At the credit union working on the POC. Well not really working, mostly just babysitting. There was a bit of excitement, one of the 3rd party vendor dudes plugged a 110v power strip into 220v (via an adaptor he brought with him) and it exploded in a most spectacular way. It also took out the switch we were using and of course the credit union doesn't have a replacement so I ran over to "tiger direct" to get a cheapie switch to get us back on schedule.

People talk smack about tiger direct but the store I went to was fun. It was like a fry's exploded and they picked up the best parts and left the rest. No lucky bamboo or puppets or kids toys but a ton of random electronic stuff and more oddball networking widgets and USB things than you could find in an actual fry's. Prices seemed OK on what I looked at, but I didn't have time to actually shop for another other than a $40 gigE switch.

The whole region is bracing for a crazy snow storm, even the neighbours called us to ask if we would be OK when the power went out. It's going to get really, really cold if the power goes out. We don't have a very large stockpile of wood yet.

Other than getting the date wrong, I finally got un-lazy and started recording my circuit workouts:

At least this way I can actually remember what I did last time and start to move the weigh up over time.

My left thumb was feeling sorta numb yesterday and I had assumed it was just due to all the vibration of the chain saw but it's still feeling strange today. Could I have pinched something? There is no cut or anything obvious and it would have to be a pretty big cut to get through the gloves anyway, so what's up?

I found the scrap of paper with my windows 2012 server VM password on it. Woo! Back in business.

I was using a link to Kenny's old, old, old pre-Seattle ISP web page to get to his real page and apparently that old ISP has some sort of issue right now. Guess it's time for me to update the link and remove that old hop.

The "snow" that delayed schools and cause various closures for two days last week. Two days! As you can see the weather was cold but not exactly overcast after the big storm.

Yesterday was spent making pasta, lots and lots of pasta. I made a double batch, half cheese and half veal/pork ravioli and then a full batch of just regular fettuccine noodles. Doesn't sound like much, but it took a ton of time and after we had the neighbours over for dinner (pasta of course!). The marinara sauce was home made as well, but it's never all that good. Better than you can get in a store but not as good as we've had in some restaurants. Gotta work on that.

I like this pic, the woman trying to get the air out of the bag for freezing. Redneck food saver...

Before the pasta making we ran some quick errands including getting me some new ties. Not that I don't like wearing 90s throwbacks but I want to try to look at least semi-presentable to the SECU guys next week. Two days on site doing POC testing, all wearing a tie.

Today we spent the morning cutting down more dead trees and more sugar gum trees in the paddock area. We got the woman some flagging tape so she could just mark stuff instead of following me around trying to point to things. Worked pretty well, I could just run the saw constantly and not have to stop and stand around while she made decisions. I ran two tanks of gas through it today and got most of the clearing done. There were 2 large trees beyond my ability to drop without assistance, going to wait for dad to help me with those.

After 4 or so hours of yard work I went to the range to verify the zero on the rifle I'll use next month and to try out the new full size XDm that's going to replace the Kimber. The rifle was still right on in spite of the new muzzle brake, having the scope unmounted then remounted again and having the stock disassembled and reassembled with new torque settings on all the mounts. Guess that precision machining is actually worth something.

The XDm is about what I expected from a modern striker fired pistol. Ergos are fairly good, if not quite as good as the 1911 because of the wider grip. Trigger is garbage, mushy, vague and with a gritty break. (maybe it gets better with use?). Accurate though, and recoil is mild. Basically, it's good enough and will be a good "big brother" to the XDs. Combat pistols aren't usually fired for accuracy but I ran some cheap reloads against plates at 30 feet. XDm on the right, XDs on the left. Way easier to shoot that big pistol with the longer sight radius... wonder how well I would have done with the 5.5" barrel target gun?

Tim emailed me, my XDm is in. Sweetness. I put a purchase permit in my bag this morning just in case he really did get it in 1 day like he thought he might. As soon as my 3pm call is over I'm headed over to pick it up. Then, I'm done buying stuff. I promise!

OK, I get it that's really freakin' cold out there (17F right now) but they delayed schools and stuff again this morning. It snowed a tiny bit (and didn't stick) 2 days ago people, no reason to freak out now or continue to freak out. There hasn't been any rain, there is no ice. It's just cold. On the plus side the roads aren't congested with 1000s of school busses driving around picking up 1 kid at a time.

