Look! And award! (no bonus comes with it, so it's sorta lame).

Didn't have to drive to Charlotte yesterday which was a nice surprise. Customer was painting his house and "working from home" so he wanted to do it via WebEx. I tend to talk too fast when I can't read anything from my audience but otherwise it went well and the extra re-work on the preso paid off.

It's after 6:30pm and I'm still working. It's like I have a regular job or something! The drive out to Pinehurst and back used up a lot of time, but I'm finally ready with my preso for tomorrow... in Charlotte. Another 324 miles on the Prius.

The woman dropped her phone at the barn and the screen exploded, OK, cracked somewhat. It still worked and the display itself looked OK and since she's not close to upgrade time she took it to one of the local cell fixer places. 15 minutes and $80 later she's back in business. Good to know those cell fixer places are real.

The best part about Friday is a salt bagel with light garden herb spread and a can of cheerwine. Makes it all worth it.

This week Friday was extra special because Thursday I went to one of the boot camp classes at the gym, and it's harder (cardio wise) than anything I've done yet to date. I knew I was going to be sore, but really wasn't prepared for the level of dead tiredness and immobilising muscle fatigue. Going to Krav Thursday night probably didn't help either but it's going to be the new routine. Yoga Tuesday/Friday, Krav double on Tuesday, single on Thursday, boot camp Thursday... so with Wednesday the official rest day that just means I need to come up with a Monday routine at the gym.

It wasn't raining today so we got out in the yard and did some cleanup. We cut a bunch of vines that were choking out some trees in the front, pulled out a bunch of barbwire and metal fencing that was along the back line, and removed the (or part of the) invisible dog fence the woman found from 2 owners ago. The plan was just to pull it out of the paddock area so the phantom critters wouldn't find it but once I got to pulling it out of the ground I just kept going, and going and going. It was crazy long, almost 500' according to the estimate from google maps of the path I plotted. The upside is that it's 24 gauge stranded copper wire in a nice direct burial jacket. No idea what I'll use it for but it sounds like antenna radials or something to me.

With the rain yesterday we didn't get the duck house painting finished until today, so no float test yet. The woman got fancy and put the brand on the house, and I got the foam glued to the base of the platform. I have serious doubts about that platform, but I guess we won't know if I'm right or not until next weekend.

Saturday I met up with Wyatt (guy from work) and sold him Vareck's Sig228. I hadn't actually fired it in the 12+ years I've had it so I figured it was a safe one to sell off knowing I had to sell a gun to buy a gun. My plan was to get a G17 to use for the pistol matches so that I'm firing the same platform as my carry gun. I'm also going to ditch the 12 gauge as the HD gun and use the G17. I don't train or practice with the pump gun at all, so it's dumb to think I would use it well under stress. Since I train yearly, shoot monthly, and dry practice weekly I feel pretty confident that if I needed to I could use a pistol well inside the house. The G17 with a light on it will fill that role just fine.

FG&G was actually out of new Gen 4 G17s (except for the 'dark earth' color which looks like baby poop), but they had 2 used Gen 4 black models. One was $30 more than the other and the guy said it's because it had the factory night sights. Huh. He let me play with it and take it apart and it looked like it hadn't been fired. My carry G26 looks way worse than this thing did and after about an hour of dry practice anything new would look more worn than this "used" gun would. The guy said they've had a lot of un-fired pistols being traded in. Guys got stuff for the holidays, tried it, didn't like and and swapped it for something else.

I told him it would be cool to have the night sights on my G26 for carry and my regular sights on the G17. He offered to swap them while I filled out the paperwork so I bought it. I ended up paying less than new, got a brand new looking gun with all the papers/box/mags that come with a new one and night sights on my G26. I'm pretty happy with all of that.

I spent about an hour last night doing dry practice, drawing, changing mags, etc and it feels pretty much like the G26 with the xgrip adaptors, only it's easier to manipulate because of all the extra handle. I used to think the G26 front sight was too "fat", but now that it's another 1" away from the rear while riding on the G17 it looks normal again. You wouldn't think that extra radius helps, but it does.

I had thought about going Springfield all the way, getting an XDm in 9mm but then I would need to get an XDs or something to carry in 9mm and I don't like the XDs in 9mm. Too heavy and too low a capacity for what it is.

Today's baking experiment is peanut butter pumpkin muffins. I wanted more protein in my breakfast and peanut butter is a way to do it, but I don't really like the stuff except in candy. We'll have to see if these are edible.

