Today I went with Leianne and her friend Karen (visiting from NV) to check out Leianne's place, or the place she's going to put an offer in on Monday. It's a nice ride out there to Discovery Bay, but it would suck to have to commute it. The kitchen was remodeled which is a nice feature. After that we went to Whole Foods for sandwiches and so I could babe watch. Karen is a hoot to have around, she speaks her mind and isn't afraid of holding back.

Then on to Gayla's BBQ which really was yuppie central. These are all the frat and sorority types back in college, only all grown up. It was an eye-opening experience. First off, they're not all that bad of people, just sorta locked into their social positions. It's all about money, rings (for the girls), cars, houses, etc. Basically all the stuff that we enjoy too, but it defines who they are much more than it does for us. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not for me. They do have nicely decorated houses and their wives are really tasty looking. :) Now I just have to focus on what I do what, since I've seen what I don't want.

I had so much more to say on this topic but I'm tired now and just want to go to sleep. Before I forget, that movie that I want to see next week is The Transporter. Look it up, it's a car chase movie filmed in Europe and directed by the guy that did The Professional and La Femme Nikita. I'll like it even if no one else does.

The doors in the buildings are controlled by a badge reader hooked up to some DOS PC tucked into a closet in building A. The remote sites (Austin, Oregon, etc) all connect their badge readers to that same PC over the WAN links. Apparently the guys in Austin couldn't get the elevator to work because the WAN link was saturated with someone doing code downloads from headquarters and the security system couldn't get it's packets through in time. I think they need to re-think that security model. It is a funny story, for those of us not trapped in Austin.

I got my eye checkup today, nothing exciting to report, everything is fine and my eyes are 20/15. They scheduled one for two months out; my final check.

Cicely is having a party next Friday! Her roommate moved out and now that the place is empty she's going to have a blowout before any new furniture arrives. I'm on the evite guest list, along with 41 other people. She's inviting 42 people? I don't even know 42 people, let enough well enough to invite them to a social function. She says she has friends that I can meet; having these women looking out for me may finally pay off.

Speaking of women, I had lunch with Larklyn today as planned. She's going a little crazy just being a mom now, she wants to go back to work. Unfortunately, like a lot of us she's never had to look for a job without having one; she's just moved from one to another and has no real knowledge of how to start from zero. Sounds scary to me. We're going to go see a movie or something next Wednesday. Her not-quite-boyfriend is a little worried because she's not talking about me much anymore, he thinks she's hiding something from him. The truth is that we're both busy people and don't actually talk but once a week at most. He's sorta paranoid, but then again, that's not always such a bad thing.

What a wacky dream this morning, and it wouldn't stop. I swear it went on for an hour at least. It's an odd mix of crap from Snow Crash, TV, real life and who knows what else. Here is what I can remember: I'm on the run from the Mafia in some alternate time line (that's the Snow Crash tie in). I'm with someone I don't recognize and am being chased by a woman I don't know and Lydia (the stripper) who is one of the mafia goons. At some point I get a Glock 17 from a guard (Vareck tie in I'm sure) and hijack a odd semi-truck with a really big cab. I shoot the unknown woman once (who later ends up in the truck with us) and shoot Lydia twice, one of which I swore was a fatal wound but she too ends up in the truck with us for a few days. We're driving, driving, driving, trying to get away from someone. We end up in what looks like an airport and for some reason the gun is out on a chair. A guard approaches and I cover it and try to get it into my bag without him knowing. I'm not worried he'll see it and arrest me, I'm worried he'll see it and I'll have to waste the ammo to shoot him. I don't have anything but the mag (pre-ban, another Vareck tie in) that came with it. We run away again... I wake up totally freaked. There were so many more details than this, and the whole thing was in color too, but I can't recall them now. I woke up 1 minute before the alarm, sweating and thrashing around.

It's sorta show and tell day today. Rod is bringing in his Kawasaki, I rode in on the Suzuki. Going 70mph on a "real" dirt bike (vs. the BMW which is a poser dirt bike) is scary.

Everyone liked the Suzuki. Jimmy tracked me down and asked for the keys and went riding around the parking garage, then Ed took it for a spin and then Rod. I think it was novel for them, they all have only ridden sport bikes. I was glad to get home and swap it out for the BMW though, it's not a great street bike.

After I got the other bike I went to Outhouse steak house to have dinner with Micheal and Brian (the old SE and PSE from netapp that used to service our account). Michael is such a player! He's got 6 women on his plate right now and none of them are potential for going serious, he's just playing with the whole lot of them. That can't be healthy, but it is his style. Makes me look like an alter boy. Poor Brian, he's happily married and just doesn't have the stories to share like we do. Dinner was actually good, I ate my steak, salad, part of the bloomin' onion thing and a whole loaf of bread. I must have been hungry, all the working out is putting a strain on my system.

