In 2009 I took a picture of the 100 octane race gas pump at the 76 station at the bottom of hwy 9. In 4 years, the race gas has only gone up $1, but the regular unleaded is up $2. Interesting that fuel has gone up 100% in only 4 short years. Will we be paying $8/gal in 2016? Also notice the difference in quality in cell phone pictures in those 4 years. You can't tell so much in the thumbnail, but if you look at the full size images it's pretty obvious.

The gas stop was part of my getting the bike out on the road for a bit on Sunday. It's been sitting there with the same tank of gas for 6 months and even though I have the fuel stabilizer in it I was worried that it would start getting varnish everywhere (and it's not so easy to take EFI apart like it is the old carb on the KLR). I've not been very successful at riding when I don't have a destination so the woman told me to go to the goat farm on the coast and get her some cheese. OK, that I can do. 4.5 hours later I had run some good fuel though the bike and picked up her cheese order. Yum, goat cheese.

Mom is still in the hospital, hopefully she's going home tomorrow. She'll spend 1 night in a hotel by the hospital in case there are troubles then head back up to the mountains. Dad was smart to build the house without stairs since it's going to be a while before she can walk correctly again. I love that the side order of carrots and celery sticks was exactly 3 of each. I expected a bowl or something, but I guess they keep the portions small, can't have people OD-ing on veggies.

Made a batch of jerky on Sunday, the woman did all the prep on this one because it's a birthday present for the nephews. It's only one of their birthdays but their stupid "everything must be fair and equal" mom says that if one kid gets a present the other has to as well. Those kids are in for a shock when they get in the real world and realize you don't get something just for showing up.

The new neighbors get less interesting by the day. First I thought they would be cool, they're 30-somethings, speak English and appear to be born here due to their funny SoCal sounding accents and the guy was patching and painting the garage walls so at least he's got some skills outside whatever tech skills he's got to pay for the house. We thought they might be good to know before they start having kids. Two days later a kid in one of those carriers shows up. Sigh, apparently we missed that boat by about 10 months. Then this morning there was this wailing sound in the courtyard loud enough for even me to hear it. They're moving more stuff in and there is a small child standing there screaming at the top of her lungs. That goes on for 5-10 minutes until they close the garage and drive away. Double sigh.

I'm clearly running out of fun things to do, or motivation to do anything knowing we're going to the hospital every day. At least I got the roof rail inserts painted on the 4runner, had those sitting in the garage for a few weeks now. I've noticed other 4runners like mine have 3 inserts for a total of 5 rails, I only have 4. I don't see attachment points for another set though, so maybe my year is different or they went cheap on the non-limited.

I also broke down and ordered the OEM front mud flaps to finish up the "remove the side steps" project I started on day 3 of owning the thing. I didn't think I really needed the guards other than to complete the look of the side trim but after seeing how much mud flies up on the doors even just driving around in the rain it's clear they do something.

$6 bag of cookies from the hospital. We know what they don't have, the real question is, what do they have?

Work life balance only works if you have some sort of real life. Now that I'm working less I find that I'm also doing less stuff outside work. Just feeling so lazy as of late. Not sure why.

Good news, mom can have food now. Bad news is the cancer is stage 4 and because it's in her vascular system it could be anywhere in her body so it might come back anywhere at any time. Medium news is that there have only been 174 known cases of this type of cancer in the world so they'll be doing a paper on her treatment. Also, I got her this chicken since she can't have real ones now:

Lot more time in the hospital this weekend. Mom is doing better, but the pain meds still make her loopy and sleepy a lot of the time. You can tell they're reducing it but she's still having trouble sitting up due to the weakness in the stomach muscles they cut/moved. Once she's up she can walk around mostly. She's still not cleared to eat or drink anything, so she's a little unhappy about starving for 7 days now but they want to ensure time for the intestines to heal and her body to get rid of some of the fluids it's retaining. She's so swollen everywhere, but it is getting better. They're hoping by Friday she can go home.... well sorta home. She's going to move to a hotel down the road from the hospital for a few days in case anything happens she's close by rather than actually at home. She can't stay with us as she won't be strong enough to climb all the stairs.

We did sneak away to the travel show on Saturday, walked right by this freaking disaster in the making:

New stadium, NO infrastructure upgrades so the roads around the area (some of the worst in the bay) are going to be even worse when people are actually trying to get to/from this thing. Perhaps we'll have moved away before this tax payer funded toy is open.

The travel show was somewhat lame, over half of it was for travel in California. We sorta know about Napa and San Diego, etc. The worst was Yosemite, there were half a dozen or more travel companies running tours and stuff through the park. I was there there in September in 2011 traveling back from Reno (the scenic route) and the place was packed. Looked more like Disneyland than a park, buses, restaurants, cars, trash, stroller parades, etc. Can't imagine how bad it is at the peak now.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though, we did meet people from several African safari places and these guys: http://www.gadventures.com/ Their catalogs look, feel and actually smell just like the Edelweiss catalogs. Must be some sort of standard adventure tour brochure printing and layout methods out there. Anyway, they have all sorts of interesting looking tours and we're likely to try them out in 2014.

It's been a long, long couple of days but I think mom is out of the woods, or at least has found the trail. She's still in the ICU as of today, but it's likely they'll move her to the next level down sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. She's awake some of the time and seems pretty mentally with it considering how much pain and/or pain meds she's experiencing right now. She's a tough old farmer, I'll give her that.