I'm using the Cisco "soft phone" on my mac instead of an actual desk phone and I have to say I like it a lot. First, my desk phone is always with me, and second I can use any headset or audio setup I want. That means I can speaker phone it out the mic/speakers in the mac itself or use my fancy Sennheiser headset that is 1000x better than the POS headset you're forced to use with the actual physical Cisco desk IP phones. The only downside I've found so far is it's hard to dial numbers on the keypad on a keyboard. It should be the same, but the keypad on a phone is upside down compared to the keypad on a computer keyboard and it takes mental effort to dial phone numbers like that. You wouldn't think it would but it does.

Last night we went with one of Kristen's new associates to the Little Hen to do their "restaurant week" tasting menu. It wasn't bad, but just like last time some things were not seasoned correctly. I had the sweet potato and carrot soup which was good (spicy but lacking salt!), the duck confit (awesome, best duck I've had in a long long time) and the chocolate torte (average). The woman got the charred beets and wouldn't share so I have no idea how good it was, the gnocchi (pretty good but the mushrooms weren't cut correctly for the dish I don't think) and the sawdust pie (no idea what it really is but it wasn't bad).

I hate to admit it but I got screwed on an ammo buy this week as well. I paid an outrageous sum for two cases of .45, and then by dumb luck found them significantly cheaper somewhere else. Somewhere known for screwing people on prices, shipping and back orders. I wasn't expecting the stuff to be 20% cheaper elsewhere when I had to search for days to just find it 5% cheaper than the main source (ammoman.com). Sigh. Lesson learned... so to average it out I ordered some from the cheap place too. Dollar cost averaging, baby! Or at least that's what I told the woman. I now have enough ammo to actually go shoot some, so I need to stop talking about guns and shooting and just go do it and get back to normal. Too much time and attention on gun stuff lately, it can't be healthy.

SAN architecture class all day today and tomorrow. It's "virtual live" so at least I'm able to sneak off to the bathroom as needed. :)

Woo, extra day off work. Spent it taking down the old busted paddock fence and dropping a few trees. The old fence came down pretty easy with a little application of chain saw! VROOM! Unfortunately I put a dirt splotch on the headliner of the 4runner because I was loading the wood into it to haul it to the burn area and one of the boards flipped up. Doh. SUVs make lousy pickup trucks.

Also, another batch of deer jerky with the meat that Jesse gave me.

Come on CA, stop being stupid. I realise you can't process the first few change of address forms I sent in, I mean I know it's hard since you have to use paper forms and have nothing on-line, but once you get my address changed stop sending me vehicle renewals out of state and stop asking me to register to vote. My vote didn't count when I lived there so.... wait, illegal voting is what CA loves so maybe that's why they sent me another registration form. Oh wait, it's in English, never mind. Just a mistake, someone hasn't figured out how to filter non-CA addresses out of a list. I know it's tough.

Sorting ammo, trying to break out all "misc" boxes and sort them into actual calibers now that I have room and a few moments of spare time. Not sure why I'm doing it though. I do like finding al these old OSU era reloads. Been dragging these boxes of 9mm around for 20+ years now. What I can't figure out is what was I reloading 9mm for in '93? I guess the high power?

Last gun related thing in a while (I hope!) was that I went to that range that's accepting members and did their initiation class. The range is a little primitive, OK it's a lot primitive, which is fine. What's not fine is that they don't have any time frame on when they'll get their 1000 yard range up and going. The guy said it could be 1 year or 3 years or 5 years. With nothing over 200 yards I can't see why I would want to join and have to drive for an hour to shoot. Maybe the public stuff gets too busy in the summer, but I guess we'll see and I can join next year if it's a problem locally.

Whoa, no updates in a week. Well, it has been pretty busy. Tuesday I had to go to Greensboro for an all day meeting at Lincoln Financial, then Friday I had to go to High Point to meet with some shipping company. Lincoln is going to be my account, the shipping company I'm just helping out on because they want to do multi-site work and none of the other SEs have actually architected a multi-site setup in real life. I've done it enough times that I have some street cred.

Here is a pic from the Lincoln building of downtown Greensboro. Swanky. OK, not really.