I've got my workout stuff in the laundry right now, as soon as it's done I'm going to sleep. I'm not sure about reading tonight, I'm afraid of the dreams.

The weekend plan is now set, all three days are occupied. Saturday I'm going to follow Leianne and her friend out to Discovery Bay to check out her (potential) new town house then I'll head home to relax before the BBQ at Gayla's. Then Sunday I'm going hiking on Mt. Tam with Cicely (12 miles) and Monday Vareck will be down to drop off all the guns. I better stop by the bank on Saturday to pick up some cash. He may stay for a day or so to check out schools and/or the job market but he's said that his primary goal right now is to sell stuff, not look for things.

I'm supposed to get tickets for the Sheryl Crow concert in Reno next month. I also have to request Oct 16th off so I can go to the track with the guys from work. We're doing Thunder Hill; I'll use the R1. Zoom.

Tomorrow will be meetings, working on focal reviews, dealing with an unhappy employee, lunch with Larklyn and my last eye follow up appointment. Friday night I think I'll watch that Harry Potter DVD that Ed made for me, assuming I can figure out how I've got the player wired in. I've not used it since Krista left. Sigh, just typing her name makes me miss her.

God damn it's annoying around here at times! This stupid "change management" stuff is fucked up. We follow procedures, make a change, it's flawed, we back it out, life is good. Suddenly our security Nazi is all up in arms because he can't tell what's going on. Why not? Because he didn't actually read any of the email docs we sent describing what's going on and why. What's his solution? Start making all sorts of noise about us being idiots and not following procedure, etc. Now I'm shoving the documents back in his face going "see, we did do it, why didn't you read them?". He's silent now. I'm hiding in my cube and being civil in email. Ed wants a face to face but it will be harder to censor my email vs. censoring what I want to say in person.

Warm here tonight. I'm going to clean up the living room tonight even if it kills me.

Dad called to get the running boards for the truck (the tubular ones, not the flat stupid ones) and they kept trying to give him the chrome ones to match the bumper. But the bumper isn't chrome, it's black, as are the mirror housings and everything else. Turns out the truck is a special edition called the "night rider". Oh. Apparently they're rare.

The only format I could find Snow Crash in anymore was the large format paperback (normal sized text, just huge pages) and at first I didn't like it. Now however I realize it's got an advantage. Just like a bible, it can stay open to a page while sitting flat on a table. That's a good thing, I can eat cereal and read much easier when I don't have to hold the book.

Something is seriously wrong today and I can't tell what. It's like my mind has GPF'ed. I can tell something is wrong, but I can't say if I'm tired, or hungry, or sick, or cold or warm or anything. My mind is completely random. Now I see why people turn to alcohol or drugs, I so want to be 'wasted' right now so I don't have to think about anything. I'm aware of the impulse so it's no danger but I can see how someone else with less intuition would fall victim to it. Ugh. Gotta shower and get to work. At least I ride today, so I'll only be a half hour late. Without the gym to motivate me Tuesday and Thursday AM I'm rarely on time anymore.

Ah ha! It's not that I want to be wasted, that's not the feeling I want. It's the feeling of struggling to recover, that's what it is. I currently don't have any struggles in my life that I feel I can actually overcome. When you're trying to recover from being sick, or drunk or whatever it's a battle, you feel the pain/loss of the situation but then you can fight your way back to feeling better. That's what's missing. Everything I have now struggle wise seems too insurmountable to actually accomplish. I'm just spinning in a no-win large scale situation with no small/medium sized things to work against.

My favorite rating on LaunchCast... "never play this song again". I have a ton of those. Apparently I don't like a lot of popular music.

Went to the BMW dealer and made an appointment to get my right mirror replaced. It's a warranty thing so they have to swap it, they can't just give me the part. The swivel thingy is too weak on these mirrors so after a while they just fold in at speeds above 55mph which you can do legally in the US oddly enough. Anyway, while there I made this mistake of taking a test ride on an 1150GS. It's a super sweet ride, if I hadn't got the truck for dad I would have traded my 650GS in on one already. Smooth, powerful, awesome brakes, cool looking, etc, etc. Spendy though (something like $15k before options). Rather than act on impulse, I'm going to put the money I would have spent on the bike into a 6 month CD. If I still want the bike in 6 months I'll get it. If not, I'll know I made the right choice. Either way I'll be rewarded with 4% interest. BMW didn't raise the price for 2003 so there isn't any reason to jump right now, I don't need their 2.9% financing. Plus it's going into winter, it's going to be all cold and crap soon enough. Time for snowboarding!

Why does LaunchCast say Rock of Ages by Def Leppard is "recommended by fans of Alanis Morissette"? What's wrong with those Alanis fans? :) I'm listening now obviously or I wouldn't be thinking up all these comments.

