an interview for a job I don't want, and Tuesday or Wednesday I'm going to try to hook up with a guy to tell me more about the pre-sales engineering job at Netapp. I used to work with him at Evil Co (TM) and he's made the jump from IT to 'something else'. I want to learn about that process, I'm tired of being IT.

I'm also going to sign up for the sword school thing on Monday. It's "reasonably cheap" to do (provided I don't go nuts buying stuff) and I'll be focusing on knife work. On the weeks I'm in Austin (if that's going to be happening very much longer!) I can take a Thursday "side sword" class.