Whoa, I've missed some entries. Life is busier than I though. Anyway, the big news is that on Wednesday night I dislocated my shoulder (while sparing). Rosa (Mrs. I have a black belt and tournament fought for 5 years) caught my left arm and did a very Segal-ish move and pop, it came out of the socket and then pop, it went back in. Any idea how much that hurt? It works OK (my arm) but it's sore and I can't really lift, or play golf, or do much of anything other than type. I figure I'll be OK by sometime next week if I just rest it. I have no plans of doing anything to stress it. I've not even ridden my bike.
The other interesting news is that I rented the first Insight available for rental in San Jose just yesterday. It's costing me $600 for a week, but I think it's worth it just to test the new technology out. The car has more power than I first thought. They ended up giving me an automatic, even though they warned me like a dozen times that it would be a 5-speed. I figure the auto is OK, I mean it's a worst case scenario that way. Going home last night to HMB it did just fine and today on the way in I even passed a few people on 92 going up the hill (note: if you're getting passed by a 71 hp hybrid powered golf cart, you really shouldn't be on the road). Cruising in at 70-75mph (vs the usual 75-80mph) we got 51.7 mpg. That's pretty cool. It's not that noisy, but it is somewhat uncomfortable due to the light weight. You feel every bump and with those tiny tires it tends to follow every rut in the road. This weekend we're going to take a trip out to the cabin to see how it does at 3500 ft trying to climb hills. I'll take some pictures tomorrow since my camera is at home and I've not been there in a while to be able to pick it up.
Oh, and I hate these fuck-wits from Synopsis. They change their appointment like a dozen times because they can't figure out when everyone's schedule is free, they canceled twice and now today we're supposed to meet at 9am (was 10am) and they're here at 8:30am having the receptionist call me every 5 minutes. I'm just going to let the bastards sit there until 9. Fuck 'em, I don't want to talk to them anyway. Our VP is making us tell them how our linux farm works, thereby allowing them to write white papers and sell our technology to our competitors who also use their software. Good for them, bad for us. I hope the marketing chick he slept with was worth it.
While running to the bank at lunch, I got a chance to play with all of the widgets in the Insight. I found the 'sport' setting on the automatic. It really makes a difference. The car will run up to redline now and use 100% electric boost. A lot more fun, but it kills the mileage. I also read that the automatics mileage is only 56, that's like 12 less than the 5-speed. Autos suck.
One of the netapp boxes blew a main board and I had to come in and swap it. Luckily we had a spare on-site. Time to go home, again.
K5 suggested I keep a journal of my decisions, the facts I used to make the decisions, things I thought about when I did it, etc. Basically she's worried that when I do stuff like sell the GTI, or choose to ride/not to ride to work, etc that I'll regret it later if I can't look back and go "I did it because of XYZ". I guess it can't hurt to try.
Yesterday our counselor canceled so I had an extra bonus day to myself which was pretty cool. I went to the gym (didn't make it in the morning) and had a really good workout. I also went to the bookstore and got a learning Italian CD (to complement our class work), paid some bills, folded laundry, read some magazines, wrote some notes and generally just enjoyed myself. I need more days like that.
Sparing was good this morning as well. I've got a huge red spot/bruise on the right side of my rib-cage but at least I didn't get kicked in the head.
Check this watch out. It's from Suunto and although it's not is the US catalog, they say it will be here in December. This is the 23mb demo for the Observer model. Basically it has all the stuff that my Casio Pathfinder (see the way earlier journal entry) has, but looks way cooler and is more 'adult'. It's also titanium. That's always a good thing.
The BBQ at the cabin went well this weekend, I think. I don't know if Don had a good time or not, some of K5's friends are pretty dominant in a conversation, almost to the point of being really annoying. The food turned out OK, even though Don had to fend for himself on day 2 (I guess people thought we were feeding them the second day too???)
I have no affinity for languages. Italian class was last night and I was struggling the whole time. Being partially deaf really sucks when you're trying to hear language stuff for the first time. I'll have to work way harder than anyone else to overcome that lack of hearing thing.
K5's driving really annoys me and I know why. She's never paying attention, she's always screwing around with her glasses, phone, garbage, whatever, making lots of random little lane position changes, on and off the gas, etc. Basically she's giving about 25% of her attention to driving, the rest to something else. I wonder if I can bring this up at the next counseling session; it really, really annoys me.
Got rice? Our new resident NT expert and rice boy got his car back from the shop today. $4300 for that new transmission. It's really bright out there, it was washing out all the colors and contrast.... that, and I have a cheap camera.
I picked up the bike today. They tried to charge me $230 to fix it, they said that the oil was over-filled and it puked out of the top of the air box. I mentioned that they were the only ones that did the service and they let me go without payment. Bastards.
Played golf yesterday at the San Jose Country Club (vendor thing). It's a tough course, but in fairly good shape. I did pretty well; I think I'm actually starting to get the game.
This morning I played squash with Troy, then did a quick 30 minute workout before heading home. Summer is over so it takes longer to get places due to the sheer volume of stupid soccer moms clogging up the roads after they drop their urchins off at school.
Speaking of school, our Italian classes start tonight. I'm back in college again, wonder if there will be any cute chicks? :)
Also yesterday I went with K5 at lunch to sign the papers on her condo refinance. She's taking out a bunch of cash to buy the apartment building in Austin. It will close/fund/whatever next week and she'll have the cash in hand when we go to TX on the 7th.
I wish I had some pictures of something to put in here, but there hasn't been anything interesting to take a picture of in a while. I'm pretty unmotivated about anything material at the moment so I can't even plot and scheme about what I want to get next (and steal pictures from web sites).
No vendors have called me and it's already have 10. Usually I have 3-4 messages by 10am. I even called the Sun guy yesterday and said I want to bump up all our 6800s from 64gb to 128gb of RAM and he's not called back. Maybe I've finally annoyed everyone into not calling me. That could be good, that could be bad.
Last night's dinner consisted of a bag of ramen and a hamburger bun. We're pretty much out of food at K5's house. Her fridge blew up over a week ago and the parts still aren't here. The tech said that her compressor was taken out, probably from a power spike when they restored power after the last rolling blackout. Some day these fat-ass lazy stay at home soccer moms will figure out to just turn the AC down once in a while and then we won't have to deal with the blackouts. I guess they have to keep the ice cream cold so it's ready for the afternoon Ophra viewing.
After fixing the thermostat in the Montero (total cost of $6 in parts) my gas mileage is up 10%. That's well worth it. I knew it was running rich being cold all the time.
Played golf with EMC on Sunday at Wente Vineyards which is a really, really nice course. Tough as hell (wish I had my camera along to take pictures) but I shot very well (I think). After golf K5 and I drove all over the valley and found her a car (which she bought). She ended up buying my car, the 2002 Subaru WRX wagon. Basically just like Eric's Impreza, but with a 227hp turbo engine so it's a fast little car. She picks it up today (it wasn't ready yesterday, it had just come in that morning and there were no technicians working Sunday to actually prep the car and get it ready). I've got the camera today so there will be pictures galore when we go pick it up at 2pm. It took 4 hours to negotiate the deal and get the papers done. I traded in my GTI, it's officially gone. My daily driver is now a '89 Montero. I feel so liberated.
Whoa, HET's P/E ratio is 869. That seems, um, high, or something. That must be some sort of typo, right?
She picked up the car. They did a crap job of detailing it, just like I thought they would. It needs wax and someone to go over it and pick off all the little bits of packing material they left behind. At least all the parts work. :) And of course, there are some really bad pictures. I had trouble because it was so bright out. Hopefully I can get some in HMB where the light is a little softer (sunlight through fog makes a great non-glaring non-harsh illumination source).
Golf yesterday was OK, just OK, not great, good nor any other nifty word. It was the first time I played 18 holes (that wasn't a best-ball tournament style game). Very exhausting. It's a sport all right.
The battery in my Rio exploded and got this nasty crap all over it and leaked out onto the night stand. I wonder if battery companies will still 'repair or replace any product damaged by leakage from this battery' like the used to advertise they did?
