I got a postcard from Kelly5 from St. Barts just today. It went out April 9th. I wonder if they go to France first? Postage was 3.80ff.

Vareck's upgrade to a secure server prompted me to check my security. It's weak, very weak. Probably should do something about that. I just noticed that when I do a journal update from home, I'm using ssh over an encrypted VPN connection. That's got to be secure enough. It's amazing how many layers of 'transparent' security we go through all the time.

Now that I've made junk mail fun, they'll probably change the rules on me. Tonight I went through mail and had 5 different bits of junk mail with postage paid return envelopes (two credit card offers, one insurance company, one magazine offer and one charity I don't like) so I just took out the page with my address on it (and shredded it), put the rest of their crap back in and put it back in the mail to them. I figure it will be fun using the spammers money to send their crap back to them. Petty, yes, but it makes me feel good all over. :) I wonder if they have some hidden crap in the literature or on the envelope that lets them track it back? I couldn't find anything, but I didn't try everything (black lights, weird chemical processes, checking for Moon Letters, etc.)

The only downside to today? My workout this morning sucked. I was once again too tired to actually do it. Need more sleep I guess. Tomorrow is the actual golf game, the last lesson. I'm very worried. Kelly and I are going to try to go to the driving range at lunch when we drop her car off to get smogged so I'll have a chance to get some last second practice in. I need it. Better bring the camera...

And let it be known that Vareck is freaking genius. I nuked my home page and he mentioned that he might be able to pull it from his browser cache. I went to my work PC and poof, got it back. Amazing! (yea, make a backup, I did just yesterday... before I made all those changes, I'll be more careful with my scripts now).

Good weekend for the most part. Saturday we went hiking along Skyline Trail, not very serious hiking mind you, but enough to remind us that there is more to life than concrete. I also wandered around and took pictures at the marina. Saturday's dinner was artichokes, crab legs and rice. Sunday we had tuna sandwiches, steamed broccoli and carrots and I had some cheese (2% fat style) and crackers. The meals seemed weird, but good.

Major event, we got the beds switched around at Kelly's place (I liked the guest bed better, it was firm whereas her normal bed was too soft and made my back hurt) and cleaned out the garage so I could park my car in there.... yes, she gave me my own side and a garage door opener. I think she likes me. :)

Sunday night after we ate we went back to my place and got my bed and stuff moved back into the big room (formally known as the office) and most my clothes moved over. Another night of fiddling and I'll be ready for Leanne to move in. My room looks pretty cool now, much better than I thought it would. I got rid of all of dad's stereo gear and the huge speakers and sub-woofer and crap. All that will be hooked up to the TV in the living room at some point.

The refinance doesn't make any sense at this time. Too many penalties and fees. I'll have to wait another 1.3 years before I could take advantage of lower interest rates. Kelly5 and the loan lady both agree on this. Kelly5 however keeps getting all bent out of shape because I refuse to talk to any more 'professional' money management people. Listening to the professionals cost me a 40% loss last year. Doing it my way made me 4%. so in my book -40 < 4 no matter how you look at it. I'll take a 4% gain over a 40% loss all the time. Why is that so hard for people to understand? Any gain is better than any loss.

Kelly took me to see Bridget Jones' Diary, a total chick flick. Even the previews were all for chick movies. It was fairly amusing, if just another sappy unrealistic love story to screw up women's views on love. Guy movies screw up guys' view of combat, women's movies mess with real life. How unfair. I did skip out of work at 4:30pm today (back now at 7:30pm and working on more system stuff) and skip going to the range with the guys, again. I'm just not into going right now for some reason. Just tired I guess. Oh, and get this. I told Kelly that every guy in the theater today was going to get some when he got home. She said "yes, everyone but you". How did that happen? We're not doing anything tonight, we're going our separate ways (hence she's going home, I'm back at work). This just doesn't seem right.

The sheer volume is killing me. We had to go check out the new Netapp stuff we're upgrading and whatnot into the new building. Something like $1,200,000 worth of crap that I'm responsible for doing something with. 15 fridge sized crates. I had to use a pallet jack to move things around. This is insane. Who ever needed a forklift to move computer hardware? Is this 1977 again?

Crap, I totally spaced and forgot my shrink appointment today!!! argh!!! I never forget appointments. I feel stupid. At least I can just leave a message on his machine.

Dad came over and we talked and went to eat. We were going to move my bed into the other room but I still have too much crap in here (the office) to turn it into the bedroom yet. I've run out of things to throw away, I'm down to just the 'real' stuff I want to keep.

Working on refinancing the house and the condo so I'm having to dig through these huge piles of paperwork again. Turns out I've got a prepayment penalty on the 1st on the condo (which is a pain, but was necessary to get a good interest rate at the time). The second on the condo is pretty weird. I've got 179 payments of $249.11 and 1 payment of $21,721.81. Man, that last payment is a little steep. Guess that's why it's a 'balloon' payment.

Crap, too much is going on to document right now, I'm scrambling like mad to keep up with the hardware flow. I got into a "discussion" with the VP who had some stupid ideas about Linux farm upgrades and I pushed back and made him spend $420,000 to do it my way (vs the $37,000 he wanted to spend for just cosmetic upgrades). Man, now I have more work to do.

Part of the deal is that if I make the farm extra cool, I get to drive his new Porsche. I have no idea what model it is, but it's probably fast.

OK, 7:30pm and I'm home now munching on dinner. I can't believe it, I've not been home so early in forever. I actually bugged out of the office at 5:30 and went to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls (Kelly5 wants to play on Sunday). I still suck, I didn't magically improve since the last lesson. Still, it was sorta fun after a fashion. My back is all tweaked however; hopefully it will be all OK when I go to the gym tonight. Gym tonight, and SLEEPING IN!!! tomorrow morning until 8am. Man, how cool is that?

Did my 1.5 hours at the gym, got a full workout in (changed two exercises around, I've been wanting to swap a few exercises out since it's been 6 weeks on the same cycle). As Vareck is noticing, there are bimbos-o-plenty at the gym when you go at a 'normal' time in the evening. There were black spandex clad women everywhere, like at least 5 or 6 of them. That's a huge number compared to the -1 or 0 there are in the morning. Unlike Vareck I didn't get any numbers.

I ran Photoshop over a few of the pictures and they turned out awesome. Focused up well, color balance is good and they came out on the printer most excellently. I'm very happy about that.

As a trial run, I went to the gym out by Kelly's house for my morning workout. It wasn't too bad. It's no Club Sport (which is no World Gym like in COS) but it will do. They have a 'pay by the visit' program so I can buy a set number of visits and use them as needed rather than paying for a full membership that I don't use. 10 visits are $75, 25 are $175. I'll probably just keep doing the 10 pack for a while.

I'm pretty productive at work today getting stuff done, too bad there isn't anyone around to notice. A very hollow existence let me tell you. I went and talked to Nick for a while and he gave me an official 3dfx squirt gun. Special.

Kelly told me that Saturday the social services people are going to come out for their final in-home assessment of her and her place to see if she qualifies to be able to adopt kids. Originally she said that she sorta put that on hold while we figured out what we're doing in our relationship. Guess she's figured it out? I should ask.

We spared tonight, on a Monday! I didn't do very well (I never do) but I didn't get hurt too badly either. While eating dinner I read the cereal box and the free Pokemon talking spoon is actually free. No shipping and handling even. Amazing. If I had 4 UPC symbols from the boxes I would order one. :)

I lead a sort of labor uprising at work today. Basically all us Unix guys (and the one NT guy) are tired of being in the dark and treated like shit. We all agreed to talk to our boss as one cohesive unit. Well it didn't work. Ed came down on me and Loc and Mike have already caved in. That leaves the Canadian to stand up to Ed. Should be interesting. Maybe I'll lose my job over it?

Just got back from the cabin and am uploading pictures now. I don't like the cable 128k upload speed limit at all. They're all pretty self-explanatory. The dog isn't ours, it just appeared when we started unloading the tractor. The shots of us in the backyard with the metal pole hanging from the chain, that was the tractor's first real work. I've wanted to pull those stakes out of the ground forever now but we couldn't do it by hand. The house at the end is one of Gary's rental houses that we were just dropping the truck off at. He's just renting it until he builds one for himself.

The asshole neighbor door'ed my car today as well. The rear door of his stupid 4-door minivan thing obviously slammed into the rear quarter panel of the GTI, one of his useless little brats not paying attention no doubt. They can't ever find the trash can with their candy wrappers, so why would they pay attention to anything else? I need to get it fixed. I started repaying him already.... I keyed his car... with a screwdriver. Went through all the clear coat and all the layers of paint right down to the metal. Oh, too bad. Dumb ass. He probably won't notice until it starts to rust through.

Cable guy just left after installing a new 3com cable modem. He said that my "LAN city" modem was total crap and he's been swapping those modems out for the last month as they all slowly fail after being in service for a 1-2 years (I've had mine for 1.5 years). The cable is freaky fast now. I'm happy.

Kelly just left on her way to take her mom's truck to Reno. I'm waiting for dad to call to tell me he's reached Redding so I know when it's time to leave to head to Pioneer to meet him.

I did fix the radiator hose in the truck last night in about 10 minutes (in the rain) but it wasn't the hose, it was actually the water pump (spraying onto the hose making it look like the hose was leaking). Double damn. So I'll take the Montero up there and leave it and get the truck fixed then swap them out.

It's 3:18pm and I'm still at home. Dad called around 1pm saying they were just leaving Medford; he's way behind schedule. I've cleaned out more stuff, made up another box to take up (I still have the passenger's seat empty at this point, and hung some pictures. I also sorted through the safe and cleaned it up (it was dusty). I was going to the driving range, but I didn't want to drive anywhere. Then I was going to go get a new picture frame for this sheet of 'space exploration' series stamps I have from 1981 (postage was 18 cents back then) but again, I didn't want to drive. I walked to the store and got some cereal (no wonder I'm hungry again, today I've had two bowls of cereal and a power bar, not enough food!). I also got some fat free muffin mix, I'm going to bake some banana muffins (or a loaf, haven't decided yet) as snacks to take to work. I thought about hitting the gym too, but again, I don't want to drive anywhere. Dad should be calling soon so I'll head out anyway.

I'm half way though The Two Towers as of today as well. I'm re-reading the Tolkien stuff getting ready for the movies. :)

Kelly5 got back her pictures from her analog camera and they include a free disk with the images scanned (in really bad resolution). Here they are anyway roll 1 roll 2 and roll 3. The analog prints look OK, then she saw these digital versions and appreciated mine a little more.

Kelly also got some email from one of her friends at the brunch on Sunday. Kelly asked what she thought of me and she replied "First impression...nice, quiet, good sense of humor, goes with the flow, handsome, I think you should keep him for a while."

I forgot to mention, dad called me and told me he just spent $15k on a tractor. WtF? It's worth $20k he says. Um, yea. It's a Kubota L2500 (two years old, not the L2600 is the new base model) with 58 hours on it, four wheel drive with an unused scoop/bucket thing and a breaker box and ripper on the back. I could go start digging up fiber lines now I guess. Here is the picture from the web page, I'll get real pictures this weekend when he brings it down from Oregon.

Leanne came by last night and we discussed the details. She'll take the room for $800/month + 1/2 utilities, she can get a phone and cable if she wants them. I'm moving all my stuff out this weekend and most of it up to the cabin so she can move in any time after. She may be bringing a cat if her sister doesn't take it to Texas with her (moving there this month). That's OK as long as the litter box is in her room and it doesn't pee on anything. First time that happens it's going to be in the dumpster. She agreed. It's two years old and she says it's never done that before so I have no fear that it suddenly will start. Kelly had cats for the whole time we were together and they only caused problems when they were young.

And just because I have disk space to burn, I'm putting all of the Army field manuals I have on-line (from a CD). Useless but entertaining sometimes.

Yet another bad night and bad morning with Kelly. Just more and more of the same. I thought that we had things resolved this morning but it appears that we didn't actually resolve anything and nothing came of the talk other than lots of crying and being late for work. Sigh. My fear that she was getting tired of being in the relationship seems to be coming true, she's getting ready for burn out.

Leanne is coming over tonight to check out the room and see if it will work for her. I've set the price at $650-$950 (the range for other rooms for rent in the area). This should be interesting.

The local Dennis gave me this movie from some Asian site. Now that's how you drive a Porsche! I doubt our VP will drive his new one that way, I doubt he'll drive it at all actually. Who would want the loser valet parking guy here touching a car like that? (I know they're losers because twice now they've left my keys with the Montero. Once on the windshield wiper with the tag, once on the ground next to the driver's door.)

Vareck is quoting lines from Metallica's Sanitarium (I think). Should we be worried?

Class last night was good, but I really screwed up my left hand. Not broken or anything, but it hurts a lot. This morning the instructor didn't show for the private lesson and no one knows where he is. The black belt with the 9:30 time slot was early so we did some stuff in the parking lot but by 10:15am no instructor so we both left. I think the people in the businesses next door were a little confused as to why we were going at it in street.

Hah, and now my right had is bandaged. I cut it on a system case really deep. I'm a wreck!

Walked with Kelly today after lunch. Things between us are very strained due to my weird mind set. (which means Dennis is probably having trouble with Kristin since he says when we fight they fight). We're actually not fighting, I just get the feeling that she doesn't trust me anymore and isn't comfortable being in the relationship just now. That's bad, I hope we can get back to a good space soon. I doubt it will survive a lot of this stress since it's nothing she can do anything about. How in the world do people stay together? Denial? Can you actually meet someone that you're really compatible with or do people just give us and stay with whoever they're with as there isn't anything better to be had?

I'm a little tired this afternoon, probably because I stayed up until 1am packing. I'm almost done, another push tonight or tomorrow and I should be all the way there. That reminds me I should go put those boxes I collected into the truck before the janitor tosses them since I left them in the hallway.

Health update. When I got on the bathroom scale at Kelly's place after showing Wednesday it read 162, the heaviest I've been in a long while (maybe forever). Kelly weighted X (she wouldn't say). Today I got a reading of 155 and her reading was still X. So the scale seems consistent. She says that I'm back to my old weight because I'm young. I pointed out that while she hasn't gone back to exercising at all, nor reducing her food intake, I've been working out 1-2 times per day, every day and eating about 1/2 my normal food intake. I don't think it's age, it's just lack of activity that's keeping her the same. She says she's gained 20lbs since she started going out with me. Is this somehow my fault? Why do women always get fat once you start dating them? (I know the answer and my shrink even agreed with me; it's just a rhetorical question at this point).

Wow, am I in a weird space today, and yesterday. I just couldn't get happy for some reason. Kelly and I went to that brunch with her friends (which was good) and then I went back home to pack more stuff, go feed my parents cat (they're out of town for a few days) and then went to her place. We went for a walk out to the point (this really funky beach right on the edge of the harbor) and had a long talk about 'stuff'. Basically I'm not ready to move in with her, she's not ready to have me move in and I'm getting all bent out of shape because I feel like I have to give up everything that makes me 'me' to be with her. This is not atypical however, I feel that way with all women. The person I am is not a person that women want to be with (Vareck, take note here). In order to attract and keep a 'quality' woman I'm going to have to sacrifice everything that I am and take up an entirely new persona that's more, um, well, less me and more something else. Shooting, motorcycles, racing, cars, 4x4ing, working out, these are all bad things. I have no idea what good things are other than: snow skiing, golf, water skiing, drinking & partying, eating, theater and sitting on the couch watching TV. And of course none of these are good if they're done at any time that you could be doing something with/for the woman such as shopping, house work, seeing stupid chick flicks, travel or anything she wants to do at that time.

It's amazing how much crap one accumulates over the years, and everyone says I don't really have much. Try figuring out which 80% of your stuff you want to get rid of then tell me you don't have any 'extra' stuff around. Anyone need a 28k modem?

I did find this invoice going through some old papers. Should bring back memories for Vareck anyway. This is what started the whole gun craze, back in the days when the streets were rampant with crime and all. Not like today where everything is PC and happy eh? And can you believe I had an AK with a scope???

Cable modem magically started working again. I called them yesterday and they scheduled a tech to show up next Saturday. That would have sucked. I need to find an alternative to cable.

Got the watch adjusted but I think it's still too big. I saw how it took the link out so if I could find a screwdriver that small I can do it myself without damage (in theory).

Don came up today and we went to the range and I sighted in the AR. Vareck is always wanting pictures of us with the toys so here are a few. Notice how freaky the color was on some (I forgot the camera was in low-light mode, oops). This is the one time I'm allowed to wear a hat backwards. Don was sporting his spiffy CIA cap... I didn't get one. :( I did have to spend money though, my old rifle case wasn't big enough to hold the new toy so I dropped $100 for a huge hard sided one with 6 locking lugs and wheels; it rolls like a carry-on luggage bag. One other guy at the range had one so they must not be new. It's the only one I could get that would fit, the others were too thin. That scope is 3" wide!

I didn't get the truck fixed, I'll try that tomorrow. I did get a lot of stuff sorted out and packed from the den closet. Don made out well, I gave him two PCs, 5 SCSI drives (sized 2, 2, 4, 18 and one unknown) all fast/wide with a controller. Since I gave him the 17" monitor before, he now officially has my PC from college. Hopefully he can do something with it. I hated to toss it and I have zero use for the rest of those parts. I don't run the SCSI stuff anymore, it's too loud. I'm using a 4gb IDE drive in my PC at home... how lowly.

We went to see Exit Wounds. Sorta the usual lame Segal political propaganda in there, lots of really small really full auto weapons, not much martial arts. The naked chicks playing with paint was really good though! :)

Apparently it's some sort of holiday, the gym was quiet, the roads lightly loaded and the market it closed. Interesting how these things sneak up on you. The post office was open (good thing) and I got my taxes mailed out. I wrote 4 checks, two for 2000 and two as the first quarterlies (fed/state) of 2001. $92,867 $27,400 $28,000 and $11,200. Ouch.

The Montero has a big dent in the passenger door, I don't remember if that was there the other day or not. I've not actually checked it over for damage. It was also making some weird high-pitched squealing noise today, must be a loose belt or something (I hope). I've got to fix the truck this weekend (it blew a radiator hose a few weeks back) so maybe I'll check the Montero out too and see what it's damage is.

The moment of truth, check this baby out. I picked up some (ultra-cool) rings at the range last night and assembled the new rifle. It's not sighted in or anything, but you can just see how cool it looks:

Hmm... my euphoria over the rifle project seems to be sorta deflated now... Kelly5 is acting very strange and different. (and I didn't tell her about the project, she doesn't want to know). We're now not doing anything Friday, Saturday or Sunday night, and she's not staying at my place any of those nights nor invited me to her place any of those nights. Weird. We're doing a brunch on Sunday with some of her friends, so I guess I'll just see her then. She just left now, they're giving the SAP people the rest of the day off (after 3pm) because it's good Friday. What the hell is good Friday anyway?

Ick. I went to the gym today. I've lost some strength, or more like endurance really, and gained 5 lbs of fat. My butt is sorta wiggly now and my arms are smaller. I did some figuring against my workout chart and I'm about 6 weeks behind where I was before I left. That's not too bad really, I was predicting worse. Apparently those 'fake' workouts at the gym at the hotel helped fend off some of the loss. What I'm really worried about it the weight gain. I don't think I do enough cardio to actually burn that off, I'm going to have to start working out harder and/or picking up some extra cardio. Maybe I can bring my running shoes and stuff to work and do some sprints and whatnot in the parking lot at lunchtime. It takes about 15 minutes to eat, so if I run for 20 minutes, shower off taking 15 and then eat lunch I still can do it all in an hour. That's pretty cool.

Dad gave me a watch last night, sort of a birthday present but not really. It's his hand-me-down Tag Heuer now that he's upgraded to a Rolex (which set him back like $10k!). Apparently the one he gave me is around $2500. I'll admit it's a nice watch, but for that kind of cash it should at least do something other than tell the time. I've got to take it to the jeweler and get some links taken out of the band. Dad has big wrists.

I put some more scans in the tickets section. I can't find all my stubs yet, some may be lost.

Also off the scanner, a receipt from the grocery store we bought picnic supplies in. The original is pretty faint.

And a major breakthrough on the auto picture page making. I installed Image Magic and now I can 'sharpen' all the images on the fly. They look a lot better (most the time) after a little touch up.

Made it back from the Caribbean in one piece, a lot poorer but a whole lot happier. Amazing what a change of pace will do (and man, was this place a change of pace!). I won't go into the thousands of details, but to summarize, we went horseback riding, sailing (twice, I really liked it), drove all over the tiny island, had excellent food every day, relaxing walks, spent time on the beach, etc.

The most significant day of the trip was April 5th of course, my birthday. We headed out at 4am to get to the beach to watch the sunrise (and since we had the place to our selves for a while had actual sex on the beach just as the sun was rising). Kelly5 had given me my present a few days earlier (she couldn't wait) which was 'all good'. That night we went for a sunset sailing cruise so we could watch the sun go down. All in all not a bad way to turn 29.

My snazzy Panasonic batteries got me through 310 pictures (filled the 64mb card) whereas the unknown brand NIMH that came with the camera died after around 100 with the 32mb card (do different cards use different amounts of power?). I had some regular ones so I got a few pictures after that, but they weren't of anything interesting. Since (female) nudity is accepted on the island (it is a French island, BTW) I had to delete some of the photos from the public records since they're not exactly the type of thing I want getting out. Too bad there weren't more cute women to look at all naked by the pool and on the beaches. Here are the dumps from the 64mb and 32mb cards. Yes, I was playing with the camera settings so they don't all look good. It's hard to figure out how to take pictures of the sunset.

Some pictures of note. For those that drink, this huge bottle of Vodka is $12. This is the piece of concrete I dropped the camera on when getting out of the car. This is the airport and Eric will note that I'm standing on the glide path and this pesky hill with the road on it seems to be right in the way. Also note that the runway ends at the sea, don't stop too long. This car might interest Don, it's made by Daewoo, the same guys that make his rifle. This is the crash site where a plane aborted a landing, turned off that 'slipped' down into the mountain side. Kelly5 dented the rental Suzuki opening the door into a wall, but they didn't charge us. Oh, and this is the actual spot I had sex on the beach. :) Those first few pictures on the 64mb card are from the hotel in St. Martin where we got stuck (our plane was delayed 5 hours when a window seal broke) for the night during the first day of travel. St. Martin sucks, BTW, never go there.