I'm back home, and very tired. I've uploaded the pictures which is what most people want to see anyway. :) Mine are all boring (other than that bug at the end, is that thing freaky or what?) but letting Michelle wander around with the camera at the beach bar place turned out some good shots. That guy she took a picture of is the one that licked Cicely on Thursday night. Odd that he showed up at the same place we did. Images are here. I'm kinda proud of image 3882. I took that shot under my leg while looking at the reflection in Mike's sun glasses (as he checked out the butt floss chick). Now that's photography. I should also point out that there were signs everywhere at the bar saying "no cameras". I wish I had gotten a picture of one. :) You can sorta see one in the background of the licking boy photo but it's not really clear enough to read.

Crap, I just bought a car. So Jim (last day today) was bugging me to buy his crappy '88 Corolla. I kept saying $500 (he was asking $1500). He obviously didn't want to sell it for so cheap. Well today he said "fine, I'll take your damn $500". Tuesday he drops it off on his way back to Canada. Great, what am I going to do with a Corolla? I'll probably just sell it off at the wheels and deals lot and/or donate it to charity and take the tax write off. Worst case is I can drive it to and from work for a while and give the Montero a rest. It's a Canadian car so it's got 300000km on it and you cruise down the road at 120-140kph. That's gotta be worth something.

I talked to gym girl this morning and oh the irony. The book she's writing? It's about dating, a subject that is "dear to her heart". She's been working on it with a friend for the last 4 months. She used to work at yahoo! in marketing but quit to write the book. That's pretty ballsy.

I ran Ad-Aware and cleaned up my winders box again and then turned on cookie confirmation for everything. By denying the spam cookies from yahoo I can actually turn off the pop-up blocker most the time. However, I can no longer get into yahoo! mail. I'll just do that from my Linux box as they can't infect that with all those spy programs and whatnot.

OK, mission accomplished. I went on a minor mall crawl with Gayla (from work) and got 3 shirts and some slightly more fashionable shoes. I've also picked up some new black socks (and tossed the ones I stole from Krista) and some shoe polish and actually made my comfy black shoes look good again. I tried some spray stuff but it really stinks, the whole house smells like it and I put the stuff on in the garage, with the door open.

The Montero is shaking at any speed above 45mph. I must have thrown a wheel weight. It's also got a really noticeable low speed stumble when it's cold. Probably needs some tweaking, it's been over 20k since the last service, I'm sure there is a 15k service that I should have done.

Lisa canceled out on tonight. Hmm... who didn't see that one coming? Fuck, what is it with these women? They cancel, reschedule, cancel, reschedule and then cancel. I guess they just have to juggle so many guys that things don't work out and/or they don't have the guts or integrity to just say that they fucking met someone since we made plans and don't want to go out. That would be understandable. In any case, I sent some email to T46 and told them to put a hold on my account, I don't want to go out anymore. I'll figure things out after I get back from Germany. I so don't need this. I'm not even sure I deserve this either, but maybe I do.

The Veritas people called today to verify my presentation topic for the July 9th web-cast and to confirm my travel plans for the conference. I'm flying out on Saturday early afternoon, flying home late on Monday night. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with my crap between checkout time and the time it's time to go to the airport. Do they actually hold your bags at the front desk anymore? I would feel extra dorky carrying a big backpack around, it's not that sort of event. WTF am I supposed to do Saturday night (there is no conference on Saturday, it doesn't start until Sunday). Maybe they'll have movies in the room. Or I can go walk around the strip. That might be interesting wandering around without the E messing with my head. I'm still debating on if I should call Lydia or not and let her know I'm in town. I'm pretty sure I'm not in the mood to deal with her theatrics.

Busy weekend. Went out with Joanna on Friday and saw Bulletproof Monk which was good, I thought. Some may disagree, I'm curious to know what Dennis thinks. I probably won't go out with her again, BTW. Just nothing romantic there.

Saturday Rod and I rode up to the cabin to see if he could really tour on the R1. Other than needing some luggage he didn't seem to have any problems. I could never have done it, too uncomfortable. After I got home I went over and took care of Sue. She's immobile for 4 weeks while her knee heals after surgery so she's stuck for the most part on the main floor of her place. I was running around fetching the mail, taking out the trash, getting books and stuff from the upper level, etc. She's in good spirits which is important. She'll start physical therapy next week and should be able to crutch herself around more.

Today I need to finish laundry, get some shopping done and then head over to Leianne's for dinner at 3:30pm.

Leianne's dad is such an alcoholic. He's met me 3 times now but can't remember from time to time. Apparently he was drunk both the first two times he's met me (according to Leianne). What a pain. He wasn't there (at the house) until 5 minutes before dinner was served, then he showed up from the bar. Sad really. Dinner was good, they made two types of chicken for me in case I didn't like the lamb. I'm so spoiled. Kristine was there (the former LA sister) but Stephanie was not. It's really a good example of how important personality is in shaping how someone looks. The sisters are clones, but I always thought Stephanie was the 'cute' one because of the way she acted, walked, etc. Kristine looks the same physically but moves and talks different and portrays a much different attitude. Same body, two minds. It's kinda cool, if you didn't like one's attitude, you could go talk to the other. :)

Last night dad and I went and got our pictures taken for mom's mother's day gift. It's apparently the same photographer that took my baby pictures 30 years ago. That's interesting, and somewhat creepy.

I read Vareck's journal about someone goggling him and finding out he was married. Eventually everything will be on the net.

Went to lunch with Joanna, that was cool although I'm really getting tired of restaurant food. It's all so heavy/oily/nasty. Tonight I went and shoot pool with Rod and Steve and kicked some serious ass. I won 5-6 games in a row, all with a house cue. It must have been the cue.

Shit! I went to the dentist today and I somehow went from 0 cavities for the last 16 years to 3 in just 6 months. WTF? He wants to work on them, I'm already getting numb with the idea of it all.

Kenny provided this picture which he got from a friend of a friend. Those ARs are just so cool I had to keep the image. I also like how sharp it is, it makes my digital camera look bad. Time for an upgrade. :) I also like the drier vent hose hanging off the side of the door gun to keep the shells from flying about randomly and possibly getting sucked into the intakes or rattling around in the rotors.

The day is over but it doesn't feel like it should be. It's gone by way too fast. I'm starving though, so I'll head home soon and eat before getting to the huge homework load I've got. I asked for extra. What was I thinking? (oh yea, that I wanted to learn more).

This morning I talked to the gym chick again and learned some info. She said that this last weekend she flew to LA to visit her brother. She also mentioned that she works at home as a writer. I didn't ask about her current book, I figure I can ask about that next time I talk to her. Gives me a little "in".

I called the travel agent and gave them my proposed itinerary. They're working on the details and I should have something in the next few weeks. She said they can only book train stuff 60 days out and I'm not quite there yet. Still, I'm just two months away from going. It's getting close.

I'm going to Vegas May 3-5 (Saturday-Monday). Veritas wants to take me there all expenses paid so I will say something nice about them in a presentation. I can do that. I hope Lydia is back from Europe and Jamaica and all that crap so I can say hello.

Skeet shooting was called off today which is a bummer, I was looking forward to that a lot. The rain was pretty heavy last night but not so much this morning and now it's gone, blue skies and whatnot.

I took advantage of the break in the rain to go for a quick hike over off 280/85 which is a pretty lame hiking area, but it's close. I got caught in one rain shower but took cover in an old barn they've got some tables in. There were a half dozen 50-60 year old Asians in there as well, all wearing those stupid surgical masks. SARS has claimed 130 people world wide according to the news this morning and must have made someone millions selling those little masks. It only lasted about 10 minutes and I was on my way again. A popular activity now seems to be 'trail running'. There must have been a dozen people out there running along the hiking/mountain biking trails (and oddly no bikes at all). It does look more fun than just running around on the streets. I would give it a try if I didn't have such problems with my knees when I run in general. Hmm... running on soft dirt would probably be easier on the body than running on pavement. That's probably why they do it.

Today I've got to go over to Maggie's house (Troy's soon to be ex-wife) and help her kid out installing a new sound card. I figure Troy has helped me out on so many occasions it's not even funny so now it's time for some payback. It took me a few seconds to figure out why Mark (the kid) was calling me, why not just have has dad do it? Oh yea, his dad can't get within 1000' of the house or whatever the restraining order says. Kinda hard to turn screws and install drivers from 1000'.

Back from Maggie's place, the sound card is functional. Just install the card, wire up the crap from the CDROM, disable on-board sound, install the drivers and away it goes. Normal people's computers are so screwed up. It's an AMD1800 w/256mb of RAM which I'm guessing is at least as good as a PIII/1ghz box. However, XP takes freaking forever to do anything on it. There are so many plug-ins, stupid chat apps, the AOL virus (that IM thing), etc going on that the system is chugging all the time even when no real user apps are running. No wonder people think computers get slow over time, they load them up with so much useless junk and there is no way for the average person to figure out how to undo all that crap that they do in effect 'get slow' the longer you own them. Eye opening to say the least. The coolest part of the trip was when Mark started playing "Black Hawk Down". I had never seen it and said so. Maggie and I were talking and Mark was 'gearing up' for a mission and asked me what was better, the CAR-15 or the M-16 and the M9 or the .45. I blathered on about barrel length (16" CAR vs. 20-24" M-16), collapsing vs. fixed stock, capacity, 9mm vs. 45, blah, blah and it was all correct per the crap on the game screen. He wanted to know how I knew about all the weapons without playing the game. I said I have an AR, a Beretta and a .45 at home. He thought I was a God. Impressing kids is easy.

I've started planning my trip today as well. I should have a rouge outline done by tonight and then I'll call the agent tomorrow and have her flush it out with hotels and rail passes and all that crap. I probably won't go see the NVDA office in Aachen, it's too damn far away from everything else I'm going to be doing.

The orange selection at the store was pretty abysmal. I have no idea how I found so many good oranges that first time. Is it out of season for oranges? I seem to remember asking that question before. Dinner tonight was a crappy $1 TV dinner. Potatoes, corn, salisbury steak and the afore mentioned orange. Sounds like lunch on South Park. I'm trying, oddly enough, to add a little more protein ad fat into my diet. More protein than fat, but still, trying to reduce the carbs. I am eating less (quantity wise) which minimizes the over-full/under-full stuff.

I know I shouldn't be watching this Black Sash thing again but it alway seems to be on when I find myself watching TV. I love the dojo, it's pretty cool. The dojos (is that the plural?) I've trained at don't look like that. They always look like crappy old warehouses because in fact they are crappy old warehouses. The show is supposed to be set in SF (or so I'm guessing because they show cable cars in the cut scenes), I wonder if the building is there or if it's in Vancouver or some other city in Canada. It looks sorta like the bay bridge in the background when they go outside on the patio place to talk which would mean it's north of Embarcadero toward the wharfs. It also looks like a river is outside the windows sometimes, but there isn't a river anywhere, just the ocean. Maybe the web page says.... yep, the web page says it's filmed in Vancouver, Canada. Damn they have a lot of TV filming going on in that city.

For the record, she did not call.

Had a great time with Jo tonight though. She got some free dinner thing at "Original Jo's" in downtown SJC. The food was crap, but the 'well fed' normal type people there seemed to be loving the over oiled, salty, fatty meats and pasta. Whatever, glad it was free, would have sucked to give good money for that food. After we went for an adult beverage at an Irish pub she knew of. Not too bad, it wasn't as noisy as a normal bar and there were some cute women running around for me to gawk at. All in all a good evening. We avoided politics and no one got hurt. She seemed to be in pretty good spirits. Probably because she's got work now.

It's late, or early, however you want to look at it and it's time for bed. Watch though, I'll still wake up at 6am even without the alarm.

Had lunch with Joe (the T46 guy) and his harem. For some reason I thought I would be good at ski ball but apparently not. I'm not any better than any other random guy off the street that's never played. I'm also pretty crappy at pool anymore. I went to shoreline billiards tonight to check them out for a possible Thursday night site. I also shot by myself for about an hour and did pretty crappy. Between the poor ski ball performance, the poor pool performance, the poor performance with the women... man, a guy could really get depressed at all that. Me, nope, I'm too much in denial to be depressed.

Did I mention anywhere that I think Julie will cancel for tonight? I think I did, or hope I did because it's happened and I wanted to make sure I could still predict the future. It may not be as bad as I predicted though, take a look:

Hey Kelly. I've been out sick for the past two days. That's why you haven't heard anything from me. I'm going to the doctor today at 1:00. I think I might have strep throat. Don't know yet. All I know is I feel like crap. Probably not going to be able to get together tonight unless the doctor cures me between now and then. I'll call you, though. Sorry. Hopefully we can reschedule????

So, I now just wait for the call. If she calls, then she was serious. If she doesn't call, she's just making another excuse.

The skeet shooting event on Sunday may be canceled because of rain. The forecast shows rain tomorrow and Sunday. That's kinda sucky, I was looking forward to riding tomorrow and the shoot on Sunday. Oh well, what can you do. At least it's not snowing.

We went to play pool after work and brought the new contractor along. He's good technically but a bit strange socially. He'll grow up nicely I think.

Most of today was a blur, a couple of meetings and I had to go to Fremont to see Claudia the loan lady. She can get me 4.25% so I'm going to do the refinance from my 5.5%.

I'm not really in a journaling sorta mood. Learning that Krista is getting married in October has me somewhat bummed, but mostly it's the comments she made. I don't know why it bugs me so much but it does. Whatever, I'm going to sleep.

I'm at work and it's late. We had a work dinner at The Cheesecake Factory tonight and it was pretty good. The food was tasty, there were a ton of cute chicks running around the restaurant and we got to leave just after 8pm. We carpooled to the restaurant so we got to leave early to take Steve and Clark (the new consultant guy) to the train station. Sweet excuse.

The annoying news of the day is that I've lost contact with Julie. I emailed her with the plan and poof, she vanished. Damn, why do I fall for it every time? The big interesting news of the day is that Krista got engaged. I emailed her asking where my birthday email was (yea, I'm fishing at this point, mostly upset about the Julie trick) and she shared her news with me. I don't know if it was to scare me off or what. I tried to get some more info out of her but no response so far. The just plain odd women related news is that Rod found some interesting evidence against his wife in the divorce. Apparently she used his laptop to sign up for some on-line dating services and even recorded all of the chat sessions... and then left it all on the laptop. Rod has all sorts of recordings now of her chatting with guys and agreeing to meet them. That's pretty dumb on her part. I've no idea if it's good for anything (as evidence) as it's all just log files and whatnot but at least it puts his mind at ease. Yes, she was cheating on him.

Hey, check it out I un-installed the Microsoft bug. Kenny says that MSFT doesn't make the drivers and that it's all Cisco's fault but when I did a driver info on the broken drivers they're owned by MSFT and the working ones say they're owned by Cisco. Hmm... Anyway, here is the cool part. When I went to reinstall win2k actually showed me all the previous drivers I could pick from and I just went back to OEM10 and poof, we're back on-line. There are some check boxes and crap missing from the config menus now but that's cool because those were the ones that were screwing up the connection by magically changing settings between reboots.

Aud took me to dinner tonight for my birthday which was kind of her. I like girls buying ME dinner. She talked about the wedding this summer (hers, not mine) and the fact that it's going to be in Norway and the fact that I'm invited. Hmm... do I want to go to Norway in August?

I traded some email with Julie (the chick I made out with in the parking lot and then had to dismiss). I'm getting the hang of this; don't be too nice or pay them too much attention and they'll come running. It's lame and stupid, but seems to be working as we're going out Friday. In theory, we know how she bails. Still, I gotta try. Also on the social front, we're doing pool on Thursday, I'm riding on Saturday and then going to Dave & Busters with Joe and his crew of women. Sunday is skeet shooting.

Whoa do I have a headache. Not sure why either. Things are busy at work, and therefore stressful, but it's a good stress. They're just technical issues, coordinating equipment, etc, not stupid user/manager/director/VP type problems. I'm hoping it's not my neck again, I was doing so well.... grr....

Let's see. The big news so far today is that Lisa canceled on me for tonight. No surprise there, I knew that when she didn't make it home at a reasonable time yesterday that she wouldn't be in any shape to do anything tonight. I hope she's not just doing that "push him out and hope he goes away" thing like the other girls. You would think I would have learned my lesson and just given up but no, can't do that. It would be too easy. Instead I talked to a girl at the gym this morning. It's the same one that I've been checking out for a while now, but today I think I figured out that she was waiting for me to leave so she could follow. It was way, way too convenient how she put her jacket on, gathered up her bag and then went to play around with some free weights where she would have a clear view of me leaving. I mean, why would you get ready to go, then continue working out just long enough for me to finish, go get my junk from the locker room and then suddenly leave right as I walk past? She was 3' behind me the whole way into the parking lot. I let her get to her car before I walked back and talked to her. :) Her name is, um, exactly the same as The Evil One, which somewhat scares me. She kinda looks like a taller version of the The Evil One too, with brown hair and brown eyes and a somewhat plain face but a killer body. When I said goodbye I said "see you Wednesday" whereas she said "have a good workout". Um, didn't we just finish working out which is why we're in the parking lot? Either she hadn't seen me at all in the gym today and this was a total, total coincidence and she thought I had just arrived, or (and this is what all the girls here think) she was nervous and just blurted out something stupid not realizing what she was saying. Anyway, we'll see what, if anything, happens on Wednesday. The ice is broken. No, no pictures but I can say that she drives a late model Honda CR-V, white with (ick) brown interior. No sign of brat racks, vomit stains, smears on the windows (from dogs), etc. In fact, it was perfectly clean, there weren't any papers, parking permits, CDs, cups, food containers, etc. Zip. How am I supposed to learn anything from that?

So mom got me the toothbrush. :) Dad didn't get me anything, he wanted me to go pick something. A GPS was too much so I got a new watch. It's titanium so it matches my ring and it's really light. It's cheap too, I couldn't figure out why until I looked it up on the net and found that the band isn't really pure titanium, it's stainless that's been coated. Instead of making dinner I wanted to go to Chevy's, just for the chips and salsa. It was a pretty uneventful dinner and then we went back to the parents place for cake. I got to bed by 10:30pm (even with the time change) so I could get up for the ride today. The rest of the haul of gifts included some sheets from my grandmother (the other item on my list), a strange rock sculpture, a decorative box, a golf ball holder (from Leianne) and this weird ass "lawn bug" from my aunt which is this quasi-satanic looking bug thing that's supposed to sit on your patio and bobble it's head. It's sitting there now, but I dunno for how long. Someone may steal it and hide it in the trash can. Or something.

I was right about the age range of the people on the ride, I was the youngest by 20 years or so. I was also right about the speed they ride at. I was one of the slowest riders there, I think there was only two people behind me by the time the ride was done. It was still fun though and gave me an idea what it will be like in Germany. The lunch they provided was pure German cuisine too. Funky bread, funky cheese, funky meat and some fruit. They also had some square sausage of some sort which I'll have to find out where you can get it; it was that good.

I probably should get off my butt and go to the mall and get some new shirts then get to working on my homework. I was going to wash the bike as it really needs it but that will have to wait until next weekend. Oh, and speaking of the bike, they scratched the valve cover on the right side when they were reassembling it. They tried to use some touch up paint but it won't work as they're not painted but powder coated. They can't even order a replacement cover for another couple of months, apparently BMW isn't shipping spare parts for the twin spark bikes for another few months. Bogus. :( They did put on the cylinder guards though, and I'm not sure if they didn't charge me install labor or they charged me when I bought the bike (and ordered the guards). It shouldn't cost squat to put them on while they're already in there doing the service.

Also, the montero turned over 170,000 miles today. Here it is at 169,999.9. I checked, it turned over 160000 miles in October 2002. That's a lot of driving.

Dad lent me his pool cue; it's a lot nicer than mine. It's probably 20+ years old... the wood on the barrel is stained slightly darker where your hand rubs against it and the 'ivory' on the base is slightly discolored. That's kinda cool, old tech.

This Black Sash show on the WB is pretty lame, but damn is this chick cute:

Happy Birthday to me. 31 ain't so bad, although a lot of my remaining hair is turning gray.

I'm watching Army of Darkness. I knew a lot of Doom stuff was taken from it but I didn't know how much. It's amusing. "Good, bad... I'm the guy with the gun". The SciFi channel has quite a lineup today: Army of Darkness, The Road Warrior, The Running Man, and Conan, the Destroyer. That's a pile of good movies. All 80s era classics or there abouts.

Last night Joanne and I went to a sushi place in "little Japan town" which is down off to the side of downtown SJC. It was pretty good. Then we went an shot pool at 1st street billiards. I was doing better than usual, actually able to use throw a couple of times and even made one masse shot and one jump shot (it was just 9 ball, so all I had to do was hit the ball, didn't do much more). We talked for a long time and finally said good night at 2am. She wanted some 'action' of some type but I wasn't into it. She just doesn't do it for my physically. It's very strange. It's really going to mess things up too.

Work was very productive on Friday, mostly in the afternoon. I got some phone screens done, found a good candidate, set him up for more interviews, got a contractor lined up, got some PO work done, counseled my trouble employee, etc. Work was actually fun.

Today I took the RT in for it's service and got a Triumph loaner. I still love the sound, but the thing is pretty damn uncomfortable compared to the RT. I'm still glad I got rid of the R1, I would never ride a pure sport bike if I had the RT. I'm hoping they're done with it soon, I don't want to spend too much of day sitting around waiting.

If I was serious about getting a mountain bike I would do it today, they're having a big sale at Mike's Bikes. I don't think I'm serious yet though. :(

Dad just called. He's not going to get me the Sonicare toothbrush I wanted for my birthday. He says it's a stupid gift. That sucks, that's what I actually want. That and a hose reel but I already got that (and took a picture of it today, see the link above).

This is pretty cool..... well now anyway. My 4+ year old PC died during the move and I thought it was the power supply, again. Nope, it was the motherboard. Stone dead. I managed to find a PIII/700 that still has ISA slots (I have an ISA sound card after all) and swapped that in. Win98 reloaded dozens of drivers and whined and cried but in the end everything is working again and my system is 2x the speed. I'm pretty happy about that. I'm still thinking of getting a new system and transitioning over but I can do it at a slower pace now that I'm back operational on my main box again. Happy happy.

Hmm, April in German is "April". Even I can spell that.

It's been a busy week so far, that and the MS update virus trashing the laptop has kept me from doing usual updates. All time at work is actually spend working, not as many holes in my schedule where I can type out updates.

Today I had to move my cube. I suppose I didn't "have" to move but since we got the new cubes by the window and everyone kept pointing out that I should take the corner one, I finally gave in and did. It was an expensive move, my PC died. Looks like the power supply just quit, it won't power at all. I'll have to swap it out tomorrow and get the box back on-line. I'll probably get a whole new system and try to configure it over time to do what I need. I can't even get into it until lunch though as I've got a two hour meeting (1 on 1) with Ed. He's going to go over the feedback my guys gave him during their 1 on 1 sessions. There are a lot of complaints apparently, and some about me and my management style. That's not too surprising, I'm not exactly an expert at this stuff. :)

Friday night Joanne and I are going to play pool, Saturday night I'm doing the birthday dinner at my parents. Sunday is the shop ride with Cal BMW. Busy weekend.

One good thing did come out of moving cubes. In one of the boxes that I didn't unpack since the last move I found my NVDA jacket. I swore K5 took it as she was always trying to steal mine. Guess I was wrong. It's in the wash now, it was a touch stinky... smelled of being in a cardboard box for a year. The receipt in the pocket was dated April 14, 2002.