Went to the parents tonight for dinner. Chicken was dry but the artichoke was tasty. That's an advantage to living in CA, fresh trendy produce. Mom got dad a Cool-Pix 885 that he's happy with. It's nicer than my 775 but larger. And speaking of cameras, mom found this flier for a amateur photo contest held by the city of Newark next month. I'm going to enter a few of my shots and see what comes of it. They've got various categories in addition to the main theme of "American Spirit" or some such PC crap such as "nature" and "man's creations". I've got my waterfall photos for the nature stuff and my SF city scape and bench photos for the man's creations categories.

Don and Sue are going to go out again, that's cool. Last time K2 and I set someone up it was Shaun and Deb, and they're married now. Last time I set Don up with someone it was K2 and we know how that turned out. Scary?

This song "Heaven" by DJ Sammy & Yanou was popular in the club in Vegas, or I should say a dance mix version of it was. This is so cool, after a while I'll know exactly what type of music I like and I can go buy some CDs I'm sure to like. That's probably what they have in mind when they built the site. I've got to go to sleep now, I have to go to the gym in the AM.

Interesting observations on my run this morning. (I run 3 laps around the campus after lifting, I think I've already mentioned that). Anyway, the first is that using the pointy end of building B and the markings on the parking lot as a makeshift sundial to figure out how long I've been out there is not a good idea as with the sun's position in the sky changing as winter comes it makes the shadows change position. Wonder how real sundials work? The second is that the trading window must be open, or it must be opening soon. Two of the warehouse workers (very Mexican) are sporting new pimped out rides. One has a slammed navigator with 20" rims and tacky gold shit all over it, the other as an escalade with an equal amount of gold crap (but still the stock height). Mexicans as a culture just seem to have really poor choice in cars. The third is that a good 50%+ of the people I see arrive in the morning are carrying Starbucks cups (or a Starbucks equivalent, complete with the little cardboard cup condom). That's a lot of $4 cups of coffee.

We had to spring the truck on dad tonight as it turns out. I got a frantic phone call from mom and then from Leianne... dad had looked at the same truck twice and was getting ready to do something stupid, like buy it. That would have been a very Brady Bunch sorta situation with us ending up with two trucks. No one wanted that so I invited them out to dinner and made sure they got there first. I parked next to mom's car and went in like nothing had happened. When we left the restaurant dad said "look, the truck gods are taunting me, there is a truck just like the one I want parked next to us". I hit the remote and made the lights flash and said something like "no, the gods have granted your wish, that is your truck parked next to us". It took him a good couple of seconds to figure out what was going on and then refused to believe what he was being told (like we would make it up?). Needless to say he was very pleased, and did a good job of not crying and all that. He's going out tomorrow to buy a cover for it, just like I though he would. And some running boards so mom can actually get into the thing. It's crazy high up there for a stock vehicle. The Montero is happily back in the garage and I can walk around in there. It's a good thing. I would like to have him bring my punching bag back from the cabin so I can hang it in the garage.

I watered Paige's plants tonight as well, glad I didn't forget as it's pretty warm and they were dry.

I'm reading Snow Crash and I like the guys writing style but the story is dragging a little in spots. It's a neoclassic or something as I understand it.

What a major pain in the ass. I got a AMD1600 system from work so I would have something fast enough to play Warcraft III on. After dicking around for several hours I couldn't get the integrated sound working nor on-board video to do anything other than 640x480 and/or interfere with the GeForce II card I pulled out of my old system. I gave up and just took the working CDROM out of it and replaced the dead CDROM in my old system. I then installed Warcraft... but it won't run. It doesn't like the CD. It will install from it, but not run against it. Guess it knows it's a copy? Dunno, I guess I will have to buy it if I want to play it. I can get the AMD disk re-imaged at work using win2k or something that's already got all the drivers in it. Oddly enough, the USB stuff did work and I was on the net in seconds. Trying to find drivers when all your browser can do is 640x480x16 colors is painful. Oh, and apparently computers don't have ISA slots anymore (I knew this, we've not used ISA for a long ass time now). My ISA Sound Blaster 32 is useless in this new world order.

Don came up today and although we didn't go to the gun show (no one really wanted to go) we did take Sue to the range, and then went to Chevy's for dinner (my parents turned up at the restaurant too... good thing I didn't try to drive the truck there!). Sue seemed to be having fun although she was lousy at shooting from what I could tell. I was trying to stay away as it was a chance for her and Don to see if there was any interest. Don suggested dinner so I think that's a good sign. I've talked to her and know what she thinks, I'll find out Don's reaction soon and see if they want to go out.

I'm now doing laundry and hopefully my pants will dry quickly so I can wear them tomorrow. All these fancy hand-wash hard to dry things are starting to suck. I like casual Fridays now, I can dress myself easier on casual days.