We took some enchiladas the woman made over to my parents for dinner tonight since mom isn't feeling so good after starting chemo this week. Mom is doing OK, but the next few months are going to suck.

I brought a few of the muffins over and we tried them. They're pretty dense and didn't 'puff up' like a normal muffin but there is no flour in them so I'm not sure what the baking powder had to 'puff'. They're more like a dessert bar, but edible so they'll work. Could use more cinnamon.

Earlier I assembled the fancy porch swing my parents gave us (since it's too big for their porch) and found I was missing 1 washer and the chains to hang the swing from the support. Dad found a few hook/chain setups in the garage and didn't know what they went to, so there is a chance they're the missing parts. They don't quite look like what I was expecting, but I bet I can make them work. That's for next weekend though.

I didn't remember to take a picture of the swing setup, but here is a shot from the security camera of me moving it down toward the pond. Good enough for now.

Also noticed a lot of footage of this little guy every night between midnight and 3am making a little trip down toward the pond. It's not as obvious in the still shot but if you look at his waddle in the video you can tell it's not a cat. Raccoon is my guess by the tail.

With the day off on Monday I made up for lost time on Sunday (visiting mom in the ER after a blood clot issue that fortunately they cleared up) I cranked out this duck house:

The plan is to float it in the pond and tie it down so it never comes near the edges so the ducks have somewhere to nest that the fox can't get to. I have no idea if it will work but it was a chance for me to experiment with building smaller scale things out of wood so that if/when I have to work on chicken coups or similar I've got some idea how to build it. The removable front and tip up lid are totally unnecessary for this but it would be necessary for cleaning in a coop. The only major issue I ran into was not having the right length of screws (1" was too short, 2.5" is was too long) so I had to use 1.5" nails in a lot of places I didn't want to.

There are more construction images on the main page.

I made the mistake of letting the Nexus 7 update to android 5.0.2 from 4.4.x which has been pissing me off for a few days now. It was totally unusable, so slow that it took 30-45 seconds to open an ebook in the kindle app and several seconds just to turn a page. The net is full of suggestions on how to solve this, many include how to go back to 4.4 but that requires a full wipe and reinstall. Guess someone at google took the apple approach and didn't bother to test on anything but the latest hardware. After turning off all the features and deleting half my apps it's back to somewhat usable. Still lags behind compared to before, but I guess that's the price you pay for NO NEW FEATURES. You would think I would learn but apparently I'm just dumb like everyone else. I've been pretty happy with the tablet and android in general up to this point, but if I have to replace it I won't buy another android device. At least apple just cuts you off when you don't have the hardware to run something vs. the android method of constantly nagging you to upgrade only to brick your device.

On a positive tablet note though I've been playing "sim city" for a week or so now. People have said that it's impossible to get beyond level 10 without paying real USD for in-game stuff, but they're wrong. It's not impossible because I'm doing it, I'm at level 12 now. What it is, is boring. If you expand at the rate the game lets you, you won't have enough money to buy power/water/sewer for all these "free" housing things you setup, so your sim people will be unhappy and unlike in real life if the people are unhappy they don't pay taxes. No money coming in, no way to pay for services, so you're basically stuck with the only way out being to pay actual USD to get in-game money to buy services.

Seeing how that was shaping up in the early levels I decided to just ignore expansion and work on building up services first while people were happy and you have money coming in. You wait and wait and wait to collect enough then buy surplus services, then build the houses. It works, but it's boring to sit around for days not playing while you're waiting for in game money to build up. So, it's not impossible, it's just not fun to game the game.

I don't think I listed it anywhere, but I came in 29th out of 56 people in the league on Monday night (even being so tired after working on the duck house all day). Getting better.

I've set my MBP to sleep at 11pm and wake at 6am to save power. If I had a spinning drive in here anymore I would never do that but I figure the SSD won't die the same way a spun-down HDD would. Now, the fans... will they die? Who knows?

Yesterday was not a good day, mom ended up in the ER with some crazy pain that turned out to be related to new blood clots forming. They ended up in her legs, not her lungs/heart/brain so she didn't die and they're treatable with blood thinners. So now she's got that on top of starting her new chemo on Thursday. Going to be a rough couple of months while she goes through that again.

The woman wanted this old seed planter thingy in the yard gone and mom didn't want it for yard art but our neighbours did. He's already got several of the old farm implements around his yard as decorations and was happy to get this thing. He didn't want to just "have" it though, he wanted to trade so the woman picked up a nice cedar log which she claims she'll use as part of a teeter-totter for the goats. Yea. Sure. Who's going to be building that?

With the water worry in the basement I decided to finally build my ammo can holder. It was a quick project and used up the last of the deck screws, but now the cans won't get wet if the carpet starts wicking water everywhere.

The NYC trip has now morphed into a DC trip. Still taking the train, it's just a shorter ride for our first train adventure and since we just kept talking about going to museums we figured I should see the granddaddy of all museums in DC instead. There is still plenty of foodie stuff and th e hotels are not as expensive. NYC is stupid expensive and I could just not justify the prices.

Speaking of hotel prices though, the woman found a hotel she wanted to stay at but while we were researching the prices went up $40/night even though we had a tentative reservation scheduled. She decided to keep looking and released the reservation. Two days later they sent her a promo email offering rooms for $60/night less than before... so stalling actually got us a cheaper rate. She's locked those in now though so we have our train tickets and hotel reservation and now she's just got to work on the restaurants.

With the major downpour the other day the basement started leaking. The carpet was all wet over by the ammo (save the ammo cans!) and there was a mini mud slide by the dirt area. It was pretty obvious where it was coming from, and two days of running fans and the dehumidifier later we're down to dry everywhere except the entry point. Looks like the water seal between the concrete footing and the cinder blocks has failed. That spot is 3' below grade on the outside of the house in the front so it's going to be a major digging project in the spring to get at it. Guessing the neighbour's backhoe will come in handy once again.

Finally got off my butt and started prepping things to take to work for breakfast. Baked up some muffins and cut up salami and cheese so now it's all just grab and go on the way out the door. Not exactly health food, but at least it's not from a vending machine. It's a start.

Cold on Thursday and Friday and it's been warmer today but the pond is still iced over. Hope this nonsense is over soon. We went for a walk this afternoon and it was only 36F I think. We did run into the neighbour who has all the chickens and he gave us some eggs. The dude is a professional handyman... so that's going to come in really handy when we want to do stuff that's beyond my abilities (or desire) to do.

A side effect of the cold is that the deer are around more looking for handouts. The woman has been feeding them 2x as much in the mornings and a bonus 1x feeding in the afternoon and still they come around snooping. There were 15 at once running around out there but I was only able to get pictures of 10 but you get the idea.

Today I made up a batch of ravioli and using the scrap dough I made up some "chef's special" scraps so we could try it without cutting into the nice looking ones I made. This dough recipe was different than I usually use, it was from Michael Symon's cookbook. It uses a LOT of egg yokes and much less flour than the other recipe and you run it to the maximum setting on the pasta rollers instead of one off the max. It's different, both in how it works and how it tastes, but it's best feature is supposed to be that it doesn't require manual kneading. I dunno, I might go back to the other recipe next time.

I also made some sourdough bread to take to lunch tomorrow. It's part of my prepper supplies, there are no wet ingredients required other than water and something to keep it from sticking to the pan (so I used olive oil since that's in the prepping supplies). I forgot about it while I was resting so it sat for an extra 1.5 hours before baking. Oops. It's way too flat now but we'll have to see how it tastes. If it tastes OK then I want to make it again using the cast iron dutch oven instead of a baking sheet and will try to cook it over an open fire instead of in the electric oven. Scary! It needs to be warmer outside for that to work though, I'm pretty sure it won't work right out in the open if it's freezing.

With the damage (hopefully temporary!) to my elbows I've switched from doing push-ups in the morning and evening to doing sit-ups. Started with 20 per set and will increase 1 per day just like I did with the push-ups. So far I'm up to only 27 but it won't be long before I'm doing 50+... and hopefully my abs catch up because right now it's painful just sitting around.

Work has another service sorta like the book library, this one is "books 24x7" and they specialise in executive summaries of books. You get blast through a whole business book in 10-15 minutes with a really concise summary. That's pretty cool, I've wanted to read more and now I can do 1 book per day rather than just a part of a chapter before bed.

I'm really digging this VMware class. You can tell I'm getting it because I'm causing problems... using NFS data stores instead of local, moving things around, trying to do things before the book tells us to, etc. You know, having fun with technology.

What's not going to be fun is fixing my parents wireless. Dad can't remember the new password I set on it and he lost the paper it was written down on. No choice at this point other than doing a factory reset and reconfigure the thing again. While I'm there I think I'll put a linux box on their network so I can host files from their zippy fast cable connection. :)

First yoga class after the break... wow do I feel horrible. Guess sitting on my ass loading ammo and watching TV for a week was a "bad idea" in terms of flexibility. Tonight is the first Krav class, that's probably going to be worse.

Ordered my case of ammo for January (ordering 1 case per month to pace myself) and looked up what the hunting license in Arizona will runs me ($20/day for small game and fishing for our of state residents so that's not too horrible).

Oh crap, I started an apt-get upgrade after downloading the packages earlier and I forgot just how slow the pi board really is. This thing may not finish by the time I head home for the day... so hopefully it won't kill the system when I have to stop the upgrade midway through the run. Didn't think that one through.

In a VMware vsphere class all week and it starts at 9am each day so I can still go to the gym. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's the week after new years so the gym is packed with tourists getting in the way and wasting time. Since all these new years idiots aren't paying to go to the gym they die out really quick and things get back to normal around mid month so it's not as bad as it could be. I wonder how full the yoga classes will be?

Sunday we went to Costco and in addition to the usual stuff we found some wines to try. We had the NZ pinot last night with dinner... and I thought it was horrible. The woman thought it was OK and said it would go well with cookies so we made some and she was sorta right. The cookies did cover over most of the harshness of the wine, but it's still a bust I think.

The woman doesn't like fish and I don't like how it stinks up the house so in order to eat more of it at home I'm going to have to learn to grill it outside. I managed to not incinerate the first two fillets I practised on and both were edible. I've very little experience cooking on charcoal, that's going to change over time though.

My cheapie scope showed up on Saturday and I got it mounted up with the slightly too tall rings I already had. I could get another set and mount it 1/4" lower but I think it's OK for now. This scope seems nicer than the one on my .17 and if it is I'm going to switch them around which is why I won't want to invest in more rings until I figure out where the scopes ultimately land.

The in-laws kids got me a 5 pound bag of spree for giftmas and I don't think I'll eat it that fast so I had to break it up and pack it for storage.

I've named one of the theoretical goats "taco" because there was a sign at the goat farm that said "goat tacos". Get it? Anyway, in one of the new cookbooks we got it had a recipe called Tacos de Chivo (goat tacos) and I said "ah, taco now has a show name!". Maybe it's too much of an inside goat/horse show inside joke.

We also spent some time this weekend working on travel plans for the year. So far I've got a trip to PHX to go rabbit hunting and visit the in-laws (yea, that's as crazy as it sounds), a train trip to NYC for various things (food, museums, etc), a motorcycle tour to Tennessee for the NRA convention that I missed last year, and the woman's family doing a huge ass beach vacation. Time to get out and see the world again after focusing on the house setup for so long.

The HVAC seemed to be running a lot more than necessary this morning, and when I went outside I noticed this. The heat exchanger / compressor thingy was totally iced up. It was still running but how much heat could it be extracting from the ambient air when it's surrounded by ice? I thought that at some point it would give up on the external compressor and just run 100% on the 'emergency' strip heating inside the blower unit. I was either wrong, or something is not quite right with the HVAC again. I've left it off all day and now the temp is up to 42F outside so the ice is melting away. The house has gone from 63F down to 60F over the course of the last 5 hours I've had it off.

With the woodpile crash still sitting there looking at me I decided to bust out the chainsaw and splitting maul and split and re-stack all those rounds. By cutting a big X in the hardwood rounds with the chainsaw I was able to split them into 4 pieces, usually with just a few whacks of the 16 pounder. Some were still too wet and/or hard and/or big for me to split by hand so I went ahead and split them with the chainsaw just to get it done.

The results of the pistol match on Monday are out, actually have been for a while I just forgot to write it up. I was 38 out of 64-ish people. There were 4 DQs and some people have no score but there were at least 64 who posted scores at all. 4 DQs is pretty bad, you have to do something stupid to get a DQ (flag yourself, shoot the walls, break the 180 rule). Jesse came in 11th and if he had made one more solid hit it would have been in 7th, so competition at the top is pretty close. One would expect him to do well though, usually when he's shooting stuff it's shooting back, and as he points out usually in the dark with sand everywhere. He spends more time jumping out of plans now vs. shooting people in the sand so I imagine his skills are going to fade at some point. Although I would think they make special forces guys train all the freakin' time.