OK this is weird, but I'm sitting in a Starbucks again, same as when I did the last update. You would think I could find somewhere else to journal from by these little scraps of time spent waiting seem to be when the inspiration hits. Especially with how busy it's been the last week with work, travel, etc.

Most recently (ie yesterday) the new dresser the woman ordered months ago arrived. The first one vanished, the shipper lost it. Not sure how you lose a dresser but that's what they're claiming and they shipped another one and knocked some money off for the delay. That made me happy since I didn't think we needed yet another damn piece of furniture in the first place.

Last week one of the geese eggs hatched so we had a baby goose running around the yard getting in trouble with the squirrels and prompting the parent geese to hiss and flap at everything that moved. Then yesterday they just left. The baby can't fly for another few weeks so they must have just walked off. No idea why, but with no angry geese defending the stick pile they were all living in the foxes came in last night and attacked the duck nest that was also in the stick pile. Kristen checked today after we heard some sort of attack last night and sure enough all the eggs are broken and the duck is gone. Circle of life I guess.

More circle of life was the hunt this weekend. A quick little 700 mile drive down to Nowhereville FL for a guided alligator and hog hunt. Pics are on the main page, but the results are in the freezer. I've made up a batch of "pig stick" too, think slim Jim's but made with actual meat instead of whatever chemicals, residue and sawdust they put in commercial sticks. Tasty! Not sure how we're going to cook the alligator. Dawson, the guy I went with who showed up in a few pics on my camera, is going to make an andouille sausage with some of the port and then alligator jambalaya to put it in. Sounds good to me.

Sitting in a Starbucks waiting for customers to show up. I hate these coffee shop meetings, it's so damn noisy in here because it's a coffee shop and not exactly a place to conduct actual meetings. It's what they prefer though so I'll be doing my preso on the laptop trying to hear what's going on over the chatter and the really annoying music. Will marketing every say that blasting music and making people yell at each other is not a feature? Or maybe it's just to get people NOT to sit around drinking coffee, hadn't thought of that.

Anyway, been busy lately with work and fun stuff. The psycho class over the weekend was only OK, although I did get to play around with a crossbow so now I feel like I could order one and make it do something when it arrives. Since the pellet gun thing didn't work out very well for shooting in the yard perhaps the crossbow will. They'll probably work better at the longer ranges I want to shoot at.

We also did the chicken coup tour Saturday and got some ideas for coup design. But do we really need more pets when the yard looks like this:

The gym people were taking pictures of our outdoor yoga class this morning and I got them to email the pics with me in them. I look really angry. It's either the sun in my eyes or that's just how I look all the time. The answer is probably #2.

The woman has some friends staying with us for a few days, they're driving from Florida to somewhere and stopped by on their way through. It's the old security guard chick and one of the doctors from SF General. It's annoying to have people in the house but the woman is making some funky meals for the occasion, like breakfast today being a bacon and brussel sprout frittata:

It looks weird but it was actually pretty good.

Since they were all doing stuff today after breakfast I decided to go for a ride. With nothing on the "to see" list in particular I decided to head to the south coast. The easiest way to go was to follow Hwy 421 until it stops. It wasn't a bad ride, but Unfortunately when I got to the coast it was like all coastal areas. Busy, stinky, run down, lots of traffic, lots of people and when I stopped for a picture, lots of damn bugs. Lame. I spent about 2 minutes at the end of 421 to take the pic and check email and text the woman that I was turning around. If I had more time I would have taken the ferry back across to the mainland instead of the coastal road but I didn't have the time so I just reversed coarse. I went home via I40, which should have been faster but I have no idea if it really is. Traffic was moving fast, even with my speedo reading the Japanese standard 10% high, I found myself doing an indicated 95 in traffic. That's like 88 mph, good thing the flux capacitor wasn't charged up.

Not a lot of APRS coverage between the civilisation centers. That first picture is of a random rest stop I stopped at to get a drink and rest. I'm in horrible riding shape.

When I got back around 4:30pm the woman and I went for a quick walk down the street. Quite a difference between where we walk now and where we used to walk. Image courtesy of google since apparently I have no images of our old street.

Update has been few and far between because I've been working a lot. Customer site visits for installs, setup, architecture discussions, etc. Basically, I've been doing it all while my sales reps are in Vegas for the sales kickoff. It sounds fun, because it's Vegas, but in reality it probably sucks just like Insight does for the SEs. All day lectures, mandatory social events and lame dinners, etc. Boring.

Friday on the way to work this little guy was blocking the driveway at the house. Good thing I saw him and stopped. I probably would have missed him but it was easy enough to just pick him up after the photo and put him on the other side.

Dude at Biogen with all the chickens gave me some eggs on Tuesday during my visit. I don't think they're genetically modified...

On the way to SECU Friday afternoon the 4runner turned over 200k. I managed to get "action shots" while driving and pull over to make sure I got one in focus for 199 and 200. I think this means I only have another 10k before the timing belt service is done (the previous owners did it at 120k instead of the 90k recommendation. Or maybe they did it at 110k and it's due now!!! I better go look at the sticker and see.

Barn electrical is finished. There are more pics on the link on the main page but the short version is that the interior and exterior lights are up, they're wired with 3-way switches so you can turn them on/off from either the goat side or the feed side and that I used waterproof switch covers on the goat side since with the barn door open it's possible they get rain on them. Overkill? Likely.

After yesterday's push to get things done, today was mostly a waste. Touched up damaged paint on the barn, went to a lame ass gun show, got some new work shirts for summer, ate two good meals (one at a fancy trendy deli in Chapel Hill and the other was the woman making chicken tiki Marsala for dinner), did laundry and talked to my parents.

The woman would have done well in the 80's, the jaunty hat fits with her image.

Saw this on the "historic pictures" thing on twitter, the seal to Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Thought it was pretty cool looking. The pic thread is one of the more interesting things on twitter, actually.

Saw this today in FV, the gas station has a vending machine in the middle and you can buy beverages at the pump while you're getting your gas. This is going to be handy in the summer!

At home depot at 7am pickup up roofing material and scaffolding, and returned said scaffolding at 6:30pm. Barn roof is done. Next up is the electrical re-do. I'm impressed with myself that I managed to demo the old roof and slap up a new one alone in a day. I even put some nasty tar stuff over all the nails so there is no chance of leaks.

Way more images on the main page in the "goat barn rebuild" link.

Ah ha! So my Weyland sticker was looking pretty bad, I couldn't get the clear parts not to bubble up so I was going to try to peel it up a little and re-seat it (or just try again with the 2nd sticker in the pack). However, it appears that the clear is _supposed_ to come off there, because now with that part off it looks much better. Oh. Learn something new every day.

Spent all day in a customer data center doing rack-and-stack with a partner SE. He would have been totally screwed without me there. They sent 1 guy to do the work of 3 so without extra hands he would have been working the weekend to make it up. Not fun. We go back tomorrow afternoon to do the actual hookup. No downtime is needed but their change control requires a notification period for anything that could cause an outage and it's possible someone trips over a bunch of cords or something.

Ooh.... wiring. Tomorrow we pop those unattached cables at the top into the chain and add in the rest of the chains in the next two cabinets.