Wednesday caused some excitement, one of the other SEs asked me to cover for him in the briefing center. I had a few hours to prep slides and modify what he had and I presented to the customer. My first time presenting at an EBC, pretty excited about that. Now the people that run the place know I can do these briefings so they'll likely ask me to again based on the positive feedback. That's good for me, something to keep me talking to new people on a semi-regular basis.

The woman wants more light in the living room so after much fumbling around I found a light kit that would work with our fan. It's hard to get what we want, apparently in 2010 the DOE banned using ceiling fans as primary lights (WTF?) so all the light kits are either de-rated or use those stupid candelabra base bulbs which don't put out any light. I found a kit that uses regular base bulbs but was re-rated to use CFLs/LEDs only. From what I can tell the Chinese manufacturer just stuck a "use 9 watt bulbs only" stickers over the top of the old school bulb sockets. Under those shiny stickers are the old 240v 100w max info and the wires feeding the socket is still 14 gauge as before. Basically it's some legal shit. Our government is being stupid once again. The light kit was $24, the 4 LED bulbs were almost $80, 3 for the light plus a matching spare. In theory I shouldn't need a spare because by the time one dies I LEDs will be so cheap I can just replace them all, but if these new CFLs are any indication one of those bulbs will be dead in a month.

Today I went to the range with Jesse. That boy can shoot. He's a special forces medic with several tours in the various wars and is currently doing some crazy HALO jump testing stuff at Ft. Bragg. Basically he's everything I would want to be. Sigh. My not firing anything more than a few rounds of .22 in 2+ years sorta showed when trying to keep up with him. Double sigh. At least the XDs worked very well. Absolutely no drama with the random 230gr ball stuff (reloads and factory) and a half box of the Hornady good stuff. I'll run a few hundred more of the ball through before beating the gun up with a few boxes of the Hornady to make sure it runs at speed. We got to blast a bit at the range today, but nothing like I really want to do to ensure it works under high speed use.

Jesse was happy to get to the range to test out some of the Hornady himself (he's switching over to it as well based on what he's read) and to have me there to talk to the old farts like the range master and whatnot. The range guy was telling me how I needed to carry a spare mag in case I got into a firefight and ran out of ammo or had a problem with the mag in the gun. Once he wandered off Jesse was all "I wonder how many firefights the old man has been in in the last 6 years, I've done my share of killin' and don't need his nonsense". Strange to be hanging out with people who have actively killed people.

Oh, and their house is 112 Bottle Neck trail, vs. our 112 Talicud Trail. Spooky. They're actually in Holly Springs though, a few miles from here.

I actually went to the beer bash at work on Friday, normally I just go home but this week there were enough people I knew in the office to go and be social. I didn't try any of the beers but I did have some of the root beer and it was pretty amazing. They also had "a selection of wines" mentioned in the email. After searching around I found this...

Yea, that's a selection all right. Nothing but the best for Netapp!

Yesterday I mostly did chores around the house, and spent a little time hanging out with the neighbours. I couldn't get into anything too serious because we were meeting new people that afternoon; the chiropractor that is in the office next to the woman and her husband (who works at Netapp in the technical marketing group) came by to check out our place and then we went to check out their new house. They just moved to NC from NY a few months back so the women folk were very interested in how each other would decorate. Their place is more, I dunno, crowded I guess. Lots of BIG furniture which makes a reasonably roomy house feel small and crowded. I just don't know why people do that but I see it a lot so it must be a thing to do. After the butt sniffing we went to the "scary Mexican place" I pass by on my way to work every day. It's painted orange, it must be authentic. It was OK, well actually good for here. Back in CA it would suck but I'll take it for now here until we find something better. There were actual Mexicans working there, and eating there, so why was it so bland???

Today was more chores. I put up the shelves in the puzzle room so the woman can put up her NASCAR cars or ponies or whatever she's doing in that room so she's happy with that. The neighbour came over with his back hoe and we buried my radio cable in about an hour. I had to detach the conduit once so I could pull the cable back out and cut the conduit to length. In theory I could have just been "really careful" and cut around the cable but one nick in that jacket and that high dollar cable would be junk.