I went to my conflict resolution class today and it was pretty good. Almost as good as the meeting class. I'm done with my 4 classes now, I must be some sort of manager now. :) Outside in the parking lot of the women from class saw me getting in the Montero and asked me if I off-roaded it. I thought it might be some sort of anti-SUV attack (I figured anyone that off-roaded themselves would recognize the massive brush scrapes down both sides) but instead she had flyers from the local 4x4 club which is having an off-road school. K5 enjoys driving on the trails and wanted to learn more so this was perfect. On the ride home K5 called me and said she would be at my place around 7pm tonight. She had some sort of 'epiphany' about her life and it's going to involve some changes. It scares me, but she sounded pretty positive. I can't tell if that's because she's going to dump my ass and feels good about it or what. I need to really find out what 'epiphany' means before she gets here...
OK, that wasn't hard. dictionary.com to the rescue. My guess is we're talking about #3, unless she really ran into some weird people at that SAP conference she was at yesterday.
e·piph·a·ny ( -pf  -n )n. pl. e·piph·a·nies
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I'm beginning to tire of sales people. They really suck. I mean, if you have a product you can pitch it and see if people want it. If they don't then you shouldn't keep hounding them to death. Just give it up and move on and see if the next guy wants it. I guess there isn't any money left so they've got no choice but to keep beating their heads against the wall until something gives.
Damn, my investment chick had to cancel on me. She called at 7:30am and left a message asking for directions to the new office. I didn't get the message until 9:15am when I was checking voice mail. Oops. We'll meet next Tuesday. Now I've got a whole day with no meetings, scary. I bet I'll get some real work done.
Leanne baked cookies last night. It was kinda nice to come home to the smell of baking stuff. The other night she made some sort of BBQ meat and artichokes. Some day I would like to cook something myself. I used to you know, I could cook some stuff that didn't involve a microwave.
It's quiet it in the office today. I can hear our resident NT hacker and rice boy talking on the phone 3 cubes away. He's working some sort of deal for a transmission for his Honda. They're talking gear ratios now. I should go take pictures of his rice mobile.
So much for that, I took my camera over but rice-boy's car isn't here. He blew the transmission out and it's in the shop, that's why he's on the phone.
Peer pressure runs rampant around this place. Jimmy (the network skippy) found a Mercedes C32 AMG, a 346hp sedan. The dealer wanted $59k yesterday, today they called him and offered it for $52k. Jimmy wants the car, but is afraid to deal with the guy so he's waffling around on if he really wants it. There were 5 of us pressuring him to do it, and I got our VP in on the action as well. Jimmy finally called and left a message with the sales droid saying $51k and they have to throw in the CD changer (like that's not standard equipment???). We'll see if he ends up driving it tomorrow. I won't be here in the afternoon so I won't see if he actually goes through with it until next week.
I've been trying to con someone into buying a WRX wagon and I think Rob (one of the Exchange guys) is going to. K5 thinks it's pretty cool too and says it's a better family car than the GTI and maybe I should get one. Man, I just bought a new car... do I really need to trade it in? It's probably only a couple grand over the trade-in value on my GTI. Hmm.... could this be my next ride?
Nothing much to report today. I did have a 2+ hour meeting with my boss, and his boss. Interesting stuff, but hardly worthy of writing down.
I shot a 46 today, K5 said I beat everyone. Amazing since I had a 9 on one hole (that's bad).
Someone mentioned we made our numbers and announced a 2:1 stock split. Coolness.
Today Netapp came in and gave Ed and myself shirts, but didn't bring enough for everyone. Jim was making noise that only the managers get stuff, etc. I did think it was pretty chicken shit that they didn't give us enough for everyone so I took Ed's shirt and mine and gave them to Jim and Loc. That's the right thing to do, give the little perks to the workers to keep morale high. Too bad no other managers here have ever tried that.
K5 scratched my car, or at least someone scratched it while it was in her possession. Went through the clear coat so I won't be able to buff it out. That sucks.
Spared this morning (and got some new bruises for it) and am getting my haircut tonight. After the haircut I have to go to HMB (to take the GTI back to the garage). At 5am tomorrow we have to get up to leave by 5:45am to get to the golf course by 6:45am to hit a few balls before the 7:06am tee time. I played Sunday with a vendor, am playing tomorrow with K5, Friday with another vendor and then again on Sunday with yet another vendor. Man, I never realized how much golf people were offering us before I started playing. I like the free golf.
Went to my "Increasing Personal Effectiveness and Performance" class on Saturday which was pretty interesting. I have some things to try out on everyone here at work and things to try with my 'employees'. Scary. Saturday night was the MIS BBQ which I really didn't want to go to but went to anyway because K5 wanted to. She really didn't want to either but was afraid of the political ramifications of not going. Half the department didn't go, no one likes anyone else around here.
Also Saturday K5's clutch blew out. It didn't just slip, it violently stopped working. I think the throw-out bearing is gone. I managed to jam it into 1st gear and drive at 10mph to get her off of the freeway and limp it back to the parking lot at work. I've got to call around today and see who can fix it. She's driving my GTI, again. This makes the 2nd week that she's been using my car because hers has died.
Sunday I went to play golf with a vendor at some course down in the hood, in San Jose. Rancho de gun shot or something (really named rancho de pueblo). It was a nice short course, really forces you to be accurate and work on your short game. Then, wonder of all wonders, K5 went on a motorcycle ride with me. Yes, scary I know. We went down Hwy 1 to a fruit stand to get some veggies and then down to some town to have artichoke soup. We started home and on the way she gave me the sign to turn off onto this little mountain road. We zipped around up on some really bad roads in the mountains for about half an hour then continued back toward home again (her butt was getting sore). I didn't take any pictures of the ride, but I did take two of her suiting up. I've also got pictures of the garden box with it's sprouts here.
I'm generally feeling pretty good today. The ride in this morning on Skyline was pretty nice, and the bike is running well. It's still no super street machine, but I figure I'll give myself a year on it as my 'getting restarted' bike then move up to something else. Hardly worth journaling I know, but I'm just typing to reduce stress.
Man, I hate it when I get all confused coming out of the bathroom. All of the buildings look the same and all of the bathrooms look the same. I forget which building/floor I'm on and I get all disoriented and weird feeling when I walk out and get lost.
I can't sleep. I'm tired, but I don't want to go to sleep. Mostly I don't want to have to face tomorrow. Yet another day at the office. My happy state from earlier today has worn off apparently. At least I have clean sheets (the dryer just finished up).
Wow, I lost a whole day in there somewhere. Yesterday was totally wasted. I got in at 9:13 (played golf at 7:12) and at 9:28 my boss called a 'private meeting', just the two of us talking. He almost quit Monday. He says the money isn't worth it anymore and was perfectly happy to just walk away, ditch his house down here and move up to his Sacramento house and get some 'dead-end stupid sysadmin' job. Oh. I'm glad he didn't, I'm sure we wouldn't get as good of a director as he is and then we would have an idiot VP and a bad director. That's just bad. Anyway, at 10:30 I had a meeting with IAS which ran until 12:40 (instead of 11:30 like I was planning). After that Ed took me to lunch to continue our talk from earlier. We got back at 1:50pm and at 2pm we had to go to Alameda to check out a demo from Computer Associates who were a total bunch of morons. If you have a demo day for your products, make sure the people running them at least know something about the product or the competition, or something. We knew more about the stuff than they did. Who buys this crap software anyway? By 5:45pm I was back at home, completely confused. I didn't go to class since I was on the wrong side of the bay, rather I just sat around doing nothing, not even reading. Leanne came home and talked to me for a while, then she left to go see a movie and I watched TV for a bit then went to the gym. TV in general is really stupid, I've not missed much. I just don't get these sitcoms anymore. South Park was amusing, it was an episode about a towel. That's only really funny because I have a blue towel hanging in my cube so now I can make towel jokes and people will get it (the towel is there because I shower after my sparing class, not because I'm some sort of freak).
I just now (between typing that paragraph and this one) fired off email to Sun telling them that their N6800 storage unit is total crap and to come haul it away. They gave it to us to demo, and wouldn't tell me how much it was if we wanted to keep it. It's a total joke so it doesn't matter, but still, I hate when they say "How much is it worth to you?" when I ask "How much?". Ed's standard answer was "free". Mine is now $3, free is just too cheap. :)
Oh, and when there are a bunch of young female hard-bodies at the gym dancing around in spandex, I suddenly find myself able to lift an extra 10-20% and do just a few more reps. Amazing how that works. I would like a girlfriend.
I think I already passed this around the foo21 list but I should put it here just for amusement's sake. I ran out of space on my hard drive and I've got to clean the junk up.
K5 had me look at K4's new engagement ring. The center stone is 2 karat. The going price for a ring around here was $10,000 but now it looks like some idiot went and spent $25,000. Damn, that sucks for the rest of us. They're working class slobs like the rest of us, but I guess instead of a car or house or something, he bought a ring. Still, I hate the idea that it's all about perception, women are so petty. If you don't fork out the $$$, you can't possibly love them. I guess I don't have to worry about such things, but it's still a bad precedent to be setting in society.
Why am I cleaning out space? I need to install MS project. Sigh.
Last night at the gym was excellent. It was a quick workout (like tonight will be) but at least it was a workout. They've brought in new equipment, I'll bet 90% of the gear there is new in the last 6 months now. All those people that join and never actually show up is really making it nice for the rest of us.
Slacking in the journal it seems. Thursday night K5 and I bugged out and went up to the cabin. She had to work 'from home' some on Friday but since the parents put the phone line in and the nVidia 800 number works just fine she can work from anywhere. I wonder why she doesn't try to work from home more, it seems to work well for the SAP people. We mostly just fiddled around, put up some shelving, watched deer running around in the yard, etc. Saturday we went 4x4ing at one of the local OHV areas which really sucked compared to the stuff in Colorado. Never knew how good the 4x4ing was out there. Sunday we played golf at Mace. We played the back 9 which really sucked. No trees, lots of brown grass and very hot. Somewhat like I would think Sacramento would be like. It's pretty amazing how the course changes compared to the really nice front 9, almost like the back was grafted on at some point... probably was.
I also put new thermostat in the Montero, now it runs at a normal temperature and the heater works. Kelly took some unauthorized photos while I was working on it in the back yard.
We put a composter up at the cabin as well (that black box in the pictures) to deal with all of the yard waste and food waste. Very environmentally friendly of us.
Oh, and I almost forgot. I've had a series of 'death' dreams, you know, where you're supposed to wake up before you die but I've not been waking up in time so I actually get to do the death part. I can only remember two of them, although when I woke up each night I told K5 what I was just dreaming. One of the two I remember was that I got cut off on the bike and T-boned a old 70s style boat car, not that exciting. I didn't wake up up when I hit the pavement, I slid (on my front) and died and when I did wake up I was lying on my stomach and pretty much paralyzed for a few minutes trying to figure out what happened. The second I can remember was that I was attacked by some weird worm creature while K5 and I were exploring the ruins of an old house/temple/something (it wasn't very clear what it was but I can visualize it in detail and because I told her about it right away, I have most of the details in memory). It missed me on the first pass but on the second pass it impaled me; it dove right into my stomach. I caught it's 'tail' section and dropped my crowbar but did manage to get my knife out and cut it, but I died anyway. There is something really freaky about all of this. The bike thing was a normal fear, but the fear I felt with the worm creature was really terrifying. I'm always living with the fear of dying on the bike, but it's not every day you get impaled by a worm creature.
Another month rolls by. I have a lot to type, but I'm uploading pictures at the moment and it's really hard to do anything while that's happening. Maybe I'll write tomorrow.
When the pictures are done, they will be here.
The download, er, upload is complete. As you can see, the photo quality is abysmal as usual. At least I have the camera back before this weekend. We're going up to the cabin Thursday night for the weekend. Should be good.
I realize I'm way off, but I saw South Park tonight and it was an episode about sex education. The road warrior references were funny, I love that line "Walk away. Just walk away and we'll let you live." There is probably a sound clip of that somewhere.