Almost forgot to mention, today I picked up a small file and fixed the dead bolt plate on the front door, you can now lock/unlock it easily without fear of the key breaking in the lock (the lock seems to have a lot of slop in it, probably from being forced all those years). I also picked up some quick-release hose parts for the front porch hose outlet. I want to be able to move the hose easily from the garage faucet to the porch so I can clean the porch more regularly. All those dead leaves start to make a mess (and smell) lying around on the concrete.

All in all, it was a good day. I wish I had been able to wake up earlier this morning but it wasn't to be. Last night Leianne came over and we went to City Beach up in Fremont. I was dying for a drink and some music. I think I'm just enjoying drinking Coke, even if it does have rum in it. There was a band playing out on the patio and we sat for a bit until it got too cold. She called me tonight wanting the number of the realtor chick that helped me with this place. She's found a townhouse out in Discovery Bay she wants to put an offer in on. It will be very cool if she gets it; I'll have somewhere to ride on weekends that's not as far as the cabin. I can zip out there, enjoy some BBQ or whatever and then return home and not be too tired.

The dryer just clicked off, I have clean pants once again. I don't know if I've put these up before, but they weren't in the image directory. Here are some cheesy movies that I made with the digital camera in Death Valley. Each one is 4mb and they play if I download them to the desktop, just clicking doesn't seem to work (for me anyway). Movie one and two.

Long, long day (so far). Sue stayed over last night (no, nothing happened, we just crashed on the couch) and we lounged around all morning talking and reading. It was very cool, unlike K5 and Krista I was able to sit and eat a bowl of cereal and read Auto Week while she sat there reading her own magazine. We didn't have to talk 24x7. Very cool. Did I mention that Don is supposed to come up tomorrow so he can be 'set up' with Sue? She's a good person, I hope they hit it off. Don could do a lot worse. Whatever that cliche means.

I rode out to Half Moon Bay to check out K5's $35,000 worth of landscaping and $15,000 worth of furniture. It was really cold and foggy so I layered up and that made the ride enjoyable. That and the heated grips, their first real use. While inbound on 92 I saw to R1150GS'es going the other way. One yellow with all the brush guards on it and a full complement of luggage and a tent and sleeping bag lashed onto the back, the other a similarly equipped "Adventure" model. The Adventure kicks some serious ass. You have to be 6'2"+ tall to handle an adventure or I would lust after it more. My screen background image at work is that of an Adventure blasting across the desert. Anyway, K5's house looks really good, the yard is pretty advanced and the furniture looks very adult. She's repainted a bunch as well. I would have taken pictures but I knew it wouldn't do it justice. We had lunch at the cafe and then I motored on.

Here, I downloaded these from BMW's web site. Is the Adventure just kick ass or what?

I headed down to Joe's BBQ (our VP) and chatted with work folks for a while. I've made points with the director of the SAP group (K5's soon to be ex boss) and he introduced me to his wife and family. Nice people. The punks of the department started drinking a lot and got the great idea to try doing drive-bys against a lawn chair using Joe's lawn tractor as the vehicle and rice boy's potato gun as the weapon. I think this says it all:

That's Dennis with the gun on the right, Jimmy driving. They didn't do very well, the gun started to malfunction after a whole bag of spuds had been fired through it. The propellant (aqua net hair spray) is ignited with this 'sparker' thingy that you twist on the handle. It worked well at first but breaks down due to all the explosions it's subjected too.

Whoa, missed a whole week in there somewhere. It's gone fast, maybe because it was busy at work. Not a bad busy, just lots to do and the drive to do it. That's getting rare these days.

So the big news for me this week is that I bought dad a truck for his birthday. I found a fair deal on a really excellent truck so I went for it. I'll post some pictures here soon, I want to take my own vs. the few that are in the ad. I got it at "wheels and deals" which is a consignment lot in Santa Clara. Right now it's sitting in the garage taking up most of the space. I've got maybe 3" of clearance in the back and 4" to the front wall. I would not want to have to park this thing every day; you can not get a second vehicle in the garage with this beast. The poor Montero is sitting outside all dejected. :(

The big news around the office won't be official news until two weeks from now, actually. I talked to K5 today and apparently her world has turned around in a flash. She pissed off the wrong person on the SAP II project saying that the Accenture consultants (at $250+/hr) have been on-site for 6 months now and have done nothing useful so far. It's true, or at least all the workers on the nVidia side of the project say, but no one would stand up to the VP in finance and tell him what's going on. K5 did that, and I don't know how tactful she was about she. She said she was very tactful, but who can say. Anyway, he talked to her boss' boss and got her pulled from the assignment. That was the last straw she said and she's going to give notice in two weeks. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that she's packing up her stuff, renting out her house and moving to New Zealand for 6 months to sail around and generally do nothing. She (and I think his name is really Jeff) are going to Yosemite and then Hawaii and then when they return she'll officially quit (wants to make sure her trips are paid for). He's not yet quit his job nor said he's going with her "down under" for sure, but they did talk about it and he is really digging the idea. He's just a puppy though with no real job so I don't see the harm in it for him.