Since it's been warm-ish and dry-ish I decided that I would seal the end of the conduit now as well as made a little 1' section out by the antenna to seal up the connection to the antenna itself. I was extra generous with the caulking and after I finished making a mess there I re-caulked the master shower. I saw a couple of spots that looked suspect so I just re-did the whole thing. Probably not necessary but once you have the caulk open, everything looks like it needs caulk.

Yesterday I took my GAP rifle over to the gunsmith recommended by the can vendor to get the thread adaptor installed. He said it might be a week or two before he got to it which I was fine with, but then he went ahead and did it last night so I could get it today. That's nice. The guys shop is full of fun toys and he gave me a bag of 308 brass he didn't want anymore (he shoots 6.5 or 6mm Creedmore only now) which at today's prices was worth more than what I paid him to do the job. Sweetness for me. While I had the action out I disassembled the AICS and painted the skins. I'm tired of everything being black, and I've done green to death so I got a can of tan and gave that a try. I think the black and tan actually looks pretty good, and if it doesn't hold up... I can always just Krylon it again. :)

Tonight's dinner was sushi over by the woman's office, and unlike the Mexican food it was not disappointing. Yea for sushi!

Last night I went to the county range to take the mandatory 2 hour "intro to the range" class. Once you take the class and pass the test (written) you can then use the range. $10/hr for wake county residents. The class is about what you would expect for a government mandated class, as was the test. They offer the class every Wednesday and there were ~40 people in the class last night. No idea if it's always that busy or if this was just the first class of the year so it's all the new years resolution morons out doing their thing. What was totally refreshing were the rules. Everything made sense. How fast can you fire? As fast as you safely can. Do something dumb and they kick you out. Draw from a holster? Strong side only (to prevent sweeping other people) and as fast as safe. Do something dumb and they kick you out. Head shots on targets? Just don't shoot the ceiling. Basically everything was actually around safety and not being PC or assuming that no one can be a responsible adult. So different that CA, yet not all a bunch of dangerous yahoos. They have 100 meter (range was built in the 70s?) bay but only 1 spot to shoot prone. The benches prevent you from doing it just anywhere (lots of concrete in the way). I'm looking forward to trying the .17hmr at 100 with no wind to see how accurate it really can be.

I went by the can dealer's house last night as my can is in. Woo! He thinks it will only take 4 months for the paperwork to go through, not 10, but we'll see. The first shoot day where he brings all the impounded toys to the range is March 29th. I've got to get the threaded brake installed before then. :)

OK that's weird, google is now redirecting me to some random other country when I hit www.google.com. Finland maybe? My IP shows up correctly in the geocache, I've cleaned out the squid cache, blown away cookies, not sure what else I can do. Maybe my windows VM has some virus or something, wouldn't shock me in the least.

Ugh, I had forgotten about people like this... coworkers who ask you what you've been up to over a weekend/break/etc and instead of just listening and/or sharing their equivalent info they have to made all sorts of snide comments. "must be nice to have so much money to be able to do blah" or "who has time to do blah" or "you don't know what it's like to have family obligations and not be able to do blah", etc. I guess they just don't think. Having tons of kids and getting involved with church activities, etc are actually choices that have been made, not just random events that have befallen you. Yea, we buy toys and travel and do stuff because we don't have to constantly pay to feed/clothe/buy crap for kids or tithe to the church or spend all our free time doing laundry and running to little league. Choices people, make 'em, live with 'em, change 'em if you don't like the way it's turning out. That is one handy thing about having gay friends, you can always talk about food/wine/travel/adventure/etc without judgement or nonsense on the side. Well, maybe no "nonsense", if you've seen enough episodes of House Hunters you can see what oddball senses of modern style it seems that "the gays" have. Always so over the top.

Wee, unexpected repairs. The starter in the 4runner has been acting funny sometimes, and by funny I mean it won't spin and start the engine. You give it a few tries and then it works fine. Yesterday it failed a few times, today it gave out when we were leaving the store and with the woman in the car that's a big deal (she freaks out easily about that sort of thing). So... I found the 1 store in town that had one in stock and swapped it out. The Alldata manual says it's a 3 shop hour job. What a ripoff. I swapped it out and the rear O2 sensor in less than 3 hours and I had to find all my tools and unpack them and drive to/from the store to buy the starter. A real mechanic should have knocked that out in an hour or less if he had the part in hand.

