Anything exciting today, not too much. I dropped a $850 check off at dad's office to pay my part of the truck repairs. That sucks. Booked my tickets for the next two trips to Seattle, going in October and December. Kenny is going to take the general class again with the glock (17 I think) and then may sign up for the intensive class with me in October. That will be cool, it's more fun to have more people around.

Got some papers on the house today, the good faith estimates. Looks like I'll have to give out $23k at closing, but I know that's wrong. I say that because there are some extra fees (home inspection and whatnot) I have to pay, and the title insurance is being split by both of us which saves me $500 something. It's going to be a little over the $23k, but not much if all goes well. I probably ought to balance the checkbook tonight and see if I have food money left.

Also, I met with the AMEX guy today. If I transfer my ESPP shares to my AMEX account I'll have enough to do free online trading. :) Well, buys at least. Once I get $100k in the account I can buy and sell for free. Now I can buy 1-2 shares of stock at a time and really dollar cost average.

Almost forgot, had lunch with Anne. She brought the pictures from last weekend and they turned out pretty good. I've got some scanned in, but my PC won't respond remotely so I can't get at them while I'm writing this. Reboot time.

Added a password to the web site. I was getting too many hits from various places that shouldn't be accessing it. Lots of DOS attacks against our web servers lately so people have found the IP of pong, done the port scan and poof, an instant target.

Interesting thing happened today (other than the traffic at 8pm, the dark is slowing everyone down). The Japanese guys from cache flow came in to talk and I actually got to do the business card passing protocol. As a total aside at the meeting with sun yesterday they mentioned that they had to learn how to exchange cards with Japanese business people. Today I got to try it by the strangest luck. Works well, I think they were impressed. And man do they have phone technology over there! One guy showed me his phone and it was 1/2 the size of the nokia with a 1"x1.5" LCD display. Amazing. How come we can't have stuff like that? Speaking of the nokia, it's been on for 3.5 days now and the battery still stays it's got half a charge left. My nextel phone hardly lasts 24 hours now even with no usage. Batteries must be getting old.

I'm thinking of getting a PO box like Kenny has. That way I can direct my bills and important stuff to it and let the crap mail come to the box. The local mailbox fills up completely every day and I'm always afraid I'll miss something in the tangle of junk newspapers they put in there. I'm still missing the last Microsemi check. They claimed to have sent it 5 days ago.

Went to the gun show on Saturday with Don. Sorta disappointing really, all the military guys are gone now that you can't sell ARs or anything very spiffy. The handgun dealers are all charging way way more (like 25% more) than the local stores and you have to chase all over after the 10 day wait, or pay $25/end to mail it. I think the soccer moms are going to have their way soon and the gun shows are going the way of the dodo. There were some screaming ammo deals and I did spend $200 on ammo, and a book on Walthers. I was going to get a Walther PPK for a carry gun, but as it turns out the 'real' ones made by the Germans haven't been imported since 1968 because they're evil (they're 0.1" too short in the handle so they're considered 'junk guns'). The ones made in the US were apparently just as good, until S&W took over this year and now quality control is gone and the guy at the store said 'I can't recommend them, you should get something else'. Also, the rental PPK I fired was missing it's rear sight, but I shot it well anyway, pretty happy about that, and the finish was really bad. I was firing rounds in double-action mode to get the hang of the 15lb trigger when on round 14 the gun broke. The trigger mechanism had popped (or been sheared) out of position. Bummer. OK, so I'll check out the Kahr KM9. Damn S&W ruins everything it seems. I'm ashamed to have one of their wheel guns and claim to like it. I ordered a blade tech holster for the glock 27, if I like it and it's easy to carry I might not get the Kahr. Not sure, I might do both. It's hard to say just what I'll do, I'm wacky like that. :)

Saturday night we went bowling (don, Anne and I). It was $30 for the three of us to bowl two games. Ouch. The second game started around 9pm (or maybe 10pm) and they transformed the alley. They put on disco music, had a fog machine, black lights, 'lasers', etc so it was really strange but the kids seemed to like it. It was hard to bowl tho because you couldn't see the lanes, but the pins lit by black lights and these lights along the lanes that looked like the red floor lighting that indicate the exits in airplanes. We were at the Cloverleaf Family Bowl which I have a trophy from in 1982. At the age of 10 I bowled a 79. I guess that's good? 18 years later (oh god, am I 28? I thought I was 27...?? Wait, I'll be 29 in April? WFT?) I bowl a 135 or something with nothing in between. woohoo, talk about improvement! :) By the time I'm 192 I'll be bowling perfect games.

Sunday Anne and I went to Santa Cruz as she wanted to take some pictures at the beach. The drive over on hwy 9 was awesome, more so than usual. I was following a BMW 540i who was sorta driving fast, except in a straight line where he would take off like a shot. Eventually he let me around him and I left him in the dust. I caught up with a 911 turbo with paper license plates and was sure I was going to have to flounder behind this guy all the way to the beach. After about 3 corners he pulled over and let me pass. Wow, a guy in a new 911 turbo who knows he can't drive and lets a miata pass him. What's the world coming to? At one point just after hwy 236 (Vareck knows that area, it's where we took the pictures) I came around a corner and there was a green something in my lane. I dodged a little and he cut back into his lane right before I would have hit him (not a lot of room to dodge). I can't figure out what he was doing on my side, there was no one for him to be passing. Perhaps he over ran the last corner?

And here is something I know no one cares about. I finished my dual range workout plan. Basically I do two of everything at two weights. If I used to do say 3 sets of 15 reps at 50lbs, I now do 3 sets / 15 reps / 50lbs AND 3 sets / 15 reps / 25lbs interleaved. Tires the muscles out without as much risk of injury. Works very well. And yes, the handwriting isn't all that good, but have you ever tried to write with a dull golf pencil wearing gloves after lifting? If you want to compare it to your workout (Vareck) remember that most those weights are per side and don't include the standard Olympic bar. And that I'm short and skinny and stuff.

Some tiny pictures scanned of the color MLS printout for the Pioneer house. These images are like 1" on the printout, so the scans aren't the best but you get the idea. It looks a lot better in real life of course.

Talked to the loan lady and the tax guy today and got everything going on the house loan. Cool, it's all coming together. Now I just need to find a dual sport motorcycle to have up at the house for blasting along fire roads. Fun.

And now I know why I don't fit in with normal society. Which demographic am I in? Let's see. Today I was dressed in a t-shirt (for comfort) and dockers (to look somewhat professional at the meeting) and my new psycho vest (getting used to covering up my CCW rig again) and a hogan racing baseball hat (top was down). So that's the nerd/yuppie/psycho/redneck look? Driving my toy car (I think I'm in the demographic for that) wishing I was driving an Audi A4 Avant Wagon, worried about the cost of repairing the truck. (No where near the demographic for the A4) I was listening to Madonna, in Spanish, but I live in an Indian/Chinese neighborhood. Then switching to White Zombie. Driving to work at 10am after spending the morning talking to various people about my 2nd house and how to best use it to reduce taxes while watching stock quotes on my phone, trying to justify spending $7 on going to the gun show and $25 on a book.

Dad's birthday dinner was last night. Anne came along; she did pretty well not freaking out and only getting sorta woozy/drunk on 1.5 glasses of wine. She's not big on crowds nor lots of people she doesn't know. Or even lots of people she _does_ know. Everyone loved having her there which scares me. Did I pick a good one? At least she's not like Camille where dad actually said "I hope she's good in bed because she's really irritating the rest of the time". I had blackened swordfish. Well, they said 'blackened' but really that meant 'covered in ciane pepper and pan fried'. It was OK, but nothing I would have wanted to spend $22 on. She had some sort of chicken with really good mushrooms. The bread was also very good, but there was no chocolate moose (that's not how you spell it) on the dessert menu.

I forgot what a pain house buying is. Seems like every time I turn around someone wants another check for $300-$1000 for some 'fee'. The appraisal on my condo alone is $300, what sort of crock is that? Then they have to appraise the new place. Escrow closes in 30 days tho, so the pain should be over quickly. I've totaled up my expenses for the next month, almost $5500 in quarterly taxes, stuff, the Yellowstone trip (est), etc. Ouch.

Found out what happened to the truck. 'Something' broke off inside the transmission and it rattled around and grenaded 1st and 2nd gear and took out the torque converter for good measure. Fix is simple: New Transmission. Oh. We're getting a new ford unit (from ford with a 2 year warranty) installed with all the trimmings for $1400. Cash. No checks, no credit cards, an actual stack of $100 bills only. This is the guy that does all of dad's work on trucks for the business, so I suspect it's some sort of deal. I don't care what the deal is as long as we get it back on the road for $700 apiece. Saturday dad is taking it over to get the bumper built (custom tow hitch thing).

I swiped the "Member 11-99 Foundation" license place from dad tonight. Apparently his boss gives the cops (CHP actually, they did security at his birthday) a lot of money each year for this foundation that helps out various cops with things like court fees, helping out officer widows, etc. (11-99 is the code for 'officer needs assistance'). Anyway, they gave him an honorary badge he's supposed to present with his drivers license; they go lenient on people that pay big money. All the cops/CHP/sheriffs know what the 'member' license plate frame means as well and they tend to leave those people alone as not to tick them off and loose the donations. Now I have the power. Amazing how the world bends to your will if you have the cash.

Anne got the pictures from Thunderhill developed. The in-focus ones are bad in that they don't portray any action, it looks like I'm just sitting there doing nothing. The out of focus shots have good framing. This is the best of the compromise shots and photoshop sorta put it in focus. It looks really bad on the monitor on my Linux box, not quite as bad on the PC. Why am I always suffering from weird monitor gamma?

I'll have to get it blown up to 8x10 or whatever for the office wall to go with the Honda pictures.

New Unix admin started today; should work out just fine. He's pretty quick which will help him figure out what's going on since neither Loc nor I are very good teachers. It's interesting to see someone all fresh and happy about a job; I'm hoping it's going to put a boost in the group's productivity with the new ideas floating around.

I really like this new smaller MS keyboard, the tactile response is really nice.

Big news of the day is that the owner of the house made a counter offer (some really minor stuff, it will cost me about $300 more than planned due to them not paying for some stuff) and I signed it. We have a contract! Someone else did put an offer in, but it was after the owner had sent me the counter. Since he signed it he had to wait for me to accept/reject it or for 3 days to pass before he could deal with the next offer. Whew! Made it just in time this time. I had no idea real estate was such a 'quick' business, I figured it took people months to make this sort of big dollar decisions. Apparently not.

Nothing on the truck yet. It's been towed to the repair shop and is awaiting inspection. The mechanic's first statement was that the park/reverse solenoid was frozen. That's cheap, which is good. But where did the smoke and oil come from? That can't be cheap.

Went to the property today with dad and cut and split wood. We took the down madrone trees and with the two chain saws and a maul borrowed from one of the locals and we cut and split 1.5 cords of wood. Doesn't seem like much but we are rookies at this. My shoulder and gut hurt like hell and both hands are completely blistered, and that was through the gloves. Ouch.

On the way back the truck broke down. Right about at the 580/680 interchange (which was packed with traffic as usual) dad says "we're loosing the transmission" at which time I notice smoke coming out of the left side of the engine bay. We get out of traffic and just start driving as every time we slow down it starts shuttering and generally acting as if it's on it's last legs (which it is as it turns out). We get into a mall (I was hoping to find an auto parts store in case it was just low on fluid, hah hah) and I said "you had better find a place to put it down" (what movie is that from?) and he pulls into a space under a tree and it dies. ugh. we call mom and she drives up to get us. In the mean time, we're stuck by the (closed) mall. We break out the lawn chairs and the cooler and have the rest of the sandwiches and apples from lunch and I read while dad wanders around looking for mom. Interesting the people you see in a mall parking lot on Sunday night. I'm surprised they didn't call security on the couple of dirty looking people having some sort of picnic. :) We didn't even clean up before we left figuring we could just shower at home. I didn't want to break out the soap and water while sitting in the parking lot.

We also stopped by the (second) place I put an offer in on. The owner is out until Monday, so we'll see what happens. There was no offer in on it when I put one in Thursday, but by now I bet there is another offer in and I'm going to loose to someone else, again. We'll see, but I'm not confident at all.

This one is not as remote as the other one, and is on a lot less land (like 1/3 of an acre) but it's in way better shape (been completely remodeled) and has a lot more usable room. The basement is finished all in tile and has a fireplace and a full bath (total of two full baths). It's been repainted inside and out, has new carpet and linoleum, a new kitchen including range and dishwasher and a garbage disposal, new bathrooms (toilets tubs, sinks, tile), new light fixtures, etc. Basically it's pretty much new from the walls out. I like that. It's cheaper too, I like that as well. The only part that's not as nice is the lot is small-ish. It's only 0.8 miles from the building site for the other house which is nice. I have some other pictures, they're in the camera still.

Yesterday I went to the range and tried out the new and improved psycho wheel gun with the new 2x-6x 30mm scope I put on there Friday. There were some little gang banger type punks there with rented 9mm sigmas who could barely put them on the paper (we're talking a 2'x2' target) at 21 feet. I had the target set at 35 feet and was making sub 2" groups off hand with the scope set at 2x. At 3x off the bench the groups were 0.75" or less, mostly just one ragged hole. It's actually pretty hard to shoot a scoped handgun as you really notice how unstable you are holding it. Plus it weighs a ton now and it hard to hold up for very long. I got a case for it as well, it's now a specialty range-only piece rather than anything useful. After only 8 years I finally built the gun as seen in "Road Warrior". I also found the boxes of paper-hulled shotgun shells Vareck and I bought just in case we ever got a cut down double barrel like Mel was carrying. I'm sure that was a 20 gauge, but hey, we're close.

First day at Linuxworld. Parking sucks, why do they put conference centers downtown and then don't provide any parking? Even the bend-over $20 lots were full. I didn't get there _that_ late to have to put up with hiking in from Zimbabwe. The talks were OK, and actually a touch better than the ones at USENIX. I liked the guy from VA Linux doing the talk on clustering. You would tell he was excited about the technology and was giving a talk he was knowledgeable about. He was honest too, he actually said what worked and what sucked. How refreshing. The food was bad, they closed most the food places at 2:45pm while we were still in classes so at 3pm we got nasty 'leftovers'. I had a cheese steak sandwich. If ever I think I've eaten some sort of dog, that would be it. At least it wasn't greasy, not sure how they managed that. Guess terrier doesn't have a lot of fat on it.

I've changed which radio station I listen to via yahoo! broadcast. I could just use the receiver in the AC3 unit but I don't have an FM antenna. Anyway, I used to listen to this station out of Jacksonville (FL) but I kept getting psyched about events (because I didn't recognize the names of stuff) then later realizing they were across the country. Now I'm doing KILO out of Colorado Springs. That way when they mention places I know where they are and I don't get excited. I think the upstairs neighbors are upset at the moment, they're banging around up there. I don't have it turned up or anything. If they don't knock it off I'm going to do another sound check. :) Last weekend I tried to see how loud it could go without distorting. The remote came in handy since I had to get away from the speakers. It was loud. This 125 watts/channel is nothing like when dad used to drive them with the 500 watts/channel macintosh amp but it still doesn't distort at any level you would want to listen at. Now I'm starting to think I do need a sub, and a center, and the rears, and a 58" TV and a DVD player. Die Hard (or Aliens) would rock on this thing!

I got to use a very seldomly used quote (only Dennis would get it). Someone said "You are crazy, does your users know you do that?" I said "No. You could warn them...if only you spoke Hovitos." Anyone? Anyone? Raiders of the lost ark. (yes, I looked up the spelling on a script.)

Got side tracked there for 20 minutes reading the Die Hard script on that site. Some of the lines are wrong. I know.

Well crap. Someone else put a offer in on the cabin and I lost out. They gave full price, and didn't care that it needed a new roof. Damn. What a let down. After I made the call to get it, got myself all worked up, it just fell through. This is getting old, so very old.

I don't know what's up with these customer service people on phone orders, they don't know how to 'push' the right things. I ordered some stuff from midway and she says it will be here before the 25th. 11 days? bah. I ask if there is another shipping option. She says two-day air (be here Thursday since I'm ordering at 9:25pm) is an extra $5.49. Well duh I'll pay the extra 2% to get it here this week (so I can play with it on the weekend :) I've been putting this order off for months. It was supposed to be my reward for going to the dentist and I just never ordered it. Well no more, it will be here Thursday. Gotta get some pictures.

Linux world is this week, I'm going tomorrow. Hope it's better than Usenix...

I'm doing laundry today, and I actually ironed shirts. Few points, one being I can't figure out why the ironing board is shaped like it is. I must be doing something 'wrong' as to not be fully utilizing the board. I did find out that you don't have to iron the last bit of the shirt as it's going to be tucked in anyway. That reduced it from three passes per side to two. 33% more efficient. Also, don't use the 'ignite paper' setting without being sure of what you're doing. Only trained personnel should use anything above 'scorch'.

So yesterday dad and I went to pioneer and met with the grader guy who's going to cut the pad site for the house. The D8 cat can move 10 yards of dirt per pass. A pickup truck bed is 1/2 a yard, so moving 20 truck loads per pass is pretty impressive. After that we went to check out cabins. The one I thought was cool before was pretty bad, it was right by hwy 88, so you get the continual rush of cars. Bummer. We found another one, and on Thursday dad's going to take another look then we're going to make an offer on it. I had a camera along but didn't take any pictures. Here is the one from the listing:

It's on 1.5 acres, with about 1 acre of it in front of the cabin (where the picture was taken). There is also a small shed thing in front that has power, water and a phone hookup. It's pretty beat up tho, we would take it out. The thing needs a roof ($1500) and has to be painted on the outside. The inside is rustic (and sorta tacky) but we can fiddle with it as needed. Some paint inside will do wonders, as well as some new lights. Upstairs is perfectly usable, it's two bedrooms that are much newer than the rest of the place. What is good about it is the location. It's up this twisty road on a dead end road so there is zero traffic nor noise. My ears were ringing it was so quiet. Excellent. It snows here in the winter and there is an association that maintains the roads and plows them for $120/year. I wondered why the roads were so good, they're all private. If the get nasty, they just fire up the paving machine and put down new. It seems to have worked well for them for the last 32 years. It's got power, water (well), septic, phone and a TV antenna (everyone has them, there must be something to get), hot water and all that. The kitchen is small and has a fridge and a microwave and an electric stove/oven. Just the necessities. Cleaning up all the down timber in the yard is going to take some serious work.

Cell phones just don't work, don't ask. I actually had to use a pay phone for the first time in 10 years. Did you know they're 35 cents for a local call now? I managed to get a signal if I went to the top of dad's land and got LOS on the mountain to the south. It's weak but worked as long as I didn't move. No where else in town did it ever even blip. I noticed none of the locals were carrying them either. I also noticed a total lack of dot com ads on the buildings and companies named *net or *tech. The phone doesn't even have a prayer at the cabin, it's down in a valley. Guess I'll have to get a local phone number if I'm going to spend a lot of time there.

There are some sort of storm shutters on the out building and when dad popped on open, a bat fell out. I thought it must be dead, it didn't move after it hit the ground but after a few minutes it got up and flew away. Scared the crap out of dad, he let out this yell which scared me enough to get me to draw my spyderco.

Other than laundry and having lunch with Anne, today as been a total relaxation day. I've been sitting around reading and being totally slackerish. After i finish this log entry I'm going back to reading, I've only got a few more hours before going to sleep. That 6:30am schedule this takes dedication to maintain.

I forgot to mention that I went to Sun yesterday for a NDA briefing on new technology. They've got some cool stuff coming out over the next few months/years/whatever. I can't say much (didn't take notes even) except that Intel does not have to worry about sun's new CPU speeds, I think they've got them beat already. :) Perhaps the best part of the day was the lunch (really good stuff catered in from somewhere) and the spiffy bottles of water with the sun logo on them. I kept one of those to go with my Intel water bottle that says "i486 means Unix performance".

Doug (guy in the office here) is taking flight school. I lent him my big bag of flight materials to get started. Someone will get some use out of those since I'm such a big slacker in that area. Can't do it all tho, we can't all be Eric.

Nothing like getting your butt kicked to put things in perspective. One, someone bought the chalet already. Damn, so close. That sucks tho, I was psyched. OK, but the real butt kicking came in the form of a civic EX. On 237 I see this civic gliding through traffic. Most rice boys can't drive and when they change lanes the just jerk the wheel and change which actually slows you down (physics or something). This guy was signaling and doing quick but smooth changes. Hmm... it's lowered as well, but not the usual have your big brother cut the springs with a hacksaw sorta lowering, this thing doesn't bounce and the 17" wheels aren't all bowed out because they didn't bother to correct the steering geometry. Looks pro. It's not shaved, and there are no stickers on it nor stuffed animals on the back shelf nor crap dangling from the mirror. He passes me and since I'm bored and traffic is light (yet still going only 45 mph) I drop into 3rd and follow. He's got a 4" exhaust (at least) but it's not just some big tip, I can see it's that big all the way through the muffler. Looks stainless. He's good, but I'm on him until he scrapes me off on this Yukon XL boat with some doof at the wheel (smoking AND on the cell phone, now that's hard). I catch back up and pass right as we exit. I can take this offramp at 54 mph max, he's holding on at about 45 but then starts to fall back. I know how to apex this offramp well, and he is FWD after all. :) So he catches me at the infinitely long light as Tasman and pulls up next to me. Crap, I can't drag race a metro, he wins. He looks like a 20-something Asian, probably Japanese. The light turns green and he _leaves_. Not like 0-60 in 7.9 like a stock EX civic, but like gone. I had the top down, I would have herd a super-charger and a turbo wouldn't spool that fast. There was not really any clutching slipping either, he seemed to be in gear before he did whatever it was. NOS? Cool if it was. That or he stuffed a V8 in that thing.

I went to the gym tonight after my haircut but only did cardio. I'm supposed to go tomorrow AM so I didn't want to do too much tonight. Just wanted to do something as I felt pretty bad today (mentally) and workouts usually help.

Made it to the store finally and got toilet paper, q-tips and some other necessities I was low on. The guy in front of me with his daughter must be a weekend father. clues: no ring, seems completely unsure of how to talk to her, basket is full of frozen foods, juice pops and cereal.

Last bit. Our CEO sent some email saying they're changing the Christmas party. It's at the Monterey bay aquarium and they're bringing _ALL_ of nVidia. All the overseas offices and their families, all the guys scattered around the US, everyone local. That's a lot. Too bad it's a 'family oriented' party else I would go. The local Kelley went to the last Christmas party and said it was pretty much like a day care center. No fun at all.

Wow, the biggest gap in my log yet. Gotta watch that. It's been a horrible last few days really, I've not felt like updating anything. I won't go into details because I don't even want to have to look at it in the future. I probably won't forget it anyway.

So, happy topics, I put up that shelving in the washer closet finally so I have a place to stack linens other than in my bedroom closet. Now I've got all these empty shelves to stack my winter clothes on rather than just having this big pile at the end of the bed. That would finish up the cleaning of my place, but over the weekend I tore apart the back room reorganizing furniture, tossing old magazines and basically finishing up (or taking out and restarting) a bunch of projects that I've just had hidden away for a long time. I've always said I was going to cut out articles from old magazines to save and I finally did it and tossed about 10 tons of paper. Seems simple, but it's cool that I finally did it. Now once I have everything off the floor in the room I'm done cleaning. Spiffy. Of course, I still have this replacement miata battery here on the bedroom floor, that doesn't look good. Try explaining that one away to a date. :)

I'm getting more spam in my work email. A while back Eric said he would host a domain for me and I could use procmail to filter crap and just keep rotating email addresses as I get spam the way he does. I should take him up on that offer, I'm just being a slacker.

I've also bugged the company I ordered my power bars from, I've not seen them but the credit card charge showed up. Wonder if the guys in shipping swiped them? We'll find out. I also ordered today a little wall plaque for the front 'hallway'. It's 8"x12.5" and looks like a fragment of wall with Egyptian writing and a large Isis representation on it. It looks like it will go with the colors in the front room. It's not as tacky as it sounds, trust me. Of course, I'm the guy that painted the living room 'expedition khaki' and has a Laura Fields print on the wall.

And on the CCW front, I've changed my mind, I don't want to sue the county. It's too expensive for not much returns (that whole cost/benefit thing). So instead, I'll just move to a county that's more reasonable, like Amador. I'm going out there this weekend to check out a cabin. It will be my primary residence, and my parents will stay there on weekends while they're working on the house. Of course, I'll keep the Fremont place for weekdays, what, you think I'm nuts? Here are some samples of what $79,900 gets you. Supposedly a 2 bedroom, 1 full bath 1000sqft 'chalet' (which I think is French for 'shack') on 1 acre of heavily wooded land in pioneer off hwy 88. It's 5.74 miles from my parents building site. Cable TV is available.

I am Wheelie Mouse Man (tm) now both at home and at work. Kenny has one of those mice with the scroll wheel in it and I've always thought it was cool. Now I have them both at work and at home and I can't figure out how I got along with out them. Sometimes trinkets are good.

I drove up to some property on Bear Creek road out toward Santa Cruz. Bear Creek road appears to be drawn in by a monkey on crack, it's so twisty even I got sorta queasy after the first few miles. On the way back it was hell trying to keep the car under control; my Yokohamas just didn't seem to have any grip at all on whatever that road is made out of. It's pretty bumpy too (ever seen washboards on a paved road???) so I imagine that the tires weren't in contact with the road all that often. I might have found the property in question. It was getting dark, and when I got out to take a look, some 'creature' started moving around in the bushes and scared the crap out of me. I ran right out of there, did a duke boys style jump in the window (the top was down) and burn out on the dirt road on the way out. It was probably a deer, I'm just too tense.

Contacted a lawyer about getting a CCW permit in CA. He says that Alameda county is the worst and is currently being 'investigated' for several rights violations and some other crap. Oh. Anyway, he says I should move elsewhere if I want on, like Napa county. Obviously not possible, so we're going to talk about the suing them route. If it's not too expensive, I'm up for it. Damn government always getting in the way of the good people. The other option I could try is to get one of those jobs that qualify for a permit, like private investigator. I would have to take the tests (probably like the one in WA they give us during the weapons classes) and whatnot, but then I could say I have a side business as a PI. Maybe even write off my training an ammo? Hah, that would be the ultimate screw-back. hehehe.

The guy with the EX mailed back, it's been sold. Ah well, it's for the best.

I was going to make a list of stuff I want to do (big goals, not just the little stuff) to make myself feel more focused. If it's possible I can do anything I actually want to, then I should figure out what that is and get on it. I'll put that on the main page somewhere.

So far today I've smashed my fingers twice. Once at the gym, once moving some crap in the safe and a ammo can shifted. Ouch, no wonder I'm typing slow.

I just spent some quality time putting quicken data into the machine. Interesting charts it puts out. My top expenses were the condo, buying the miata (paying cash) and travel to Seattle and the stuff that goes on up there. :) I need to do something about the taxes. See I used to just pay them out of my check and not worry about the category. Now that I have to pay quarterly taxes it shows up as money spent and I really didn't "spend" it because I never really should have had it in the first place. It's sorta tricky. Since January, my checking account is off $0.63, savings and both credit cards are exactly on track with the bank. Not too bad. I had a check to PG&E for $29.30 get cashed for $2.93 which I know isn't right. I've not seen any back due notices or late fees or interest on my latest bills so where did that extra $27 I owe them go? To be honest I'm not checking the bills that close, but still, each month they're right around $20 now that it's summer and I'm not using so much gas to heat so I would notice a double bill if they tacked on what I owed them. It will show up sooner or later I'm sure.

Oh, and Ford did it's split/cash out thing today, sorta freaked me out. The "F" symbol is dead for the moment so when I did my usual quote/update it said "Symbol Not Found". Somehow I didn't think Ford fell off the face of the planet.

Another month down. I can't believe we're over 50% through Y2k already. Time does feel like it goes faster as you get older. I remember how long it took to get through college.... and it seems like those were the good old days. That's not entirely a good thing, I would hate to think that the best days are behind me.

So let's see, what cool stuff has been happening in my last the last few days. Um, well I got two workouts in on Monday and Tuesday and last night I cleaned the house. Sounds boring I know, and it is, but man do I feel better with the front room dusted, vacuumed, organized (threw out about 10000 magazines and piles of old mail) and most of the crap put away. I cleaned the kitchen including scrubbing the floors and did the bathroom/toilet/shower drill. Anne was amazed that a man, and a bachelor even, would know how to clean so well. I miss the days of the maid when it just happened auto-magically.

Even tho everyone at work kids me about owning BUD, I'll have you know that because of good sales and growth, they've announced a 2:1 split and a 10% increase in dividends. Hah, I may make money at something yet. Those guys that bought at $54 are pretty happy right now I would imagine. If I can come up with any cash I might try to pick some more up if it drops any. And yea, I'm up 23% on CSCO and only 8.6% on BUD, but it just feels better to be up on BUD because it's one of those old-world stocks.

Other big news, I spent about 10 minutes looking at ads for EX500s, found a '89 and a '94. I'm not going to get one or anything, but I can look.

I'm building a Linux box right now for me to use at my desk. Ed was confused again when he suggested I just load something onto my Linux box and I told him I didn't actually have one. So, end of an era I suppose, I'm going to pull the sun off my desk (move it to the machine room, I'll just use it from there) and put this Linux box in it's place. Sun is a U5/360 w/512mb RAM and 8gb IDE disk. Linux box is a 2xPIII/700 w/2gb RAM and 2x35gb ultra fast/wide SCSI disks. How sad that the sun is IDE and the Intel stuff is SCSI, and faster, and with more memory, and is probably cheaper. I'm keeping the sun monitor tho, it's still pretty good. I might swap it out for one of the new ones the next time I roll a workstation out, they've gotten better from what I've seen. The only thing I'm not too jazzed about is 1. the keyboard and mouse I have suck, and 2. I'm not sure I'm going to like these new fancy window managers. I'm trying to force myself to be modern instead of just using tvtwm like I have since '91, but dammit it works and it's fast. I'll probably just install it and continue running like always, only really really fast on this new box.

OK, update, I'm using the Linux box full time now. First off, this thing is fast! Like really fast, like I can't see the text scroll it's so damn fast. Plus I've found how to change the keyboard settings so the repeat rate is really high. That rocks. Plus my code suddenly runs a whole lot faster. I've also found some cool features in the window manager that makes it work just like tvtwm, and in some cases better. I don't know how to make things start up like I did with the .xinitrc, but there has got to be a way. This should keep my occupied for a few days trying to get stuff ported over. The automount /net stuff doesn't work right, so some of my monitor scripts don't work on this host, but I'm going to keep the sun and just telnet to it and do my stuff there that's Solaris specific. It doesn't come standard with ssh either which is strange, I figured they would have that stuff in there by now.