Looks like some web app took over my PC... my cursor is all screwed up and pop-ups keep showing up even though all the browsers are theoretically closed. Active desktop worm? Dunno, gotta reboot. Stupid yahoo! site, what were they thinking?

Had a great time in Seattle. The flights to and from weren't bad (a little slowness in Seattle this AM and about 20 minutes late but all things considered that ain't nothing) and the weather was excellent. I think it was the best weather I've seen up there ever in fact. Saturday we went to the water park and since I don't like water rides or roller coasters I got to just sit around a lot. Interestingly enough that's what I wanted. I got cozy next to this drainage gutter kinda thing on the edge of a large pedestrian ramp up against the fence in the shade, put the backpack down as a pad and leisurely watched people wander by and almost manage to take a few little naps. Yea, it sounds kinda weird but it was nice. We also saw XXX that night which was a campy but enjoyable movie. I don't think anyone said if they liked it or not... hmm...

Also on Saturday we stopped by a watch shop and for $10.88 I got a metal band that exactly matched the finish of my Russian watch and looks pretty good. Quite a deal and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It wasn't a normal band the guy had a stock (since no one seemed to stock one for it at the previous shops I went to) it was one he had lying around that he had taken off of some other watch. It really changes the look of the whole package.

Sunday I went to Kenny's yoga class and managed to survive. It really is a workout. My right shoulder was a little sore (actually still is) from the upside down forearm flippy things against the wall that she had us trying but overall my body feels a lot better for it. I can see why they like going a couple times a week, it really puts everything into alignment (which I'm not in most of the time). Too bad there aren't any classes down here close to work (K5 searched for several months to no avail on this topic). Dennis wanted to go to the go cart track in the afternoon but after a big meal Kenny and I weren't up to it so we just lounged around Dennis' for a while before going out house shopping. Kenny can afford a much larger place than he has and since a shorter commute and more garage space are on his wish list it seems only natural that he would move. He's just fundamentally lazy though (aren't we all?) so it's probably not going to happen any time soon. You can get a really nice house in a nice neighborhood for $419k. It was like someone took a chunk of Los Gatos and moved it into the mountains, and the rebuilt everything so it wasn't crap from the 50s. Very quaint feeling.

As a side note, the bike that Tom Hanks was riding in the drag net movie was the same BMW that Jim got as a loaner, although in the movie it was red.

Today at work is more of the same, but the day is going fast. I never did change into work clothes, I'm still in Seattle mode with my hiking pants and a clean but wrinkled REI t-shirt. It feels weird being in the office dressed like this now. I'm really looking forward to being at home tonight; I wonder how my place is doing and how much mail has built up. Feels like I've been gone for a long time.

I forgot to mention that the speakers Dennis gave me made it OK. Robert (I think) sent him some pre-release Logitech speaker setups with a center speaker, a sub woofer and 4 satellites and he had an extra so I took it to replace the failing Yamahas from college.

There is a huge new development down in San Jose. Hundreds of retail shops with condos above them, all brand new and slated to go on-line on September 20th. One problem, they're behind and the developer will be charged $1M every day they're late. Funny thing today, there was an 8 alarm fire in the whole complex. News footage shows the whole thing a huge fireball. The freeway was stopped and they were telling people who lived within 2 miles to start watering their roof to protect from fiery debris falling on them. Hmm... think it was arson?

DAMN! The compact flash reader went haywire and blasted my 256mb card. It reformatted OK but I lost the image of Jo with the Montero. I think Eric said something about ejecting the card before removing it... never bit me before but I guess this is the first.

I gave Lydia a password to see the Vegas photos, she's checked them out twice but not clicked on any of them. Wonder if she knows she can?

There must be a ton of wireless activity in the area (at home). The wireless activity light on the hub isn't blinking much at all but the one on the PC card is going crazy, even when I'm not doing anything. Could the PC be picking up all sorts of crap and just dropping it? Is there a "who is talking to me" mode on the card? Must be, that's how all those hacker types find stuff.

That wasn't why I opened up the journal, I had something relevant to put in here but now I can't recall what it was. Crap. I'll go gather up my dry cleaning to take to work tomorrow (they have a service for us that delivers it back to your cube on Friday if it's in by Tuesday) and see if I can remember.

I had some meatless buffalo wings tonight, they were really tasty! Spicy too and with some McDonald's BBQ sauce they were better than the 'chicken' nuggets at any fast food place.

Oh yea, now I remember. I cleared out all the last traces of Krista stuff from the fridge and tossed it (since it's garbage day tomorrow). Say goodbye to her coffee, tonic (for the gin and tonics), frozen bread stuff, etc. Now the fridge is way empty.

Hmm... how did I miss a few days up updates? Anyway, the hike yesterday with the local Canadian chick was pretty good. She's got a boyfriend as it turns out, but we can still hike together. That works for me, actually. It just more people that I can get to know. Her boyfriend sounds pretty cool, apparently he's got an old land rover and goes 4x4ing. Can't be all bad if he's got a rover. I should get a rover. What was cool on the hike was that she took a good picture of me, and I got to take this power line picture. The power line thing may not look to spiffy, but it is because I saw this shot in a photography book at Borders while in SFO and it was cool to be able to take it myself just days later. I couldn't get it centered right (so it's not symmetrical) because there were a lot of plants around under the base and some were red and looked like poison oak. I avoided those.

Jim took his F650 in for service and instead of another F650 as a loaner, the SJC BMW guys gave him this 1985 R100 (at least we THINK it's a R100). It's got multi-port fuel injection, shaft drive, etc. Pretty damn high tech for a 1985 bike I think. And what was really impressive? 106k miles on the odometer. That's a lot of miles for a bike, especially a service loaner.

I'm all packed and ready to go to Seattle tonight. I had to pick up Ed this morning and take him to work because he's got to pick up the wife's LX470 from the body shop today. That thing has hit more poles, parking bumps, etc. Just proves that little soccer moms should not be driving big trucks. Hell, no one needs a beast that big to haul around a 1.5' tall kid. Stupid yuppies. Anyway, even after picking up Ed at 6:45am I still got him to work and to the gym at 7:10am and got a reasonable workout in.

Linux world was interesting, and sad for some. Seeing HP and Sun and IBM and the rest trying to compete is just not a good thing. They're all saying they'll sell hardware and 'value add' with their support and services. Um, OK. They're all just repackaging commodity hardware, marking it up 100% and then trying to resell it. Seems like it won't work, people who are adopting Linux are pretty progressive and probably apt to not need a bunch of hand holding by $250/hr professional services people. Plus, why buy name-brand clone hardware when you can just by the no-name-brand clone stuff? Most big guys are just using Intel motherboards anyway. Big win for Intel though.

Speaking of Intel, they had their iSCSI, um, network card...? What do you call it, a SAN card? Anyway, they had one there and it looked pretty cool. Once the standard is finished up and the storage guys have the multi-access thing down (multiple readers AND writers) it will start to be useful. I hate SAN now because you have to run all that duplicate fibre everywhere and use the insanely expensive switches. Once iSCSI takes off, no more expensive switches, no more redundant fibre crap. I really hope it works. I like our direct gigabit attach tape drives and library.

I went to the gym tonight because I won't go in the AM as I'm going back up to Linux world again, this time to talk to IBM. Mostly it's just an excuse for Ed and I to get out of the office. Lunch today was at some Italian place located in an alley in the financial district. Ed used to work there and knows all these really great places. The food was excellent, not what you would expect in an alley. After that we went to the shopping area and I got an official Oakley hard case for my glasses. I went to one of those Godiva (sp?) chocolate places and got the same tasty stuff that we got in Vegas. Yum. The checker dude was so, so gay and hitting on me. Ed was freaked out, I thought it was funny. I can see why Krista has no problem meeting people in the city, I smiled and was smiled at by so many cute girls today it wasn't funny. If I had been more on my game (and actually interested) I could have struck up a lot of conversations. In Nordstrom while waiting for Ed to get out of the bathroom I was people watching. There were 5 female employees loitering by the counter chatting. None of them were wearing rings. Three were actually cute. That's some sort of record.

I got home from the gym and sat down and wrote some Perl code to parse some syslog mail entries for Phil. He's doing some security crap and keeps asking me for info... now it's all automated. Writing code is still fun, it's cool to actually make something that DOES something. Spreadsheets and MS Project plans (that I work on now a days) are unfufilling in that respect. I've got some other code I need to write, some disk space reporting tools. Maybe tomorrow night, I've got to get to sleep here so I can make it up at 6:30am. We've got to take Ed's car to the shop before we go up to the city.

When I use Star Wars or Die Hard or Aliens or whatever quotes I'm just weird, when I use Charlotte's Web quotes people suddenly think I need help.

The salary calculator says that to move from Milpitas to San Fransisco that I would need to bring in $189k. That's scary.

This is so freaky. On the discover channel they're doing one of those animal shows... on dinosaurs. It's all CGI, they've got 'em doing normal stuff like drinking and walking around (vs. the movies where they're chasing people). It looks so real.

I was bored out of my mind at work today. I'm trying to detail plans and make schedules but it just seems to futile. Not sure why. Tomorrow we're going to Linux world up in SF. Wonder what I'm supposed to wear?

Went for a ride to the bank, gas station then to Palo Alto for hot chocolate. There are so many freaks in that town, it's not worth going to even though they have lots of motorcycle parking on every block.

Sue, Leianne and I went to the comedy club last night and had a blast. The headliner guy sucked, big time but the first two guys were hilarious. I was laughing so hard my gut started hurting... that's a good thing.

The guys from work bailed out on the ride this morning so I went myself. I wore the yellow helmet and had zero problems so there is something wrong with the silver helmet. Good to know. I also rode the suzuki around a little just to keep the battery charged and things lubricated.

Dad wanted to 'bond' today (I can tell when he stops by randomly) so we went to home depot and got some cabinets for the garage. I need to get something to shim them up, the floor isn't square to the wall and I want to bolt the cabinets to the wall.

After the cabinets Leianne called to tell me that the babe at the sharper image was working today. I actually rode down to Los Gatos to talk to her but when I arrived I saw her walk out of the store and start kissing some guy in the parking lot. So much for that idea!

Back at the house I got busy and changed the oil in the Montero. I didn't spill a drop, thanks to my fancy oil filter drain tray. Check it out:

It doesn't look like much, but somehow it kept all the oil that came out of the filter from flying all over the place and channeled it into the collector.

Dinner last night for myself, Sue and Leianne worked out to $191 (which I somehow ended up paying). Wine and desserts really add up. Plus it was a trendy yuppie place in Palo Alto, that probably had a lot to do with it.

Today has been a total waste of a day so far. Slept late, watched MST3k, took my old oil to the recycle thing, picked up new oil for the Montero (haven't actually changed it yet) and stopped to visit with Troy for about a half hour. I need to eat at some point and maybe go to GP and see about getting my helmet swapped.

Why I think I'm somewhat out of control: this morning I woke up and it took me a few minutes to figure out who the woman next to me was and who's house I was in. I've slept with three different women in the past week (not had sex with them all mind you, just slept in the same bed) so you can see how it's a valid thing to be confused about when you're just waking up.

South Park was a rerun last night which sucks. It was the one about the movie remakes so there is the funny part at the end with Tweak and the rocket launcher remaking the scene from Raiders.

It's always cool to see guys on the F650 list actually taking their bikes off-road. The Dakar model of my bike is the same chassis and engine but with 2" more suspension and some other off-road oriented things (tires, bars, gearing, etc). Here are some guys actually adventure touring. Man are those bags beat up... and dropping them on the sides like that, ouch!

Lydia finally stopped by around 1:30pm for "lunch". Man these non-corporate types just do not understand what time normal people have to eat and be back to the office by. We went for a jamba juice then she had to head to the mall to get shoes, she forgot the ones that went with her dress that she's wearing to that wedding in Seattle tomorrow.

What a great night for a ride! I went to see Bourne Identity with Larklyn and when the movie got out at 9pm it was still very warm out. I rode home, then turned around and continued riding around randomly, I just didn't want to stop. These are the days I wish I could skip work and just ride somewhere. The movie was good too, or so I thought.

Eric's version of the Vegas evening (which looks right to me):

We all meet up at the Mandalay Bay, takes about 1.5 hours to get everyone together. Janet and I have dinner there and Kelly chats with us.

9 of us jam into a small Audi (Lydia's) for the drive to Rain (the club). This was quite memorable (and a bit painful).

Kelly had a good time till about half way into the 1st club (when the stuff started kicking in)

Larklyn started making out big time (as she was on E) with "Rick" at the first club, this put Kelly in a foul mood because he was supposed to be watching over her

About this point Kelly's pupils were getting pretty dilated

Lots of dancing and drinking till about 2am; most everyone had fun (girls kissing, etc). Kelly danced a bunch and appeared to be having fun except he appeared anxious (probably amplified by the E) about Larklyn

We then headed over to Crazy Horse Too for some stripper action, additional cars were available so this wasn't too exiting ride wise.

At the strip club everyone got a 'hairy nipple' (tasted like butterscotch liqueur and cream). After maybe 20 minutes in there Larklyn started looking suspiciously like walking dead (staring straight ahead, not blinking); she decided she wanted to get to bed

Lydia had just sat Janet down in a chair for a lap dance and that was just getting going when ...

Kelly started feeling vomitious and wanted to get some air, I went out with him and we stood outside. The sky was just starting to get light.

We were out there about 15 minutes talking about hallucinogens (his eyes were very very dilated at this point) when Larklyn and Rick strolled out together and headed toward Rick's SUV. Kelly considered this for a few moments then when running after them (the car was about a block away).

I went back inside to find the party but couldn't find anyone (I later discovered they had gone into a private back room).

Went back outside and Kelly had come back looking worried about Larklyn and Rick. Told me about the pact, etc...

We went back inside and eventually found Lydia/Janet/Alex/Steve, they talked Janet into driving (she was unimpaired, just tired) and we all piled into the Audi again.

Kelly was in the middle of the back seat between me and someone else (can't remember who). Steve was laying across the 3 of us. Lydia, who apparently has issues with the left/right concept when on E, was shouting directions at Janet ("go left, no LEFT, NO LEFT...", of course she wanted to say 'right').

A few blown stop signs later we ended up on Las Vegas Blvd waiting to turn left on Flamingo, a couple of blocks from the Hard Rock Hotel. The plan was to go to an after hours club there.

We're sitting in the turn lane and Kelly turns to me and says "I've got to get out now" quite seriously. I made some retort like "wait a minute, we're almost there". He said it again and sounded like he would go berserk if I didn't move. I was afraid he was going to puke on Steve actually, so I hopped out and he jumped out quickly. By the time I got back in the door and shut it, he had run through traffic, hopped a fence, ran up the escalator, and was crossing the bridge over the street at very high speed.

We went to the hard rock, the club was annoying, so (its like 7:30 now) Lydia dropped Janet and I off at the Hilton and they went to the 'peppercorn' for breakfast.

A couple of hours later Kelly called me to ask what happened the night before.

Ugh, Vegas. I'll document the images later and write the story. From these shots, it looks like a pretty boring time. The first rule of Vegas, you never talk about Vegas.

Here is an interesting chart, a F650GS dyno run from Europe. Pretty weak, what's that, 42hp?

OK, anyway, the Vegas trip. So at SJC Larklyn and I got coffee (I got a hot coco actually) and we think the milk was bad. We both got sick and ended up lying around doing nothing for the whole afternoon (I was visiting the toilet quite a bit). After dinner we hooked up with Eric and Janet and Lydia, Chris, and the rest of the crew and went to "rain", a hip dance spot. We had a VIP area on the 2nd floor which was way better than being down on the floor. We had our own couches, etc. Jimmy, Charles and John from work showed up at some point and brought a few bimbos with them which was a nice touch. At some point Lydia got me to take some ecstasy which is pretty much was caused the problems for the weekend. I was getting out of it around 4am at which time we went to Lydia's strip club (crazy horse too) and tried to partake in the activities there. I was getting paranoid, angry and all sorts of stuff so Eric stood outside with me while I rambled on and punched the wall (only once, just to see what would happen)... um, so ya know, this is all sorta bad stuff after this point so I think I'll have to stop journaling. I'm hoping that I'll forget most of it with time. Let's just say that it was a learning experience and that I'm glad I did it and am more glad that it's over. If I go back to Vegas it will be with a different crowd (like maybe just with Eric and Janet) to really see what the town has to offer (vs. seeing the inside of the hotel room most of the time trying to recover).

You can fit an amazing amount of frozen crap in the top case on the BMW. I got 6 packages of lean pockets, some low fat salami and cheese and triskets in there and it was only half full. I should grocery shop with the bike more often. And speaking of BMWs, Dennis was test driving some. Dennis in a BMW? What has the world come to?

OK, here is something interesting to put in here. I've punched in my monthly quicken crapola and 1/1/02 through 8/1/02 it shows my net savings at 88.32%. My biggest expenses (not counting depreciating capitol items like the R1) are the Milpitas mortgage, the cabin mortgage, travel, the eye zapping doctor and then my tax preparation stuff. This year for 2001 filing and for the crap I've done for 2002 which isn't much has run me $2600. That's a lot of tax preparation costs. I've spent $1012 on 'gun' stuff including.... no wait, that can't be right can it? I guess I bought the Benelli last year? It alone should have been $800 and I've spent money at gun shows and on that double barrel shotgun. Hmm... maybe I've got another category called guns under 'entertainment'.

And where the hell is Leianne and why won't she answer her phone? I'm getting hungry!

Leianne is supposed to be here so we can go eat and it's after 7. Damn, I'm hungry, where is she??? and why won't she answer her phone?

Anyway, tomorrow is the flight to Vegas. I'm starting to get a little excited, and a little worried. The lock for my luggage was damaged on the way back from Cancun and I've not replaced it yet... do they sell those at the grocery store? I guess I could just tie wrap it closed, I'm not worried about anyone stealing my clothes, I just don't want it to pop open.

I feel like there should be something else to put in here but I can't figure out what. Oh well, I'll have pictures to post when I return.

I will refrain from saying "look, another month gone" because I always seem to be saying that. Seriously though, time is flying. There, I always say that too.