I picked up the XDs on Friday, and Saturday I found a few extra mags for it in stock along with a case of 9mm ammo I grabbed to feed the MK9. I only have a few 1000 rounds of 9mm so I don't want to shoot it unless I can replace it. The ammo I got this weekend is better than some of the older stuff I have so I'll keep it and fire through some old reloads I've been hanging on to. Rather stockpile factory ammo if I can.

Also on Saturday we went furniture shopping, the woman has a list of stuff we "need". Some of it I agree with (like a dresser) but some of it I don't agree with. More chairs for the living room I can take or leave; mostly I think it's a waste but since we don't have comfy carpet like we had in Milpitas we can't sit on the floor as easily when company is over. We looked at a ton of chairs I hated, and we finally found some that were super comfy and not hideous. The woman picked out a funky fabric and we ordered them up. This is a mock photo of what they'll look like. To further brighten the room she picked a white shaggy rug out. I actually kinda like it, it's a little funky and if we get tired of it it's easy to replace. She also got some throw pillows made from the same material to replace the current throw pillows on the sofa to tie everything together. Whatever, it makes her happy. What didn't make her happy was me insisting that we don't screw up the every day use of the room just to make it look nice for company. Screw those people, they don't live here, I do.

Assembled some shelving today and started getting all my ammo and reloading crap sorted out. They're rated to 1000 pounds per shelf, I've loaded them up pretty good but they're below max. Wonder how long before they fall apart because I'm using 75% of their rated capacity?

Last thing on Saturday was going out to dinner with one of the woman's new contacts and her husband. He's a special forces medic stationed at Ft. Bragg and seems like a nice guy but also has a bit of real bad-ass in him. Not the annoying swaggering loud mouth type bad-ass, but the actual "I've killed a lot of people but I try to act normal now that I'm in a civilian setting" type bad ass. I'm hoping we can arrange a play date of some sort, maybe a range trip or a day at the clays range or bird park or something.

Pot rack is up, I think I forgot to post that:

A double good day. First, I took a lunchtime jaunt up to a gun store by work that claimed to have 2 XDs .45s in stock and in fact they did. I got the black on black version over the stainless on black because I want to paint it at some point (either tan or green) and the colorful frame looks better with a black slide, I think. Also, it was cheaper. I didn't have my paperwork with me so I'll have to go back tomorrow to actually pick it up but I paid today so it's got my name on it.

The second good item today was the guy with the suppressor emailed me and it's been transferred into his inventory so he can now do the paperwork for me and start the next 10 months of waiting. That's awesome, I think we'll make the cut-off before the DOJ screws with the laws some more to try to cut off the not quite but sorta left leaning states. NC isn't as good as some, but it's better than others. Unfortunately the Wake county sheriff is a douche like the Durham county sheriff so he won't lift a finger to let people own NFA items unless he's forced to, and that's not going to happen.

Yesterday was a long, long day. We finally setup to burn that huge pile of down trees and other junk that's been building up since before we bought the place. In addition to that pile, I used the new chainsaw to cut up some other down trees and the stuff by the antenna and we burnt that, and the neighbours helped out with their tractor to drag all the stuff we collected in the back over and we burnt that too. It's so unfortunate that this wood isn't suitable for the fireplace, I would have much preferred to split it all and stack it in the woodshed.

Speaking of the chainsaw, I went with the Stihl MS250. The shop I went to had Stihl, Husqvarna, Echo and one other I don't recall. This 250 seems to be a good compromise between power and weight, and although it's not the newest of their mid-line it is the lighter of the two. The newer one has spring loaded starting and tool-less chain adjustment. I adjusted the chain this morning with the tool and it's trivial to do so I'm happy I saved the 20% in weight and went with this one (that was also cheaper).

I picked up my pistol purchase permits from the sheriff's office on Monday and went more or less directly to the gun shop... and they were sold out of the XDs in .45. Dammit! They had it in 9mm but I don't want it in 9mm, I already have a tiny 9mm that I plan to carry. Sigh. The dude was less than helpful about telling me when they might get more.

Oh, and this is what 7 hours of cleaning 5+ years worth of pine needle and leaves off the ground looks like: