Mostly just wasted the weekend, being slightly social, getting some chores done, etc. It rained most of the time so it was a good time to clean the house. Today we went to my parents to drop off some crap, then spent the afternoon here picking up sticks in the yard that were knocked down by the rains.

I did confirm my hunt date with sneaky, October 10th. Just two weeks away, so I've been practising with the bow more and ordered the broadheads I'll use. I decided to go simple, no mechanicals, no fixed with removable blades, etc. Just old school fixed blade heads. 100gr, same as my field points and I picked up a set of the practice heads as well. Oddly they're the same price as the real thing, but they're dull and supposed to be easier on targets than the actual heads.

Boss man paid me in Taco Bell to help him pick up this sofa he found on CL. Can't help but help someone if they offer tacos. I really like his new pickup, but it's really small inside.

Busy little expanse of time. I was in Charlotte for a few days doing some training with one of the subject matter experts on VMware. We're setting me up with my own little VM lab so I can run vcenter 6.0, setup a few ESX hosts, load some of our VMware tools, etc, etc. I like knowing how things work, makes it easier to sell when you know how things really go down vs. just the marketing BS.

I stayed with my boss at his place in SC and in between him and the office is a big gun store. They had bricks of 22 ammo for $24. It's not been that cheap anywhere for years and years so I picked some up. There was a limit, but my boss bought some on my behalf, and I've helped spread the love by selling off half of what I got. I've made lots of friend selling this stuff at my cost.

They have this in the Charlotte office. Wonder if it was made here or if it was shipped out from Sunnyvale. Seems more like a local thing, they're really into beer here (probably because all the wine sucks).

Back home, I got to sit in some traffic thanks to this minor wreck. Chick rear ended a guy while waiting to turn left into the shopping center. Couldn't have been going fast since neither car really looked damaged but they had everything blocked off and traffic snarled like it was a 50 car pileup. Little town, guess they have to get excited by the small stuff.

Saturday early morning I went up to some land owned by the forum guy who tried to sell me his truck. Apparently the doesn't hold a grudge about me not wanting it. He's got a 250 yard range setup with steel targets, and a pistol pit with steel, and a hunting cabin and who knows what else. There were several other people there and over the course of 3 hours I think I fired 15 rounds total. We chronoed the 50, some 308 loads I made and mostly just socialised. I'll go back up at some point and we'll shoot for real and take advantage of his pistol setup, but for now it was just a get to know you sorta thing. They enjoyed the 50. Me, meh. Just more to clean.

Saturday night was date night and the woman and I went downtown to Buku for dinner. It's a "global street food" restaurant that's in Red Hat's building. Mostly it's just random good stuff. The duck larb was a new dish for me, and it was avaiable mild/medium/hot and we had to get it mild for the woman but I can see how it would be super good with a little heat to it. It's kinda got a Vietnamese pickled veggie thing going on with the duck added. Her ramen was super tasty as well as my salmon. The Mexican corn? Gross. She really like it and it was her pick so I guess that's good.

After the street art walk before dinner, then dinner, we headed to the amphitheatre and saw "Lord of the Rings in Concert". Basically they play the movie without the music track and a live orchestra and several choirs and soloists play/sing the whole thing. Several times I totally forgot they were there just watching the movie and then you look below the screen and see like 300 people performing to create the music.

It was an amazing night, like 72F and no bugs. Because we're not a big city, parking was $5 and about 100' from the venue. Crazy.

Today I setup my laser targeting system a bit more. It's software that uses a web cam to let you define targets of any size/shape and then tracks hits against them with a laser. Taking my dry fire to the next level. Or something. Making the scaled down IDPA targets is amusing, but they're still too easy to hit even at 1/10th the scale because I'm only standing 5 yards away. I've got two target zones on each, the head and the center 0 ring, with everything else defined as "track but do not score".

Another stealth photo for Vareck. For some reason there have been some random hot chicks wandering around the office the last few days and several have been wearing what looks like club wear. Tight dresses, stripper heels, etc. Not sure why exactly, but it's fun to look at.

Tomorrow I'm off to Charlotte for a few days of training and getting setup in our SE lab out there so I'll have my own VMs and access to real filers and FC infrastructure so I can do my own learning/tests/demos as needed. Going to really help me get a handle on things.