Here is a pic of her entering, hopefully we'll get one of her leaving too. The doctor had some pics of her insides during the surgery showing where they did the graft, where the tumor was, etc. No pictures of the tumor but it was about the size of a nerf football based on the hand waving the doc did. It also had grown some tendrils down toward her spine so they took those out as well. They used 9 units of blood, so basically they swapped out most of it. I said she should be able to drive in the carpool lane alone since she's got parts of other people in here and who knows how many people made up those 9 units of blood. Maybe she can get free bridge toll too.

The hospital is pretty high tech, they give you a tracking number so you can watch your patent's progress through the procedure and don't have to ask the nurse all the time. Also, what's up with the screen on the right, and apparently there are unused icons on the screen on the left.

Dad wanted to get mom an ipad so she could do email and games and stuff but didn't want to fork out the big bucks to get one so I picked up a used 32gb unit for him for $220 of craigslist. It's a gen 1, but really mom is not going to go beyond the basics and I would prefer they didn't have a way to facetime me. It came with a case and everything so all in all it was the best deal on CL. The woman waited in the car while I met the guy in a McDonald's, and when we came out there were 3 SJ PD cars surrounding the store. At first I thought I was getting busted for buying a stolen ipad or something, but then I saw them shaking down some dude by the outdoor tables. He didn't look homeless, but he was sorta crazy looking. I only take the woman to the best places.

Craft project, turning my old broken lamp into a high quality headset holder:

Parents are in town, they're at home now while we're out. Mom is sleeping, dad is going to Lee's to visit for the first time since his retirement. Tomorrow is the big hospital day, I don't think anyone is ready for it.

The "move to NC" project is moving along. Looking at housing, talking to people at work who live there to see if there are jobs for me, the woman is researching licensing requirements and talking to people who have shut down practices, inventorying what needs to be done to the house to prep it for sale (new kitchen counters?), etc. Not sure where it all leads, and we've not pulled the trigger on a move yet, but let's just say the hammer is cocked at this point. My parents are holding off judgment, the woman's dad hasn't said much but her mom is all crying and upset. Apparently a 3.5 hour plane ride to come visit is crippling vs. the 1.5 hour ride or whatever it is now. It's not like the drive out, and even if they did, they're retired so who cares if they spend a few days driving and sight seeing on the way. They're not going to run out of time.

Dinner on Saturday went well, we got info from the woman's friends about NC and how if the dude hadn't been transferred out here they would still be there and likely happier. Ouch. I thought they were all pro-CA and wouldn't look back. They didn't like Charlotte but said the RTP area was much better.

Sunday wasn't much, just chores, working on learning to use "Hero Lab" (a software package to create/maintain characters for Pathfinder) and thinking about moving.

I got some recruiter bugging me about a job in south SF for a start-up that needs someone to run their ops/data center team. They wanted a sysadmin background with management skills. Hey, that's me! Building data centers? check. Running large farms? check. Storage experience? check. I'm actually qualified and everything, so I give in and let him submit me, can't hurt to chat and keep my interview skills sharp. Less than an hour later I get the rejection, not what they're looking for. Really? They did have a line in there about needing to know ping pong or Foosball, and I said I wasn't good at either so perhaps they were serious about that. If that's how they hire, it's probably for the best I didn't actually get very far.

Yesterday I went to Apple for a lunch with the old team(s). Those who had gone to other groups and those that have left (which is really just me, that should be telling...) all back in one spot. Gotta say it was über uncomfortable. Everyone was bitching about how everything sucks, how nothing has happened, etc. The projects that were running when I left are all but stalled out. No movement on anything, and apparently no one seems to care. Dbag and John aren't around and their new PMs are spamming people all the time but if you just ignore their email you don't have to do anything. Amazing. So I sucked, and yet somehow a whole department that's just splintered apart and doing nothing but daily fire-fighting for the loudest crier is the way it should be?

Hey look at that, I totally screwed up a sizing config and came up with something that doesn't even work. That's unusual, I'm not used to totally screwing up like that.

Dinner last night with Anna and Loki was pretty good (went to Station 1). We've never touched on any "deep" subjects before during our dinner conversations and I forget just what a SF liberal Anna is. Loki is a real mixed bag, he's more like me than anything else but he too has seen how pointless any discussion around any political or social topic is and has just given up. Kinda sad how the only people left talking are those least qualified to do so.

Tried to hit some balls today based on the lesson I had yesterday, and I think I'm just going to give up. I was making progress I thought (hitting the ball longer and straighter) but now it turns out I've been doing it all wrong and with the "new" way I can't hit shit. I also now somehow can't go back to how I was doing it, so I'm in a worse spot than when I started. I've grooved the wrong swing. Maybe I'll try again in 10 years. It's not like I really have to play with any customers anyway, no one is buying.

Mom sent this picture from the house, I guess there will be some serious risk to their chickens if they get some:

We're going to dinner and the woman says I don't have to dress up so much. I have to remind her this is just what I look like every day, this isn't really "dressed up" as much as it is "work". I don't think she's used to it yet.

I was hoping the phone would catch this sunrise/moon/cloud image with at least some of the impressiveness of it in real life, but alas my mad photo skillz are weaker than my mad golf skillz.

Yesterday I had to do some actual work, get a few ancient filers fired up to test them before shipping them off to a customer for a wacky project. No one was around to see the workspace so racking them on the floor was the easiest thing to do since I can't actually lift them alone.

After how many years (10?) I've finally modified my thumbnail generator to kick out the html code to embed into my journal instead of me typing it out manually every time. Progress comes slowly.