Holy crap what an amazing day out today. 78F, 40% humidity, sunny with a light breeze. It's like CA weather. Maybe the brutal summer is behind us? Will we have awesome weather for a week before it gets cold? Who can tell?

It was so nice outside I took a walk by the lake behind the office this morning.

Plate showed up for the truck today as well. Tags are still temp, the real sticker should be here shortly.

Ugh. Got to the range to break in the new G41 house gun and also to put some rounds though the LCP since I keep finding it making it's way into my pocket in place of the G26 IWB. While in SC on Thursday for work I picked up some 100gr 380 reloads cheap from Palmetto State Armory. Unfortunately the LCP does not like them, had a lot of double feeds and some failures to extract. I didn't have much other 380 ammo along so I couldn't tell if it was just this or if something has gone horribly wrong with my previously 100% reliable pocket 380.

Good truck news. With the new tires and wheels on I put the old set on craigslist and sold them today for $300! A guy in Sanford wanted them, he picked up a silverado with some "shit" wheels on it and he wanted to put it back to stock. Maybe I should have charged more? In any case, they're gone and with that I'm calling the wheel project complete with huge savings on my side. New tires and upgraded rims for $500 out of pocket? Can't beat that.

I also noticed that the front logo on the truck was a little faded and that replacing them with a blacked out version is one of the things the cool kids do. It was trivial to get the badge off and clean it up and hit it with some BBQ black. It might be too grey when viewed in full sun like this picture, but otherwise it looks black. Meh, I don't have any other black paint.

Yesterday the woman showed at 2' and came in 2nd overall in points in her division which had 17 people in it. 2' isn't all that impressive compared to the 3'3" or 3'6" she was jumping before but at least she's back on the horse and getting stronger with the new hip. Her goal is to get up to 2'6" or so and call it good. She's getting old, as are we all.

Saw this van at the horse show. Pretty bad ass if you ask me. Not stealth, but still cool.

The woman made some cream of mushroom soup with a bunch of the mushrooms from the logs and herbs from the herb box and it turned out really good. It looks like barf though, so I didn't bother with a picture. It's hard to make brown soup visually appealing.

Trying to think if there is anything else to report for the weekend. Got the lawns mowed, and I need to sharpen the mower blade before next time. Got the generator fuel supply refreshed thanks to a new funnel that lets me dump fuel into the truck easily. Laundry? Really stretching so I'm thinking that's all she wrote for today.

A selfie from Monday's trip to Bass Lake. We're not looking so good there; I blame it on the angle. The woman was suffering from a head injury, somehow she managed to hit herself in the forehead with the car door at the auto parts store. I think it was because we were parked on a steep upward angle which put the edge of the door further back than usual. Or she's just klutzy.

Vareck apparently put a bunch of junk in a storage unit in 2006 and is just now cleaning it out. He found a bunch of old pictures from a trip we took to a lake, presumably the one I used to go to in high school. I've kinda changed in the last 20 years, but then again, I still have those ammo pouches and that goofy fanny pack holster thing.

I picked up a Glock 41 the other day, going to swap it out for the XDm as the house gun so I'm training, carrying, competing and defending all with Glocks. I guess I'm a fanboi now for real, although I don't go on about how awesome they are. They do have problems, but I guess they're problems I can live with. The transformation of the pistol collection is pretty much complete, the Kimber is the only metal frame semi-auto I have left. Oh no wait, I have the Browning .22 target pistol from college still, that's all metal.

My boss's boss was having trouble with the stereo in his truck, the wires in the rear suicide doors were just not quite long enough to reach the terminals on the new speakers he put in so if you opened the doors all the way the wires would pop off. He wanted to know if I could solder the wires right onto the terminals. While I could, that's not really going to solve the issue, it's just gong to make something break instead of pop off. Instead I offered to make him some extension cables for the wires so he could retain the factory wiring untouched and not have the terminals come off. I had some female spade connectors already on short pieces of wire left from the solar project, they were actually extra leads inside the relay sockets that I removed to simplify the wiring harness. All I had to do was solder the spades on the other end and heat shrink everything, then grab some little plastic stand-offs so he could screw that into something inside the door to strain relief the wires.

Craigslist find, GMC wheels off a 2008 with nearly new Goodyear tires that actually match the spare. The dude at the tire shop I had them balanced at said I got a screamin' deal on the set, so that makes me feel better. I just looked it up, and via the Tire Rack having those same tires delivered and mounted and balanced would run me $784. I paid $790 for the tires, wheels and balancing so I basically paid $6 for the rims. Sweet. I do have to get some better lug nuts though, the ones that were behind the plastic caps on the old rims are kinda lame looking.

For my get-home bag I decided to pack the lighters better. I had to vacuum pack more mushrooms so it was easy enough to do these as well. I didn't really do a 'full vacuum' on them because I doubt the valves are designed to work at negative pressure (although they can go on planes and not explode) but just a little air sucked out is good enough.

First attempt at the anti-coon wire failed! Little bastard figured out how to climb up the wall past the camera and out into the structure of the wall itself up into the rafters and then around the wire and through where the switch is mounted. I blocked in between the rafters and then stuck this piece of siding over the top of everything. He's not getting in there now. I also moved the camera about 2' to the right so they can't climb up and use it as a seat.

After fixing the feed room stuff, and wiring up the last of the replacement cameras and running to the store for various cheeses we spent the rest of the day cooking. The woman is dehydrating mushrooms from the logs and made a cheese and mushroom filling and I used it to make ravioli using eggs from the chickens. It's the bounty of the barnyard! :)

The bread was a boxed mix I wanted to try as a prep. It doesn't require anything but water so the mix can sit around for a long time. It's not the best home made bread obviously but if I can learn to bake it in a cast iron dutch oven over a fire it would be fun for camping and/or prepping. Any fresh bread after days of sitting in the dark after an ice storm would be welcome.

Got this weird text the other day. Can't tell me who it's from or what's about. Guess it wasn't important.

Shuffled the cameras around in the coop to better make use of the wide angle camera. It was sorta wasted inside the coop just showing us more of the walls so I moved it to the center of the run. After verifying it worked well there, I took out the extension cord I was using and wired in another outlet box closer to where the cams are. Luckily I found a box, receptacle, cover plate and some 14/3 wire in the barn. No trip to Home Depot, just wire it up!

The wide angle cam mounted up high now gives us a full view of the entire run area... well not all of it since you can't see under the coop itself or the ramp area. Gotta figure that one out yet.

The racoons have figured out that if they climb up the wall in the goat barn they can directly attack the big container of cat food stored there. I wouldn't think they could get it open, but they did. Rather than move the food, the woman wanted me to make it so they can't get over the wall. Sigh. More wire. Fortunately my parents had some left over 1/2" square wire left from their garden project and I had tossed it in the back of the truck when I was over there last so I used that and once again didn't have to go to Home Depot before starting a project. Having a stock of random farm stuff is starting to rock. Now if I could just lay off the projects for a bit.

The woman painted the log holder and loaded it up. Looks like it will work.

Crazy couple of days, just doing work stuff for the most part. I did manage to bang out the log holder for the mushroom logs on Sunday. By standing them up on end individually it makes them easier to take down to soak and provides more area for the mushrooms to sprout. Or so we're told. I figure I'm in this thing maybe $40, most of that is the lag bolts I used to put it together. Dad was convinced that deck screws wouldn't hold up long term because they're not made for lateral loads. I guess most decks don't have pressure in any direction other than "down".

I can really see the value in a table saw if you're going to build stuff a lot. I did all the measuring and fitting for those cross braces and wanted to cut them exactly right, but only had a (mostly dull now) skill saw. Measure twice, mark, verify, then eyeball it freehand with a saw. It works, but it's not as nice as it could be. Fortunately the mushrooms won't notice.

Today I put up the replacement coop cam, and may have to re-think how I've got them deployed. The Foscam C1 is better than I thought and I've got it in a dumb place that doesn't maximize the use of it's abilities. I may have to move the power and network from the run into the coop so I can use the wired cam in there and then use the wifi C1 out in the run where it's wide view will let us see more of the critters at once.

Why doesn't ispell know "maximize"? It's a real word, even spelled correctly.

I'm sitting in a Chick-fil-a eating lunch and working and just now noticed something amusing/interesting. There are tables of reasonably hot chicks (presumably over from the local community college) dressed pretty casual, and then there are a bunch of breeder moms who are slightly older than the college chicks, dressed the exact same way, but now over-weight by 20-30 pounds and towing kids around. It's like a time lapse view. Do they see their future? Gone from hottie to bedraggled in just a few short years?